Free Serafina and the Silent Vampire by Marie Treanor Page B

rudely past, seizing Tess’s arm and almost dragging her out of the room. Her neck, her whole back prickled all the way out and along the hall. He could still stop them if he chose. There was really nothing Sera could do.
    But it seemed that, for whatever reason, he didn’t choose. Perhaps he really did want her help. At the front door, which was still ajar, she couldn’t resist glancing back. He stood in the hall, watching them, the gloomy light casting sinister shadows across his left eye and cheek. He looked mysterious and deadly. And so inappropriately sexy.

Chapter Five
    As Sera emerged from her inner office the following morning to show her new client to the door, she found another, less welcome visitor waiting for her. PC McGowan, the red-haired policeman who’d taken such a dislike to her at the Bells’. Elspeth’s eyes were rolling frantically in his direction to warn her, but Sera had seen him at once, sitting in one of the comfortable waiting chairs.
    “See you at five,” Moira Gordon, her client, said with a smile that didn’t touch the sadness in her eyes.
    “I’ll be there,” Sera returned, uncomfortably aware of the constable’s glare as she opened the front door for Moira and closed it behind her. And in fact, before she’d even turned, he was in her face.
    “What are you going to tell that poor woman? That her dead mother wants her to give you a load of money she doesn’t have?”
    “Her mother isn’t dead. What do you want?”
    The policeman dragged his bitter gaze away from the window where the tired, not so well-dressed figure of Moira Gordon crossed the road toward the bus stop.
    “Nice premises you have here,” he said with unmistakable resentment. “Business must be going well.”
    “It’s growing,” she said calmly, “but if you mean it pays the rent on this place, no it doesn’t. I paid five years rent in advance from a legacy.” Namely, Mattie and George’s house, which she’d sold because she couldn’t bear to live there without them.
    This obviously wasn’t the answer McGowan expected, but he only grunted before smiling with rather more relish. “There’s been a complaint against you.”
    Oops. Have I been careless? “By whom? For what?”
    “By Mr. Jason Bell. For harassing him at his place of work.”
    Sera grinned with blatant mockery. “Really?”
    “There are more annoyances than physical threats,” the policeman said defensively. “We were sent video footage of you breaking into the C & H car park.”
    Sera sat down on one of the other waiting chairs. “Goodness. Well, I climbed over the barrier and hung around waiting for him.”
    “Why?”
    “To be sure he was all right. At least you and I can agree the events at his father’s party were a trifle strange.”
    He blinked at that, as though determined not to agree with her publicly about anything. “Well, Jason and his father seem to consider the matter closed. Why don’t you?”
    “Ah, Constable”—although she remembered his name perfectly well, she peered at his name tag—“McGowan. If I told you that, you’d assume I was taking the piss. What else did that video show? Fighting?” Men leaping impossible heights and distances, vanishing into dust…?
    “Hardly,” said Constable McGowan coldly. “If it had, you’d have been under arrest.” His tone left no doubt that he was sorry not to be able to deliver that particular outcome. Sera was more interested in the fact that Jason must have somehow doctored the tape before giving it to the police.
    Or perhaps vampires didn’t show up on camera? Or mirrors? Was she becoming as gullible as the people she’d been known to part from their cash?
    “So you’re not here in any official capacity?” she suggested.
    He stood up. “Oh yes. Rest assured I’ll be making a full report. In which I’ll state that I’ve warned you to leave off harassing all of the Bell family.”
    “I’ve never harassed anyone in my life,” Sera retorted.