Shrill Dusk

Book 1: City of Magic

by Helen Harper

Genres: Urban Fantasy; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Charley is a cleaner by day and a professional gambler by night. She might be haunted by her tragic past but she's never thought of herself as anything or anyone special. Until, that is, things start to go terribly wrong all across the city of Manchester. Between plagues of rats, firestorms, and the gleaming blue eyes of a sexy Scottish werewolf, she might just have landed herself in the middle of a magical apocalypse. She might also be the only person who has the ability to bring order to an utterly chaotic new world.

Release date: January 4, 2019

Print pages: 270

Sample

Prologue

 

2007 

If there was only one thing I knew for sure, it was that I was the luckiest girl in the world. Every single moment of my life had been leading up to this and I couldn’t imagine how anything could ever beat it.

I stared into Matthew Thomas Dwight’s chocolate-brown eyes and inhaled deeply, his Lynx-scented aftershave permeating the brief scrap of air between us. I leaned forward. So did he. He was going to kiss me. The most popular boy in school was actually going to put his lips on mine and it was going to be everything I’d ever dreamed of and we’d get married in a pretty church and we’d have beautiful children and…

‘Charlotte!’

Every part of me winced. Even my eyebrows seemed to retract in embarrassment.

‘Isn’t that your brother calling?’ Matthew Thomas Dwight asked.

‘No.’ I blushed so hard it was a miracle I didn’t singe his perfect, unblemished skin.

Amusement tugged at his mouth. ‘It’s okay,’ he whispered. ‘I can wait.’

That was all very well but I wasn’t sure I could.

‘Charl … otte!’

I squirmed and sighed. I knew Joshua. He’d keep yelling until I gave in and went to see what he wanted. His stupid Action Man doll had probably fallen under the bed or something. I yielded to the inevitable. ‘I won’t be long,’ I said. Then, because it seemed important to say it, ‘Don’t go anywhere.’

I got up, smoothed my skirt and walked down the garden path towards the back door. About halfway along, it occurred to me that Matthew Thomas Dwight was probably watching me and that I should make more of an effort. I injected an extra hip swing. It felt uncomfortable, and I was desperate to glance over my shoulder to see if it was working, but I managed to resist. Treat ’em mean, I told myself firmly. It worked for Louise and she’d already snogged half of the boys in our year group. So she said, anyway.

As soon as I was inside and out of sight, I dropped the awkward sashay in favour of thumping loudly up the stairs, more fairy elephant than fairy princess.

‘Charlotte! I neeeeeeed you!’

I gritted my teeth, pushed open Joshua’s bedroom door and glared. He was sitting up in bed in his favourite Superman pyjamas, his hair tousled and his eyes bleary. ‘What?’ I snapped.

Registering my tone despite his sleepiness, his bottom lip jutted out. ‘You promised Mum and Dad that you’d look after me.’

‘And you promised me that you’d let me have some peace.’

He scratched his head, apparently remembering that particular little fact. ‘Have you kissed him yet? Was it all squishy and wet?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘No. I’m not likely to get to kiss him either if you keep shouting for me. What’s the problem?’

He raised one small, pudgy arm and pointed. ‘My night light. S’not working.’

I glanced down. With the light from the hallway sending a shaft of brightness into Joshua’s room, I’d not noticed that his green star-shaped lamp was off. I sighed and knelt down, checking the plug and socket. I jiggled it, as if I could encourage electricity by giving it nothing more than a shimmy. When that didn’t work, I checked the inside of the lamp itself.

‘The bulb’s gone,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to wait till tomorrow, Jo Bug. I know for a fact there aren’t any spares in the cupboard.’

Joshua sniffed loudly. ‘I can’t sleep if I don’t have my night light.’

‘You’re seven already. You don’t need a night light.’

‘I do!’

‘Jo Bug,’ I began. Then I sighed. This was stupid; he was more stubborn than I was. ‘Alright. If I leave your bedroom door open and the hall light on, you’ll be fine.’

‘I don’t want my door open. The spiders will get in.’

I drew in a long breath. ‘There aren’t any spiders.’

‘That’s not what you said yesterday.’ The light in his eyes was sharp and accusing. I cursed myself for idly teasing him at breakfast and wrinkled my nose.

‘I can get the lamp from my room.’

‘It’s pink.’

‘The blue one from the spare room then? The one in dining room? Or from Mum and Dad’s room?’

He shook his head to every suggestion, his jaw set. ‘No. I want my night light.’

‘Your night light isn’t going to work.’ Anxiety clawed at me. Matthew Thomas Dwight wasn’t going to wait outside for me forever. ‘A candle,’ I burst out. ‘You like candles, right? You liked the ones Mum put out at Christmas? Why don’t I get you one of those?’

Joshua opened his mouth to refuse.

‘There are still some of the red ones left,’ I told him. ‘They smell nice.’ I crossed my fingers. ‘Remember?’

The fact that he didn’t answer immediately meant I’d won. ‘Wait here,’ I said. ‘I’ll go grab one.’

Even more quickly now, I threw myself back down the stairs and into the dining room, fumbling with the drawer on the Welsh dresser and scrabbling around for the candles that I knew were still there. I took one, along with a large box of kitchen matches, and a candle holder almost as an afterthought. Then I ran back up.

Joshua watched me with wide eyes as I set the candle up on the little desk in the corner of his room, far enough away that he couldn’t knock it over inadvertently in his sleep. The wick caught on my first try and I stepped back, briefly admiring my handiwork. ‘There,’ I said. ‘Perfect.’ I turned around and glanced at him. ‘Alright, Jo Bug?’

He smiled, a gap-toothed beam filled with gratitude that instantly made me feel guilty for being irritated with him. ‘Fanks, Charlotte. Can you open the window too? It’s hot.’

I gave him a thumbs-up and did as he asked, moving the curtains to one side to do so. Then I turned back towards him. ‘Snuggle down now, mister.’

Joshua wriggled his feet and curled up, allowing me to pull his duvet up and over him.

‘Sleep tight, Jo Bug.’

He closed his eyes. ‘I will. I like the candle, Charlotte. You saved me.’

I smiled down at him. ‘I’ll always save you, Jo Bug.’

The dimples in his cheeks, identical to my own, appeared. ‘Don’t kiss that boy. It’s yucky.’

I laughed softly and kissed his brow. ‘We’ll see, Jo Bug,’ I whispered. ‘We’ll see.’

*

Unbelievably, Matthew Thomas Dwight was still in the garden waiting for me. He was lounging back on the swing seat when I approached, his eyes half-closed and his arm draped across the cushion I’d vacated.

‘I’m sorry.’

He looked up, a lazy grin spreading across his face that made my heart trip. ‘That’s okay. Is everything alright with your brother?’

‘Yeah.’ I paused. ‘He doesn’t think I should kiss you. He thinks it will be yucky.’

The grin on his face changed to something entirely different. ‘And what do you think?’

I sat down next to him so close that our legs were pressing together. ‘I haven’t made up my mind yet.’

I leaned in to find out.

*

I don’t know how long we stayed like that. Sometimes I think it was maybe only twenty minutes, other times perhaps two hours. We kissed and curled into each other. He played with my hair with one hand and groped at my breast with the other. But say what you like about Matthew Thomas Dwight, when I gently moved his hand away, he understood he was pushing his luck too far. Such explorations would have to wait until another night.

If things had been different, that late summer evening on the patio while my parents were out at dinner would have been nothing more than painfully sweet and beautifully memorable. Unfortunately for all of us, in the end it was merely memorable – and for all the wrong reasons.

It was the smell that first alerted me, something akin to the heady smoke from a bonfire tickling at my nostrils. From the garden, there appeared to be nothing wrong with the house and I didn’t dwell on it. But Joshua’s bedroom, with its open windows and breeze-dancing curtains stretching over to meet the single naked flame from the candle on his desk, was at the other side of the house.

It was only when the flames began to spread, twisting their way across the second floor and jumping from my mother’s ethically sourced wall hangings to the antique furniture, that the sledgehammer force of what was going on smacked into me. Until that point, I had been too busy kissing a boy to notice that my little brother was dying.

I pushed Matthew Thomas Dwight away with such force that the swing seat clanged against its metal frame. With a spreading, sickening nausea that made my legs turn to jelly, I sprinted for the house.

I made it to the foot of the stairs but the fire had already taken root. You couldn’t even begin to imagine the heat. I ran up three steps and then backed down, an invisible wall of hot air pressing at me in stark warning. Fear for Joshua thudded through me and I propelled myself upwards once more. Some dim thought filtered through my brain that this was too much of a risk; it was too much of a gamble and I’d never make it. But if I didn’t, neither would Joshua.

I doubled back, panicked logic giving purpose to my movements. While Matthew Thomas Dwight lunged for me and tried to haul me back out of the kitchen, I grabbed a tea towel and threw it under the cold tap. I elbowed him in the stomach to stop him then twisted the towel round my head, covering my nose and mouth as if I were a sodden, trembling harem maiden.

‘You can’t. It’s too dangerous,’ Matthew shouted.

I shook my head, unable to speak, and ran back. This time I was determined to do it, even though the fire was raging more fiercely than before, a screaming thing that demanded victims and vengeance before it could be satiated.

I pushed up past the third step this time. I could do this. I had to do this. The noise now was immense. How could I not have noticed it before? The fiery roar was so loud that I barely heard the glass shattering as the windows exploded outwards. The smoke that had grown so thick on the first floor was drifting downwards and I was forced to flail my way up blindly. Even with my eyes tightly shut, tears streamed down my cheeks.

I hauled myself forwards, gritting my teeth against the heat. There was another scream of fire. My eyes flickered open to see it lick out towards me with devastating speed, a myriad of tongues descending onto my head. I fell backwards as other stronger, more capable hands grabbed at me and pulled me back into the soothing, searing agony of the cool night air.

 

 

Chapter One

 

It’s not about the money. Or the cards. It’s not even about the other people you’re facing off against. Poker is all about the thrill. Hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs … whatever. Balancing everything against a tantalising knife-edge and turn of a hand that could go either way makes my pulse rocket. I have to take my thrills wherever I can get them.

I scanned the table. There were only three of us left in and no one was giving an inch. It amuses me that if you ask a typical layperson to imagine what a high-stakes poker game looks like, they’ll probably picture this – a dark, smoke-filled room with red-velvet chairs, mahogany tables and closed brocade curtains. A crystal decanter filled with Scotch sitting on the sideboard; the sour stench of frustration mingling with over-priced cologne. Yeah. Despite the unpredictability of the cards, we are a predictable bunch.

In theory I could have used my own appearance as a tool to enhance my situation. I wasn’t a child – I hadn’t been a child since that terrible summer evening eleven years ago – but I was still considerably younger than the others in this room. Whereas youth might have once allowed me to be viewed as rash and naïve, however, the advent of online poker matches had attracted a slew of up-and-coming, acne-dappled players to both the physical and the virtual tables. You could potentially clock up more hours of poker experience at your computer in a few months than you could gain at the tables in a lifetime. Age no longer counted for anything and experience couldn’t be measured by the lines on a fellow player’s face. Personally, I didn’t much care for online gambling of any sort. It felt too … removed from the action. If I couldn’t see the whites of their eyes – well, you know.

It wasn’t my relatively tender years that could be considered a potential bonus. I’m cute. I don’t mean that in an American high school kind of way – I’m not a cheerleader. I mean that I really am cute. Believe me when I say that I’m not trying to boast; if I had the choice, I’d rather look like a glowing glamazon instead of a troll. Not that my appearance is similar to the kind of troll you find in old stories, one that lives under a bridge and eats children. No, I resemble the little plastic dolls with big eyes and faintly protruding bellies. I blame my dimples. My blue hair probably doesn’t help either but I love it too much to change it to a more natural shade.

 Unfortunately, the two remaining players sitting across from me knew me far too well to be fooled by my winsome, if rather kooky, appearance. They both hated me in their own particular ways. That was okay, though – don’t feel bad for me. I didn’t much like them either.

Arthur, to my right, affected a Cockney accent as if he were some kind of East End gangster who’d wandered a smidgen too far from home. I doubted he’d ever even been to London. I’d bumped into him in a bar a few months ago when he could barely hold his head up. His accent on that occasion had been more country bumpkin than crony of the Krays.

Next to Arthur was Valerie, her ears, neck and fingers dripping with jewels – none of which were fake. She’d tried to take me under her wing once, suggesting that I should do more to flaunt my sexuality and, she assumed, dazzle men into throwing away a good poker hand in favour of pleasing my gorgeous sassy self. She didn’t understand; even if I could bring myself to act like that, I wanted to win by beating the best when they were at their best, not when they were distracted. I didn’t simply want to win, I wanted to be better than everyone else otherwise what was the point? Flashing a bit of boob wouldn’t satisfy my competitive edge. This wasn’t a striptease contest after all.

Valerie tapped a red-taloned fingernail on the worn green felt. She enjoyed giving off an air of impatience, as if everything about the game and her fellow competitors was beneath her. She loved it really. In truth, she was more lonely than anything. The longer and more drawn-out the game, the less time she had to spend sitting on her own at home with only her thoughts for company.

Before you start to feel sorry for her, don’t bother. She’d kicked out her fourth husband a couple of years back in order to start an affair with a bright young thing she’d wooed away from his fiancée. That was after she’d disowned her own kid for the heinous act of falling in love with someone she didn’t approve of. When the bright young thing was diagnosed with MS, she discarded him in an instant and then attempted to ruin her ex-husband’s new relationship in a thwarted bid to win him back. Fortunately he was made of sterner stuff and resisted her repeated attempts of blackmail, bribery and downright nastiness. Now it appeared that no one wanted her. I didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about Valerie. She’d find another partner soon enough. She was that sort of person. At the moment, however, nothing waited for her at home beyond silence and solitude. Some people, I reflected, would be jealous of that sort of lifestyle but it didn’t suit Valerie.

‘Darling,’ she drawled, ‘we don’t have all night. Maybe it’s time you folded and let the adults play on.’

I ignored her and glanced at my watch. It was already gone three; if I was going to be at work on time, I had to be showered and dressed and on the bus in only a few hours. I considered the small stack of chips in front of me. I was up – but only by a little. I’d played conservatively for the last few hours, keeping my fingers crossed for the right moment. So far it hadn’t arrived. Given what cards I was currently holding, however, that was possibly about to change. Valerie might be here for the company rather than the competition but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a stiff opponent.

I was almost certain that she had little more than one pair. Her movements were too erratic and her expression too studiously bored for anything else. Arthur was harder to read but he’d been my side of unlucky all night. His eyes hadn’t flickered once, so I doubted anything had changed.

I opened my mouth to answer as he adjusted his cuffs ever so slightly. My heart sank. That was it, the tell I hadn’t wanted to see. He’d done well to keep his fingers from twitching up until now. I’d lost against him this way before. Perhaps Valerie was right after all – it was indeed time to let her and Arthur play on.

Irritated with myself for not taking a risk earlier, I stifled a yawn and tossed down my cards. ‘I fold,’ I announced, with more drama than was probably necessary. ‘I shall leave the two of you…’ I paused ‘…adults to continue without me.’

Valerie crowed in mock triumph but I didn’t miss the flash of disappointment in her eyes. All the same, I stood up and exited the room, leaving the pair of them to play on.

I’d barely reached the end of the corridor when Valerie’s cry of fake glee changed to one of obvious despair. I smiled slightly to myself. I could have ended the evening in almost complete penury; that it had been a near miss could be counted as a success.

I blew my hair out of my eyes, shoved my hands into my pockets and strolled out into the chill night. I’d barely gone ten yards when a darkened figure appeared from one of the shadowed alcoves built into the wall on my left. For the briefest instant my mind froze with sudden fear, despite the odd self-defence class I’d taken and the tiny pepper-spray canister I had attached to my keychain. Then he spoke and I realised I was in even worse trouble than a would-be mugger could present.

‘Charley. Charley, Charley, Charley,’ he tutted.

I sighed. ‘You can say my name as many times as you like, Max,’ I told him. ‘I’m on my way home and I’m not stopping for small talk.’

He stepped forward, the orange glow from the street lamp illuminating his face. Max was a handsome bastard – and he knew it. Dirty blond hair tied up in an artless man bun gave the impression that he’d spent no more than a few seconds on it when in reality it was more like hours, a trim beard and a golden tan. He looked pretty and gormless. Unfortunately, he was anything but.

Mock amusement flitted across his face and he pushed his hands into pockets as if to suggest this was a casual meeting and he hadn’t been waiting out here for me. ‘It’s not small talk I’m after, Charley. You know that.’

I matched his relaxed stance, doing everything I could to ignore the thrumming of my heart against my ribcage. ‘All I know,’ I said, ‘is that it’s late and I have to be at work in a couple of hours. The police are quite careful about time keeping. If I’m late, they’ll notice.’

He moved closer, his breath clouding in the air and the stink of tobacco coming with it. Everything Maximillian Stone did was calculated, including using both his height and weight to loom over me. I’d like to have pretended it didn’t bother me and that I wasn’t in the slightest bit intimidated but we both knew that wasn’t true.

‘You drop the pigs into conversation like you’re the fucking Met Commissioner instead of being their skivvy,’ he said.

I tossed back my hair and sniffed. ‘If you’re trying to make me embarrassed about the fact that I’m a cleaner, you’re going to have a work a bit bloody harder than that. I like my job. I’m proud of it.’ I curved my lips into a tight grin. ‘And skivvy or not, I know everyone on that force by first-name terms.’ I held up my hand and crooked my little finger then pushed myself up onto my tiptoes and lowered my voice to a whisper. ‘That’s all it takes to get them running to my side, Max. They like me, you see. A concept I imagine you’re unfamiliar with.’

‘I like you.’ It was quite impressive how slimy he managed to make those three little words sound.

‘Yeah,’ I said, hoping that I could goad him into leaving me alone. ‘But I don’t think there’s anyone who would say the same about you.’

My ploy worked – up to a point. Max pulled away from me, folding his arms tightly across his chest. He didn’t leave, however. ‘You’re the one who hangs around illegal gambling dens, Charley. I wonder how your buddies in blue would feel about that?’

I seriously doubted any of them would care much unless I rubbed it in their faces. All the same, it wasn’t a theory I particularly wanted to test. I reached into my pocket for the only thing I knew that could get Max off my back. When I thrust the wad of crumpled notes towards him, though, his lip curled disdainfully.

‘That’s not enough.’

‘That’s all I’ve got.’ I wasn’t even lying.

He regarded me silently for a moment. ‘This is what happens when you stick your neck out for others,’ he said eventually. ‘You shouldn’t have meddled in the first place. Now you’re in deep shit and, unless you find a way to pay me off, it’s only going to get deeper.’ He peered at me owlishly. ‘We can still come to a different arrangement. It doesn’t have to be … financial.’

I lifted my chin. I wasn’t cowed. Not completely. ‘By my reckoning, I still have ten days left. You’ll get what’s owed to you.’

Max let out a low laugh. ‘Oh, of that I have no doubt.’

I stepped to the side to move past him. He thrust out an arm, barring me from leaving. ‘If you think I’ll treat you differently because you’re a girl, you’re being naïve. You agreed to take on Christopher Rider’s debt. Non-payment means you’ll be treated with the same … regard that he would have been.’ He dipped his head towards me so I could smell his stale breath. ‘There’s no room for heroes in this world.’

A sour taste of bile rose up in the back of my throat. I swallowed it down. ‘I’m not a hero,’ I hissed, with more emotion than I wanted to convey. ‘I’m not trying to be a hero either. I’m helping out a mate.’

‘Your little collection of waifs and strays will get you seriously hurt one of these days.’ Max licked his lips as if he couldn’t wait to deal out the hurt himself.

I sidestepped and started walking again. ‘Ten days,’ I tossed over my shoulder. ‘You’ll get your money.’

‘I’d better,’ he growled after me.

I expelled a loud, irritated whoosh of air from my cheeks, adding emphasis to my fiction that I wasn’t in the slightest bit of afraid of him, but I couldn’t lie to myself. I was going to have to find the money that was owed to him from somewhere – and find it fast. First, however, there was my legitimate day job to contend with.

I sighed. No rest for the wicked.