Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator

Previously published; newly refreshed by the author. I like my women like I like my whiskey: more than is good for me. Name's Kane, Kate Kane. I'm a paranormal private investigator, which is like a normal private investigator except-and stop me if you're having trouble following this-more paranormal. This business comes with a few basic rules: don't start drinking before noon, don't get your partner killed, don't sleep with the woman who killed him. Last year I broke all of them. The only rule I didn't break was the one that said don't work for vampires. But then a dead werewolf showed up outside the Soho shag palace of Julian Saint-Germain-a bloodsucking flibbertigibbet who's spent the last eight centuries presiding over an ever-growing empire of booze, sex and hemoglobin. I shouldn't have taken the job. The last thing I needed was to get caught in a supernatural smackdown between a werewolf pack and a vampire prince. Even if the vampire prince was dangerously my type. But what can I say? I was broke, I'm a sucker for a pretty face and I gave up on making good decisions a long time ago.

I like my women like I like my whiskey: liable to kill me.* The two parts of being a paranormal private investigator I could really do without are being forced to eat bananas by an animated statue with a potassium fixation, and being put on trial for murder by a self-appointed council of vampire oligarchs. To be fair, I did kind of do it (the murder, not the bananas). But I was kind of saving my girlfriend, who is kind of one of them. On top of this, I’ve also wound up with a primordial queen of the damned trying to strangle me in my dreams. And the conspiracy of undead wizards who tried to sacrifice me fifteen years ago has decided that now is the best possible time to give it another go. Throw in the woman who left me for a tech start-up, the old girlfriend who I might sort of owe eternal mystical fealty to and a werewolf “it girl” who can’t decide if she wants to eat me in the good way or the bad way, and I’m beginning to think life would be easier if I made better choices. Then again, it’d be a whole lot less fun.

I like my whiskey like I like my women: embroiled in a magical war. Ten years ago I fought for the Witch Queen of London in a mystical showdown against a King Arthur wannabe with a shaved head and a shotgun. Back then, the law did for him before he could do for us. I don't think we'll get that lucky again. As if the mother of all wizard battles wasn't bad enough, fate or destiny or a god with a really messed-up sense of humor has dropped a weapon that could rewrite the universe right into the middle of London, and anybody with half a sniff of arcane power has rocked up to stake their claim on it. Last time this happened, the city went to pieces. This time, it might just go to Hell. Also, still dating a vampire. Still got an alpha werewolf trying to get in my pants. Still sharing a flat with a woman made of animated marble-only now apparently there are two of her. But you know what they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same crap that's been trying to kill you your entire life.