Extrait de Shade Caldwell, Détective de l'Étrange
Shade is a Spiritual Detective, a sorcerer in the service of Great Albion.
For years, his life has revolved around protecting ordinary citizens from supernatural criminals, all kinds of surveillance, hunting down murderers with mystical powers, and solving paranormal investigations. A full life indeed.
Too full.
Until the case that broke the camel's back, the one that shook his certainties and confronted him with a past he would rather forget.
Accompanied by a partner from another plane and a witty colleague with flexible morals, Shade will have to confront his true nature. But will he be able to accept it?
Discover an excerpt from the first chapter!
Night fell across the grounds of the private estate of the Most Honourable Lord Courteney, Marquis of Exeter.
Electric decorations, baubles and glass cherubs illuminated the grand driveway and façade, lending a fairy-tale quality to the elegant old mansion.
Shade lowered his binoculars and rubbed his eyes. Such bright lights at night irritated his corneas and made him cry. Lying in the damp grass, wrapped in a black waterproof serge coat, under the low branches of the boxwood hedges surrounding the property, he watched the Marquis's son, Lord Henri, a thirty-five-year-old man who brought prostitutes to his home every Friday night.
In itself, this was nothing unusual. Except that not all of them returned, and those who did had forgotten their evening.
Lisa Lee, a prostitute who was half-mad because she was possessed by the spirit of a nun, had come to find Shade.
The girls in the neighbourhood didn't dare report it to the royal police: defamation of a member of the nobility could cost £130 the first time and up to five years in prison the second time. Letting a (presumed) murderer get away with it on the pretext of belonging to the nobility was unacceptable.
Shade resumed his surveillance. Only one room on the second floor was lit. He had not seen any servants in the hour he had been lying in wait. He had not encountered any guard dogs. Once, at a viscount's house, he had come across a guard werewolf: he hadn't exactly had a good time.
‘Curious and curiouser, as the other pervert would say,’ he murmured to himself.
Hekátê was absent: one of his ‘brothers and sisters’ had asked him for help the day before, and they had left on their original plan. His absence should last a week at most.
A slight humming sound at the park entrance announced the arrival of an electric cab – an aesthetic aberration mounted on wheels. A well-dressed man, whom Shade recognised as Lord Henri, tall, in good physical condition, with black hair and moustache, greeted the five young women as they stepped out of the vehicle.
They seemed impressed by the abundance of lights and the size of the house. A young blond man dressed in a red velvet suit also stepped out of the cab.
He guided the young women inside while the lord paid the driver. The lord waited for the electric gates to close before returning to his home.
Lights came on downstairs.
The large living room, Shade assumed. He adjusted the range of his binoculars by turning the wheel between the eyepieces.
In a vast drawing room decorated with French porcelain and Venetian mirrors, a veritable feast had been prepared. The young blond man put a record on a magnificent ebony and copper turntable and invited one of the young women to join him.
Lord Henri was showing his other guests how to eat oysters. Spiked food? The drinks, perhaps... Nothing in the arrangement of the mirrors or the decoration of the room indicated that a spell or ritual was being performed. Perhaps in one of the bedrooms, the one that had been lit earlier. This was no time to hang around.
Shade slipped under the hedge towards the back of the house, which was unlit: everything to impress the guests at the front, and nothing at the back. Then, half crawling, half on all fours, he crossed the expanse of tall grass growing on the area separating him from the building. Doesn't he mow his lawn? Strange.
He pressed himself against the wall, closed his eyes, sniffed the stone, feeling the building: three or four hundred years old, the house reminded him of an old lady dozing. He opened his eyes again and walked along the wall until he found what must once have been a kennel; you could still smell the characteristic odour of dogs. He took a look inside on the off chance.
No dogs, but an old blanket and, attached to a heavy metal chain, a decorated leather collar. Intrigued, Shade slipped into the kennel and knelt down to examine the patterns on the collar. His night vision didn't allow him to see everything clearly, but it looked like Assyrian, the symbols marked in gold. His fingers tingled: a spell.
He didn't know enough Assyrian to read it without a dictionary, but it seemed to refer to a spell of constraint. To restrain what, a human? A bear, given the thickness of the collar? No, it didn't smell like a bear, beneath the scent of dog. Nowhere did it say that Lord Henri was a wizard.
Shade left the kennel. The night had grown deeper and heavier. He looked around calmly. Usually, he was the one who blended into the night. Now, there was something nearby. The image of a spider crossed his mind, and he looked up. Every hair on his body stood on end.
A huge, monstrous spider with a 1.4-metre abdomen and equally large legs was silently descending towards him. But the worst thing was that it had a woman's face with long black hair.
A Japanese spider woman? thought the encyclopaedic part of Shade's brain as he removed his gloves without taking his eyes off the... woman. She was slowly, slowly descending towards him, as if not to frighten him. He was trembling despite himself, fascinated. Part of him wanted her to take him. A dark, wild, excited part of him.
He exhaled through his nose. He was there to save the girls, not to play games. How could he neutralise her without attracting attention?
‘Hanata... Oïshi,’ she said in a particularly attractive voice; ‘nice... Come, Okane is nice...’