Midnight Labyrinth

by Elizabeth Hunter

  The vampire glanced at Chloe’s collar, then away. “Just a glass of wine. Costa de Prata, please.”

  Chloe recognized the name of a popular blood-wine, so she retrieved the black-glass goblets they used for the deep red drink.

  She had no idea what Ben and Tenzin had planned, but whatever it was, it was happening at midnight.

  Ben hung up the phone and shouted, “It’s tonight!”

  Tenzin stuck her head out of the loft. “Finally.” She flew down. “Are you ready?”

  He downed the last of his espresso in one swallow. “You need to help me with the first part, then you can head to Rothman House and start your entry. Keep in mind they won’t be leaving the house until just before midnight. After that, we want to work quickly. Meet me over at DePaul’s?”

  “I’ll see you there.” Tenzin changed into black leggings and a black fitted tunic and was out the roof garden door before he finished rinsing out his coffee cup.

  Ben walked to the closet and got out the brown uniform he’d procured the week before. He changed quickly—stopping in the bathroom to apply a large temporary tattoo to the left side of his neck—and walked to the elevator, taking it directly down to the garage. He didn’t take his car, instead he tied the coveralls around the white T-shirt he wore and walked out onto Mercer Street, just another delivery guy finishing up his shift. He made his way north, heading for the Village and a quiet shop with no phone number on the window.

  Tenzin waited on the roof of the building opposite Rothman House. She watched until 11:45 precisely, when a black car pulled up to the front of the house and a woman dressed in black—from lace veil to black stockings—descended the steps of the old house and entered the idling car. At 11:47, it pulled away from the curb. At 11:50, Tenzin was hopping from shadow to shadow, making her way to the guarded roof of Rothman House.

  Don’t kill anyone, Tenzin. It’s just a painting.

  It was good advice. No one should ever be killed for a painting. Their value was far too subject to market trends and had little inherent worth.

  She needed to remain unseen. There was no way of rendering vampires unconscious without breaking their necks, and she really didn’t want to cause that much commotion. She looked for the tiny window she’d picked as an entrance the week before, waited for the guard to cross to the other side of the building, then she flew to the window, quickly cut the glass, and slid inside.

  It was 12:01.

  Chloe stood silently at the edge of the room. Gavin’s tasting room was not on the typical employee tour, nor was it open to the public. It was located in the basement of the building. Red brick lined the walls, giving it an old-world feel, but the tasting room itself was surrounded by glass with a sealed door and strict temperature controls. It looked as if a laboratory had been plopped into the middle of a 1930s gangster movie.

  The party inside was just as incongruous.

  Gavin spoke to them from within the tasting room, discreetly showing off the features of the basement from the extensive racks to the hand-polished dining table where servers in white uniforms were laying out a tasting menu that made Chloe’s mouth water. She could smell everything going in, but once the food and vampires were locked in the tasting room, all scent and sound was cut off.

  She waited at the doorway on Gavin’s instruction. There wasn’t much to do, but it would be natural for an employee to be waiting at Gavin’s beck and call, and Gavin wanted to make sure Chloe was seen by anyone who might harbor suspicions later.

  Chloe still hadn’t seen the elusive Lady of Normandy. She seemed to live behind her veil. A pale white hand was the only physical trait she could see of the woman. If she were closer, Chloe would be able to see more, but from a distance, the vampire’s features remained elusive.

  The last of the tasting menu was laid out, Gavin’s greeting came to a close, and he brought out the bottle of wine—the ten-thousand-dollar bottle of wine—that was the reason for the tasting.

  Chloe glanced at her watch. It was 12:15.

  Ben pounded on the door of Rothman House, clipboard in hand. It took a few minutes to get an answer, but eventually a tall South Asian man in a dark suit came to the door. His hair was silver and swept back from a regal forehead when he looked down his nose at Benjamin.

  “May I help you, sir?” The butler spoke in a crisp British accent. “I believe you may have the wrong address, but I’d be happy to direct you.”

  Ben made a show of tugging on his hat and looking at his clipboard as he flicked the toothpick between his lips. “I don’t know, man. I been doing deliveries in this neighborhood all day. I think I know where I’m going, you know?” He wore his father’s accent, Puerto Rico by way of the Bronx, and laid it on thick. “This the right address?” He flipped the clipboard to the butler, who inspected it carefully.

  “That is the correct address, but I was not informed of any deliveries this evening. If you could give me a moment to contact—”

  “They tell you about every little thing they order?” Ben asked. “They ain’t like other rich people I met then, are they?” He laughed. “They buy a mansion and don’t even remember the next day. No worries. You don’t owe anything on it. Some kind of art, I think. I just need a signature.”

  The man had a mobile phone in his hand and was dialing. “Nevertheless, it’s highly irregular for my employer to not inform me of a delivery. If you could just give me a few moments to verify—”

  “Verify? You kidding me?” He wasn’t worried about the phone. He’d given Gavin a jammer days ago. There wasn’t a mobile or satellite phone on the planet that was reaching the tasting room in the basement of the pub.

  “It will only take a few minutes,” the butler said.

  “Listen, Jeeves—or whatever your name is—this is our last stop and we been working all day, you get me?” Ben said, letting an edge of temper fray his voice. He grabbed the toothpick from his mouth and let his hands start talking as his voice rose. “I got one more painting to deliver and this is it. I don’t even care if it’s going to the right place at this point. You say this is the right address on my paperwork? Then this place is where it’s going.” Without waiting for an objection, Ben walked to the dark brown delivery van he’d “borrowed” from DePaul’s and opened the back end. He slid out the crate with the blank canvas and walked back up the stairs.

  “I say!” the butler sputtered. “I have not been informed of a delivery this evening. I refuse to—”

  “Hold on! This thing ain’t made of feathers, is it?” Ben muscled his way into the entryway using the crate to push the butler back. He set the crate down and pulled out his clipboard again. “Okay, let’s take a look at the information I got.”

  The butler’s phone chimed. He picked it up with relief, but his expression soured. He hit a number and spoke tersely.

  “It is a misdirected delivery. I am quite capable of handling the matter. I do not need a nanny, if you please.” The butler paused. “Do what you need to do.”

  Ben knew as he waited in the entryway that security would be checking the truck. They wouldn’t find anything amiss. Not the registration, which tied it to DePaul and Sons art delivery, not the stack of proofs of delivery he’d mocked up and signed, and not his own license with the name and license number of an ordinary deliveryman from the Bronx.

  He glanced at his watch. It was 12:16.

  Tenzin heard the commotion in the hallway. She used Ben’s voice to mentally map her escape route. She had a total of five turns to make carrying the painting. She just prayed Ben attracted enough attention at the entryway to clear the hallway of curious humans and vampires.

  As was usually the case, breaking in was never a problem. She was small, she could fly, and humans rarely looked up. It was getting out with a large painting that would be the challenge.

  She paused at the locked door and listened.

  Quiet. The scent of lavender, roses, and bergamot came from the other side. It was fresh but not present. She p
ulled out her lockpicks and went to work on the door. There were three locking mechanisms, all with different keys. It took her a bit longer than anticipated, but she could still hear Ben in the entryway. As long as the painting wasn’t bolted to the wall, she had plenty of time.

  She cracked open the door and ducked inside. The room was empty. The clock on the wall read 12:20.

  Chloe was staring at Gavin. It was hard not to. There was something quintessentially sexy about watching the man drink. He rarely smiled. When he did, it was only a slight lift at the corner of his mouth. He’d poured the wine with the elegance of an expert sommelier. As he’d passed the glasses filled with ruby-red liquid around the room, he’d kept up a steady stream of banter. She couldn’t hear him, but she could see his expression. He was wry. He was charming. He was flirtatious. He was serious.

  At one point, he glanced over the rim of his wineglass and caught Chloe staring. His eyes locked with hers for a moment before she looked away. She crossed her arms and glanced at her watch.

  It read 12:25.

  The painting hadn’t been locked to the wood paneling, and it was easy to remove. It rested against the wall, waiting for her to carry it out. She took off the backpack Ben had packed for her, put on the coveralls, and shoved the cap reading “DePaul and Sons” on her head. The canvas was in a slimline floating frame so as not to detract from the truly odd art on the canvas. Before she removed it from the room, Tenzin took a moment to study it.

  She really didn’t understand surrealism.

  But she did understand why this painting wasn’t hanging with the others in the museum. She threw a clean drop cloth over the painting, left the black backpack in the corner of the room, and lifted the canvas by the middle stretcher bars. Then she walked out the door, hooking the edge with her toe to close it on the way out. She made the first turn carrying her awkward cargo and came face-to-face with an empty hallway. She could hear Ben in the distance, his voice growing louder.

  The clock hanging on the wall ticked to 12:26.

  Ben lifted the clipboard for the fifth time. “I don’t care what you say, it says here that this painting was bought by an anonymous buyer at this address, paid for in full, and ordered to be delivered to this address tonight. You want me to get in trouble with my boss? You want me to call him right now?” Ben smacked his forehead. “What am I thinking? The guy’s already asleep because it’s past fucking midnight already! Will you just sign the paper and sort it out with your boss tomorrow?”

  The butler was still sputtering, thrown off by the small crowd of household staff that had gathered around. Thankfully all were human, Ben noticed. Apparently Rothman House was only guarded by vampires, not staffed by them. It was what he’d been counting on.

  “Andrew, will you please take this… box outside.” The butler gestured toward a tall blond man who’d been hanging in the background. “Just take it outside and put it back on the truck so we can all go to bed.”

  “Whoa, whoa!” Ben yelled. “I don’t think so.” He puffed up his chest. “You going to sign for the painting?”

  Andrew looked confused. “What?”

  “You sign for the painting—you take responsibility for it—you can do anything you want. But if no one here is signing for the thing, then you better keep your mitts off. You know how much this lady paid for this piece?” Quiet from the surrounding crowd. “Yeah, me neither. But I do know I don’t deliver thrift store junk, if you know what I mean.” Ben glanced at the hallway clock. She had three minutes. “Listen, Jeeves, can you just sign for the—”

  “I’m not signing for anything until I hear from my employer or Mr. O’Brien.”

  “I don’t know anything about a Mr. O’Brien.” Ben glanced at his paperwork. “Is that who lives here? Would he buy something all anonymous? That don’t make sense.”

  He noticed a young woman in a uniform looking at him under his cap. He puffed up his chest and smirked. “How you doing, baby? You working here all night?”

  She rolled her eyes at him and turned away.

  “Hey, give me your number,” he said to her back. “We’ll hang out later.”

  “I say, Mr.… Whoever you are.” The butler was livid. “That is quite enough.”

  All the employees started speaking at the same time. Some were laughing and others were incensed about Ben hitting on their coworker. As the volume rose, a black shadow flickered in the corner of his vision as Tenzin slid into the room, touching humans gently to move them out of the way. Everyone was paying attention to Ben, and no one even noticed the small woman sliding along the edges of the crowd.

  His phone chimed at precisely 12:30.

  Thank you, Cara.

  Ben held up his clipboard as he pulled out his phone. “Shut up, shut up, will ya!” He made a big show of checking his phone, looking back at the paperwork, then his phone again. “That asshole! Can you believe this shit?” He felt the Samson painting slide behind the crate. The back panel slid forward and the painting notched into place, protected by the drop cloth covering the surface.

  “What?” the butler shouted over the hubbub.

  “My dispatcher just texted me. He gave me the wrong address. Owner’s waiting up around the block. I can’t believe this shit.”

  A groan came from the collected crowd, and the butler’s expression was a mix of annoyance and relief.

  “Hey, I’m sorry, Jeeves.” Ben held out his hand, but the butler ignored it. “I got the right address. You got the right address. This yahoo from Boston don’t know his ass from his elbow in this neighborhood, if you know what I mean.”

  Tenzin lifted the back end of the crate as Ben opened the door and tried to push the angry employees away.

  “I’ll get outta your hair now. Again, I’m sorry my dispatcher’s an idiot.”

  “The nerve,” the butler said. “His mistake does not excuse your rudeness.”

  “Eh, call my boss and complain in the morning,” Ben muttered. “I just want to get outta here, am I right?”

  Tenzin and Ben lifted the crate and walked out the door, nearly jogging to the truck as angry employees poured out the doorway and stood on the stoop, chattering while the butler tried to calm them down. Ben and Tenzin loaded the crate with the blank canvas and the Samson painting in the back of the truck. Tenzin jumped in back with the crate, and Ben jogged to the front, waving his clipboard at the irate employees of Rothman House.

  At 12:33, Midnight Labyrinth was theirs.

  21

  Ben stared at the painting hanging over Mrs. Vandine’s mantel. It was exactly as Emilie had described it, but far more gruesome than he’d imagined. A woman stood at the middle of a labyrinth, tall hedges surrounding her. She faced the painter, and all around her, creatures both macabre and fanciful flitted and danced. They played in the labyrinth and filled the sky where a moon hung full and bright. Clawed hands reached up from the ground and scratched her legs. Devils peeked out from the green while needle-toothed fairies flew overhead. A squat imp followed the woman, lapping at her feet, which were soaked in blood.

  But the woman stood placidly in the midst of the horror, smiling with a very long and very sharp set of fangs. In her hands hung two white rabbits, their throats bloody, and the vampire’s lips were crimson red.

  She was entrancing—ethereal and deadly at once. She didn’t look a whit like his partner, but something about her eyes reminded him of Tenzin. She was a survivor, and part of her enjoyed the fight.

  Ben couldn’t stop staring. It was possible Emil Samson had wanted to depict the woman becoming a monster to fight monsters. It was possible that, like the imps and demons, the vampire was just another creature of the imagination he’d included in the work.

  It was also very possible Samson knew about vampires, because those were some pretty accurate-looking fangs.

  “It’s a masterpiece,” Mrs. Vandine said. “And yet so disturbing.”

  “It was a disturbing time.” Emilie slipped an arm around her grandmother’s
waist. “It’s technically brilliant. Look at his use of color. For a painting to be so vibrant and yet so dark is phenomenal. And his brushwork?” She sighed and put her head on her grandmother’s shoulder. “I just wish we could display them together. She needs context.”

  “Will you hang it like that?” Ben asked. “On its own?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Vandine said. “As my granddaughter said, it is a disturbing painting because it was a disturbing time. It’s macabre, yes, but beautiful. And most importantly, it is my uncle’s work. One of his finest pieces.” She walked over to Ben and kissed both his cheeks. “How can I ever thank you for bringing it back to me?”

  Ben’s heart swelled. He’d tracked down priceless art and found lost artifacts for his clients, but turning them over to their owners never felt like this. He’d tried to imagine what it would be like to restore a piece to a family like Emil Samson’s, a family who had lost so much and clung to the few memories that remained.

  It was so much better than he’d imagined.

  “I’m just glad she’s home,” Ben said. “Even if she took a few detours since the war.”

  So far, he’d heard nothing about the theft, but it was daytime. He’d taken the painting directly to a storage locker he kept in Brooklyn and dropped it off in the crate while Tenzin flew home. Then he’d driven the delivery truck back to DePaul and Sons to clean every trace of himself and Tenzin from it before he walked home. Not once had he spotted a tail.

  That morning, he’d woken, driven his truck down to the locker to pick up the painting, then taken it to Emilie and her grandmother. They had been beside themselves, and Ben once again felt a million feet tall.

  Mrs. Vandine went to the kitchen to make coffee while Emilie came to stand beside him. She hugged him around the waist and leaned into his chest.

  “Do I want to know?” she asked.