by S J Williams
With that thought in mind, he pushed himself away from the safe and cast around for something large enough to carry the book. That was when another book on the lower shelf of Bartholomew’s bedside cabinet caught his eye. He stooped and picked it up, frowning at the front cover before flipping it over to read the back.
A history of herbal folk lore. Sebastian frowned. First the roses, now herbalism? What was Barty doing?
He opened the front page and all thoughts of roses flew out of his mind.
On the inside leaf of the front cover, a dedication had been written in an elegant, sloping cursive.
To Roberto, I hope this satisfies your curiosity. Effie.
Sebastian’s hands were shaking as he carefully closed the book and slipped it into the inner pocket of his jacket. How dare he? How dare that twisted monster find a place in her heart?
Sebastian stalked out of the room, ready for murder.
He found Henry rummaging through a stack of papers haphazardly piled on one of the tables in the living room next to a closed laptop. They looked like print outs. On closer inspection, Sebastian realised they were photographs of the portraits.
“Is this all the collection?” He asked, his voice flat and cold.
Henry gave him a quick glance, a frown in his eyes as he read Sebastian’s surface emotions, before turning his attention back to the photographs.
“I can’t be sure. There doesn’t seem to be a full inventory of the collection contents here so this might just be a selection Effie brought with her to study.”
Sebastian grunted and leaned over the table to open the laptop. The screen flickered into life, a blinking cursor inviting him to enter a password.
Sebastian’s hands stilled on the keys. Once upon a time, he could have confidently said that he knew all of Effie’s secrets. Certainly enough to know what password she would choose. But if Henry was right, that time had gone.
Stalling for time, he cast his gaze over the rest of the papers littering the desktop. There was order in the chaos. The piles, though roughly stacked, were clearly intended to be there. On a neater person’s desk, those piles might be replaced with carefully labelled boxes or files. He couldn’t help the smile that came to his lips. That was Effie through and through. Why, she had always argued, would she need to label anything? She knew what was what. Anyone else had no business being at her desk.
His gaze snagged on some papers covered in her handwriting. He had been too angry to notice when he saw her note in the book. Now he stared, unable to look away. The hand was precisely the same. The language was different, of course, but the sloping characters, the whimsical flicks? That was exactly as he remembered.
“Can you get into the computer?” Henry asked, drawing him from his revery.
Sebastian looked back at the screen, which had gone black while he’d hesitated.
“Give me a minute.” He muttered, trying to think, barely daring to hope there was still a link between them.
“Well, we might not have a minute. I can’t imagine their walk will take them that much longer.” Henry reminded him, looking at a clock across the room.
And, just like that, anger spiked his blood again. How could he have forgotten that she was with him? Enjoying an evening together? The monster must be crowing inside.
And then it came to him. If Effie was truly still his, these would be the words closest to her heart.
He typed.
Florence might be beautiful but anywhere was miserable when you were dragging around a moody professor. Effie sighed with relief when they finally turned onto their street near the university. At least at their rooms she would be able to get away from the old grouch.
Roberto, who had been slouching along, eyes on his shoes, stiffened and looked up, his body almost quivering like a dog who’d caught a scent.
“What’s the matter?”
Roberto started again and looked at her as if he had forgotten she was there.
“Nothing.” He said at last.
He didn’t act like it was nothing. Instead, he sped up, approaching the door leading up to their rooms at a near run. Effie followed behind more slowly, shaking her head ruefully. To think men complained that women were moody and unpredictable.
Roberto stopped at the door and leant forward, almost pressing his face to it. It was as if he was… Was he sniffing the door? Effie stopped where she was, well away from Roberto. Perhaps there was something a bit more wrong with him than a bad mood tonight.
Roberto made a noise that was half way between a growl and the hiss of a pissed off cat. He wrenched the door open and bounded up the stairs to their rooms on the first floor. Effie stayed put, not wanting to be in an enclosed space with Roberto when he was like this. She’d known he’d been under a lot of stress with the tight deadlines for the gallery opening but this kind of behaviour was… animalistic. She’d never heard of a reaction to stress quite like this before.
Feeling a bit awkward standing in the street, Effie cautiously made her way towards the door. On the stairs, she could hear the sounds of Roberto tearing through their rooms. It was like he was searching for something.
Effie stopped on the threshold and leaned in. The place looked like it had been ransacked with papers strewn across the floor and piles of books knocked over.
“My God.” She whispered. Had they been robbed? And, if so, how had Roberto known from all the way down the street?
She wandered over to her desk in a sort of daze, stroking the beautiful old wood like it was a dear friend who had been injured. Which was daft, of course, because no damage had been done to the desk itself. Her work, on the other hand… That was a different story, she thought with dismay as she stared at all of her papers lying in a heap over the desk and the floor around it. Sure, she hadn’t been the tidiest of people but this was chaotic even by her standards.
A crash from Roberto’s room drew her across the living room to stand at the open door. Roberto was tearing through his wardrobe, ripping out suits and trousers like they were infested with spiders. She glanced over her shoulder at the living room behind her. How much of that mess had been there before Roberto had arrived?
“Roberto?” She called out carefully, feeling like she was approaching a cornered wild animal. “Is everything all right?”
Roberto jerked his head back out of the wardrobe to stare at her. She drew back, shocked. His eyes were feral and… not the same dark brown they usually were. They almost looked red. He blinked and his eyes were back to normal again.
She must be imagining things, Effie thought with an internal shake. First the strange growling noise at the door and now this thing with the eyes. Poor Roberto was the unwitting victim of her overactive imagination.
Now, if he would just stop behaving weirdly, everything could go back to normal.
As if he’d heard that thought, Roberto scraped back his dark brown hair, which had been mussed out of its usual neat arrangement, and straightened up, moving away from the wardrobe and closing the door as he did so.
“It appears we have been burgled.” He said shortly. “I need to check what’s missing.” There was a slight catch in his voice but she resolutely ignored it. Normality. Focus on that, or as much as she could considering they’d just been burgled.
“What do you think—” She started to ask, then froze, her mind immediately going to those two men and their strange interest in the archive. She turned on her heel and rushed back to her desk, tripping over a toppled lamp in the process. She swept the papers off her laptop and logged in, her fingers clattering across the keys.
The screen lit up on the gallery notes.
She scanned the page. It was as she’d left it that afternoon.
But that didn’t have to mean anything. Or rather, it could mean that they were dealing with a particularly careful thief. One who thought to leave the laptop just as it was after they’d downloaded what they needed onto a USB stick.
Her gaze snagged on the mess of papers. The
theory of the careful thief didn’t really tally with the mess they’d left. Unless, of course, they wanted to distract her attention from what they were really after. But why? If they were going to all the trouble of downloading a specific file so she couldn’t tell what they’d done, why bother announcing that they’d been there at all?
Brushing papers off her seat, she sat down and started searching through the data the computer logged on her work. Surely, somewhere she’d be able to find a record of when the document had last been accessed…?
“Roberto?” She called over her shoulder. “Do you know how to—” She gasped as his hand landed heavily on her shoulder.
Roberto spun her around in her chair to face him.
“These men who approached you, describe them to me.”
Eyes wide with surprise, she described Henry and Sebastian as well as she could remember them. By the time she’d finished, the feral look had started to creep back into Roberto’s eyes.
He straightened up and raised one fist as if he wanted to punch something. Effie fought against the instinct to duck out of the way. She had a feeling sudden movements would not be a good idea right now.
“Pack.” He ordered abruptly. “We’re leaving.”
Effie blinked. “Leaving? But what about the gallery—”
“Now, Effie.” He snapped, already turning away and disappearing into his room.
“Wait.” Effie charged after him. “Who are we running from?”
Roberto stopped what he was doing, a pair of shirts still attached to their hangers in each hand.
“Running? Who said anything about running?”
“I did.” Effie growled, feeling more than a bit animalistic herself. “We came here to open a gallery. We can’t just go now. We’ve barely got a week to go.”
“Plans change.” Roberto turned his back on her to stuff his clothes into his case.
“Really? So we’re just going to cancel? Lose all that money? The university’s backing?”
Roberto grunted, not looking at her.
“Roberto!” Effie rounded the bed to look him in the face. “You can’t just do this to me. I’ve given up a year of my life for this gallery.”
“I’m sure you’ll survive,” he muttered, straightening up and heading for the wardrobe. Effie darted back round the bed and stood in his way. He frowned at her like she was a particularly troublesome child. Effie saw red.
“Look, you can run if you want to,” she snapped, “but I’m staying. I’ll open the gallery without you if I have to.”
“Without my money or my paintings? Good luck to you.” Roberto raised one supercilious eyebrow and stepped deliberately around her.
Effie raised her hands to the ceiling in a silent scream. “At least tell me why,” she said, staring bleakly around the ransacked room.
Roberto whirled around and stalked to her, stopping only when their faces were centimetres apart. Effie tried not to choke on the tinniness of his breath. So close, it smelled rancid.
“You want to know why we’re leaving? You spoke to the wrong people and now we have to go to protect the collection.”
Effie finally gave up her fight not to recoil and stepped back. “What do you mean, protect the collection? They’re hardly going to steal it, are they?”
Roberto slammed his fist against the door frame.
“Never you mind. Now get out. We both have a lot of packing to do.” He slammed the door in her face.
Effie stared at the panelled wood, feeling a little dazed. What had happened to her nice and friendly professor? She didn’t recognise this Roberto at all. Or, rather, she’d had no idea he could be like this.
“I guess that serves me right for travelling abroad with a practical stranger.” She muttered. She had never met Roberto outside of the planning sessions they’d done for this gallery and the research on the portraits. Perhaps there was some truth in the idea that you only got to know someone when you travelled with them.
Standing, her eyes swept the room again, this time with the heavy knowledge that she had a lot of work to do in a very small space of time. So much for sleeping tonight.
4
Sebastian had waited as long as he could, watching the lights flicking on in the windows to Effie’s and Bartholomew’s rooms from the street below until Henry had finally dragged him back home. Faint echoes of crashing and the occasional raised voice haunted him now as he sat in their kitchen, locked in his dark thoughts, only half listening in to Henry on the phone delivering their report to Catarina.
Had Bartholomew been shouting at her? Threatening her? Assaulting her?
He wanted to charge in there and snatch her from the vampire’s clutches. Only the thought of seeing her run away from him a second time stopped him.
No, he needed to be more subtle if this was going to work. He needed to trust that the clues he’d scattered in her room like breadcrumbs would be enough to spark curiosity in Effie’s mind and set her on the track to questioning who and what she was.
He sat up as Henry explained what they had found in the safe and on the laptop to Catarina. This was crucial if they were going to get Catarina on their side. Just finding the blood supply would have been enough to start a hunt, but then there were the portraits. Bartholomew wasn’t just a vampire at large. He intended to make public a collection which, if seen by the wrong person, could raise some very awkward questions. There was only one conclusion to be drawn from that.
Bartholomew intended to betray the existence of immortals to the humans.
Their existence had been kept secret for some very good reasons. Neither vampires nor immortals would benefit from exposure. Vampire relied on secrecy to hunt. Immortals would be hunted down themselves for their abilities to read human emotions and, in some cases, control human minds.Whether humans would use them or destroy them for their abilities didn’t matter. Their continued freedom depended on staying hidden.
But why? Why would Bartholomew risk it? Risk himself in that way? Did he have a death wish? He would die and quickly once other vampires, not to mention immortals, discovered who was behind the betrayal. Or did he have some strategy that would give him some kind of impunity?
And why now? From the looks of those portraits, they had been done during the Renaissance. Bartholomew had been sitting on them for centuries. What had changed that he wanted to reveal them now?
And, most important for Sebastian, how was Effie involved? Was she a shield to hide behind when the angry immortals came to exact revenge or was there another purpose Sebastian couldn’t see yet?
Henry cast him a long-suffering look as he held the phone away from his ear, Catarina’s voice a tirade Sebastian could hear from across the room. Sebastian snorted. It didn’t take much to make sparks fly between those two. Henry claimed she was the most irritating woman to ever breathe air. Catarina was generally cruder, but the message was the same. They couldn’t stand each other. Which didn’t stop them from gravitating towards each other whenever they met. Peace thereafter would be in short supply.
Too bad. He needed Catarina here. If it had just been a case of catching Bartholomew, Sebastian and Henry could have handled it on their own. Throwing the portraits and possible exposure of immortals into the mix took things to another level. Catarina, as an official vampire hunter and enforcer for the immortal council, would give them the authority they needed to act.
Sebastian waited while Henry listened to Catarina. Henry didn’t bother to interrupt. He’d long since learnt the folly of that move.
“Right. Fine. I’ll tell him. Or you could tell him yourself?” He raised his eyebrows hopefully at Sebastian, inviting him to add his part to the report.
Sebastian just smirked. He did not want to get into the middle of a conversation between them. There were some things sane men just did not do.
Henry grimaced. “Fine. Yes, fine. I’ll tell him. Yes. I’m sure I’ll manage that. Okay. Fi—” He stopped, stared at the phone in his hand, then rolled his eyes.
“Bye.” He said ruefully.
“I gather the lioness has a message for me?” Sebastian asked wryly.
“Just not to mess this up before she can get here.” Henry shook his head. “You know, I don’t think she trusts us. Bloody woman.” Henry gave his head another, sharp shake, sticking his little finger into his right ear and wiggling it around. “Talking to her is like sticking your finger into a live plug socket. I swear it counts as cruel and unusual punishment.”
“You love her really.” Sebastian said with a smile.
Henry shot him a dirty look, but then his face morphed into an expression of astonishment.
“You’re smiling! You’re actually smiling and I didn’t have to drag it out of you first.”
“You think I’ve got nothing to smile about?’
“Of course not but, blimey. It’s been five hundred years. I hate to tell you this but you’ve been a grumpy old sod for most of them.”
Sebastian snorted. “Times change.”
“They do indeed.” Henry allowed himself a moment to gaze at his friend in wonder. Then he frowned again.
“We’ll have to move fast if we’re going to catch Barty. He’ll be onto us as soon as he gets back and catches our scent.”
Sebastian froze, ice dripping down his spine as a thought occurred to him.
“What would you do if you’d found out your arch enemies had been in your home?”
Henry frowned. “Probably start hunting.”
“Right. Sorry. Poor question. What do you think Barty would do?”
Henry screwed his face up with thought. “He’s more the one to disappear than anything else.”
As expressive as ever, Henry’s face went slack, then his eyes widened.
“Barty’s going to run.”
“And take Effie with him.”
