You say that like it’s a bad thing.
“I am a little disappointed.” She was about to go back down the ladder when something caught her eye. Frowning, she shown her flashlight on it. There was a little gap in the insulation and it kinda looked like something was stashed there. She reached a hand between the fiberglass, her skin immediately feeling itchy, and found a book, of all things. She pulled it out.
“Holy milk of magnesia,” she whispered.
It looked like a really old book. Leather bound. With her flashlight hand, she managed to open the large book and gave a low whistle. “It’s in code.”
And it’s handwritten.
She nodded and rubbed her finger along the page. It didn’t feel quite like paper.
Parchment?
She shrugged. Maybe, but she’d never touched real parchment before. Then she admired the handwriting. It was beautiful with accented words and curlicue flourishes. It reminded her of the Elvish language in the The Lord of the Rings. A chill of excitement went through her body as she turned pages, stopping on a drawing of a bear-like creature attacking a person. It was in the style of medieval drawings.
“What is this?”
Are there more?
She stepped down the ladder, put the book on the ground, and then climbed back up and shown her flashlight around more carefully. There was another gap, so she raised up on tiptoes and stuck her hand into it and, sure enough, found another book. Two more, actually. As she pulled out one book, another on top of it slid down where she could reach it. They were just as old looking as the first. She made a stack on the hall carpet and went back up, pocketing her phone and lifting the panel, turning it sideways, pulling it down, and dropping it on the floor. Now she could easily turn in a circle in the square opening, looking for more gaps.
She didn’t find any, but she found a six-inch long piece of wood at the bottom of the insulation on one side. It was like a little handle with an indentation for fingers. She put her fingertips into and pushed and then pulled. There was a little click and the entire wall of insulation moved toward her. The “wall” of that insulation was only half a foot deep glued to a wood panel that swung open on hinges.
Her flashlight showed a little attic room lined with shelves that were lined with books. It was a little library. A hidden room. “This is amazing.”
Right inside the little door was a small ladder that obstructed her view of the secret library. The ladder was attached to the floor of the attic, but when she pulled on it, it came out toward her and then swung down, kind of like street-level fire escapes on buildings. The ladder descended several feet, stopping just above the step ladder, making it easy to climb up into the attic.
As she stepped onto the floor her face came in contact with a spiderweb. She cried out and batted at it frantically. It turned out to be the string to a single overhead light bulb.
“Oh.” She felt sheepish.
As well as the shelves, there was a small table with a lamp and a chair. Lizzi walked slowly around the shelves looking at book titles. A lot were normally published books about paranormal subjects, but several entire shelves were taken up by the same kind of leather-bound books she’d found in the insulation gaps. None of the books had markings on the spines or covers. She pulled one down and set it on the table. Turning on the desk lamp, she opened the book. It was in the same exotic code.
“These books have to be something special,” she said. Journals of the weird and fantastic?
Or it’s gibberish written by a mad person.
Shut up. This is something incredible. I can feel it. She took down another of the leather-bound books. It was full of the same type of writing and drawings. No. That wasn’t quite accurate. The drawings were more modern with better craftsmanship.
Lizzi put a hand to her mouth. “I think these books are hundreds of years apart in age. Written by different people.”
She pulled down book-after-book, stacking them on the table. They all had writing in them. There must have been forty or fifty of those books.
“I—I have to take these.”
Seriously?
She nodded. “The people these belonged to are dead. What if no one else knows they’re up here? I mean, the house is trashed and there was a horrible murder, what if—I don’t know, what if they just decide to knock down the house or something? I can’t leave them here to be destroyed.”
They won’t knock down the house.
“You don’t know that. But let’s say they don’t, and they sell the house. Some strangers might find these books and throw them away.” She climbed out of the attic and went downstairs to the kitchen.
Or sell them on eBay.
“Exactly. With them safe with me, I can try to find family of the dead people to give them back to.”
And you taking them has nothing to do with how fascinating the books are.
“Well, what would it hurt if I try to decode them?” Lizzi stepped carefully over the pots and pans and broken ceramics. She thought she’d seen—there it was, a box of the big outdoor trash bags.
She was sweating profusely when she finished bagging the books, ignoring the pain in her back, and stacking them by the front door. It was over a dozen heavy trash bags.
You could leave them here for the family to find.
Lizzi pursed her lips, then said, “What if the cops toss them out?”
Now you’re just making up excuses to take them.
Maybe. But, no, they’re too valuable to just leave here. I’d hate for something to happen to them.
She turned off the lights to the secret library, shut the insulation door, replaced the attic trapdoor, threw the ladder into the office, and then went outside to back her car into the driveway. Loading up the books, she got dizzy a few times from the exertion, but the excitement kept her going. She knew—just knew—the books would prove this had been a prime incident.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
With her second Manhattan in hand, Calico pursed her lips and considered removing the stake from Winston so she could talk to him. As fucked up as that sounded, he knew more than she did. A lot of the history she should have known from reading the family chronicles. She needed to get those damned books. But that meant going back to the house. She shuddered and gulped more bourbon.
“Dammit,” she said huskily.
She had to find the books before Lorcán, and it would be best to go during the day. The glass in her hand broke, she hadn’t realized she’d been gripping it that hard. Blood mixed with the bourbon on the concrete floor. She’d sliced the meaty part of her palm.
“Fuck me,” she said.
She went up to her bathroom on the second floor and rinsed her hand. There was a lot of blood, the slice a good inch long and deep. There was a little linen closet in the bathroom, one shelf taken up with medical supplies. During her training with Tabby she’d suffered more than a few cuts and bruises. She disinfected the cut, used a couple of butterfly bandages to close it, and stuck a bigger bandage over that.
Calico saw herself in the mirror for the first time in over a day. It wasn’t exactly a pretty sight. She knew she was putting off heading over to Mom and Dad’s, but that seemed forgivable at the moment.
She chose her hair as her first objective. Thankfully the injury was to her non-hair-brushing hand. Working out the worst of the kinks, she scrunchied it into a wild ponytail. She rubbed down her face until it was shiny pink. She went to work on the dried blood on her neck and chest.
Grabbing a few Cottonelle wipes from the top of the toilet tank, she rubbed down her pits. Then she washed her face as vigorously as she could with the bandage. Then, lastly, she brushed her teeth and put on deodorant.
In her bedroom, she threw her blood-stained bra in the trash, put on clean underwear, then her Colorado State University sweatshirt and sweatpants.
She glanced out her bedroom window. It was past noon already.
“Time to suck it the fuck up, buttercup.”
; CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Calico parked her little red Audi 5 on the street outside her parents’ house. She was too freaked to pull it into the driveway. She opened her door but didn’t get out. There was broken yellow police tape hanging limp across the porch.
Otherwise, it looked like her childhood home—no, this was no longer home. It was now pain and loss and violence wrapped in suburban brick. She sat for over ten minutes before she pushed herself up and out.
Her breaths came shallow and didn’t seem to supply enough oxygen. Of course, bourbon could be partly to blame. There was a business card stuck to the front door. It was for Ace Cleaning Services. Fucking vultures. She tore it in two, then realized she’d actually need them, even if they were heartless assholes, and dropped the two halves into her red leather tote.
She turned the key in the deadbolt. It moved too freely. Hadn’t the cops locked up? She vaguely remembered giving them an extra set of keys.
Stepping in, she saw the bloody footprints and splatters on the stairs.
“Fuck.”
She started shaking but forced herself to move so she wouldn’t just collapse into a sobbing heap. In the living room, she found her carry-on for the Vegas trip on the floor next to the couch. She’d completely forgotten about it. Hell, she’d completely forgotten about Vegas.
Trying not to look at the dried blood in the living room, she went to the hallway behind the stairs that led to the garage and the den and a little storage room. She searched them for the books, opening every cardboard box and plastic tub because she had no idea where Mom had stored them.
As Calico walked back out to the living room, she felt the difference in the house. It felt like she was visiting a stranger’s place—stark and uninviting.
She continued the search on the main level then went down to the basement. There were more storage boxes, but it was still set up for fight training, Mom keeping herself in shape. Tears trembled from her eyes.
There was still a speed bag, a much-repaired heavy bag, and even poor Bob—a padded male torso with weird Silly Putty skin now the color of grime. Both girls had beat on him mercilessly. Calico smiled despite the tears. Bob’s head was tilted sideways thanks to Tabby. There were rowan stakes jammed into both arm stumps. His skin was covered in gashes.
She turned away from Bob and started looking through boxes. The first ones along the wall were filled with Christmas decorations, which brought a new bout of tears. She moved quickly into the corner of the basement where the last few boxes hunkered down by themselves.
Oh, shit. Her name and Tabby’s were magic-markered on them. Her chest tightened as she opened her box, but managed a smile seeing her menagerie of Beanie Babies crammed together in a mad stuffed-animal orgy. The Babies had been almost as big a deal as My Little Pony. She ran a hand over the plush surfaces.
Next, she pulled one of Tabby’s two boxes toward her. It was heavy. There were a lot of notebooks and a couple of textbooks from college. Her sister had gone to Metro State in downtown Denver to stay close to their folks so she could keep up her training.
Calico frowned at a bit of black leather peeking between two stacks of notebooks. She grabbed it and pulled, spilling out the notebooks and textbooks as a leather jacket emerged. A torrent fell from Calico’s eyes. It was the jacket. Tabby had pleaded for it relentlessly before her freshman year of high school. It was a pebbled black leather with lapels. Calico held it to her face and sobbed.
She had loved that jacket almost as much as Tabby because she thought it was the absolute coolest thing ever. Calico lifted her head and smiled at the smear of tears and snot on the leather before swinging it around and slipping it on. Holy crap, it fit. Maybe the sleeves were a little long. She hugged herself and closed her eyes, feeling herself hugging Tabby. The sobbing continued for a good five minutes.
Finally, sniffing back a gallon of snot, she forced herself to her feet and went upstairs to blow her nose and clean off the jacket. She smiled with bittersweet nostalgia at herself in the bathroom mirror.
“Okay,” she whispered, “let’s go to the second floor.” Having Tabby so close gave her courage.
Still, she avoided looking at the bloody footprints as she went up the stairs. She searched her and Tabby’s old bedrooms, now a guest room and an office, and finally stared at the doorway to her parents’ room. The bloody handprint seemed to get bigger as her eyes welled up again.
She shook her head. “No. No no no. No fucking way.”
She went back into the office. The books weren’t there, but her parents’ computer and Mom’s iPad were. There could be valuable information on both.
She flipped over the keyboard to make sure Mom’s passwords were still there on a sticky. Then she pulled out a plastic tub from the closet. It was full of old shit that she dumped unceremoniously on the carpet. She packed the computer stuff and iPad into the bin and carried it out to the car.
As she went back inside to get her carry-on, she jerked to a stop. A man stood in the living room.
“Who the fuck are you?” She was in the mood to beat on someone and he would do, even though he was over six feet and had a strong frame.
He smiled sadly and said, “I’m Detective Detrick Palmerroy.”
“When the hell did you come in here?”
“While you were putting stuff in your car.”
“What do you want?” He was in his early thirties, if she were to guess. Decent looking with dark curly hair. Dressed in khaki slacks and a dress shirt.
“You’re the daughter, right? Calico? Let me just say how sorry I am about your parents.”
The I’m-so-sorry was already old and he was only about the third person to say it.
“How can I help you?” she said curtly.
He glanced upstairs and did a little scowl as he seemed to gather his thoughts. “Well, I’m trying to figure out why your parents were targeted. What was the motive?”
Do vampires need motive? But she knew why. Lorcán wanted to wipe out the family and he wanted the books. Neither of which she was going to tell the cops. “I have no idea,” she said.
“Uh, this next question is going to sound random, but do you know anyone who lives in Kansas City? We have reason to believe that the person who did this had some connection with the city—either knows someone there or might actually be from there.”
“Kansas City? Missouri? Not off the top of my head. What kind of connection?”
“It’s probably nothing. We had a guy come into the precinct last night talking about the incident and Kansas City. Probably just looking for attention.”
“Incident? That’s what my parents’ murder is? An incident?”
He looked uncomfortable, but to his credit he didn’t backpedal or offer insipid apologies. “So you don’t know anyone from Kansas City? Maybe some relatives or even friends of your parents?”
She shrugged and shook her head. “Nope. Look, it’s getting late and I have a lot to do. Do you have any more questions?”
“Not right now, but I’ll probably be in touch.”
She frowned at him. “Probably? Isn’t it pretty much your job to be in touch?”
He smiled. “Yeah.”
There was a knock at the door. Busy day. Sighing, she turned and found more cops standing in the doorway. It was Detective Martinez from the other night and a man she didn’t recognize. They both wore ugly beige slacks and blue windbreakers with LPD ironed on the left chest.
Calico smirked and said, “You guys look more official.”
They frowned. “Excuse me?” asked the woman.
“Your colleague here,” she hooked a thumb over her shoulder.
The two cops looked past her and continued to frown. “Someone was here from the police?”
“Yeah, still is. Detective Pomeranian or something.”
“May we come in?” asked Martinez.
“More the merrier.” She stepped out of the way and turned back toward—he was gone.
“Where
is he?” asked Martinez.
“Search me. He was right there two seconds ago. Maybe he went upstairs to look at the, uh, incident again.”
“What’s he look like?”
“I’m getting the idea he’s not with you.”
The man said, “We’re the two detectives assigned. Did he show you ID?”
“Actually, he didn’t. Just said he was a cop. A detective. Asked about motive and Kansas City. If I knew anyone there.”
“Kansas City?” said Martinez. “Missouri?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Do you know anyone in Kansas City?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Did he happen to say why he asked?”
“Something lame about someone coming into your police station claiming to know about my parents and some connection with Kansas City.”
“You stay here. We’re going to search the house.”
“Sure.”
As soon as they were out of view, she grabbed her carry-on and left. It was getting late and they’d want to delay her even more over some nutjob impersonating a cop. They had her cell number, if they had questions, they could call her.
Tossing her bag in the backseat, she jumped in and took off, but didn’t get very far before slamming on her breaks. Calico got out to look back at her parents’ house. No. It was her house now. Another tick in the column of Overwhelmed. She pushed that aside and looked at the street. There was only one other car, which she assumed belonged to Detective Martinez and her partner. Where was Pomeranian’s car? And he seemed to have disappeared the moment she turned to the door to answer it. As in poof! Gone.
Was he some other kind of monster in league with Lorcán? Though why would he ask about motive and Kansas Fucking City? Unless that was just to throw her off. But he didn’t ask about the books or anything personal. She looked into the backseat of her car. No one was curled up on the seat or in the little footwells. She opened the trunk. It just had the computer stuff.
She got back in and took off at a fast clip, keeping an eye on her rearview for anyone following. The sooner she found a safe hiding place the better.
Dark Vigil Page 13
