“I’m sorry,” I said, breaking eye contact first. For a vampire that reveled in her independence, Mira was showing a surprising amount of protectiveness for a collection of creatures. But I had a feeling that Daniel had earned her respect. He was sticking his neck out to protect mankind and help Mira. What did I care if Mira compensated him for his troubles?
“Thanks,” Mira said gruffly, then turned and continued up the stairs.
It wasn’t until we had reached the third floor that James finally spoke up. “How did he find out…about everything?”
“His sister-in-law is a member of the local pack,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. There was a somewhat wry smile teasing at her lips as she spoke. “Only Daniel and his brother know, but it opened his eyes to the rest of us.”
That way was better than what I had been expecting. It probably hadn’t been a comfortable moment for Daniel Crowley, but I doubted it caused him to wake up in a cold sweat with a scream lodged in his throat. Those few humans who knew that vampires, lycans, and all the other creatures existed were generally survivors with gruesome tales of blood and pain, and poorly healed scars.
I stopped at the top of the stairs on the top floor next to Mira. There were only two apartments on the sixth floor. The apartment on the left had its door close to the stairs. A woven mat with WELCOME in wide black letters beckoned all visitors. A fake potted palm also stood next to the dark wood door, adding to the warm atmosphere. The door to the apartment on the right was at the other end of the hall. Yellow police tape was stretched across the entrance, warning away the curious.
“What are the odds the neighbor heard or saw anything?” Mira said blandly, jerking her head toward the door on the left.
“We’re not that lucky,” I said with a frown. If the neighbor had seen the attacker, he or she wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale. That, of course, is assuming the attacker didn’t have the power to wipe a human’s memory.
I walked ahead of Mira down the hall to the other apartment. I reached up to tear down the yellow tape, but my hand halted in midair as my eyes snagged on the streak of blood across the door. It wasn’t drawn in any kind of symbol, but looked like someone had wiped the blood off his or her finger, smearing it across the lacquer surface.
Mira reached around me and tore down the yellow tape, making a noise of disgust in the back of her throat. Using the key Daniel had given her, she unlocked the door and shoved it open. I moved to follow her into the apartment, but she pressed her hand to my chest, stopping me.
“What?” I demanded, barely resisting the urge to take a step backward away from her touch. After what happened at the little vampire gathering, I thought it better if I maintained some physical distance from her. One of us was having restraint issues, and right now, distance could only be a good thing.
“Wait.” Mira drew in a slow, deep breath through her nose and held it, her eyes closed. She didn’t breathe, but vampirism did heighten her senses. Mira was smelling the air.
I quickly snapped my eyes from the way her breasts rose as her lungs expanded and stared blindly into the room, vainly attempting to concentrate on why we were at the apartment in the first place. “Anything?”
Mira shook her head, frowning. She exhaled and drew in another breath, holding it longer. “There’s definitely something, but it’s…hard to pick out. Lots of humans were through here, mucking everything up. There’s something else, just a hint, but it’s not anything I’ve ever encountered.”
“So you’re saying it can’t be vampire,” I said thickly.
“No,” she growled, glaring at me over her shoulder. “But I can say that none of the nightwalkers we saw tonight have been in this apartment in the past few days. They would not be able to hide from me.”
Leaning my left elbow against the doorjamb, I shoved my fingers through my hair, pushing it out of my eyes. “Let’s get this over with,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure what Mira hoped to find that the police hadn’t already found. On the other hand, our minds were open to the idea that the woman’s attacker was not human.
The narrow hallway led into a large living room. The walls were made of the same redbrick and decorated with a collection of framed black-and-white photographs. One wall was filled with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto River Street and the Savannah River. The scent of apple-cinnamon potpourri hung in the warm apartment air.
However, the warm atmosphere suddenly chilled when my eyes dropped to the tape outline of where the woman’s body had been found before the moss-colored sofa. The white area rug with an ivy design was stained a deep brownish red from her blood, and the taste of copper filled my mouth.
Slowly, I walked around the sofa to get a better view of the site of the woman’s death. An odd tension twisted in my stomach as I quietly moved through the apartment. I had seen more than my fair share of corpses, but there was something strange about moving around the dead woman’s apartment, as if her absence left the air feeling heavier. I rarely investigated human murders. It was usually my job to punish the murderer once he or she was identified.
Around me, Mira flicked on the lights. Her eyesight was extremely sharp, but she was obviously unwilling to miss anything. The nightwalker moved easily about the room as if she had no qualms over the fact that we were investigating the brutal murder of a young woman. Her feet were silent on the patches of carpet and only lightly clicked when she stepped onto the hardwood floor. I couldn’t understand the vampire. Did she not care that the existence of one of her kind could possibly be hanging in the balance? Obviously not.
“Nothing looks disturbed. No sign of a struggle,” James said in a soft voice, as he, too, was afraid to disturb the oppressive quiet of the apartment. Nothing was tipped over, shattered, or torn. Even the lamp shades were perfectly balanced.
“The door didn’t look tampered with. So we can assume she let her attacker in,” Mira said, walking over to stand beside me. She paused and then her head jerked up. “Unless the attacker was a magic user, cast a spell to unlock the door and walk in.”
I shook my head, unable to tear my eyes away from the tape outline. “No residue.”
“I beg your pardon,” Mira demanded, her tone finally jerking my gaze back to her face.
“I have a…” I licked my lips, fumbling for the right word. “…sensitivity to magic. Spells tend to leave behind a residue. A spell to unlock the door would have left a residue behind in the wood. There was nothing.”
Mira just arched one questioning brow at me then returned her gaze to the bloodstained carpet. “So, she probably let her attacker in. Could be a friend or lover.”
The vampire squatted beside me, shaking her head as she looked over the scene. “It wasn’t a nightwalker.”
I couldn’t stop the snort of disbelief at her comment, earning a dark frown from her. “You can’t possibly know that by just smelling the air,” I argued.
“Look at the blood,” she said in a near growl. “There’s too much blood.” Standing, she walked across the floor and pushed the sofa off the edge of the area rug.
“Mira!” Her name escaped me in a harsh gasp. I pointed to the floor, showing her that she was standing in the outline of the body.
Mira looked up at me with a look of utter disbelief. “You’re strange. You do know that?” she said blandly, narrowing her eyes at me.
I know it was a strange qualm, but you didn’t walk on someone’s grave if you could help it and you didn’t stand in the place where a person died. Call it an old superstition. I did what I could to keep up with the changing times and ideas, but there were some notions that I struggled to shed.
Bending down, the vampire grabbed the edge of the carpet and pulled it toward me as she backed up. The sound of cracking filled the air as the crust of dried blood crumbled.
“Look. Not only did her blood saturate the rug, but it seeped through,” she explained. I looked over the edge of the rug to find that small rivers of blood had dried in the ridges of the ha
rdwood floor.
“So instead of killing her accidentally by draining too much, the vamp came in with the sole purpose of killing her,” I argued, stepping back and folding my arms across my chest.
With a growl, Mira released the rug and let it flop heavily back into place as she stood. “Even if a nightwalker had come in here with only the goal of killing her, he or she would not have passed up an opportunity to take a few pints from her,” she argued, her anger causing her irises to flare slightly. “You never pass up a free lunch, especially if it’s your enemy. This woman lost every ounce on the floor.”
“So you’re sure her attacker wasn’t a vampire,” I sarcastically said, fighting the desire to reach for the hilt of the knife resting along my left side. Anger started to bubble in my veins and roll in my stomach. Mira was sinking back into killer mode, donning the mantle of the ruthless hunter. I wasn’t convinced that a vampire was guiltless of this woman’s death.
“I’m saying fifty people could have been in the room watching her die, and I can guarantee not one of them was a nightwalker,” she bit out through clenched teeth.
“Bold statement,” I sneered.
“Yeah, it’s why you love me.” She laughed, reaching up and tweaking my nose. I blinked, staring at her for a breath. The anger had been washed from her eyes. There was a slight chill to the air from her powers, but it was quickly dissipating along with the scent of lilacs. And then, just as quickly, the fresh laughter in her eyes died and she turned serious. “But that still doesn’t answer our question of who,” she continued. “What are we left with?”
“Besides human and vampire?” James supplied.
“Yes,” she hissed between clenched teeth, looking back down at the tape outline.
“Lycans,” he suggested.
Mira shook her head. “Ryan said her throat was torn out. She wouldn’t have stood here while a lycan changed. She would have run. There would have been evidence of a struggle.”
“Unless she knew this person was a Were,” I stated, drawing Mira’s thoughtful gaze back to my face.
“True,” she slowly drawled. “Anything else?”
“Any shape-shifting naturi.”
“That could be a long list. I imagine something from the animal clan would be able to shift.” Mira shook her head, rubbing one hand over her face. “So we’re still at square one. Do we know anything about this girl?”
James reached into his back pocket and pulled out a tiny notebook. He flipped through several pages before settling on the information that he was searching for. “Abigail Bradford,” he read aloud. “Age twenty-six. Single. Daughter of Alabama senator John Bradford.”
“Great,” Mira muttered, drawing my gaze back to her. “That explains the media hysterics.”
James paused in the middle of his recitation, partially closing the notebook as he looked up at her. “I don’t understand.”
“Bradford is one of those bible-thumping ultra-conservatives that will make the Great Awakening very painful. I have no doubt his family headed up the Inquisition and the Salem witch trials,” she explained, pacing across the room. With a shake of her head, Mira turned back around to face the researcher. “Anything else?”
“Just that she worked as a curator for the Juliette Gordon Low house—”
“Oh, just stake me now!” she exclaimed sarcastically. “It can’t possibly get any worse.”
“Who was Juliette Gordon Low?” I demanded.
“She was the founder of the Girl Scouts,” she grumbled. “Probably was a Girl Scout herself. Miss Abigail Bradford was raised by a squeaky-clean family and worked for a squeaky-clean museum. It’s all too…”
“Clean,” I interjected, crossing my arms over my chest. I stepped away from the sofa and leaned my shoulder against the wall, turning my back to the tape outline and Abigail’s gruesome death so I could think clearly.
“Ha.” She glared at me. “Something feels off.” Mira paced away from me toward the wall of windows, running one hand through her hair.
“You think it was all a setup to draw attention to the outsiders,” I suggested. “Someone plotted her murder in order to shed light on the nightwalkers or lycans.”
“Maybe.” The single word escaped her in a soft, thoughtful whisper. “But that would indicate some long-term planning.” She turned on her heel to look at me, her hands shoved into the pockets of her pants.
“Vampires are known for their patience and long-term schemes. You have all the time in the world,” I reminded her.
“So do the naturi,” she snapped. “We need to know how long she’s lived in Savannah. Specifically, how long she lived in this apartment.”
“I can look into that,” James said. He reached into the interior pocket of his coat and pulled out an ink pen. Flipping to a new page in his notebook, he started to scratch out some notes. “Is there anything else you need to know?”
“Why she came to Savannah,” I interjected.
“And if any family members or friends from her past are outsiders,” Mira stated.
I sent her a questioning look as James continued to make notes. It seemed like an odd request. Yet James took it all in stride, never once betraying any doubts.
“Couldn’t hurt to check.” Mira shrugged before returning her gaze back out the window.
James was usually pretty good about getting random bits of information and would probably have our answers by late afternoon. Since acquiring him as an assistant, I was becoming accustomed to his strange quirks and rampant curiosity. But it was all temporary. I had outlasted more than two dozen assistants during my time at Themis. I outlived them all.
Mira’s soft voice drew me back to our current dilemma. Her voice was so quiet, I think she was mostly speaking to herself. “Why here? Maybe we’re making this too big.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, walking over to the windows.
“What if we’re looking for a conspiracy and there isn’t one? What if it really is all about Abigail?”
“You think she’s not as squeaky clean as her background?”
“She lived a block away from some of the hottest clubs and bars in the whole city. I doubt she moved here to visit the city library.” Sarcasm dripped from her words.
“You have a theory?”
“A hypothesis,” she said, pushing away from the window. “Let’s test it. Go into the bathroom and check for pills. See what she was on.”
I had a dark suspicion of what I was looking for, but I kept my thoughts to myself as I followed her down the hall off the living room. Mira turned left into the master bedroom while I took the first right into the bathroom, with James close on my heels.
It was a small room with tiny white tiles and pale blue walls. The large claw-foot porcelain tub dominated the far wall and matched the white porcelain wash stand. The room was softly lit with a pair of sconces with tulip-shaped frosted globes. It was all neat and tidy, with a scattering of female products that I didn’t want to try to comprehend.
The mirror over the sink was a classic medicine cabinet. Pulling aside the mirror revealed the usual assortment of Band-Aids, ointments, creams, and pain relievers. What caught my attention were the vitamins. Eight bottles, including two that were over-the-counter iron supplements. Iron pills were a common with people who had heart problems or were anemic. At a guess, I had a feeling this was what Mira was looking for.
Grabbing one of the bottles of iron supplements, I closed the mirror and turned off the light before walking across the hall to the bedroom. Mira stood before an open drawer in the bureau, softly cursing in Italian. She was rather fluent and creative.
“Good news?” I inquired.
“Scarves,” she muttered. “A whole drawer full.” To emphasize her point, she reached in and grabbed a handful in her clenched fist. She let the sheer bits of fabric slip through her fingers and spill back into the drawer like a silken rainbow.
“A nightwalker can heal a wound caused by a bite,” she began, closing t
he drawer. “But if you’re keeping a pet, you leave the wound so everyone knows that she is already taken. Unfortunately, the human is left to conceal the bite during the daylight hours. Scarves are a popular remedy.”
“She could just find them fashionable,” James offered, drawing her dark gaze back to me.
“Do you believe that?”
“No,” I replied, tossing her the bottle. She briefly looked at it, her fingers tightening around the plastic until it cracked and snapped.
“Somebody is going to fry,” she snarled, stalking out of the bedroom. She slapped the switch, turning out the light as she walked past.
“Five minutes ago you were sure a vampire didn’t kill her,” I called, following her down the hall.
“I still don’t think a vampire killed her,” she snapped. In the living room, we began flicking off all of the lamps. “But if she was a pet, it means little Miss Abigail could have been involved in all kinds of nastiness.”
Passing by the end table next to the sofa, I snatched up a four-by-five picture in a plain wooden black frame. It was of a pair of women with their arms around each other’s shoulders. The large white fountain that dominated Forsyth Park rose up in the background. Both women looked to be in their early to mid-twenties, with bright smiles and a look of innocence. Well, at least ignorant of the dark world that surrounded them.
“That her?” Mira asked, peering around my arm.
“One of them probably is,” I said, taking the back of the frame off. I removed the picture and shoved it into my pocket before replacing the empty frame.
Mira looked up at me, a slight frown pulling at the corner of her lips. “We’ll find out when we get to the morgue.”
TWELVE
Back on the street, I paused beneath the streetlamp next to Mira, letting my gaze sweep up and down Factors Walk. The whole area was thick with shadows and intermittently broken by dim lamplight. To my left, I saw a small figure scurry down the alley before cutting down between a pair of buildings. It was only a brief glimpse, but my vision was keen enough to pick out what appeared to have been a young girl with a ragged backpack. Could it have been the same girl from earlier? I needed to find her again, ask her what she saw. But it was too late to go chasing her now. I would have to do my searching by daylight with James at my side.
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