“That’s mean. Necessary, but mean.” I took in the room around us.
A thick layer of dust covered every surface; even the white cloths draped over the furnishings were gray with it. What must have once been a beautiful crystal chandelier sagged overhead, suspended by two wires in a shroud of cobwebs. The embossed wallpaper curled around the edges and seams and vanished under big dark stains in the upper corners where water had probably leaked through from the roof. Dead bugs littered the badly gouged hardwood floors in between little piles of desiccated rat droppings.
I expected the house to smell as awful as it looked, but the air felt cool, and smelled only faintly musty.
“Mrs. Frost said they fumigated they place. They must have aired it out after that.” I saw how dark his eyes were. “What’s wrong?”
He breathed in and then frowned. “I cannot say. The chemicals the exterminators used were strong. They are masking all the other scents inside the house.” He put his arm around me. “Stay close, Catlyn. Something here feels very troubling to me.”
Jesse and I walked out to the main hall, which split off in different directions. Here the floors had been tiled in marble, but tracked-in dirt, cracks and chips marred the smooth stone. I couldn’t even tell what the original color had been.
A pair of heavy steel doors at the end of the hall led into a room so dark not even my excellent night vision could pick out any details. Jesse reached across me to flip on a switch, and overhead lights flickered on.
However much Julian Hargraves had neglected the rest of the house, the library looked as pristine and spotless as if it had been built yesterday. Empty bookcases lined all of the walls, each with glass-fronted panels with individual locks. A giant, old-fashioned wood desk sat at one end, and leather chairs, small tables and floor lamps made little reading islands on either side.
The room might be a hundred times cleaner than the rest of the place, I thought, but it smelled unpleasant, as if something old and damp had been left somewhere to mildew.
Facing the desk was a large oil painting of an older couple sitting in a gazebo; I guessed from the fifties style of their clothes and the white version of the mansion in the background that they were Julian’s parents.
Jesse walked around the room, looking into the bookcases before he stopped at the desk to check the drawers, which turned out to be empty. “There is nothing left in here.”
“That we can see,” I amended as I looked down at the big Persian rug covering the center of the floor. One edge had a faint curl to it, while the others were perfectly flat. I reached down and pulled it back, exposing the tiles. They had been cut and inlaid with a gray metal that formed a gigantic number eight.
Jesse came to kneel down beside it, but as soon as he reached to touch the metal he drew back his hand. “This has been fashioned out of iron.”
Iron (or weapons made out of it) was one of the few things that could harm or even kill vampires, a weakness Jesse and his parents had also acquired after they were attacked and changed.
I didn’t have the same problem, so I touched it carefully. The metal didn’t budge, but the metal-streaked marble ovals in the center of each end of the eight looked slightly newer than the surrounding tile. As soon as I pressed my fingers in the center of one oval, it sank down slightly, and something under the floor made a mechanical sound. At the same time, one of the bookcases to the left of the desk creaked. I pushed against the oval again, but it didn’t budge.
“Try pressing both sides at the same time,” Jesse suggested.
When I did that, both ovals lowered into the floor, the mechanical sound grew louder, and the bookcase swung out away from the wall, revealing a dark empty space behind it. We went over to look inside, and saw something like a walk-in closet with files, books and wooden boxes crammed into five deep shelves.
“A bookcase safe.” The musty odor smelled stronger now, and I held my breath as I stepped in and took out one of the file folders. Inside were photographs of Sarah Raven kneeling beside a bed of flowers. I handed it to Jesse. “Jackpot.”
Something crunched under my sneaker, and I looked down to see an open prescription bottle, and tiny white pills scattered on the floor of the closet. I bent down to pick up the bottle and read the label. “This was Julian’s. It’s nitroglycerin. He must have had a heart condition.” I set the bottle back on one of the shelves.
Jesse drew me away from the closet. “Something violent happened here. I can smell traces of blood.” He started to say something else, and then shook his head.
I put my hand on his arm. “Tell me what it is.”
“I can also smell us.” He looked down at me, his eyes solid black now. “Your scent, and my own.” He nodded toward the closet. “It’s coming from inside there.”
“But we’ve never been here before tonight.” I looked all around the shelves, until something inside me focused my attention on a wooden box that had fallen to the floor. Dark stains and smears mottled the outside of the box, and when I touched it I felt an instant sense of recognition—and revulsion, because the stains and smears were dried blood.
I couldn’t bring myself to open it, so I handed it to Jesse, who slowly lifted the lid. A large plastic bag had been left in the box, the inside of it also stained with dark red splotches. At the very bottom of the bag I saw something, and forced myself to retrieve it.
Jesse’s blood had once soaked the broken piece of oar in my hand. I knew this because on Halloween night I had pulled it out of his chest.
I closed my fist around it. As I did, I heard my heart beat in my ears like a drum, pounding hard but at the same time slowing. A chill spread through me, icy and terrifying, as everything in front of my eyes blurred and changed. Lost Lake spread out before me, its waters silvered by moonlight, and on the banks I saw a highwayman and a duchess standing together, smiling at each other.
That’s me on Halloween night, I thought dreamily. And Jesse. I couldn’t understand why everything looked as if I were seeing it from inside a small box, until my breath fogged the glass in front of my face. Not a box, but a window.
“Catlyn?”
I knew Jesse was speaking to me, but I could hear him only faintly, as if from the other side of the house. “He was there. In the boathouse.”
“What do you see? Who was there?”
“He waited,” I told Jesse. “When you came into the boathouse after Barb stabbed you on Halloween night, he hid in the shadows.” I smiled a little as I felt a twisted pleasure spread over me. “You were wounded and weak. He enjoyed seeing you like that … ”
“Catlyn.”
The images faded, and I snapped back to the present. “Oh my God.” I dropped the piece of oar and rubbed my hand against my jeans, frantically trying to get rid of the awful sensations it made me feel.
Jesse grabbed my hands and held on to them. “It’s all right, Catlyn. Don’t be afraid. You had a blood vision.”
“What?” I stared at him, horrified. “I’m not psychic. I don’t have visions.”
“You are in part psychic,” he corrected, “and it was a blood vision. Vampires can use blood to see the past. My parents and I can do the same in a more limited way. Since your father was like us, he must have passed on his ability to you.”
I stared at my hand. “But I’ve never been able to do that. Why would I start now?”
“Our bond.” He picked up the broken wood. “This was stained with my blood. You must have been responding to that.” He put it back into the bag, and some of the darkness faded from his eyes. “You said that someone was there in the boathouse. Who was it, Catlyn?”
Someone walked in the room, and I spun around to see Sheriff Yamah standing a few feet away.
“I’d like to hear that, too, Jesse.” He eyed me. “But first, young lady, I’d like to know why you’re here.”
Fourteen
Despite Kari’s coaching, I couldn’t think of a single lie that would explain why I was with Jesse. I couldn’t even come up with a decent excuse as to why we were searching Julian’s library.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to.
“Julian Hargraves knew about us, James,” my dark boy said. He took one of the files from the hidden closet and brought it to the sheriff. “He had us watched, and followed, and photographed.”
Yamah took the file, opening it and flipping through the pages. As he did, he began shaking his head. “You’re mistaken. Old Julian never left this … ” he stopped speaking as soon as he saw the first photograph of Jesse’s mother.
I took pity on him. “He noticed that the Ravens weren’t aging. Up here he could watch the island without anyone knowing about it. He hired men to follow Jesse and his parents and take pictures of them, and report on what they did whenever they left the island. He even knew about me. He was hiding in the boathouse on Halloween night.”
Yamah closed the file and looked past us at the closet. “It’s all in there?”
“I believe so.” Jesse gave him a pointed look. “We have not yet had time to look through everything.”
“I’ll take care of it.” Yamah sighed. “But this girl should never have been involved in this, Jesse. You should have come to me.”
This girl. The words made anger simmer inside me. He spoke as if I were no one and nothing.
“Catlyn found Julian’s journals,” Jesse told him. “If not for her, I would never have discovered what he had done to me and my family.”
“Keeping your family safe is my business, son.” Yamah regarded me. “I’ll take you home now, Miss. You can explain all this to your brother.”
“No.” All the emotions I’d been holding back roiled inside me, seething and dark red and ugly. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
He tilted his head back to look down his nose at me. “Breaking and entering is against the law.”