“I sense magic inside,” Zav stated.
I did too. Not magical beings—the windows were dark and the house appeared vacant—but something in the basement was emanating power. Or maybe something built into the foundation itself? It was hard to imagine someone leaving magical artifacts behind after moving out.
Dimitri went inside through a back door, Sindari informed us from the other side of the house.
Zav and I were standing in the rain and looking at the place while Sindari ghosted around the perimeter, sniffing at the lawn, garden beds, and walkways. It was a larger than typical lot for the area, and fir trees along the sides made it private other than the open view out to the street and the lake.
Did he come out? I assumed he had, but what if he’d encountered a vampire inside and gotten himself killed?
The bleak thought made me wince. Dimitri never would have met Zoltan or gotten involved in this world if he hadn’t met me. If he was dead, it would be my fault.
I am trying to determine that.
“Will we enter or stand here in the rain?” Zav asked.
“The rain that isn’t getting you wet because your magic is keeping it from landing on your head?”
For the most part, he was keeping me dry too, but I’d learned that if I wandered more than a few feet away, I ended up out from under his magical umbrella.
“Yes. It is damp and unpleasant out here, despite this hemisphere of your planet being tilted closer to your sun at this time.”
“Despite it being summer? Yeah, Seattle can be damp any time of year. It’s a thing here.”
“Dragons prefer hot climates.”
“You should have claimed an equatorial female for your mate.”
He gazed at me thoughtfully. “Yes.”
“FYI, barbecue-ribs restaurants are in shorter supply near the equator.”
“I will stay here.”
“I thought so.”
I do not sense Dimitri inside, Sindari told me, but I also cannot smell evidence that he left.
Dread filled me at the idea of sneaking in, only to find his body. If he’s dead on the floor in there, I’m going to murder whoever did it.
The trail is old, so it’s possible that he left and retraced his route exactly. That would have made it difficult for me to tell if he’d come and gone.
As I padded across the lawn and around the house, I hoped that Dimitri was the kind of unimaginative guy to walk home exactly the same way he’d come. Given that we’d come over a mile to get here and turned numerous times, I wasn’t sure how likely that was. I braced myself to find a body—and to have to explain to Nin that we’d lost both of our business partners in the same week. Ugh, and my mother was in town too. She wouldn’t be happy to hear about Dimitri’s death. And damn it, I wouldn’t like it either. We didn’t have a lot in common, but he was a helpful guy and didn’t deserve to get killed for trying to find a missing friend.
By the time I pushed through a side gate and into a back yard full of unkempt garden beds and a drained fountain, tears were threatening to film my eyes. I firmed my chin and blinked them away. We didn’t know anything yet. It was too soon to mourn anyone.
“This is a vampire’s lair,” Zav said as we followed the walkway.
“The house?” I halted. “Is there a vampire in there now?”
I didn’t sense anyone magical inside, but my senses had been fooled before.
Sindari was waiting in front of cement steps that led down to a sunken basement door, his fur glowing a faint silver in the misty night air. A vampire was here but is not now. I would be able to smell him if he were present.
“The lower level of that domicile is covered with remnants of his aura.” Zav waved to the door, the one Sindari was waiting patiently to enter. “Recent remnants.”
“Lovely.” It occurred to me to pull out my phone and look up the address of the house before we barged into a trap. With Zav at my side, it was unlikely anything would be able to kill me, but doing research on the property first wouldn’t hurt.
The house had a Zillow listing that showed it for rent for twenty-eight hundred dollars a month. That was a lot lower than I expected, given the location, the view, and the fact that it had six bedrooms and a turret. Maybe the basement vampire lair brought down the value. Vampires weren’t mentioned in the listing, but the house had been for sale for years, with numerous price drops, before being turned into a rental.
“Sounds familiar,” I muttered thinking of the McMansion sharing the lot with Zoltan’s haunted carriage house.
“What?” Zav asked.
“Vampires bring down property values.” Nothing more than rental listings came up for the address, so I returned my phone to my pocket. “Let’s check it out.”
The door wasn’t locked. Zav and Sindari stepped into the basement ahead of me, and I felt well-protected. Poor Dimitri would have come alone. What clue had led him here?
The small, high windows were covered with boards, not that there was any light in the back yard that would have illuminated the basement. I flipped a switch by the door, the panel set between the studs in an unfinished wall. Nothing came on.
As Sindari and Zav padded into the darkness, I drew Chopper and whispered, “Eravekt,” choosing that over my night-vision charm. The blade flared with gentle blue light that illuminated the low ceiling, with knob-and-tube wiring strung between the wood beams. Not far from a laundry sink and an old washer and dryer squatted a black oil-burning furnace that wouldn’t be out of place in an antique shop. Judging by the pipes and vents, it was still in use as the house’s heat source.
“Getting insurance on this place must be fun,” I muttered, surprised some building code hadn’t required a renovation long ago.
We’ve found the source of the magic, Sindari told me.
I hurried around a corner and past old wooden stairs that led up to the main level and found Zav and Sindari standing in the middle of a mess. A wooden workbench had been upended, dumping everything from nails to mallets to books on the cement floor. There was a forge in one corner, metalworking tools dangling from bars around a bed of charcoal. A huge anvil on a metal pedestal bolted to the floor was the source of the magic I’d sensed. A few wheels and barrel hoops hung on the wall among swords and axes. None of the tools or weapons were magical.
“The rental listing didn’t mention a basement blacksmithing shop,” I said.
A blacksmithing shop that saw a fight. Sindari nosed something on the floor. A phone. This belonged to Dimitri.
My heart sank. He wouldn’t have left his phone behind willingly.
When I picked it up, alerts for missed calls and texts—several from me—appeared on the front of the cracked screen. “Now I know why he didn’t call me back.”
A passcode prompt came up when I tried to get in, but it didn’t matter. I doubted the answers were inside. The answers were… wherever he was. Unfortunately, not here.
I peered into the corner of the basement I hadn’t yet seen and jumped. A coffin lay turned over on its side, the lid open to reveal a lush blue velvet interior and a pillow.
The vampire must sleep there during the day, Sindari said.
“Looks like he forgot to make his bed.” I rubbed the back of my head. “So, what’s the deal? Dimitri and this vampire got in a fight? Or Dimitri was visiting this vampire when someone else came in and picked a fight with both of them?”
That made more sense to me. If someone was kidnapping vampires, maybe Dimitri had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had been caught alongside this fanged blacksmith. But whoever had done the kidnapping must have realized right away that Dimitri had warm skin. Why take him?
If he was carried out, that would explain why I struggled to detect his departure trail, Sindari said.
“Carried out and stuffed in a van? But why? Wouldn’t they have left him and taken the vampire?” I had a headache and was trying to figure out how this tied in with Weber being attacked at the yacht club. What had that vampire with the hounds said? You’ve made enemies of the wrong people. “I think… I need to visit my employer tomorrow.”
Weber had to know more than he’d let on so far.
“Your boyfriend?” Zav quirked an eyebrow.
“According to the society section, he is.”
“Because human society is ignorant and cannot recognize a female marked as the mate of a dragon.”
“Humans can’t sense magic. You can’t blame them for that. We mark our mates in other ways.”
“How?” He scrutinized me.
I’d been about to explain hickeys but decided against it, lest he want to experiment. “T-shirts, remember? I haven’t had a chance to shop for one though. Sorry.”
“A shirt would show that you are claimed?”
“Yeah, the typical ones involve pictures of the snuggling couple making lovey eyes at each other, preferably surrounded by a pink heart.”
“Where can we obtain these?”
“The guy who took your photo for that poster could tell you.”
Zav nodded firmly. “Excellent. I will acquire this information from him.”
Maybe I should have told him about hickeys.
My phone buzzed. I tugged it out, hoping it was Dimitri. Weber’s number popped up. Apparently, the fact that it was after eleven wasn’t a deterrent to calling one’s bodyguard.
“Yeah?”
“Ms. Thorvald?” Ah, it was his executive assistant, not Weber himself.
“Yup.”
“Mr. Weber is holding a small cocktail party at his house before the theater tomorrow. He wishes you to work for both events and arrive at noon to run the security inspection that I told you about when you were hired.”
“I’ll be there.”
“I’ll let him know. Thank you.”
“What are you doing tomorrow, Zav?” I put my phone in my pocket.
“T-shirt shopping.”
“How would you like to put that on hold and snoop around Weber’s house instead?” I would have to figure out a way to keep Weber busy and prevent all the magical alarms from going off, so Zav could do it without being detected.