Blood Lily (Lilith Adams Vampire Series Book 1) (9 page)

“Is that so?” She arched an eyebrow and pressed the band
-aid down on his hand with a little extra enthusiasm. Chance jumped and yanked his hand back.

“God, you’re evil.” He tried to look pissed off but
only succeeded in grinning like a bobcat.

Lilith flipped him off
and slammed the first aid kit closed. “Well, if you’re done punching doors, I want to check out Duncan’s office and I’d rather you be there in the room.”

“So you don’t think I’ll compromise the scene?”

“There hasn’t been much in the way of forensic evidence anyway. There were a few drops of blood between the door to his office and the side basement door, but it wasn’t much and now it’s been contaminated with…” She hesitated for a moment, letting it sink in. “With my blood.” She rushed through the words, not just for her own benefit, but for Chance’s as well. “Just don’t touch anything.”

She took her time getting up and looked around the room. “What did you do with my kit?”

Chance nodded toward the door. “I set it against the wall in the main room. You may need to clean off the bottom.” He paled a bit, the whole event obviously replaying in his mind.

Lilith
looked him over for a moment. She was worried about him, but saying anything more would just make things worse. Chance looked up at her and smiled, forced at first but it soon spread into something sweeter.

Duncan’s office was full of dark oak furniture. The room wasn’t very large but he utilized every square inch. Any wall space left between the towering bookshelves was covered with antique sketches, old maps and medieval rubbings. Chance leaned against the door frame so he could watch her and still keep an eye on the outer room, especially the shattered glass door.

The hundreds of books stacked on the shelves seemed to center around
medieval times. There were tons of books on History from all over the world, a very large section on alchemy, and even some on superstitions and legends. On the desk itself sat a stack of newer books on Quantum Physics, String Theory and Herbal medicines.

Once she slipped on her
neoprene gloves, she began flipping through the stack of papers on his desk. “It seems like Duncan was doing a massive amount of research into something.”

Chance shrugged and glanced around. “
Or everything. Maybe he just liked to read non-fiction.”

Lilith
opened one of the large drawers in the desk and pulled out a handful of notebooks. She scanned a few of the handwritten pages. “He was definitely researching something. These are full of his notes.” She stacked up the notebooks and looked over at her kit on the floor in the doorway. “Hey can you grab a large bag out of my kit. They’re in the bottom center.”

Chance looked confused as he held up what looked like a folded, brown paper shopping bag. “This?”

Lilith glanced up and nodded absently.

He stepped into the room just enough to slip the bag on the table before returning to his guard post. “Let me guess. You don’t have enough funding so you pick up supplies at Apple Tree Supermarket
s?” The grin on his face would have normally made her just flip him off. However, this was a hell of an improvement from his earlier attitude and she was grateful for the return of normal Chance, so she indulged him. At least it kept them off the subject of her attack.

“Cute.
To answer your question, no. These are issued by the department for most evidence collection. We only use plastic bags for evidence that is air sensitive, like bloody clothes or really anything with a liquid sample on it. Plastic can contaminate some evidence and the restricted air movement can be damaging as well.” Lilith didn’t glance up to gauge his reaction. She just grabbed the brown paper bag and stuffed the notebooks in. She didn’t think this was the mother lode that her attacker was looking for, it was way too easy. On the other hand, she was very curious to see what Duncan was researching.

“Hmm. Interesting.”
Chance earned kudo points for actually sounding interested. Typically when she nerded out about work, people gave the deer-in-headlights look and quickly changed the subject. “So it’s not like CSI with all the cool plastic bags for everything. Wow. I feel so disillusioned right now.”

Lilith glanced up and chuckled.
“Aww. Did I shatter your sense of reality?”

Chance’s lips spread into a sly smile. “Somehow I think I’ll live.” There was
a familiar warmth in his eyes that made her feel better.

Lilith returned his smile briefly before returning to her work searching the desk. She
found a digital voice recorder, an old tape recorder and about a dozen cassette tapes amid the chaos on top of the desk and shoved them all into the bag with the notebooks.

Once she had the desk cleaned off, she pulled out a vial of white print dust which would show up better on the dark wood.
Using her brush she set out a light coating while Chance watched in fascination. There were only a few prints on the desk and after comparing them, they were all the same. 

The blood trail
from the hall told her nothing she didn’t already know. It led to Duncan’s chair. Frustration started to really nag at her, making the right side of her head hurt. There had to be something here. Assuming that her attacker was also Duncan’s attacker, he had to be here for something. She just needed to find it.

Well over an hour passed as she dusted surfaces, and finally found a second set of prints. It probably belonged to Spencer or Miriah, but it was worth taping and running through the computer.
If it did belong to one of them, she could rule it out in a matter of seconds. She’d been working on a small database, starting with close family members, to make running prints easier. Kind of like a vampire version of AFIS.

TV shows have an impossible turnaround.
The average time for results from Automated Fingerprint Identification System was 27 minutes and it isn’t as automated as people think. Several results were kicked to a fingerprint analyst who then determined the closest match. The human element is still considered crucial. Computers were too easy to tamper with. It took longer than a few clicks, some flashing images and instant results.

Of course, t
he crimes that really concerned her were usually within a small group. There were cases, of course, where vampires were the victims and humans were the culprits, but in those cases she had no choice but to use the same systems as everyone else. Her pet project just made it faster for her to identify her own kind.

When she opened the last desk drawer, it didn’t look quite right
though she didn’t really know why. She started pulling out random junk, tossing it carelessly on the floor. Once the drawer was empty she stared at it, the puzzle working through her mind. What was bothering her about it? Her eye caught a dark splotch on the interior face of the drawer. She leaned in to get a better look and a shock ran through her. There was a rough arrow faintly burned into the wood. She’d seen the design before.

“Throw me a pocket knife.”

Chance crossed the room to hand it to her. “I can’t believe you just told me to throw a knife at you.”

Lilith snatched the knife and flipped it open. She pried at the bottom of the drawer along the edges. It had to be a false bottom, not only because the drawer looked deeper on the outside, but also because she needed to find something, anything. Besides, the crude arrow couldn’t be a coincidence. It was the same one that mysteriously showed up at her New York apartment. Someone wanted her to find this, someone who managed to get an envelope all the way to her in New York without using the post office.

She finally caught the edge of the prefab wooden bottom
with the edge of her gloved fingers. A thrill of excitement ran through her as she popped it up with a small splintering sound. She stopped pulling and slid her slender, gloved hand between the drawer and the fake bottom, feeling her way around until her fingers brushed over a thin container. Bull’s eye. “Chance, come give me a hand.”

He rushed over and stared down into the drawer. “What do you need?”

Lilith motioned her head toward her hand. “I need you to pull back on the piece of wood, give me enough room to get this out.” She didn’t bother telling him to pull on gloves. Obviously the drawer hadn’t been touched recently.

“I could just pull it out for you.” He started forward, grabbing for it.

“No. Don’t break it. I want to leave it in tact. If whatever’s under here is really so important, I don’t want anyone to know we have it. Maybe no one else would ever think to look under here, but I guarantee if it’s broken, they’ll know something is missing. Until we know what’s going on, I don’t really want to make myself a bigger target.”

Chance nodded and very, very carefully pulled back on the wood. Thankfully the thin, prefab “wood” bent and didn’t just snap. She
managed to squeeze the thin little box out but her glove rolled down as she pulled. The back of her hand scrapped against the rough edge of the wood. She drew in a sharp breath and bit her lip as the treasure finally came free. Very slowly, Chance lowered the bottom back in place and tapped around the edges.

Lilith pressed the bottom of her
t-shirt against her hand to stop the bleeding. The scrapes weren’t deep so it didn’t take long. Once the bleeding stopped, she pulled her glove back into place and refocused her attention. When she looked back into the drawer, it looked almost perfect. There were a few little dings along the side where she’d used the pocket knife, but nothing that would instantly stand out. “Can you start throwing all that junk back in the drawer for me?”

Chance glanced at her hand while grabbing an armful of stuff off the floor. “You okay?”

“Just a few scratches. Nothing I can’t handle.” Chance actually smiled as he tossed the random collection of things into the drawer. Every now and then he’d stop to look at something, random crystal vials that must be antiques, old coca cola tin boxes, a china doll that was stained almost beyond recognition. “What the hell is with all the junk in here? None of it seems to make any sense.”

Lilith glanced down at the six inch square container in her lap. It was a faded motley
collection of colors, chipped and scratched so much she couldn’t make out the design. “Some of it might be to mask this. No one really roots around in a junk drawer because people typically throw things into one and they never come out. It’s a psychological thing. When you are looking for something important, you check places people use all the time, a place they will remember. No one remembers what they threw in the trash. Plus, the sounds from all the bottles and whatnot, would mask the sound of this rattling in the bottom if it came to it.”

“What do you mean mask the sound?” Chance frowned at her while he closed the drawer.

“This was in the bottom in a space much larger than it needed. There was no padding, nothing to keep it from sliding around when someone opened or closed the drawer. If you opened a drawer filled with papers and heard a metallic clink, you’d know something was up, right?”

Chance smiled and leaned against the desk, folding his arms over his chest. Just his body posture said volumes, impressed but defensive. He was holding on to something, a secret of some sort, and it wasn’t the first time she’d noticed. Now wasn’t the time
to go digging. “So what’s in the thing?” He lifted his chin toward the box in her hand.

“Only one way to find out.”
Lilith flashed him a smile and started prying up the edges of the tin box. It finally popped open and a musty smell filled the air. There was a myriad of little items inside, a small metal cast of a family crest, several small pages of parchment, some blank and some covered in ancient scrolling letters, tiny portrait sketches, and several things wrapped in linen. She reached for the first wrapped item with delicate fingers, concentrating so hard on being careful that the sudden thunder of a screaming voice made her jump in the chair. She nearly dropped the box and scrambled to keep all the contents inside.

“Lilith! Chance! Where the hell are you?” Spencer’s voice echoed down the stairs.

“Downstairs. Office.” Chance yelled back.

Lilith tucked the box closed with a snap
and leapt to her feet. She grabbed Chance’s shoulder with a serious look. “I want to keep this to ourselves until we know more, okay?” She put all the importance and weight into her tone. Chance stared at her with a moment of pure understanding. “I just want to know more about what is going on before showing our hand.”

Chance nodded and a smile began to stretch across his lips. “Let me guess.
Online Texas Hold ‘Em?”

She tucked the thin box into the waist of her jeans and tugged her blood-stained t-shirt down over it. She really needed to change clothes. The blood-soaked pieces were starting to stick to her skin. “Do you study some kind of smartass comeback textbook or something?” She shoved at his shoulder with a laugh.
“I prefer spades anyway.”

Chance grinned. “Can’t handle a real game of poker?”

Lilith quirked one eyebrow up at him. “Cause if money’s not involved it’s not real? Look, I really need a shower and a change of clothes before this shirt permanently adheres to my skin.”

“Do you want me to grab your suitcase?” His smile was soft and genuine. In all the years
he’d been around, she was starting to feel like she never really knew him until now. Well, it shouldn’t seem odd. She really hadn’t known anything about him till now. He was a fixture in her life, but he’d never been a real person till now. He was just in the background wherever her father went.