Generation V (29 page)

I drew a circle around the park and the Grann address, keeping its edge at where Maria’s body had been found. He would’ve been in a hurry that night, eager to get to his new toys, and Maria would have been dumped quickly. The next night, getting rid of Jessica, he would’ve been more cautious, more like vampires were told to be, and instructed Phillip to take her farther away, to draw the eyes of police to the wrong area of the city.

I played with that thought for another second—the wrong area of the city. Maria and Jessica had been in dirty alleys, near bars and clubs and businesses. Luca had planned this trip. A predator trying to avoid attention might be interested in abandoned warehouses and neighbors who wouldn’t be around at night, but Luca had seemed to fit right in with my family, who tended to be pretty picky about their personal surroundings. I couldn’t quite picture him walking around on old concrete floors and sitting on boxes. Chivalry had come to visit my first off-campus apartment once, and when he’d learned that I was sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor that I’d bought off the previous tenant for twenty dollars (which smelled only mildly of cat urine), he’d been so acutely horrified that he’d gotten right on the phone and paid double to have a new mattress delivered within an hour, and I’d found myself marched straight over to a furniture store for a new bed frame.

Prudence or Chivalry would probably have stayed in ritzy hotels if they were traveling, but they weren’t in the habits of raping young girls, so anything with that kind of oversight and security was probably right out the window.
Apartments have shared walls that are usually the same thickness as paper, and somehow I didn’t think Luca was interested in having neighbors who might overhear any suspicious noises.

I tapped the map again, but I couldn’t think of anything to narrow my search circle down any further. Maybe a town house like Prudence preferred, maybe a rented house, but I needed to hurry up and find him. Older vampires aren’t exactly sleeping in coffins when the sun is out, but it can make them a little logier and sluggish. I’d take any sliver of an edge that would give me.

I ran all the way back to the Fiesta.

Parking wasn’t exactly plentiful, so I finally parallel-parked in a residential-sticker-only area and hoped that I’d be gone again before some irritated local called the cops or the traffic officer rolled through. It was easier to focus on little things like that than consider the really stupid thing I was about to do.

I went straight over to the park, the city kind with one baseball diamond and a small playground area. There were a lot of kids running around, but also plenty of anxious adults keeping watch, and I got more than a few nervous looks as I passed by. The police might not have realized how important this park was, but the parents were very aware that it was a local girl who was missing.

I walked over to some swings and crouched down under the pretext of tying my shoe. People were really jumpy, and I didn’t want to risk having some mother dial 911 to report a suspicious single man if I sat on a park bench, not when I was carrying a concealed gun filled with bear-killing bullets, so I let my hands fiddle around
with my shoelace on autopilot while I reached back to that quiet place in my head and felt for vampires.

For the first time all day, something responded to me. There was that buzzing I’d been looking for—so faint that I almost couldn’t pick it up, but when I gave that little line a tug, it tugged back and gave me a direction. I got up and followed it.

It led me out of the park and down the street, past tidy little houses. If there were kids playing in yards, parents were always out with them. There were a lot of fliers posted, some with Jessica’s and Amy’s photos on them, but most with just Amy’s. I concentrated on that tugging, feeling it grow just a little stronger with every step I took. Just like back at the mansion, feeling for Luca was different than trying to locate my family. If I stopped concentrating and specifically looking for it, it dropped away immediately and I had to fumble to find it again. Which was lucky, since unless Luca was looking for me in the same way, he wouldn’t feel me approach.

It pulled me down a one-way street, where the distance between the properties widened and the houses got more expensive. These lawns weren’t tended with old push mowers from the garage; these were the product of professional care. The sidewalks here weren’t concrete anymore; they were the older brick kind, the kind that cities hate maintaining and replace whenever they have the chance. The tug led me to a small Tudor house, set back from the street and partially obscured by a large and well-pruned hedge. The low-level buzz was like a bee rattling around in the back of my skull when I concentrated on it, and I knew that Luca was inside. I just hoped that Amy was still with him.

I circled around the property, hunching down slightly to stay below the old-fashioned gabled windows. I really hoped that no one in the neighborhood was keeping an eye on me, because everything about my actions was screaming
prowler
. All of the windows had modern turn blinds, all of which were, obviously, turned. I made my way around to the back of the house. There was a tall wooden privacy fence, and the gate was locked, but a landscaper had left a wheelbarrow and a few bags of lime next to it. Maybe he’d gotten called away in the middle of a job, or maybe the new renter hadn’t liked having service personnel around and had told him to drop everything and get off the property until he was told to come back. Either way, I wasn’t going to waste this stroke of luck. By turning over the wheelbarrow and stacking up the lime bags, I gave myself just barely enough added height that I could hop up and snag the top of the fence, then haul myself over. My landing on the other side wasn’t very graceful, but I’d spent enough time trying to run away from Madeline’s mansion that it was quiet, and I managed not to break any limbs on the way down.

With so much space between the house and the street, there wasn’t much room in the back. Most of it was a large stone patio, but Luca had let the tall fence lull him, and the glass patio doors were open to let in the afternoon breezes, leaving the closed screen doors with thick privacy mesh as the only barrier to the outside. I crept up the patio as quietly as I could, then peeked inside. It was hard to see through the dark mesh, but after a second for my eyes to adjust I could see that at some point an owner had decided that their Tudor house needed an
open floor plan—probably the reason it was now rented out to roaming European assholes. From the door I could see a kitchen nook, a lot of recently waxed hardwood floors, the kind of generic furniture that you see decorating time-shares, and one of those spiral staircases that invite death going up to a dark loft area.

I didn’t see Luca, which was a good thing, but I also couldn’t see Amy. The odds of having her waiting next to the door for me had been pretty low, but I had been hoping that for once Fortune would have smiled on me.

I wiggled the screen door push knob. It was one of those with the little latch on the inside that is marketed as a lock, and that owners seem to place a great deal of trust in, but Jill and Brian had had one on the back door of their house that was about the same age as this one, and I remembered from the many times that I’d accidentally been locked in the backyard that to open it you just had to try hard. It would stay locked against a normal attempt to open it, but the manufacturers clearly hadn’t intended to keep out young boys who had no appreciation for how much their foster parents had just spent on a new screen door.

I pushed the handle in, and the lock engaged right where it was supposed to. This was the part where the wicked intruder was clearly intended to give up and go burgle elsewhere, but I kept applying steady pressure to the handle, increasing it slowly. The locking mechanism was just a tiny stick of metal that held against the door frame, and the more pressure I put, the more it bent. I could feel it starting to wiggle, and then with one last push, it gave way with a soft but startling bang. I waited, holding my breath, but I couldn’t hear anyone moving,
and I slowly opened the door just enough for me to sneak inside.

My eyes adjusted fast to the dim afternoon light that seeped around the edges of the blinds and gave everything a twilight look. There was nothing in this main open area, but I could see a partially open door along one wall that I hadn’t been able to see from the patio. I could just barely make out the corner of a bed inside it. The spiral stairs led to one of those half-loft areas popular among people who have no children or any need for privacy. I knew that Luca was in the house, and given the time of day and that he hadn’t come to investigate the sound of the lock breaking, he was probably sleeping. There were two possibilities in front of me.

I looked from one to the other. I could see a few skylights in the ceiling above the half loft, but they’d all been blacked out, probably with towels and masking tape. The bedroom on the main floor probably just had closed blinds, because it had the same low level of light seepage as where I was standing. It was brighter than the loft, which was shrouded in inky shadows, so I crossed my fingers and made my way over to it. I crept along the wall, mincing along and shuddering at every scuffing sound my boots made against the floor and silently cursing whatever deranged owner had decided on wooden floors instead of carpet. At the door, I took two deep breaths to try to slow my racing heart, then peeked inside.

The bed took up almost all of the room—a huge, frothy concoction with white sheets, fluffy pillows, and even a kind of open-lace canopy that was stretched between tall honey-colored wooden posters. Unlit candles
covered every surface, tall white tapers and shorter, squatter red ones, and red and pink rose petals had been scattered across the sheets.

I’d thought that I’d discovered a new benchmark of disgusting when Suzume had ordered me to stamp on Phillip’s severed heart, but clearly I’d been very wrong. Luca’s lair of pedophilic romance was going to haunt my dreams for a long time—assuming I got out of here again.

That’s when I heard breathing, high and fast, from somewhere farther in the room. I followed the sound, and when I rounded the far side of that high bed, I found Amy Grann.

She’d been locked in one of those portable metal wire dog crates, the kind for Labradors and poodles, and the ceiling was low enough that she had to stay seated. She was dressed in a blue teacup dress, with a snowy white apron and white tights. I knew from the photos that her hair was always in a ponytail, but now it was brushed out and fell down her back, and there was a shiny black ribbon tied in a bow right where most little girls wore a headband. If it was Halloween, every door she knocked on would know at a glance that she was Alice in Wonderland. My stomach churned, but I knelt down to put myself on her level. I couldn’t see any marks on her, none of the awful bite marks that had disfigured Maria and her sister, but Amy’s blue eyes were wide and glassy, and it didn’t look like anyone was home.

“Amy,” I whispered as I got closer to the cage. The cage was locked from the outside, but just with a little chain and a pin. It was easy to undo, so easy that she could’ve done it from inside, and I hated to think about
why she hadn’t. She hadn’t responded to my whisper, and I tried again. “Amy Grann,” I repeated, and something flickered in those dull, dull eyes. I eased the door open, wincing at each squeak of the metal. Now the door was completely open, but she was sitting at the back of the cage and not making any moves.

“Amy,” I tried again. “My name is Fort. I’ve come to take you home.”

She blinked, then shook her head slowly. “Can’t go home,” she said, that little voice hoarse and barely audible, so low that I had to strain to hear her. “The monster killed Mommy and Daddy.”

“I know,” I said, creeping closer, trying to see if I could fit my shoulders into the opening of the cage. I couldn’t risk the time it would take to coax this broken little girl out on her own, but if I startled her and she screamed…I whispered to her again. “Amy, I’ll take you away from the monster.”

She shook her head again, and her lower lip trembled. “Can’t go,” she said. “The monster will hurt Jessie if I don’t stay here. I have to stay here.”

My throat tightened. No wonder she hadn’t tried to open her cage—she thought that her sister’s safety depended on her. She didn’t know that Jessica was already dead. I could’ve lied to her then, and I thought about doing just that, saying that Jessica was already safe, and that I was going to bring her to see her, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“Amy.” I reached my arm into the cage but stopped just short of touching her. I couldn’t imagine how this little girl would react to being touched. “Amy, the monster
lied to you. Jessica is dead.” The words were like acid, but I forced them out. I couldn’t let her believe that lie.

I could see the shock go through her, and that eerie stillness started to break as she shook. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

“Amy, please,” I whispered urgently. “I need to take you away from the monster.”

She gave a jerky nod, then leaned forward onto her knees to start crawling out. Relief flooded through me, and I scooted back to give her room. But just before the cage door, she froze again.

“It’s okay, Amy,” I said, my hands itching to just reach in and grab her and then run like hell. “I’ll keep you safe. Come out.”

She wasn’t looking at me anymore, though. Her eyes were fixed at the door, and a high, terrified noise came out of her throat, the sound a trapped rabbit would make. A cold knowledge slithered up my spine, and I slowly turned to look.

Luca was leaning against the door frame. He must have just gotten out of bed, because his feet were bare and he was wearing a pair of loose black satin pants, like a genie from a shitty ’sixties movie, with a red silk shirt tossed on but left completely unbuttoned. Euro-trash pajamas.

“Why, Fortitude,” he said. “What an unexpected visit.”

Luca was not pleased
to find that I had broken into his house at such an inconvenient time, and was not hesitating to let me know about it. Under normal circumstances I might’ve found something inherently amusing in having a man dressed in such ridiculous clothing launch into a scolding lecture that would’ve been better suited to a high school principal, but with Amy frozen in place and my bladder under only very questionable control, there wasn’t anything funny to be found in the situation.