In the Dark (14 page)

When I left my
room, I didn’t see any sign of my host. No lights under any
doors. No sounds from other rooms. My footsteps echoed on the
hardwood floor.

“Sebastian?”
I yelled, figuring he would at least answer, let me know where he
was. Gypsy purr-meowed and trotted out from a room, but no Sebastian.
I scooped her up and kept looking.

Knocking on his
bedroom door didn’t bring him out. The practice room was empty.
No one on the balcony, either. No note anywhere in the place.

I wanted to say,
“Well, great, he’s off having fun and I’m stuck
here,” but instead I hugged Gypsy and worried. Oblivious to how
I felt, Gypsy wiggled in my arms until I put her down. She vanished
around a corner, leaving me totally alone.

Wait, he said
he wanted to do a few things before Emily and Josephine came over
tonight.

That had to be
where he went. Nothing dangerous. Nothing where he might not come
back. The thought of him not coming back made me swallow and rub
suddenly misty eyes – I hadn’t expected that. The man
didn’t exactly give me warm fuzzies inside, and up until that
moment, I probably wouldn’t have said I even liked him . . .
but I realized right then that I thought of him as a friend. A friend
who’d gone off into dangers untold without leaving me a note.

Looked like my
job for the night was to wait. I flopped down onto the couch. I
didn’t want to wait. I wanted to know where Sebastian had gone
and if he was okay.

“So now
what do I do?” I asked the empty apartment.

My voice echoed.
The place seemed so empty, for all its heavy furnishings. I wondered
if Sebastian had friends. I wondered if he’d ever had anyone
else in his home before me. I doubted it. The guest room was sparse,
but completely unlived in. Why he kept one at all, I didn’t
know. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy to call up a friend
and say “hey, wanna stay over a couple days? We could hang.”

I wondered what
he did all night. The only thing I’d seen him do that even
resembled a hobby was in the mirrored room, swinging a staff around.
That couldn’t take up all his spare time. I took a good look
around the entire living room, hoping to see something that might
tell me what he was into . . . I didn’t see anything. He had
expensive taste in decorating, but I didn’t learn anything
else. He had said he was on some sort of personal quest – maybe
that took up his nights. Really, I wondered if he just sat in this
apartment alone and stared at the walls for nights on end.

Probably.

Why?

Three nights in
his company, and all I knew was that he scared me and he was unhappy.

Why?

Gnawing my lower
lip, I glanced around again. I might find answers in this apartment.
A diary. Photos.

Before I could
decide not to – or he could come home – I jumped up and
ran down the hall to his room. It wasn’t right, I shouldn’t
snoop – but I wanted to and if I waited, I would realize I
shouldn’t.

Quickly,
I promised myself.
I won’t pry real bad. No touching, just
looking at whatever’s out. That’s all.

For a second the
whole thing reminded me of a murder mystery show, where the girl goes
snooping through her boyfriend’s place and finds out he’s
a psycho killer just before he walks in the door.

Except he wasn’t
my boyfriend and I already knew he was a psycho killer.

I pushed the
door to his room open gently, almost afraid of tripping some kind of
alarm or something. The door opened smoothly. No bells or whistles
went off.

The room was
tidy, like the rest of the place. I couldn’t picture Sebastian
doing housework, imagining instead that once he decided a thing had a
place, he always put it back as soon as he was done with it. Hardwood
floor, again, with a heavy rug in the center. Beautifully woven in
blues and golds. It looked antique. I stared at it for a while,
wondering how old it was, where Sebastian would have picked it up.
But the rest of the room waited, promising to be more interesting
than a throw rug.

In the middle
stood a huge four-poster bed, with a down comforter and soft, clean
sheets. Made, of course, all in dark colors. Was that practicality or
preference? Did he ever cry in here, get his pillowcase all bloody? I
couldn’t quite picture it, but at the same time, I couldn’t
believe he never got misty-eyed.

A large, old
dresser sat against another wall. Intricately carved vines and leaves
covered it, with heavy brass handles on the drawers. A big mirror sat
on top, right behind a tray of surgical equipment. Not what I
expected. I took a step closer to examine it, hands behind my back.
Not an extensive set: scalpel, forceps, catgut thread and needle.
What in the world could he need this stuff for? Doctoring himself,
apparently . . . I stopped thinking about it.

This didn’t
tell me anything about him.

I opened the
drawers to his dresser, almost but not quite breaking the no-touching
rule. I didn’t intend to rifle through his clothes, just look
at the ones on top. I didn’t see anything special. Jeans and
slacks, underwear and socks. I reverted to the age of three long
enough to giggle at his undies, even though I couldn’t think of
a reason why he shouldn’t have any.

His room had an
attached bathroom, like the guest room. I stuck my head in, but other
than being larger it wasn’t any more interesting than the other
one. The only thing left was to check the closet. For the sake of
thoroughness and because the rest of the room was such a loss, I went
over to it and threw the doors open.

Shirts.

Mostly the same
kind he always wore, dark, button up. Some Walmart specials, others
obviously tailored and pricey. A lot of black ones. Black seemed like
a color he would find very efficient. Hard to stain, especially with
blood. I shuddered.

No – I
shivered.

I looked at my
arms. They had goosebumps all the way to my shoulders. Another chill
went though me, raising the tiny hairs more. I frowned. A stray
breeze wouldn’t make me shiver anymore, but I checked for
windows and vents anyway. Nothing. This was an emotional reaction. To
what, though?

I found myself
pushing the clothes back, sliding the bunch of them along the rail
until I had them out of the way. Something else in here waited for me
to find it.

When I saw it, I
pulled my hands back, afraid to touch.

On a shelf, all
alone, sat a small wooden box with a glass lid. Inside, I could see a
small, tattered piece of . . . well, I didn’t know what kind of
cloth it was. My only fibers class had been a while ago. Wool, maybe?
A rough weave of wool. Plaid, and so worn out and faded I thought it
probably would have disintegrated by now if it hadn't been in the
box. It didn’t look like any particular sort of thing. Not a
shirt, or a hat, or a kilt. Just a scrap. Had it been something like
that?

Very slowly, I
unlatched the box and lifted the lid. I slipped my fingers inside.
Despite being terrified the fabric would crumble, I reached out and
brushed it. When I pulled my hand away I had tears in my eyes. I
didn’t know why. It just made me sad, the lonely scrap in the
closet of very practical clothes.

A tear slid to
the end of my nose in a second, and I let the lid of the box close.
If Sebastian found blood on his floor he’d know I’d
barged in. I didn’t think he’d appreciate the intrusion,
as much as I had wanted to intrude.

After closing
the box and pushing his shirts back into order, I shut the closet
door and I let myself out. Rather than answers, I’d found more
puzzles. I went back out into the living room, wondering when he’d
be home.

S
ebastian
found the Resnan home easily. He arrived to find the house lit, a
single car parked in the drive. He pulled the Vector to the curb and
parked, glanced at the clock on the dashboard, and got out. It was
early. He would have enough time to question Mr. Resnan and get back
to the penthouse before Josephine arrived.

He looked the
house over as he approached the front door. Nothing unusual; two
story, small yard. Overly tidy, as though the family wanted to
convince the world that no one had ever lived there, but the entire
neighborhood seemed concerned with the same falsehood. At the front
door Sebastian knocked politely. If no one answered, he would kick it
in. He waited, listening for sounds from inside. Heavy, long
footsteps crossed a carpeted room. Tall. Most likely male. Probably
Mr. Resnan, though Sebastian remained ready to encounter anyone,
hostile or harmless.

A man taller
than Sebastian answered the door, opening it just enough to see
outside. Suspicious. The man had dark hair, dressed half-in and
half-out of a suit. Dark purple-blue smudges marked his lower lids,
as if he had slept poorly recently. The corners of his mouth turned
down as he looked Sebastian over.

“Yes?”

“Good
evening.” Sebastian painted a polite smile on his face. “Mr.
Resnan?”

The man took in
the smile and hardened a little, but he nodded in acknowledgment.

“I wonder
if I might speak with you about your wife?” Sebastian framed it
as a question, underlining the request with the force of a command.

The man’s
will bent far more easily than the woman at the police precinct. He
nodded wearily and stood aside to let Sebastian in, following the
rules of cordiality without being asked. He would answer anything
Sebastian put to him – in detail.

The door entered
into a living room. It had the look of a place under new and strange
occupancy – as when the pack had taken a new home for
themselves and evicted the previous owners. Sebastian did not believe
that this man had never lived here before, only that until now he had
not had the sole responsibility of the place.

Family portraits
hung on the wall. Sebastian lingered on them before letting his eyes
wander the rest of the house. There was a shot of the children, a boy
and a girl. A shot of the husband and wife in wedding outfits. One of
the entire family. The woman in the pictures had dark hair. Something
tickled the back of Sebastian’s mind. He looked closer at the
photographs. The woman in the bridal gown bore a striking resemblance
to the woman he’d seen at Ian’s home.

Two sets of
matching women?

He accepted the
possibility that Mrs. Resnan had been turned into a vampire the night
she’d been taken, and that he may have seen her outside Ian’s
home. However, Sally Resnan would not have walked backward into her
steps. It would not occur to a city-dweller to do so. And as such a
young vampire, why would she want to break into Ian’s home?

Still, unless he
was mistaken, two sets of matching women seemed too odd for
coincidence. Something was afoot here, whether the two women had been
under orders or the vampires had disguised themselves to look like
people they had seen to throw off pursuit. Sebastian tucked away the
information that Sally Resnan looked like the woman at Ian’s
house and went on with his examination.

Beyond the
living room he saw a dining room where two children, a boy and a
girl, watched him with wide eyes. The children in the pictures.

“You kids
go on upstairs,” Mr. Resnan told them, a bit sharply. Sebastian
guessed he had not been their main caretaker until now. The children
left the table in silence. Mr. Resnan turned back to Sebastian,
meeting his eyes with the stare of an unhappy man. “What can I
tell you?”

“I need to
know about your wife’s personal life,” Sebastian said at
once, keeping up a pretense of politeness. He might once have simply
broken into this house and interrogated the man – once. As with
the policewoman, it was safer now to ask gently and leave them alive.
And perhaps . . . perhaps such drama and violence were unnecessary.

The man spread
his hands. “Like what?”

“Was she
involved in any cults or strange organizations? Perhaps even
something which sounded normal to you, but which she wouldn’t
discuss at great length?” That was typical behavior for vampire
hunters who tried to lead normal lives as well. Unlikely though it
seemed, Sebastian could not discount the possibility that Sally
Resnan was one of the women he sought.

But her husband
shook his head. “No, nothing really. She came home after work,
and we went out with the whole family on weekends. Sometimes she
visited her parents or went out with friends. No clubs or anything
strange. She didn’t act like what they tell you to watch out
for.”

Sebastian nodded
and went on with the questions. Had she ever indicated a belief in
the supernatural? Had she ever mentioned anyone by the name of either
Kent or Ian? Was she interested in mythological creatures, such as
werewolves or vampires? Had she ever been out later than expected or
left the house under sudden or unusual circumstances? Had Mr. Resnan
actually ever seen her during the day? Did she have any strange
friends?

He ran the gamut
of everything he could think of that might indicate Mrs. Resnan had
known a vampire, been one herself, been part of a vampire hunting
group, been a loner herself, or been attacked by a vampire at any
time prior to her car being stolen. His questions led nowhere,
confirming that she had merely been the victim of a random attack.
Frustrated, grasping at straws, Sebastian found himself drawn to the
family photos once more and narrowed his eyes.

“Did Mrs.
Resnan have a sister?”

“Sal was
an only child,” Mr. Resnan replied.

Sebastian swore.
His one lead had taken him here, where he’d found a dead end.
Or perhaps a clue that he did not understand.

He persisted in
the questioning until he was certain, certain in the extreme, that
neither Mrs. Resnan nor her husband had known anything about the fate
that awaited her.