Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Harriet
I wake before my alarm. A faint light glows through my curtains.
I swing my legs out from under the quilt and start my morning routine, which I’ve honed like clockwork. Stretching, bathing, and a quick check of the news.
The cool spring breeze drifts through the window as I tame my curls with dark brown barrettes that match the color of my hair.
Is this investigation even going to work? Alexandru is so much a fish out of water. He sees people as peasants. Will he be able to contain his princely disdain?
On the plus side, his charm is a formidable weapon. He’s the kind of predator that draws people to him, though the villagers around his old castle were clearly wise to his bloody ways.
And he believes me.
If you see a killer there, then a killer is there.
After all the pitying glances, the tight smiles and polite nods, this cold-blooded killer believes me.
The way he read Sloane back there was impressive, too. It’s very Sloane to desperately want to refuse me the information I need, while at the same time wanting to deliver that information.
So Sloane.
And the idea to let her save face with a bribe? Genius.
My clothes are laid out on my dresser: white shirt, black pants, ankle boots, and a women’s light knit jacket—soft with excellent pockets, one of six identical such jackets that I rotate through.
Today’s jacket is walnut brown. I put on the one piece of jewelry I always wear: a long gold chain with a single pendant—a gold key that belonged to James.
It fits in a box currently on my shelf and still holds the rocks, marbles, and other little treasures he collected.
I put on my favorite red lipstick with the precision of a surgeon, and then the perfect amount of black eyeliner.
I go through my bag like a pilot doing a pre-flight checklist. Phone, wallet, backup lipstick, compact, mints, pen, tiny notebook, Tide stick.
Check, check, check. My bag makes a satisfying click when it shuts.
I grab some coffee in the kitchen. I was up late last night working on Sloane’s bribe to track down the 1971 Sears exclusive “Enchanted Evening” edition of Mystery Date, printed in a very limited quantity and only sold through holiday catalogs.
It has an alternate “mystery suitor,” a woodsman instead of a prom date.
It also has gold-edged cards, better artwork, and a glittery mystery door with a metal hinge instead of the usual cardboard.
Sloane and I were close friends in high school.
We spent hours in her bedroom doing homework, mooning over boys, and hatching plans for the next cool feature in the Ashwood High Gazette.
It was there that I first encountered her extensive vintage board game collection.
We played some, but many were strictly off-limits—especially the various editions of Mystery Date.
Sloane once told me that the “Enchanted Evening” edition was the holy grail: the one she wanted most, and the one that was impossible to find.
I was a show-off when it came to research back then. Naturally, I took it as a challenge. When I finally tracked it down, I was thrilled. Her research skills were fine, but nothing like mine. Nobody’s were like mine.
But that was right around the time of the Great Newspaper Blowup—the fight that torched our friendship. I deleted the link in a fit of anger. It didn’t matter, I told myself. The game costs as much as a used car.
I’m amazed there’s still one out there to find, but I found it buried in a hidden listing on a Swedish forum for vintage game obsessives. It’s even more outrageously priced fifteen years later.
But what does a centuries-old vampire care?
I paid for it and arranged to have it shipped to Alexandru’s house. I alerted Gregor that a package was coming from Sweden and to treat it like the Crown Jewels.
Downstairs, the scent of lemon oil and rosewood hits me.
I move through the antique store slowly, part of me cataloging what’s out of place.
Someone’s shifted the Georgian sideboard.
A tiny smudge on the mirror above the Victorian fainting couch.
Granabelle must’ve opened up the curio cabinet again—its lock sits crooked.
Mom is doing the books. Granabelle, however, stands like a sentry near the register near the door, arms crossed.
“Good morning,” I offer brightly, pausing to give them each a kiss on the cheek. Granabelle stays stiff.
I straighten. “Something wrong?”
“What could possibly be wrong?” Granabelle says.
“Except the fact that you brought your new employer to meet Sloane and show off Sloane’s store, but you couldn’t be bothered to bring him down the street to say hello to your own family?
Are you asking if that’s what’s wrong? You barely get along with that girl, but hers is the shop you visit together? ”
“Jesus Christ,” Mom says. “We don’t care.”
“Of course we care!” Granabelle says.
“Look,” I say, “I know he’s this illustrious new citizen of the realm and all of that, but he’s not somebody you want to know—not at all. Like, he’s not a good person.”
To say the least.
The idea of him meeting these two women I love with all of my heart has me quaking in my boots.
“Not a good person? What does that mean?” Mom’s suspicious now. Maybe I went too far.
I want to tell them he’s a dangerous monster, and that they should stay away from him, but they wouldn’t believe me.
They both think I see crimes and patterns where they don’t exist, and they certainly don’t go in for the supernatural.
Mom hates it when I suggest James might be alive.
I think she survives in part by assuring herself that he’s dead and buried and no more harm can come to him.
I wouldn’t say she’s overprotective of me, exactly, but if she did somehow become convinced I was in danger from Alexandru, I could see her going after him—I really could. She’s got a switchblade and a shotgun right behind the counter.
I hate myself for leading him here.
“This is a fine store—nothing to be embarrassed about,” Granabelle says.
“It is amazing!” I go to her and give her a hug. “I’m proud of this store, and I’m proud of you. I love you guys.”
“Oh, god, sugar rush alert,” Mom says.
Granabelle makes me promise to bring him next time.
“We’ll see,” I say.
I can feel them watch me as I leave.
They’re not in danger as long as I find a killer for Alexandru to eat. Drain. Hoover up like a Slurpee.