Chapter Seven
“What do you think, Mr. Drake?” Felicity said in her best impression of Mr. Blackwood’s whiny voice as she used a mortar and pestle to crush the herbs she’d gathered from the supply room. “What kind of security would you suggest?”
She had proposed the idea of showcasing vampiric artifacts and had arranged the exhibit herself, but the moment a man had become interested, her employer tripped over himself to give Mr. Drake anything he wanted.
After Great-Uncle Ezra’s departure, the two men had spent hours reviewing the various changes Mr. Drake had proposed to better protect the exhibit.
Neither of them knew that the thief targeting the illuminated manuscript was a vampire. Their security improvements might stop a human but would be completely ineffective against Winifred.
Felicity’s chest tightened as she remembered the sadness in her former best friend’s eyes when Felicity had pointed the crossbow at her heart. Felicity had almost believed Winifred had been telling the truth about wanting to reconcile.
But that was impossible. As a vampire, Winifred had no conscience. Her appearance at the Sloan House had simply been an attempt to use Felicity’s guilt to sway her into canceling the exhibit.
It wouldn’t work.
Felicity poured the crushed herbs into a clay bowl.
Winifred had caught her by surprise once, but she wouldn’t get a second chance.
The challenge would be keeping the cleaning staff from removing the herbs, but that concern vanished after she swept the materials into the space where the walls met the floor.
The museum was so old that the mixture simply vanished into the cracks.
She had no way of confirming whether the spell had worked, but it wasn’t as if she could camp out at the Sloan House all night. Her great-uncle would be watching her more carefully now that she’d promised to give up being a hunter if anything went wrong with the exhibit.
She wouldn’t, of course. He could expel her from the base and force her to find her own lodgings, but she’d never stop searching for the vampire who had shattered her family.
With her exhibit protected, she exited the museum and strode along the sidewalk. A cab would have been safer and faster, but after her disastrous day, all she wanted was to find and kill a vampire. Preferably several.
She tucked her hand beneath the edge of her heavy cloak and ran her fingertips over the soft leather of the bandolier draped across her chest. If Great-Uncle Ezra discovered she had taken it, he would be furious, and even more so if he realized she had also stocked it with weapons from the armory.
There were a dozen wooden stakes, four throwing knives, and a silver-edged sword in its scabbard, all beneath her cloak.
She’d taken great pains to ensure none of these items would be visible to a passing observer, and her hair was tucked carefully beneath a brown wool cap and a hood.
From a distance, no one would recognize her as a woman. Exactly what she intended.
She stopped in front of a silent stone fountain filled with brackish water and took in her surroundings.
Narrow brick buildings towered around her, their windows dark.
The only sounds were wings flapping overhead and the howl of the wind, and the air was tinged with the musty, rotten-egg smell of human remains.
Her mouth went dry. A vampire was nearby.
The sword on her hip was falling, at risk of slipping down her hips.
Before it could become a liability, she sat on the edge of the fountain and adjusted the buckle.
It was chilly enough that her fingers were numb, and the cold seeped through the thin twill trousers she’d stolen from her brother’s closet.
It was one of only three garments she’d rescued before Great-Uncle Ezra had ordered Vincent’s possessions carted away and his bedroom transformed into a second nursery.
They’d forgotten him so quickly.
A crow fluttered down from a nearby tree and pecked at a tuft of grass poking between two worn cobblestones.
She reached into the pocket of her cloak and found the hardened remains of a crust of bread.
After crushing it in her palm, she tossed the crumbs toward the bird.
It squawked as bits scattered across its back but was soon rapping its beak against the ground.
More crows descended on the feast, resulting in a scuffle.
Before Vincent had been murdered, they’d had a particularly nasty fight.
He’d been distant for months, insisting he was working on a project for their uncle that required him to remain in the basement for days at a time.
She’d demanded to know what had been so important that he couldn’t share it with her.
He’d only clenched his jaw and insisted she wouldn’t understand.
She realized she was crying and dashed the tears away. If she’d known then what her uncle had done to Vincent—locked him in a cage with a werewolf—she would never have screamed that he could keep his secrets.
The crows finished with the bread and began preening.
She stood and brushed the crumbs from her palm. Patrolling while she was in such a state was unwise. It was time to return home. She doubted she could sleep with all the thoughts crowding her mind, but she needed to be well rested to deal with Mr. Drake in the morning.
“Late night stroll?”
She reached for the hilt of her sword, but it slipped out of her grip. She cursed and fumbled instead for a knife in her bandolier, but before she could withdraw one, she saw who’d spoken.
Mr. Drake wore a baggy, black lounge jacket, a purple waistcoat, and silver trousers. Completing the cobbled-together outfit was a too-small bowler hat perched atop his head.
“Did you follow me?” she asked.
“I should ask you the same question. A woman wandering the streets of Whitechapel at night. What would Mr. Blackwood say?”
The air vanished from her lungs. If the curator knew about her nightly activities, she would surely be sacked. Then she saw the crinkling at the corner of Mr. Drake’s eyes and realized he was once again teasing her. “What do you want from me, Mr. Drake?”
He could have been using his natural charm to seek a position with one of the larger and more profitable museums. Ones that could actually afford his services.
“You’re unlike anyone I’ve ever met,” he said.
The man was so adept at dodging her questions that she wanted to throttle him.
She curled her hands into fists but refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d annoyed her.
There had to be some other way to get him to leave her alone.
She had plenty of experience being ignored by the men in her family.
If only she could make Jonathan treat her in the same dismissive manner that her cousins did.
Perhaps the truth would work.
“If you must know,” she said, “I am searching for vampires.”
His sharp laugh had her biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
“‘Vampires,’” he repeated. He sat down and stretched out his long legs. “Why?”
Her jaw dropped open. Any other man not related to her who heard a lady utter such a ridiculous statement would have immediately dismissed her as hysterical.
Not Mr. Drake. As he tilted his head, he grinned. The damned man found her entertaining.
Perhaps if he learned more about the dangers of her task, that would chase him away.
“There have been a series of murders in this neighborhood,” she said, waving her hand around them. “At least twelve victims. Their throats were slashed and bodies drained of blood.”
Was she imagining it, or was he clenching his fingers tightly between his knees? The smile had also faded from his face.
She shifted on her feet. “Their deaths were gruesome. The cuts to their throats were so deep that witnesses claimed the dead women’s heads lolled over the back of their necks like puppets.” The way Mr. Drake paled encouraged her to continue. “It was done to disguise the marks, of course.”
He furrowed his brow. “‘Marks’?”
“Bite wounds. The vampires who killed them cut out the pieces of flesh that would have shown the true manner of death.” It was a common technique, or so the books in her family’s library claimed. A way to keep the local humans from realizing what lurked among them.
“So, you think there’s a vampire?” Mr. Drake asked. The skepticism in his voice made her grind her teeth until she took a moment to recover herself. She wanted him to be skeptical. The more he thought of her as beneath his notice, the sooner he would depart her side.
“Yes,” she said crisply. “In fact, I have a good idea of what manner of vampire it might be.”
He lifted one thin eyebrow. “Enlighten me.”
Now was her opportunity to use another of the talents that women possessed, and men despised. She would chatter without giving him a chance to respond, going on and on until he regretted seeking her out.
She inhaled deeply, then began.
“According to my research, when a new vampire is created by their maker, they possess a fearsome hunger. Most times, the maker assists the fledgling by restraining it in a cage and providing it with sustenance. It is believed that the maker does this because newly made vampires do not possess the willpower to keep their victims alive and often leave easily identifiable marks upon the corpses. Now, one can surmise based upon the series of deaths in recent newspaper articles that there is something more at play in this situation, as the deaths have occurred but are being disguised through the removal of flesh on the neck and the appearance of other wounds. Therefore, it is my supposition that a vampire is intentionally allowing their children to roam free in this area. I intend to find that maker and dispatch them before any other innocents die.”
He chuckled. “So, you see yourself as some kind of hunter?”