Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
After showering, Takashi donned a pair of slacks and a hoodie from the collection in Zack’s drawers. The sweatshirt had an ironic graphic—a pair of cartoon fangs dripping with blood and the words “I Bite” written underneath—which did seem like something Zack would eventually enjoy. Takashi thought it was amusing.
He also opened the cases on top of Zack’s dresser. Along with rings, watches, cufflinks, and tiepins, Seamus had very helpfully provided Zack with an array of sunglasses. Artificial light could be intense for newborn vampires. Fledglings also frequently wore sunglasses in order to hide their inability to control the redness of their eyes.
But they also had other uses. Takashi examined a few pairs before settling on one. He snapped the earpieces off. The long, thin pieces of stable wire would come in handy if he discovered any locks. In the closet, he found a drawer of gloves. Luckily, a leather pair fit, and he stashed them in his hoodie pocket, along with his makeshift lockpicks.
He slipped out into the hall. He took a cursory glance at his suite across the way from Zack’s. The rooms were a standard affair meant for a long-term guest. The color scheme was black and red, and the coffin closet had a bland wooden box in it, but it was functional. I’d rather not sleep away from him, though .
Quietly, Takashi backed out of the suite and began exploring the mansion.
Zack’s suite turned out to be on the second floor of the building, and there were four to which Takashi found easy access. Retracing the few paths that Takashi had taken, he went down to the first floor and to the study where he’d first woken in the mansion. Along the way, he scanned a few rooms. Other than the occasional security guard or staff member caring for the house, Takashi was alone.
The study door wasn’t locked, and Takashi slipped inside without issue. Anton’s blood had been cleaned off the Victorian desk’s massive corner. Zack’s notebooks, their laptops, and the ropes that had bound Takashi to the chair before the desk were gone. Besides that, the room was the same.
Takashi tugged on the pair of leather gloves. Time to get to work .
Many vampires had been suspicious of an ambassador from another coven in their midst, and they’d have every right to be. Takashi’s job was to facilitate Nell’s relations with other powerful supernaturals. Sometimes, that was to attend parties and bring lavish gifts to celebrate new masters.
Sometimes, his job was digging for the dirt. Spy was almost as accurate a job description as ambassador.
He skimmed the top of the desk, running his fingers along the underside edge to see if there were grooves or telltale marks of a hidden compartment. The walls behind the three paintings in the room were also blank, as were the back of the canvases.
He swept back around to the desk and began to carefully comb through the drawers. Each side had three, and there was one in the center. The side drawers contained various papers and envelopes. One drawer had nothing but discarded invitations from other covens. Another was just loose blank printer paper pages. Takashi took one out and held it up to the light. No secret messages appeared. He wished he had one of his rings that he’d left behind in the hotel suite. It was charmed to detect invisible magics.
Since the rest of the room was more staged office than actual working space, he folded a few blank pages and put them in his hoodie pocket. The center desk drawer was a mess of pens, many of a far cheaper variety than Takashi anticipated finding. He began to slide the drawer shut.
Hold on a second . He tilted his head as he reexamined the center drawer. The difference was subtle, but the drawer wasn’t as deep as it should be. He pulled it out farther and discovered that one of the pens in the center didn’t move. After taking a moment to memorize the pens’ placements, he took hold of the glued pen and lifted out the false bottom to reveal a slim secret compartment.
The only thing in the hiding spot was a switch, connected to a wire that ran into the back of the desk. It disappeared into the depths of the Victorian monstrosity.
What do you lead to? Are you friend or foe ? Takashi got onto his hands and knees under the desk. The plush Persian rug didn’t show any disturbances of a wire running anywhere underneath. If it didn’t go anywhere, then it was probably a trap. Just to make sure, Takashi carefully lifted the corner of the desk. When it came up easily from the floor without the tension of a wire dragging it down, he discarded the idea of pressing the switch. He put the false bottom and pens back where they belonged and gently shut the drawer.
As he headed for the door, he took a closer look at the vases of roses. The round black-and-gold porcelain was shaped in such a way that the very bases of the vases wouldn’t actually touch the pedestals they sat on.
Takashi arched an eyebrow. He’d come across far more inventive hiding places, but double-checking couldn’t hurt. Gently, he lifted a vase off a pedestal.
There was a circular button about four inches in diameter. Takashi set the vase off to the side and nudged the pedestal. The wood was bolted to the floor. He went to the other and discovered the same thing.
Now, this could lead to something interesting. He removed the other vase so he had access to both switches. They were spaced just far enough apart that he had to stand in front of the door in order to touch both at the same time. Was one a trap? Would it alert Seamus or the mansion’s security?
Who knows if I’ll get another chance at this . Takashi pressed the switch to his left. Nothing happened. He pressed the right. Minutes crawled by, but he heard no running approach. All right then . He pushed them at the same time.
An audible click sounded, and then a section of the far wall swung inward, revealing another room beyond.
The Amazing Sato does it again, folks . The memory of applause was not as great as living it, but an echo of that thunder was in his ears as he strode into the secret room. There were two switches just inside the door. One activated the lights in the room, so he doubled back to the light switch by the door and turned off the main room. In case anyone is passing by in the hallway. Don’t need them suddenly noticing that fraction of light under the door, not with the secret room open .
Where the rest of the mansion had overt signs of wealth, the hidden office was pure functionality. Takashi didn’t doubt that Seamus dropped more than a few pretty pennies on the private space, but there was a sleekness to the lines of the desk that he hadn’t seen elsewhere in the building.
The desk sat against the far wall, nearly as large as the Victorian desk in the other room, and a bank of monitors was attached to the wall above it. A set of metal shelves beside it held a home server and a desktop computer tower. At the bottom was a LaserJet printer. All fairly standard from what Takashi had seen in recent years from tech savvy immortals.
His own laptop, along with Zack’s journal, notebooks, and laptop, was sitting neatly in one corner of the desk. He resisted the urge to wipe the data from the laptops. Computers had the nasty habit of logging everything done on them, and if Seamus was as paranoid as Roger claimed, then he might have uploaded software that would keep a record even if Takashi cleared everything else. The damn things might even send an alert to Seamus’s phone, so the computers were low on Takashi’s interest list.
The rolling metal bookcases on either side, though, were very interesting.
Each side of the room was about four feet deep. The bookshelves were on tracks, with one end facing Takashi. There wasn’t enough space between them to navigate, but each one had a large handle. An individual created more room at the desired bookcase by nudging the others along the track.
The bookcases to his right contained a multitude of books that ranged in size and condition. Some were quite old, the smell of their ancient pages that of parchment rather than paper. None of the bindings had a title on them. However, as Takashi continued toward the back of the room, he noticed that the books were newer and newer. At the far end, they were modern, leather-bound volumes. Luckily, the books and shelves were dust-free, so he plucked one off the last bookcase and opened it.
March 31 st , 1976
I swear, if Anton does not stop his mewling about how poorly his research has been going, I may finally drive a silver stake through his heart. You would think that after funding his quest for magic for more than seven hundred years, he would have discovered the magic he promised me, but no. He is as much a failure as the rest of them. And he thinks I’m unaware that he kept more of the power from our last ritual. Oh, he claims I got the most, but I feel no change and it has been two months. The bitch is holding out on me .
Takashi gently closed the journal and returned it to the shelf. Whispering to himself, he said, “Well, that shatters the illusion of the happy couple.”
The other shelves were full of slim, black binders, and they had names neatly written in little cards on their spines. At first, Takashi thought they were members of the coven, but then he spotted a whole section of Wrights, including Callum, Amber, and Zack. Takashi took a moment to note whether there was dust on anything—there wasn’t—and pulled Callum’s from the shelf.
The binder had labeled tabs: Summary, Recent, Early, Psych, Accomplishments.
Takashi sat cross-legged on the floor and opened the Summary tab. Each page was plastic with printed paper inserts. The first had a picture of Cal Wright. Takashi had only seen him in research materials. Josefina had sent him a dossier on the hunter after he’d invaded Taliville looking for Zack, but Takashi had been aware of the Butcher for a while. American hunters were the topic of conversation among bored vampires. They tended to point at the “plethora of rampaging barbarians” as a uniquely American issue when they had hunters in their own territories as well.
Cal was a handsome man, in a rough-and-tumble man’s man way. Beautiful people turning out to be complete assholes had long been one of the injustices of the universe.
The section went on to list Cal’s attributes, including his birthday and education. He’d dropped out of high school, which made Takashi wonder if Zack had finished. His occupation was filled out as hunter. Takashi flipped to the next page. At the bottom was the category “Potential.” Cal’s was a 6.
Underneath that was written: The challenge would be keeping him from hunting his own kind upon first transitioning. Best approach would be extended manipulation of desires in order to prepare him for the change. But is he worth that much effort? Not likely .
Quickly, Takashi skimmed through the rest of the binder. The contents went into detail from what was in the summary. Cal’s “Accomplishments” was a list four pages long of murders.
It was a recruitment evaluation.
Takashi closed the binder and put it back. He drew out Zack’s and immediately went to the “Potential” section of his Summary.
10. He makes me miss Bran in all the best ways. Willful. Smart. With the Wrights disowning him, he must long for family. Best approach would be welcoming him with open arms, which won’t be hard. I’m beginning to love him as a son already .
“How long ago did you write this?” Takashi murmured. He closed the binder and put it back on the shelf.
Was every binder on these shelves about a hunter? Takashi rose to his feet and picked a binder at random. Samantha Warren’s occupation was listed as a professor. He slid it back in place and chose another. Kevin Williams was a scientist, and his potential was rated at an 8. Hyacinth Vale was a college student; her rating was a 9.
The bookshelves had to hold hundreds of binders. Seamus must have been considering all of these people as possible sirelings, but why? If he didn’t take the time to regain his strength, he simply wouldn’t have it to give to another. There was no way he could turn all of these people within their lifetimes. Even if Anton helped him, he’d still weaken himself too much.
Unless they’re stronger than they let on . Roger had said they’d been absorbing power from sirelings for centuries, but Seamus hadn’t shown any talents beyond what was common of a vampire a quarter his age. Takashi had assumed he’d given a large portion of his vampiric strength to Zack in order to turn him, but what if that wasn’t the case? What if the bath of Seamus’s power was running over, and he had been able to fill up Zack’s soul with just the excess?
Had the fight in the hotel suite been cats playing with mice, or had Roger and the others presented the slightest challenge? Considering how quickly we were defeated, I think the answer is the first .
Takashi wasn’t playing one game of four-dimensional chess against Seamus and Anton; he was playing fifty. At the same time. And pieces were going to fly off the board any minute.
There were more answers in this room, he was certain of it, but he’d already spent a long time in it. In all likelihood, Anton or the boy who’d been bringing him blood would start looking for him, and he couldn’t afford to be caught here. He ensured that he left both the secret office and front study exactly as he’d found them and slipped out into the hall.
Still alone, he took a moment to lean against the door and conquer the fear welling up. He bricked it up behind three layers of worry about Roger. After all, there was nothing to be done about the fact that Seamus was likely holding out how powerful he was. It was just Takashi’s hypothesis. Perhaps he was wrong. You know you’re not. You know you’ve barely seen what he’s truly capable of .
Perhaps the answer wasn’t to wrestle the coven from Seamus in the way Roger had originally intended at all. A stealth assassination would put the leadership into a freefall, but they were never going to win a fair fight in public. Something else would have to be done. A revolution? Preposterous. Vampires had tried to rise against their elders before, and it never went well without time, money, effort, devotion, and a smile from the fates. Roger, Zack, and Takashi were lacking in a few areas, especially the favor of the fates.
Maybe not. We are still here . Takashi pushed away from the door and headed off into the mansion. He had a lot more of it to discover, though he was going to keep the rest of his exploration to the more public areas for the evening. He’d already pressed his luck spending any time in Seamus’s hidden office. Trying again would be asking for trouble. And we clearly have enough of that in our cards .