16 | Silver
We spend the next couple of days planning exactly how to break into the vampire elder’s place to rob him. Dante manages to find out when he’ll be out of the house at a meeting, but we don’t find out much more to help us.
I guess I’m winging it, then.
The three of us head over to Victor Blackthorne’s house in the late afternoon. The place isn’t exactly what I was expecting from a vampire elder. It’s on a quiet street lined with trees. Before this point, I didn’t even know Arcanum had trees. Hedges and stupid fucking topiary, sure. But this place is leafy. The houses are enormous, but not ostentatious in the same way the Arcanum Heights mansions are.
“Huh, no turrets in sight,” Zeph says. “It’s less creepy than I was expecting it to be, too.”
Dante turns to me, running his hands down my arms until he’s holding my hands in his. “So he should be at his meeting for the next hour. I don’t know him well, so I don’t know where he’ll keep the books, but—”
“This is not my first rodeo,” I tell him, tugging my backpack tighter onto my back. “I’ll have a dig around in his pantie drawer and I’m sure they’ll turn up. You both know the signal if he turns up before we expect?”
“Sure. I’ll punch the vamp here in the face and when you hear him yell, you come running,” Zeph says with a smirk.
I’m... not entirely sure he’s joking. “Maybe come up with something else. Call my cell phone or something.”
Zeph grumbles something under his breath, and Dante just shakes his head. My vamp looks nervous, and it’s making me weirdly giddy. I’m not used to having anyone waiting right outside while I do a job. I’m also not used to anyone being quite this worried about me while I’m doing a job.
It’s sweet.
We’ve done some research on this guy and I have an idea of the sort of vamp he is. He’s old as dirt. Eccentric. And I’m guessing he’s going to be at least a little lax with his security, considering he decided it was a good idea to bring a bunch of highly sensitive books back to his house instead of leaving them in the safety of the Forbidden Archives.
Scouting around the back of the house, I’m relieved to be proved right when I spot a cracked window on the ground floor. Result. I’m not even going to need to break my neck to get inside.
There are a bunch of rose bushes I have to skirt around to reach the window, and I’m careful not to catch myself. The last thing I need is to leave this vamp a calling card once I’ve been and gone. Pushing the window open carefully, I heave myself up and onto the sill and then climb inside. There’s a short drop once I’m inside and I climb on the sink and sort of slide off until I land on the hard floor.
Using my blood magic to confirm there’s no one inside, I continue deeper into the house.
It smells like cologne. Like, a lot of cologne. An overwhelming, teenage boy level, like he’s trying to hide something by filling the air with it. He also has a bunch of cat trees dotted around the place. I count eight of them as I head through the living room into the bedroom.
Not a single cat, though.
Which is weird. But handy.
The inside of his house looks kind of like a mixture between a porn palace and a... cat palace. It’s a strange combination, but who am I to judge? I’m just here to rob the guy.
I keep my blood magic at the ready, just in case he slips by the guys outside without their notice. It’s easy enough to discount the living room since he doesn’t have a single book anywhere, no drawers or boxes where they might be hiding either.
Continuing swiftly through the house, I check the kitchen and come up empty before discovering his office. Making quick work of rifling through the desk drawers and the shelves he has lining one wall. I come up empty pretty quickly and blow out a long breath.
Guess I’m heading upstairs. I slip my phone out of my pocket and check it before I make my way up there. I have a message from one of my old contacts who apparently has something useful for me, for the right price. I make a mental note to check it out once we’re done here. But there’s nothing from Z or Dante, so I pull up my socks and run up to the second floor, cursing the unexpected cardio.
It’s also a lot trickier to make a hasty exit once you rule out diving from the window as a route out of the house.
Up here, there are a bunch of closed doors and I’m fully expecting to discover a kink workroom or something. Instead, I’m slightly deflated when I just find a bunch of bedrooms that look like they’re barely used. The sheets are piled up, kind of like a hotel midway through cleaning service.
Checking each chest of drawers, wardrobe and then under the dusty beds, I come up empty again. Dammit. This is taking longer than I expected. The house is deceptively large, and he has a lot of rooms, a lot of crap to search through.
Moving on, I discover another bedroom, which must be the one Victor Blackthorn uses. It has that overwhelming smell of aftershave again and the covers are a deep red, crushed velvet and they’re slightly rumpled. I work my way through the room again before throwing myself onto the floor to check under the bed, where I discover a tatty old suitcase.
It’s dusty as shit down here and I’m hot and sweaty and dirty by this point. More than a little irritable and ready to be done, too. The case is heavier than I expect and I almost put my back out, trying to yank it clear of the bed with one hand.
When I flick the latches and pull open the lid, I let out a relieved grunt.
The case is stacked with books. Most of them look ancient. They’re leather bound and have pages that look like they could disintegrate in your hands. And he’s got them all shoved together, not even in neat piles. The ghost librarian would have a shit fit if she saw the state of this.
I grab my backpack and start shoving as many as I can inside. There are way too many for me to carry and I’m considering calling Zeph to grab the entire case when I hear something that has me freezing.
—a heartbeat. It’s faint and fast.
Someone’s in the house, downstairs.
Shit. I need to get the hell out of here. A surge of adrenaline goes through me and, cursing to myself, I shove another handful of books into my bag. I push the suitcase back under the bed and get to my feet, wincing as I heft the bag onto my back. I then summon my glamor magic, hoping to slide by unnoticed as I tiptoe down the stairs and back to the bathroom with the open window.
I dump the backpack outside first before hefting myself up onto the toilet and then the windowsill. It’s not until I’m halfway outside that I consider the speed of the heartbeat. Dante’s is about half as slow as a non-vamp.
Shit. There’s a strong chance I’m making a panicked exit over nothing.
I can’t use my glamor and my blood magic simultaneously. Not while I’m also trying to stretch the nulling magic as far as I can to stop Ember from creeping into our heads. Keeping up the mental shield is exhausting, and it means I’m not able to scan the house again. But as I slide out the window, ass first, two green eyes blink at me from the bathroom doorway.
The cat.
Dammit... maybe I should have kept my nerve. I might even have had time to grab another few books, or I could have started to flick through some of them.
But, it turns out that maybe the cat is my guardian angel.
I’m ducking behind the rose bushes and making my way around to the front of the house when my cell phone buzzes. It’s Zeph, telling me the homeowner is back earlier than expected. Hefting the bag more securely onto my shoulders, I fan the front of my shirt. I’m sweaty. Dusty as hell. With a bag full of old books.
But at least I’m safe.
Although, something tells me this might not be our last visit to this place that’s part porn palace and part cat mansion. There have to be another fifty books upstairs and they’re calling my name, begging me to come back and check their contents.
I glide past Dante and Zeph, who look about as inconspicuous as a pack of wolves at a choir practice, along with what must be Victor Blackthorn, as he makes his way to his front door. I keep going until I’m out of view of the street and then wait for the two of them to catch up.
“All go okay?” Dante asks low in my ear.
Dumping the heavy bag onto the ground, I let out a groan at the ache in my shoulder. It matches the ache in my head that I’ve had for days now. Turns out that keeping a telepath out of all three of our heads is a real drain on my energy.
“It went fine,” I tell them, then quickly fill them in on the details. Zeph picks up the backpack and slings it over his shoulder like it weighs nothing and I roll my eyes at myself for not taking him with me. I bet he could have carted that suitcase out of there without even breaking a sweat.
“He has a ton of books in his bedroom. Let’s just hope that one of them has something useful in it.”
Dante hums softly. “As a people, we have a shocking number of accounts of massacres, but we are remarkably tight-lipped about how to cause a true death in a powerful vampire. Not exactly surprising since we’re such a long-lived species, but it’s distinctly unhelpful when you have an overpowered, megalomaniacal vampire hoping to take over the city.”
Zeph snorts and I can tell he’s about to make an asshole comment, so I glare at him. I must have magic Medusa powers today, because he snaps his mouth closed again and rubs the back of his neck.
The fact these two haven’t maimed each other yet is a minor miracle. Especially when the quarters we’ve been keeping in the library have been so cramped, we’ve basically been sitting on top of each other for twelve hours straight each day.
Checking my phone, I re-read the message from one of my contacts. She used to be the one that had the weirdest requests from customers, and I’d do my best to track them down from the dodgiest corners of the city. And right now, I’m the customer with the weird request. It feels strange to be on the other side; the person holding the cash with someone else going out of their way to fulfill what I’ve asked for.
“Before we head home, there’s a store I want to head to before it closes,” I say.
“Whatever you need, Little Witch,” Zeph says.
“I, er, asked her if she had anything that could be used if we had a telepathic stalker,” I explain. “As much as I’d like to say, the nulling shield is working, but I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep it going all day for much longer. I want to see if there’s, like, a hat we can put on that should be able to shield our thoughts.”
“Tin foil hat,” Zeph mutters and I elbow him in the gut.
Dante’s eyebrows shoot up. “And someone has tracked down one of these magical hats?”
I chuckle softly, tucking my hand into his arm. “Not exactly. But she’s said we’re welcome to come and look in her storeroom to see if there might be anything we could tweak or that might work.”
“Then lead the way,” he says. “Having the shield up all the time is taking it out of you, isn’t it, love?” The endearment seems to slip out without him meaning it to, if the way his eyebrows shoot up is anything to go by.
I nod and squeeze his fingers. “Yeah, it’s exhausting.”
“I’m sorry.” He pulls me into his chest, wrapping his arms around me for a moment. A hug is exactly what I need right now. Dante holds me until Zeph lets out a disgruntled grumble and I snort, pulling away.
“Sorry you’ve been burning through your energy to shield the two of us,” Dante adds.
I shrug. “I’m used to working by myself, so it’s been nice to have company.” Even with the tension between the two of them, it has felt good to not have to do everything alone.
“And to force the two of us together, eh?” Dante says softly, like he knows my game.
That earns another, slightly sheepish shrug from me. What can I say? I need the two of them to get along, and the only way that’s going to happen is if they get to know each other. And sure, maybe shoving them into a dusty corner and expecting them to get along is a big ask. But we don’t know how much time we have left before the vamps strike again and I don’t want to waste that time with them at each other”s throats.
It’s about a ten-minute walk before we reach what looks like the quintessential magical supply store. The air inside smells strongly of herbs and incense, enough to make my nose twitch. The ceiling also seems lower than it ought to be and there is an assortment of twigs hanging down, along with far too many shelves for the small space. I bet Luna would love this place.
Zeph lets out a displeased rumble as he awkwardly makes his way along, narrowly avoiding knocking jars and boxes to the floor as he goes, and I try not to laugh at his discomfort.
The shop owner then pulls me aside and shows the entrance to the storeroom, and reiterates that everything is for sale. “For the right price.”
She winks and pats me on the back. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t this friendly the last time I saw her, but then again, I wasn’t offering a bunch of cash back then. Sometimes money is all you need for people to stop acting like a rude asshole. Which tells you everything you need to know about them.
We head through a doorway that’s obscured from view by a pile of boxes. The three of us then head down into the room that lies beneath the store. It’s just as cluttered down here, a mess of boxes and crates and yet more shelves covered in jars.
Zeph gives an unimpressed grunt. “How the hell are we going to find anything useful down here?”
“She said we might find something to the right of the staircase by the wall. Apparently a lot of this is items she couldn’t shift and then some of it’s stuff you have to make a special request for which people never bothered to pick up.”
“Huh.” He starts to sift through the boxes that lie to the right of the stairs while Dante presses a kiss to the top of my head and joins the search.
“There’s a bunch of shit here,” Zeph comments, pulling things out of boxes and stacking them on a nearby shelf. “Look, they have journals with protective wards, a bunch of pre-mixed potions, and those weird enchanted glow sticks I remember from when I was a kid. No idea how any of this might be useful, though.”
Dante’s busy sorting through some more of the nearby boxes. “Looks like there’s also a bunch of enchanted glasses in here. Maybe they’ll help us read faster?”
“Need reading glasses, old man?” Zeph snarks and my vamp chuckles under his breath. The three of us then rummage around quietly for a few minutes, every so often pulling out anything that might be useful.
“How about this?” Zeph asks, holding a bright pink box in his hands. “You reckon one of the twins would like this Pretty Princess jewelry set?”
“Cute.” I step forward and grin at the box before cocking my head to one side with a thoughtful hum. “It says on here you can imbibe one amulet with a spell and the others will mimic it, ‘so you and all your friends can match!’”
“You already look pretty enough, Silver,” he grunts.
I roll my eyes, feeling my cheeks heat. “Thanks, sugar bear. I wasn’t thinking of using it for that, though.”
“Are you thinking it might absorb the shielding magic?” Dante asks. “That would mean all of us could be protected from Ember’s snooping.”
“It’s not exactly an anti-telepathy hat, but it could be close.”
“And it would mean you wouldn’t be stuck with the two of us all the time.”
“Would mean that we could explain what we’re doing to Ro, too. At least that’d make him quit asking about it. He’s been driving me crazy all week,” Zeph grumbles.
I grin and start grabbing everything that looks even semi-useful, piling them into my arms.
“Let’s take the pre-mixed potions and enchanted glasses, too. You never know what might come in handy.”