As Jenks had said, there was one living vampire, slumped unconscious in a chair facing the door, his hand around an empty bottle of whiskey.
Rifle ready, David went to check out the kitchen. “Is no one listening to me? The kitchen is clear, Mr. Peabody,” Jenks complained loudly as he followed him. “The upstairs is empty. It’s just Mr. Jim Beam here. And he ain’t going to wake up without some help.”
I forced myself to step over the threshold, eyes watering at the scent of lily. No wonder Constance is ticked. “He doesn’t look like a fighter,” I said, feeling as if something was crawling up my back. No, the man slumped in the chair with his mouth hanging open was thin, almost malnourished, the scars on his arms ranging from thick and old to red rimmed and brand-new. A thick stubble coated his face, and his nails were worn almost to the quick. He was in casual pants and a dress shirt, stained from dust and sweat. Clearly not one of Constance’s favorites.
She left him for me to find. A disposable vampire so scared he drank himself senseless on cheap whiskey.
David’s foot scuffed the stairs to the upper floor. The sound shot through me, and my gaze went to the camera in the corner. The little red light was on, winking at me, but Jenks had it on a loop. We were, as he had said, ghosts.
“Downstairs,” I whispered, and David halted, his head even with the upstairs floor. Turning, he silently came back down to peer in through the swinging doors to the kitchen. My senses tingled, overloaded by the reek of vampire, and I held my breath against the stink of lily as we went into the kitchen to find the only way down.
The kitchen was slightly more organized. Open boxes sat on the counters and packing peanuts littered the floor. Unfamiliar glasses in the sink held drops of wine. Dishcloths I’d never bought hung from the oven handles. My shoulders hunched, I followed David to the almost anticlimactic entrance to Piscary’s lower levels.
“When did Ivy put in the staircase?” David asked, hesitating inside the stark, ten-by-fourteen room. It had probably been a butler pantry at one time, but now it was empty apart from the enormous wall clock facing the elevator and the spiral staircase going down beside it. The wide, triangle steps looked like teeth, and the fading hint of pixy dust told me Jenks was running vanguard. The smell of lily was getting worse.
“Ivy found it under the floor two weeks after taking possession,” I whispered, not wanting to hit the call button and possibly leave a record of our being here. “It’s original.” I looked at David, my gut tightening. This was too easy. Constance wanted us here. “I’m taking the stairs.”
I pushed forward before David could, my steps silent on the worn wood as I descended. My bad feeling was getting worse, and not all of it was because that lily stench had become gaggingly thick. Glasses in the sink, the lack of cars out front, one disposable vamp upstairs: someone wanted us here, and I was wound tighter than a troll on her wedding night by the time we reached the lower floor, well below the level needed to ensure safety to the undead.
As Jenks had said, the main room was empty. Once white and stark with Piscary’s lack of imagination, it was now soothing grays and blues, evidence of Ivy and Nina. More open boxes and furniture were scattered about, and my heart hurt.
David scuffed to a halt, a hand over his nose. “The smell probably drove them out,” he said, muffled.
I reached for a ley line, already knowing that we were too deep to manage it. Piscary had chosen his lair carefully, and though he was dead—truly dead—the place still stank of him and his paranoid preparations.
“Jenks?” I whispered, turning to the fitful sound of his wings. My face went slack at his silver-gray dust, his flight low and halting as he came from the downstairs kitchen.
“Rache,” he rasped, face white as he landed on my hand. “Nash . . .” he said, voice breaking.
Fear slid cleanly through me, dividing thought from action. I strode to the tiny room, David’s cautioning reach pulling from my arm. My hip nudged my bag, pushing it in front of me, and I reached for my splat gun.
“Rache, it’s not your fault.” Jenks’s flight paralleled my motion. “It was his choice.”
His words dropped down my spine like ice. The familiar cool feel of my splat gun lit a fire in my chest. Images of past vampire cruelty flashed through my mind, and I lurched to stay in front of David as we entered the small kitchen where Ivy used to make popcorn.
Fear and anger spiraled into confusion and shock. My expression blanked, and I stared, trying to figure out what I was looking at. “Oh, God,” I whispered, shocked to stillness.
The masculine frame tied to the table had to be Nash. It was too big to be Zack. His body was smeared with blood, but his face was eerily clean, and his yellow shock of hair stood out bright. His head hung off the end of the table to bare his untouched throat. His clothes stuck to him, black with blood. Ivy’s huge popcorn bowl sat under the table, bloody rags to the brim. Blood had dripped from the table, and a swath of it decorated the ceiling, now dried to an ugly brown. One wall had been entirely smeared with blood, the outline of a lily rubbed into it as if it had been finger-painted.
My splat gun drooped; the silence hammered on my ears. The scent of lily and decaying blood choked me.
“Sweet bloody Jesus,” David whispered from behind me.
“Is he alive?” I asked as I inched forward. “Nash?” But he had to be. Jenks’s amulet was still glowing, and he wouldn’t dust the wounds of a dead man.
“Don’t,” Jenks said as I reached for the sprig of lilac pinned to me and ripped a piece free. “Rache, don’t wake him up. Let him die in his sleep.”
But Zack was missing, and Constance had clearly made Nash his whipping boy. He wasn’t going to die if I could stop it. How am I going to get him out of here?
“Nash?” Hands shaking, I placed the lilac on him, thinking the flowers looked demented amid the blood and stink. A string of pearls hung from his neck, red and ugly, the shine lost under the dried blood. “Nash, can you hear me?” I added as I took his head in my hands and lifted it even with his body. Under him, the necklace swayed with an ugly stiffness.
Nash’s breath came in with a sudden, terrifying rattle. Startled, I almost dropped him. His eyes opened, but they were filled with blood, unseeing as he stared at the ceiling. “Nash?” I called again, and Jenks hovered closer.
“Don’t give her anything, Zack,” Nash rasped, his ragged voice clear in the utter silence. “Don’t make this for nothing.”
“Nash?” I shifted his head, his anguished cry filling me with panic. “It’s me. Rachel!” I said, trying to hold his head even. “We’re going to get you out of here. Where’s Zack?” Al. Al can pop us to a hospital, I thought. He said he wouldn’t help me with Constance, but he’d left me books. . . .