“Maybe the helicopter’s just a coincidence,” I said.
Christian barked out a laugh.
After passing our gate and continuing on, I pulled up the neighboring driveway and parked. I had been to this property once before when plotting our attack against Godfrey Sparrow after he infiltrated our mansion. Nothing had changed. Still just a slab of concrete where a house had once stood, now covered with a fresh dusting of snow.
We got out to search for signs of a helicopter landing.
“She was here,” he said, pointing at something on the foundation.
“How can you tell?”
“You can’t see what I see.” Christian walked away and stood beneath an evergreen tree. “There’s a thin layer of dirt on top of the snow just here. It must have been blown off the foundation. And look at the slab—there should be at least an inch of snow. Wind from the helicopter blades cleared out some of the powdery stuff.” Christian headed farther back and into the darkness.
Was she hiding in the woods, planning a sneak attack? Maybe she wanted to eliminate Viktor. I remembered Wyatt’s comment during our meeting about cutting off the head of a dragon and how the limbs would flail. Without Viktor, we had no clout with any officials. He wasn’t just the glue that kept us together; he was the dragon. Yet I couldn’t imagine her sneaking into our home when she knew we’d be on high alert and we outnumbered her.
“We should head home.” When I turned on my heel and took a step, my boot caught, and I tripped. I sat up and looked at a handle sticking out of the concrete. Once I brushed away a thin dusting of snow, I uncovered a hatch door. “Hey, check this out!”
Christian stepped up to the edge and tapped his boot against the handle. “What have we here?”
My arm muscles strained when I attempted to open it. “I think it’s locked.”
“Stand aside.” Christian pulled at the heavy lid, which must have been eight inches thick. The hatch was the exact size and shape of a door. Once open, he used the inside handle to gently lower it. “It’s a Vampire door. No locks required. If she’s down there, she’ll have heard us by now.”
I jogged back to the truck and grabbed the flashlight from the glove compartment. When I returned, Christian was already walking down the steps.
“Careful,” I whispered, following behind him.
When we reached a small room at the bottom, I shined my light on a metal door. Christian ripped a sticky note from it and showed it to me.
It was a series of numbers: 24267.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing the light at a box.
Christian flipped open the cover, revealing a keypad. “Someone’s giving us an open invitation. Does she own this property?”
“I don’t know.”
Christian punched in the code, and it triggered the door to unlock.
“I keep forgetting to bring wood,” I said with annoyance.
Christian pressed his ear to the door and listened. “Can’t hear anyone. Shall we?”
“Danger is my middle name.”
When he opened the door, I aimed the flashlight into an empty hall. Christian flipped a switch on the wall, and recessed lighting in the ceiling revealed a furnished room up ahead. There were no doors, but I noticed vents on the ceiling. I couldn’t tell if an actual ventilation system was set up or if it was remnants from when the house once stood. It was possible there were air ducts somewhere on the property.
Christian moved slowly and then stopped, listening. When he shook his head, he kept going.
I turned off the flashlight and followed him into a quaint living room no bigger than what you might see in an apartment. The couch on the left wall looked broken in, and it faced a curtained wall instead of a television. This wasn’t a basement or storage room—someone lived down here. Gem would have liked the coffee table, which was a giant black rock with a smooth top.
When I approached the kitchen sink, I had a moment of déjà vu. After rounding the counter, I opened the fridge and stared at a fresh carton of milk inside. I shut the door. Then I noticed a plate of fresh beignets on the counter. Houdini liked beignets. I had a faint recollection of him mentioning how he’d made them from scratch when he held me in a place just like this.
Christian faced me. “This doesn’t look like her style. She’d never put her arse on a sofa that hideous.”
Ignoring him, I walked over to a tall curtain on the left wall and slowly pulled it back, revealing a giant glass wall. This wasn’t the same place Houdini had once kept me, but the layout was identical. Only instead of there being a door on the far side of the enclosed room, it was right in front.
We both looked into the brightly lit room where Lenore sat in a green chair, her head tipped to the side. While her braids were still intact, the rest of her hair looked like it had been sucked through a wind tunnel. Her orange dress had bloodstains where a stake was poking out from her chest. Dangling from it was what looked like a postcard—a hole punched neatly in the corner to loop the string through.
