The room was a shambles. The sofa overturned. Books yanked from the built in shelves and thrown around the room. Her computer was in pieces on the floor. It looked like a twister had been through.
“They were looking for something,” I said.
“I agree.” Peter bent next to the coffee table and picked up several books, laying them gently down in piles next to him. He grabbed ripped papers and smoothed them out before setting them in neat stacks next to the books.
“It’s impossible to know whether they found what they were looking for,” I said.
The entire room was tossed so it was hard to say for sure. I would assume if they’d found what they were looking for their destruction would have stopped at that point. The fact that nothing had been left intact led me to believe they hadn’t found whatever that was. At least not in here.
“I’m going to walk through the rest of the house.”
Peter nodded and flapped a hand at me as if to say get on with it. He didn’t look up from the papers. I took that to mean he was planning to stay and find out what he could.
I headed deeper into the house where the destruction wasn’t quite so pronounced. The kitchen was left virtually untouched, as was the sun room. Her office shared the same fate as the living room. Again, the computer had been torn apart and the books pulled off the shelves. Someone had taken claws to her desk and chair, leaving deep gashes in the wood and leather seat.
Her upstairs was also left mostly untouched. The faint smell of animal and something more tickled my brain. I knew that second smell. What was it? I inhaled filling my lungs with it. I’d smelled it recently. If only I could place it.
Ha. Basil and anise. That was it. The same smell that was on Robert.
Why had the smell stayed here rather than in either of the offices? I hadn’t caught anything but the faintest whiff down there.
The scent was concentrated around her walk in closet. Someone had lingered here, but nothing was disturbed.
I didn’t think it was a good sign that someone with demon taint had paid my friend a visit. It confirmed my suspicions that there was a link between the trouble throughout the city and the vampire selection. I just needed to find out what that link was.
I headed back downstairs to find Peter had gathered enough piles of books and paper to be in danger of running out of room on the coffee table.
“Her office looks like this,” I said. “The rest of the house is relatively undisturbed.”
“Hm.” Peter didn’t look up, consumed by whatever was on the paper in front of him.
“What is that?” I asked.
“I can’t be sure, but I think it’s what they came here for.”
I moved quickly, settling down beside him and trying to get a glimpse of the paper. It made no sense to me, looking like a bunch of squiggly lines with names at odd intervals. I tried to grab it from Peter for a closer look. He elbowed me and yanked it out of reach.
“Unless you’ve been working with her over the last several days on this matter, I suggest you let me finish looking at it. I doubt you would understand what you were seeing anyway.”
I settled back and gave him a flat stare. “Then impress me, oh wise one.”
“We weren’t able to do a normal genealogical search as we were starting at the beginning and trying to extrapolate down through the years,” he began. I made a motion signaling he needed to speed this explanation along.
He rolled his eyes. “The records are sparse and you have to eliminate possibilities to find the needle in the haystack. Unless someone stays in the same area from birth to death, it can be quite challenging tracking down records. Until we found a mention of the family friends in the last will and testament left by the children’s parents, we were stuck.”
“She said the friends took the children to California.”
“They did.” He paused and turned to look at me, “Did you know humans have compiled most of their historical records online in state archives? It’s quite convenient if you know what you’re looking for.”
I raised my eyebrows and said with a straight face, “Did they now? I had no idea.”
“It’s quite impressive. I’ve decided that the preservation of even the minutest detail in their records is one of the few redeeming traits of humanity.”
“Ah hah.” That was an interesting observation. One I didn’t know what to do with it. “What does this have to do with what you found, or Caroline’s abduction?”
“I’m getting to that.”
“Get there faster. The clock’s ticking.”
