Vlad stood. “By all means, let’s investigate.” He went to the door and held it open for us.
I went first, but then shoved Clive in front of me. “There’s a ghost coming up on your right that likes to bite off faces.”
“So kind of you to think of me,” Clive said.
“Don’t even.” I held on to the back of his jacket, my face pressed against his spine. “She won’t bother you.”
I turned my head away as we passed by the door. Unfortunately, that meant I was looking in the direction of the open door across the hall where a skeletal woman lay, her eyes open and glazed over, staring straight at me. Her jaw dropped open and the rattling sound of her pleading echoed in my head.
“Is it her?” Clive asked, no doubt because my heart had begun to gallop.
I shook my head against his back. “Keep going to the open area at the end of the hall, please.”
When he stopped, I looked back down the hall we’d just walked through. The top of the face biter’s head was visible as she peeked around the corner of her door at me. Hopefully, that meant she’d stay in her room. I studied the doorways. Most were open, the doors long gone. Not all, though. The tub room had a closed door.
“Doesn’t it freak you out to have closed doors down here? Anything could be behind them,” I said to Vlad.
“Generally speaking, I’m the most dangerous thing around, so no,” he replied.
“Good point.” I looked at Clive. “This is the tub room. They took Léna here her first night, put her in a cold bath in her shift. The water plastered the thin fabric to her body, making the pregnancy obvious.”
I opened the door on its screeching hinge. The scent of rusty water and mold overpowered me as I shined my flashlight. Tiles were broken or missing. A large metal tub caked in filth still sat in the middle of the smallish room. The ceiling was black with mold, the part that was still up. Pieces had begun to fall in the corner.
“Why is it hotter in here than out there?” I asked.
“Perhaps it’s the heat generated by the hyphal growth of the mold colonies,” Clive responded.
I elbowed him. “Look at you, breaking out your science facts. You’re kind of hot too,” I said.
“Not here, darling. I’d rather we limited your exposure to black mold,” Clive responded, wrapping an arm around me, trying to guide me toward the door.
“Wait,” I said. “Do you hear that?” It sounded like the sloshing of water against a hard surface. As my bookstore and bar was situated beneath the water line of the San Francisco Bay, I was quite familiar with that sound.
“The maddeningly slow heartbeat? Yes, but I have no idea what it is,” Clive said.
“Heartbeat?” I looked at both vampires. “You hear a heartbeat? I meant the water sound.”
Vlad nodded. “I’ve been hearing a slow heartbeat since we first looked at the building, almost a hundred years ago. Sometimes it’s stronger, sometimes weaker. This is the loudest I’ve ever heard it.”
“I know of no animal with a heartbeat that slow,” Clive said. “Perhaps a blue whale, but I doubt they’ve been holding a blue whale in the basement for over a hundred years.”
“Like I said,” Vlad responded, “it’s never been this loud. It’s usually so faint, it’s easy to ignore.”
“Well, now I want to rip out the walls and floor to see what they’ve imprisoned,” I said, looking for hidden doors or hatches.
“Is this where you saw the wolf?” Clive asked.
Reluctantly, I went back to the hall. “No. There’s just something about that room. It’s important. I feel it.” I turned to where the shadowy hall should have been and found a wall. “That wasn’t in my dream,” I said, pointing.
Nineteen
Storytime
Vlad walked over and tapped on it. “I hear an echo. It’s open behind this wall.” He glanced back at me and then spoke to Clive. “Take her around the corner while I knock it down.”
Clive picked me up and moved me.
“What the heck?” I demanded.
