Midnight Curse

“The ugliest dog you’ve ever seen?” I suggested. I may have been a tad cranky.

“Well . . . yeah.” After a quick glance at me, her eyes settled on Jesse—and widened even more. She closed the book and set it down neatly on top of the notes. “What did you say you needed?”

Jesse held up Molly’s key. “Access to the safety deposit boxes.”

Dropping her pen, the young woman took the key from Jesse’s hand, her brow furrowing. “This is from the special section.”

“Is there a problem?”

“No, not at all, sir,” she said hurriedly, suddenly very interested in pleasing us. “I just don’t see these very often during the day. If you give me the code word, I’d be glad to help you out.”

Dashiell had texted this while I was sleeping. “Cymry,” I said, pronouncing it carefully. I’d Googled the word on Jesse’s phone during the drive. It was a Welsh term from the Middle Ages, used to describe the Welsh people. Very Molly.

Anush smiled brightly. “Thank you, miss. Right this way.”

She came around the corner and led us down a series of corridors that looked weirdly familiar. Then I remembered I’d seen these doors on the security monitors at the front desk. Duh.

Anush steered clear of Shadow in a polite way, but the bargest didn’t notice. Shadow was deeply interested in her new surroundings—her nose worked overtime, and her head turned rapidly back and forth to take everything in. Eventually we wound our way to a small vault door, similar to the kind you’d see in any bank. Anush entered a code into a keypad and turned the enormous handle, revealing a room of safety deposit boxes like the ones you see in every bank heist movie. There was a table in the center of the room, and two chairs. No security camera in here. I went and sat down, partly so we weren’t all crowding the small space, and partly because I’m essentially very lazy.

Anush went straight to Molly’s box, number 3791. There were two keyholes; she inserted a key in one of them and gestured for Jesse to do the same with the other. After they turned the keys, Anush removed hers but didn’t let the door swing open. “Take all the time you need,” she said cordially. “The exit door will be locked on the other side, but there’s a push bar for when you’re ready to leave. Please notify me on your way out, and I’ll come back and turn my side of the lock.” She backed out of the room smiling and practically bowing, her eyes nervously flicking toward Shadow.

Then we were alone with the box.

Jesse swung open the door and pulled out the drawer, which he set down on the table in front of me. He dropped into the opposite chair, and we both stared down at the contents. The safety deposit box was about the size of the cardboard boxes that knee-high boots come in, and one-quarter of it was filled with neatly wrapped stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Next to them was a carved oak jewelry box, and next to that was a packet of papers and supplies. There was a little pile of passports right on top. Jesse picked them up right away and took off the rubber band holding them together. He examined a couple of the passports.

“If these are forgeries, they’re the best I’ve ever seen.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think they’re forgeries.”

“Pressing government officials is practically a part-time job when you’re a vampire,” I said absently. I was spreading the rest of the spy movie stack across the table. There were deeds to land in a few different countries, plus a number of envelopes that held foreign currencies. I found a small stack of Polaroids and began flipping through them. They were probably from the 1970s, judging by the hair and clothes, but they reminded me a lot of the photos at the Scarff Street house: groups of young women standing together smiling. Molly was in all the shots. I didn’t recognize anyone else, so I passed them to Jesse.

“Here we go,” I said, picking up a small, no-frills address book. You would think someone who’s been alive for a hundred and fifty years might have a pretty full contact list, but there were only two or three entries under each letter. “Interesting,” I murmured.

Jesse dropped the photos and leaned over the table, craning his head to see what I was reading. “Just first names,” he observed. “Vampires?”

“That would be my guess. She probably keeps human phone numbers on her cell like anyone else.” I paged through further and recognized the names of a few of the LA vampires, including Frederic. Next to each name there was a dash and a country or state name: “Naomi - Washington State,” “Livingston - Croatia,” “Morris - South Carolina.”

“What happens when there are two vampires with the same name?” Jesse asked.

“A question I pondered for many years. I always figured they’d have a Highlander-style fight to the death, but actually they just identify themselves by their place of birth, like the other entries. See, look.” I pointed to the entries for H, where there were actually three different vampires named Henry. They were marked “Henry - Iceland,” “Henry - Quebec,” and “Henry - Vermont.”

Underneath the name, there was always an address, though many of them were P.O. boxes. “Don’t vampires move around a lot?” Jesse said. “What are the chances that any of these are still current?”

“The address isn’t where the vampire lives; it’s how he or she can be tracked down,” I explained. “Molly told me once that vampires keep a drop site somewhere, like a P.O. box or an abandoned house that they own. That’s how they find each other, when they really want to.” I shook my head. “The problem is that it takes time. If your drop site is in Spain and you’re currently living in Canada . . .”

“Okay, I can see that. What are the starred names?” He pointed to the entry across from the Henrys: “Georgiana - Pennsylvania,” with an address in New York. Sure enough, there was a star next to it.

I frowned. “I don’t know. Let’s see how many have them.”

Jesse produced a small notebook and pen, and we made a list of the starred entries. There were fourteen in all. “They’re all women’s names,” he pointed out. “Her friends?”

“I don’t know. In theory all the names in the book are her friends. What makes these fourteen different?”

“Look, some of them have phone numbers.”

I checked, and he was right—a few of the starred names had a number penciled in at the bottom. Most of them had been erased several times, like Molly had kept them updated. Interesting.

We spent a few minutes digging through the rest of the box’s contents, but didn’t find anything else that seemed helpful. The jewelry box was full of expensive pieces, some of which looked very old. I doubted any of it could help us exonerate Molly, so I left them where they were. I also ignored the small velvet bag filled with diamonds, and the envelope that held three locks of braided hair, each the length and thickness of a pencil.

I had brought one of those reusable grocery bags, the kind that can fold up into a tiny pouch, and we packed up the Polaroids and the address book. After a moment of hesitation, I also tossed in one of the passports and three of the stacks of cash.

Jesse noticed me do it, and I saw understanding cross his face. He made a show of reaching down to pet Shadow, pretending he’d seen nothing.

If I couldn’t free Molly legally, I was damned well going to have a plan B.

Chapter 16

It was ten thirty in the morning when we left the storage facility, which gave us just enough time to get to Dashiell’s Pasadena residence to question Molly at noon. Jesse started in that direction without speaking. I could practically hear his brain churning, though, and I knew he was doing his cop thing, analyzing the case for those little loose threads that could lead to a new angle of investigation. His ability to find those threads was exactly why I needed him, so I kept quiet and petted Shadow for a while, scratching the spot under her hairless ear that always gets itchy.

“What about talking to the families of the murdered girls?” Jesse said finally. “Could they tell us anything?”

I thought it over, and shook my head. “I don’t see how. That would blow our chance of keeping things quiet, for one thing. Besides, none of those girls knew what Molly really was.”