Standing in Lord Hauville’s office, I took in the room. There was that central desk with Hauville’s computer, since returned from Scotland Yard’s forensics after being stripped of all necessary evidence. That window I’d stepped out of to hide, precariously balancing on the ledge; teetering on the edge of reason.
That threat of a fall now had a new meaning.
I sensed that Lady Hauville had purchased that lamp in the corner. Its antique Victorian flair was a throwback to more conservative times. The tassels running around the base of the shade were so feminine, so gaudy. Lord Hauville hated it, yes, that was what I detected, and from the encircling energy he’d hardly spent any time in here.
Because this was not his office. It was hers.
Which meant that computer was also hers.
Like a transparent ghostly image, yet of a living person, I watched mesmerized as the residual fluctuation of Lady Hauville moved about the room and finally came to still by the window. Her apparition peered out at the city. Her angst reached me across the breadth of the room and I unraveled the emotions as they found me, felt her terrible aching over Olivia’s diagnosis and her exasperation that her daughter was dying. Fear surged within her veins from the realization there was nothing she could do to save her daughter’s life. Another wave brought the reality of her willingness to do anything to try.
Anything...
Returning to the storage room, I read what I could from its memory. That camera inside the fox had been placed there by Lady Hauville. Though I struggled to pull out of the ether her motivation for putting it there. There was just too much confusion. Scotland Yard’s policemen coming and going had seemingly contaminated the essence of the memories.
With more questions than before, I made a discreet exit, retracing my steps out of the back of the building and quickly finding the Ducati where I’d parked it. My gut told me more answers could be found at The Royal London Hospital, where Lady Hauville held a consulting position.
Weaving through the busy streets, dodging cars, taxis, and double decker buses, I sped toward Whitechapel Road and one of London’s oldest hospitals.
The stunning facade meshed old architecture with new. This hospital was also a teaching facility. Training nurses, midwives, doctors, and dentists to continue the tradition that impressively hailed all the way back to the year 1740. Even today it was reputed as one of the best facilities in the country, providing state-of the art care to patients. After safely parking the bike, I dodged an ambulance pulling away from the curb and made my way into the accident and emergency department.
The heavy aroma of bleach hit my nostrils, sending my nerves on edge. The waiting room was packed with casualties of one form or another—people all sitting upon plastic chairs. The uncomfortable kind. Restless, they waited to be ushered on in to the treatment area and, by the look of many of them, admitted overnight. They, like me, were not getting in there without the triage nurse’s permission.
Sensing someone behind me, I turned and scanned the many faces.
Merging out of the crowd, Anaïs strode my way, a stunning gothic vision dressed in a black T-shirt, leather pants, and high platform boots.
I gave her a nod of appreciation. “Jadeon sent you?”
“Yes.”
“Is he angry with me?”
“He understands.” She shrugged. “I’m under strict orders to summon him if needed.”
“A hands off approach?” I asked, surprised.
“He’s never far away, Ingrid, should we need him.”
I chuckled. “The illusion of control.”
“What do you need from me?”
“I have a hunch.”
Anaïs took in the emergency room. “You’re looking for Dr. Hauville?”
“I need to speak with her.”
Her gaze found the door and it responded, clicking open and permitting our entry. She flashed a smile to the guard and his eyes glazed over; she’d successfully tranced him out. Usually I’d have expressed my disapproval, but not today.
Together we strolled down the white washed corridors, passing nurses, doctors, and technicians, and other hospital staff, all of them with somewhere to be five minutes ago. Anaïs drew the attention from the occasional passer-by, which kept their eyes off me. As I no longer existed, this was a good thing.
We lingered on the outskirts of an organized chaos exacerbated by constantly beeping machines, alarms, and call bells. The staff were right in the middle of shift change. Day staff chatted away in medical lingo, giving detailed reports on their patients to the night nurses and transferring care.
I approached the fifty-something female receptionist. “Can you page Dr. Hauville for me, please?”
“She’s not here today,” the receptionist said. “Can I take a message?” Though from her expression she didn’t want to.
“Which way is her office?” I asked, holding up the beige folder I had found discarded. “Results she asked for STAT.” It was of course empty, but she didn’t need to know that.
The receptionist, who looked as busy as hell, soon spilled the location. “Down that hallway and third door on the left.”
Within minutes, Anaïs and I had located her office. It was decked out in frugal NHS furniture; the small space of a busy doctor. The thin door did little to block out the noise outside. The medical textbooks lining the shelves reflected her specialty, interspersed with family photos here and there to lighten the mood. Her desk was stacked high with paperwork, forms, memorandums, and several medical journals. The lack of patient files proved she’d honored the confidentially she was bound by.
Anaïs guarded the door and I set to work at Dr. Hauville’s computer. Taking a seat, I scanned the office for residual traces of movement. She hadn’t been here in days so there wasn’t a lot to go on. Just her moving around, her mood low, irritated.
After a few minutes, I found the post-it note where she had scribbled her computer access code. A series of numbers and letters both upper and lower case that anyone would be hard pushed to remember. I set to work hacking into her desktop.
Clicking away on the keyboard, I found my way in. Under the patient search icon I entered Beatrice Shaw. Her name didn’t come up.
Unfazed, I used the trick that Nick Greene had showed me, accessing any digital evidence that revealed wiped files. Although not as talented as Nick when it came to computer forensics, I knew what to look for when recovering deleted data.
“You found something?” Anaïs said.
“Give me a second.” I focused back in.
She joined me by the computer.
I found the ghost file. Anaïs leaned in close and together we read the report, scanning the digital file that had been removed from the medical records database.
“This is a report on a Jane Doe,” I said. “Same time frame.”
Beatrice had been in a serious car accident and brought here via ambulance. Medics had found her a mile from the accident, seriously injured. That was why Miller hadn’t found a trace of her being rescued.
“But where did Beatrice go from here?” Anaïs said. “The morgue?”
The door opened.
A young nurse hesitated when she saw us. “What are you doing?” she said.
“We’re techies.” I raised my hand to counter her argument. “Dr. Hauville’s computer crashed. Sorry we’re late getting to it. IT is swamped.”
Anaïs folded her arms defensively.
“There it is.” I returned my attention to the screen. “The mother of all computer bugs. What the hell was Hauville doing downloading all this illegal software?” I said, exasperated.
Anaïs feigned worry. “Can you save her hard drive?”
I deftly slid the mouse around and clicked away on the keyboard. “Can you ask Dr. Hauville to return to her office? I have a few questions for her.”
“She’s not here today,” the nurse said, frowning.
“No problem,” I said. “We’ll get this issue sorted by the time she
’s back.” I smiled at the nurse. “Don’t worry. No one need know about this.”
“Are those contacts?” she asked me. “Your eyes are beautiful.”
“Contacts,” said Anaïs.
We sighed with relief when the nurse left.
“Dr. Hauville was Beatrice’s physician,” I read from the screen. “Beatrice’s neck was broken and she sustained multiple fractures. Found unconscious.”
Anaïs flinched. “She must have been so scared when she woke up.”
I pointed. “She looked dead to them.”
“As a fledgling she would have taken longer to come round.”
“Just like the medics, the emergency staff thought they had a dead Jane Doe.”
We read the report detailing the minimal care delivered to Beatrice. “Hauville was the doctor who pronounced her dead,” I said. “That’s interesting.”
“The report ends ten minutes after she was brought in.” Anaïs leaned in closer. “Hauville must have witnessed Beatrice’s reawakening.”
“Her full recovery.” I stared up at Anaïs. “Right in front of Hauville’s eyes.”
“It must have looked like a miracle,” Anaïs said.
“No. Hauville saw it for what it was. A supernatural event.” Clicking around the screen, I found no discharge information. “No tests were ordered. No emergency transfer to ITU.”
“And she made no attempt to document what she saw.”
“But every attempt to hide it,” I said. “Hauville deleted Beatrice’s file.”
“Why?”
I shot Anaïs a look. “Let’s ask her, shall we?”
CHAPTER 28
The Hauville’s secluded Windsor estate was off the beaten track. The last time I had visited here was with Helena, back when we’d believed our arrest warrant would deliver a result.
My throat tightened as thoughts of her surfaced again. Guilt, dragging behind it a whole host of other emotions, caused me to waver. This gut wrenching panic that I was striving to keep at bay threatened to rise to the surface and incapacitate me. I had to force myself to focus.
A Ford Explorer was parked outside the front of the house, hinting someone may be home, and hopefully that someone was Dr. Hauville. Other than that, the place looked deserted.
There was no answer when I knocked on the door.
From behind the house, Anaïs scaled the rear wall while I watched. It truly was a surreal moment, observing what was humanly impossible unfold before my eyes. Anaïs ascended swiftly up the brickwork, soon reaching what looked like a cracked open bedroom window. It kind of looked a little creepy. I wondered how long after a fledgling was turned they’d be able to move like that? Flying would take the kind of courage I wasn’t sure I had.
I mean what the fuck! Flying?
Caressing my forehead, I tried to soothe this looming headache, soothe this angst that only taking action suppressed. My life was turned on its head. The idea that one day I’d be breaking and entering had never crossed my mind. Yes, I’d taken certain privileges during an investigation, but never had I foreseen I’d be pursuing the same activities I’d once arrested criminals for.
I was somewhere between needing to curl up into a ball and sob for a life that was no longer mine and grasping for the faith that my new life would have meaning. Maybe, just maybe, I’d have more freedom to do more good. I really needed to believe this.
Right now this hope was all I had to keep me going.
Anaïs appeared on the other side of the glass sliding door. She opened the catch and let me in. We made our way through the living room and searched room after room, hoping to find even the smallest clue that Beatrice or Helena had ever been here.
After a few minutes, Anaïs found me in the kitchen and watched with fascination. “You’re picking up on something?” she said.
There was a shift in the energy in here. A potent sense of tension, and it wasn’t just coming from us. Steadying my impatience and suppressing all my nervous energy from being holed up in a castle for days, I tried to relax a little. “I’m sensing the residual energy.”
Her eyes widened.
“I’ll explain later,” I said.
“Any other super powers you want to tell me about?”
“So far just eyes that glow in the dark and this.” I managed a nervous smile. “Do you sense Beatrice?”
“It’s too foggy.”
I leaned against the kitchen counter and continued to read the room.
Dr. Hauville making tea. Making dinner. Talking on the phone. Preparing a meal…no meals…for more than one.
A shudder of fear slithered up my spine, followed by a tidal wave of emotion. I wasn’t sure if it was mine or hers, or Beatrice’s. The fractious pulses of energy were difficult to distinguish, impossible to define. Another vision fluctuated. That of Dr. Hauville stomping across the room toward the pantry. Following her ghostly image, I opened the door. Her transparent imprint kept on going before disappearing through the back wall of the pantry. Scrape marks from a door opening and closing marked the tile floor. Though it wasn’t immediately obvious, there was a door here.
Please let this be it…
The cold hit us as we descended the dark wooden steps. Another door greeted us at the end of the stairwell.
“Is this a bunker?” I whispered.
“Built during the war?” Anaïs said. “Oh God, no one would ever hear you if you were trapped down here.”
Though no stranger to this kind of danger. I was reassured to have Anaïs with me.
“Someone’s down here,” Anaïs whispered. “A mortal.”
The sweet, pungent scent of an air freshener drifted. The quietness was so exaggerated every noise we made echoed. Way down the corridor, the darkness lifted and shards of light burst from beneath a door.
With a nod from Anaïs, she confirmed that this was the room where she was picking up a mortal’s presence. Though from the way she frowned she was sensing something else too.
“What is it?” I said.
“Not sure.”
Cautiously, we entered.
Anaïs and I locked eyes, stunned…
There, lying beneath the covers of a duvet, was a pale child of no older than twelve. Her shallow breaths were ragged, and her face twisted in torment. A troubled sleep. This was the very same girl from the Hauville’s family photo. Olivia, the daughter they were grieving over.
From the equipment, this would pass as a hospital room. A blood pressure machine flashed its last neon result. Her heart rate was dangerously low. An oxygen tank stood ready beside the bed, the 02 mask hanging over it. A blood transfusion hung from a pole beside her, delivering scarlet fluid into her left arm through a bright red tube. A breakfast tray positioned within reach was filled with cups of bright red jello. One of the cups was half eaten with a silver spoon sticking out.
“Is she a vampire?” I whispered to Anaïs.
“I don’t know what she is,” she said.
The hairs prickled on my forearms and the room felt cold.
Dr. Hauville was standing in the doorway. And she was pointing a gun at us.
“We want to help you,” I said. “Please, put the gun down, Dr. Hauville.”
She narrowed her gaze. “I thought you were dead?”
“Is this Olivia?” I said.
“You’re trespassing.”
“Call the police then.” Anaïs folded her arms across her chest.
I gestured to Anaïs as a warning. “Everything is going to be fine.” I turned back to Dr. Hauville.
“I read you were killed in a fire?” she said.
“A misprint?” I said.
“Really. Then why was your obituary announced in The Sunday Times?”
My mind scattered into a thousand pieces. Wave after wave of emotion stretched the full length of the room. Fear. Hate. Remorse. Regret.
Olivia stirred, pulling me back into the room.
What the hell was Dr. Hauville doing here? What was she doing to he
r daughter?
A faint waft of fear slithered past me and I stepped back to avoid it, steadying my feet against the onslaught of transparent waves of emotions.
“Ingrid?” Anaïs threw a concerned look my way.
“I’m okay.” I used the pole to steady myself. My hand fumbled for the IV bag, turning it to face me to see it better. There was no label.
“Let go of that,” Dr. Hauville said.
“You’re giving your daughter vampire blood?” Anaïs said.
Her stare shot from me and back to Anaïs. “How many other people know vampires exist?” She stepped forward. “Do you have any idea what this means?”
“You’re not trying to turn her,” Anaïs said.
“Just enough to keep her alive.” Dr. Hauville held a crazed stare. “The implications are endless.”
My gut wrenched with what she was putting Olivia through.
“Where’s Beatrice?” Anaïs said.
Hauville looked stony-faced.
“Please,” Anaïs said softly.
“Careful. The gun,” I sent the mind message to Anaïs, hoping she’d not rile Hauville up and get us shot.
“Your daughter is a hybrid,” Anaïs said.
“How do you know?” Dr. Hauville waved the gun at Anaïs. “You’re a Gothica, aren’t you? You dress like one.”
Anaïs glared back at her.
“Please, Imogen.” I motioned to the weapon. “We want to help you. We want to help Olivia. Put down the gun.”
“You killed your husband?” Anaïs said, her advantage of delving into Dr. Hauville’s thoughts both an advantage and a liability.
Her forefinger slid over to the trigger. “Rupert was willing to let her die.” Her face turned to sorrow. “I had to choose between them.”
The air down here was thin, suffocating so, and I hated this time we were wasting on hearing her confession, yet I knew it would lead us to the girls.
Dr. Hauville shrugged. “I just have to get the levels right and she’ll be normal again.” She sucked in her breath. “Olivia’s alive and that’s enough.”
“Olivia drinks blood too?” Anaïs said.
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