Blood Lily (Lilith Adams Vampire Series Book 1)

by Jenny Allen

  “Not really.” The clothes were still nagging at her. “Except… It’s probably nothing, but there are a few outfits hanging in their insanely clean and organized closet that are wrinkled all to hell. It just seems…out of place.”

  Chance was about to say something when his cell phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket and shrugged at the number. “Spencer.” He answered it as he walked toward the door. “How are you feeling, man?”

  Lilith took a seat at the desk and started going through the drawers while she listened to Chance’s side of the conversation.

  “Good, I’m glad you’re feeling better… Nah, we are up at Miriah’s place taking a look around… It’s okay, Spence, we didn’t want to wake you…By the way, I don’t think Miriah’s neighbor likes you too much.” He laughed whole heartedly at some witty response from Spencer. It relieved her. Spencer sounded pretty stable and hopefully he’d stay that way. “Well, sure. Of course. Okay. See you then.”

  He turned to Lilith after he hung up with a half-smile. “Well, he sounds better, really hates the “old bat” that lives across from Miriah, and he’s going to meet us here in about an hour. I figured we should probably tell him about Malachi in person.”

  “Good. Maybe he can actually shed some light on all this. If Miriah was keeping anything here for Duncan, maybe he knows about it or where to look. All I can tell so far is that Malachi loves all things Japanese, they are meticulous about cleaning but not about what they dump in nightstand drawers, and Miriah must stockpile batteries somewhere.”

  Chance glanced up at that last bit. “Do I even want to know?”

  Lilith flashed a quick, awkward smile. “Uh, probably not.”

  There were several moments of silence while they both continued the search until Chance changed the subject. “You know what I don’t get? Why do you think it only mentioned Miriah in the letter, and not Spencer?” Chance was leafing through a book on some ancient text, with glossy pictures of every page of the manuscript.

  “Miriah has always been the more responsible one. Accountant versus art appraiser. It looks like most of the duties he passed on to Miriah were based on her mathematical skills. I suppose there wouldn’t really be much for an art appraiser to do.”

  “Hmmm makes sense I suppose.” He didn’t sound one hundred percent convinced, but he didn’t say anything else as he thumbed through the book he was holding.

  “What book is that anyway?” Lilith peered at the photos while she closed the overly organized drawer of office supplies and reached for the next one.

  “It’s a pictorial of this famous book, known as the Voyruich Manuscript, one of the oldest ones in known history and it’s a total enigma. I saw it at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library a few years back. It’s been dated to the 1400’s. Pretty fascinating piece.”

  Lilith arched an eyebrow and looked at him like she’d never seen him before. He looked up just in time to catch her expression. Chance scowled over at her and flipped his middle finger in her direction before returning to the book.

  “Just because I’m a bodyguard doesn’t mean I’m mindless, thank you very much. I happen to have a great appreciation for history.” When she still didn’t say anything, he continued. “Plus Gregor took a tour of the Yale Museum a few years ago. He seemed pretty interested in the manuscript.”

  Lilith chuckled as she shuffled through some more papers in a file drawer. “Ah. The truth finally comes out. Interest by proximity.”

  Forty-five minutes later they still hadn’t found anything. All the papers Miriah kept here were personal finances and a few of Duncan’s finances. If she was conducting an audit on Miriah, Malachi or Duncan it would be a goldmine, but otherwise it was all useless. Chance found several books on the Voyruich Manuscript which kept him entertained but didn’t yield anything useful.

  “You guys still here?” Spencer’s voice came from the front hall and thankfully he sounded pretty normal.

  “Yeah, back here in the office, Spence.” Chance shelved the book he’d been thumbing through and gracefully hopped up off the floor.

  Spencer peeked into the room and glanced up at Chance who towered over him. Spencer was at least nine inches shorter than Chance’s six foot three. The sleep had done him some good. He still looked vaguely homeless, and his clothes were rumpled even more now, but his eyes were sharp and no longer red rimmed.

  “You guys find anything here?” He looked at both of them anxiously.

  “Not really. It doesn’t look like Miriah kept anything significant here.” Lilith shoved the last of the papers back in the file drawer and closed it.

  “What about at Dad’s? You didn’t find anything there at all?”

  “Not really.” She busied herself with cleaning up Miriah’s desk so she wouldn’t give anything away. She still didn’t want anyone to know about the tin. “Just a couple journal entries, a little blood trail leading to the door. No other fingerprints or any other forensic evidence.”

  Spencer’s jaw clenched and he forced a rough sigh. “Just a bunch of dead ends.”

  “Why don’t we go out to the dining room and talk? I’d really like to hear about things from you, Spencer. Even something insignificant could be important. Plus, we have some stuff to tell you anyway.” She busied herself with placing items on the desk in their proper places, and didn’t look up after the last sentence. She wasn’t looking forward to telling Spencer about Malachi.

  “Sure.” His voice sounded sort of shaky and uncertain and Lilith could definitely understand that.

  Lilith and Chance took one side of the table and Spencer sat across the table from them. Somehow that just seemed safer to her. Spencer was staring around the room at all the pictures of Miriah and Malachi. He stopped at a picture of the four of them, Spencer, Duncan, Miriah and Malachi. His mouth set in an angry line and there were darker things lingering below the surface. If it was her in his situation, she’d be pretty damn angry too.

  A silent look passed between Chance and Lilith, wordlessly expressing that neither of them wanted to rush Spencer, so they just waited for him to start.

  “I haven’t been particularly close to Dad in a long time.” His voice was completely flat as he finally took his eyes off the photos and looked across the table at the two of them. His blue eyes were a little narrow and pinched, his nose a little too thin along with the rest of him, otherwise you might call him attractive. He ran his long fingers through his bedraggled sandy brown hair and leaned back in the chair.

  “Dad’s been so damn obsessed with his pet projects. He pretty much dumped the business on Miriah and Malachi. A few years back he freaked out over some photographer’s death. He started doing research, spending a little more time at the Madisonville house. Then it was a few days every couple months, then every month, then weekends.” He sighed heavily and started picking at his nails. “He hasn’t left that damn house in six months. He was totally obsessed with whatever he was doing.”

  “So it all started with some Photographer that was killed?” Lilith watched him carefully, an occupational hazard. Once you learned to read body language and micro expressions, you had a really hard time turning it off.

  Spencer looked up at her with a casual nonchalant look and shrugged. “That’s what he said anyway. He never really mentioned who it was or anything.”

  “So you didn’t know what he was working on?”

  Spencer met her steady gaze and huffed out a short chuckle. “I’m an art appraiser, pretty much the limit of my usefulness. If Dad had a question about paintings he came to me, if he had questions about anything else, he went to Miriah.”

  The very subtle contempt that pulled at his lips almost surprised her, but then what family didn’t have a little inner struggle. “Gregor told me that you and Miriah were going to see Duncan at the Madisonville house for dinner that night?”

  Spencer slumped back farther into the chair and casually draped one arm over the back of the chair. It was an odd posture, totally
open, even a little confident. “Miriah’s idea. She wanted to keep the whole family vibe going. She seemed to think it would help Dad. He was starting to forget things, important things. If he wasn’t a vampire, I’d say he was suffering from Alzheimer’s. "His eyes drifted to the wall, he blinked, just an instant, and then he leaned forward, leaning his elbows on the table. His face fell and took on that sullen look again.

  “Was Malachi there too?”

  Spencer snapped his head up and looked at her, totally confused for a minute. His eyes moved back to the photos on the wall before he answered. “No, he was on some trip. I didn’t ask where. We weren’t exactly friends. It was just me and Miriah. Dad wasn’t home, so we waited for him. We actually wound up crashing in the guest rooms upstairs. In the morning he still wasn’t there and we knew something was wrong. Miriah found some drops of blood down by the office and freaked.”

  “Yeah I saw those too.” Lilith thought back to the untouched bedrooms. The beds were made and hadn’t looked slept in. But then, considering Miriah’s precise personality, she probably made sure both rooms looked picture perfect, even in the midst of stress.

  He continued on like she hadn’t spoken, still staring around at the photos on the wall, various emotions from anger to sadness flickering across his face. “Miriah drove back to her office while I checked out Dad’s place in Knoxville. I called Gregor when I didn’t find anything there. Then the other day, early in the morning, Miriah called me with some address to a warehouse outside of Nashville. She’d been checking into it for Dad I guess and she asked me to take a look at it. She said she was going to meet you guys up at the airport and drive you down to Madisonville. That’s the last I’ve heard from her.”

  “What was the warehouse?” Lilith glanced at Chance. He was studying Spencer pretty intensely and was definitely in all business mode.

  Spencer ran both hands through his hair now, stopping to rub at the back of his neck. “Dead freaking end. It was just some dank, abandoned building. Nothing’s been there for years. I was pretty pissed at Miriah until I realized she didn’t make it to the airport.” The anger was still there on his face, slightly blurred by a twinge of regret. He was so angry that it seemed to mask anything else she might have seen on his face.

  “Do you have any idea why Malachi would be in New York City?”

  Spencer slowly took his eyes off the wall and met her stare evenly. Slowly his stare melted and he shrugged. “Is that where he is? Maybe it was some real estate thing.” There was no real reaction of surprise. It was probably hard to be surprised by anything anymore. Of course, Spencer never made his dislike of Malachi a secret.

  “He’s dead, Spence.” Chance spoke up with a pointed look at Lilith. Guess he didn’t want her to drag it out.

  Spencer’s face crumpled and went completely blank. He just looked at Chance and Lilith. She couldn’t read anything at all in his face. “How?”

  “He was tortured, Spencer. I think it was some kind of warning or message, but I’m almost completely certain it has something to do with whatever is going on down here.” Lilith kept her voice neutral. She was still scared of Spencer flipping out like he had earlier, but except for a briefly clenched jaw, there wasn’t anything else.

  Spencer grunted and leaned back in his chair. “This is insane.” His eyes drifted to the ceiling and ran his hand through his hair again. Apparently he was working through a lot of frustration. He didn’t say anything for a long time, just closed his eyes and took very deep breaths. “So have you found anything since you’ve been here?” Oh yeah. The anger was definitely there this time. Even Chance picked up on it and stiffened in the chair beside her.

  “Honestly, not much. Just some vague references to a few things. One note I found said he was having Miriah help him with his research. I didn’t find anything here. Is there any chance she brought stuff back with her to her office maybe? Or Malachi’s office?”

  He scratched at his shoulder and let out a frustrated sigh. “It’s possible. I never went to either office. Hell, I haven’t even been here to the apartment for a week or so. Miriah and I were … disagreeing a lot.” The nervous energy was itching under his skin. He was getting restless and his eyes kept drifting to the wall of photos. She could understand that. He wanted to do something, find his Dad and sister, even if they didn’t always get along.

  “Why don’t we split up and take a look? Chance and I can take Malachi’s office, if you take Miriah’s office. Maybe we can find something useful?” Her voice was a little too high and sweet, like she was talking to a kid on the verge of a tantrum.

  Spencer didn’t miss the condescending tone. He cocked his head to one side and stared at her for a moment. His already thin lips stretched into a forced smile that made her skin want to crawl right off her body. “Sure thing. Do we get walkie-talkies and secret spy names too? Maybe matching trench coats and a decoder ring? I’m not some five year old punk that you have to coddle. You want to talk to me, do it like an adult.” His lip curled in a sneer of pure contempt as his eyes scanned up her body. “You are wasting my fucking time, you useless bitch.”

  Chance moved forward in his chair and his face was set in an angry scowl. He looked like some avenging angel in that moment, all full of righteous fury. “You ungrateful prick. Look, I know you’ve been through a lot, but knock it off, Spencer. We are here to help so if you only have snide remarks to share, just shut your fucking mouth.” Spencer’s eyes went wide in surprise but very quickly hardened into an icy stare. There was an amused glint in his eyes while he stared down Chance that just didn’t seem to fit. Maybe it was some sort of short man, macho syndrome.

  Chance grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him closer. “Yeah, your family is missing, Malachi is dead. You being a fucking asshole is not going to change that. You want to find your dad and sister? Stop being a dick and let us help.” He shoved Spencer who rocked back in his chair and Chance sat back in his with a disgusted look.

  There was an intense moment as they both stared at each other with equal contempt and then Spencer finally dropped his head. He stared down at the table, his disheveled hair hiding his face. “You’re right.” His voice trembled and he pulled in a shaking breath that rattled his shoulders. “I’m tired of chasing dead ends, and because I’ve been fighting with Dad and Miriah, I’m not any help.” He slammed his fists down on the table, making Lilith jump in her chair. “I’m tired, so damn tired of being useless!”

  Lilith was more careful this time. When she spoke it came out calm and casual. “Then help us, Spencer.” She paused, warring with herself but decided that ultimately he needed to know how things were. “I’m here to help, but if you ever call me a useless bitch again, I will knock the scowl right off your face, regardless of what you are going through. You hear me?”

  Spencer simply nodded without looking up. She figured it was the closest thing to an apology she was ever going to get. Sure, Chance had just put him in his place, but she didn’t want other people fighting all her battles for her. “All right. We’ll check Malachi’s place and you take Miriah’s. Do you know where they kept the keys? It would definitely be easier and less suspicious then picking the lock.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll take Malachi’s office. I know more about real estate than I do about accounting. I’m sure if there’s something to find it would probably be at Miriah’s office and seeing as you’re so keen to be helpful...” A warning look from Chance caught his attention and Spencer stopped in mid-sentence. His red-rimmed eyes flicked back to Lilith and slowly each of his angry inflections smoothed into a mask of humility that she knew was forced. She suddenly understood why she’d spent more time around Miriah. It was hard to even imagine that they were related.

  Miriah was full of bouncing southern charm. Lilith spent a lot of summers with Miriah hiking up Bald River Falls to take pictures and just explore. They’d never been truly close, not like she was with her friends in college or Gloria, but they’d always gotten along well to
gether. Spencer she never really remembered seeing much, but if he was always like this, she was glad she hadn’t been around him much.

  “I’ll just grab the keys.” Spencer dragged himself out of the chair, staring at the floor like a kicked puppy. A few minutes later he returned with two key rings, one of which he tossed to Chance. “Meet back here in two hours?”

  Chance and Lilith shared a look and then nodded at Spencer. “Sure, Buddy. Sorry about the tough man act, but you were flipping out. You need to grip on your emotions and stop blaming the people that are trying to help you.”

  One side of Spencer’s mouth came up in a smile. It wasn’t even vaguely attractive and there was something almost smug about it. Spencer was a mangled mess of visible emotions that Lilith just couldn’t seem to make sense of. “It’s cool. You have to do what you have to do right? You guys head out, I’m going to grab a super quick shower and borrow some of Malachi’s clothes. I’m sure he won’t mind if…” Spencer stopped abruptly as he thought back over what he was about to say. His shoulders slumped and he waved Chance and Lilith to the hallway. “Anyway, happy hunting.”

  Chapter 7

  Minutes later, Chance and Lilith squeezed into their tiny rental car and headed downtown toward Miriah’s accounting office. The traffic was light, but that wasn’t too surprising since the evening rush hour ended several hours ago. Apparently, there wasn’t much of a night-life out here. Even Knoxville’s busiest traffic would have been a cake walk compared to New York City at any time of the day. Hell, people here actually obeyed general traffic laws like red means stop.

  “It seems like Spencer harbors a lot of resentment.” Chance was staring out the windshield, dodging slower cars as he sped down the road. His hands were tense on the wheel, flexing, relaxing and flexing again.

  Lilith shrugged into her seat. “Families are complicated. Not everyone gets along as well as Gregor and me, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love them. He may feel left out of the family, but he definitely wants to find them.”