A Drop of Red (24 page)

Since they were still in the small-talk stage of the interview, they hadn’t asked yet about her much younger cousin Eleanor or found out why Natalia had envisioned her grave at Highgate Cemetery. All they’d really done was offer the story that had gotten them through the door—a cover designed to make their vampire-related questions seem reasonable.

Basically, Dawn had used the old “we’re on a personal mission for a friend” approach, just as Frank had done to make his own appointment with Justin Abberline tonight. But for Mrs. O’Connell, Dawn had invented a fictional missing pal named Sara who was “an acquaintance of Eleanor’s.” According to this cover, they were tracking down this friend since everyone else had given up on finding her and, since they’d “uncovered Eleanor’s name in some of Sara’s sensitive documents,” they were coming to Mrs. O’Connell, hoping she could help them by talking about her cousin and why she might be connected to fictional Sara.

More lies,
Dawn thought, glancing at Natalia. But as long as they brought down this Underground, they were damn justified.

“It’s not often I have the pleasure of company these days,” Mrs. O’Connell said from her petal-upholstered armchair across from them. “Not unless you include the odd long-lost third cousin who comes sniffing around for what money I might leave after I’ve gone to the great hereafter. Since Ellie passed on, I do miss a conversation over tea. She was always kind enough to indulge whenever she was in town from one of her business trips. But I’m thinking you’re not here to chat with a dotty old missus and you’ll want to be hearing about Ellie now.”

Sprightly for her age, Mrs. O’Connell pushed herself to her feet, scuttling past the upright piano and its contingent of mounted musical instruments, swerving behind a silken dressing screen where they could hear her riffling through a drawer.

Dawn took a sip of tea and absorbed the room’s antique warmth. Well, it wasn’t
warm
warm—in fact, she had goose bumps in spite of a fire burning behind a low needlepoint-covered screen—but it wouldn’t be terrible to stay here an hour longer.

Maybe she didn’t mind hanging around because she was tired, Dawn thought as the tea traveled from her throat to her stomach in a cooling stream. Tired of running around. Tired of things always flip-flopping on her, like Jonah taking over Costin last night. At least old places had some consistency to them.

Mrs. O’Connell’s voice was muffled behind the dressing screen. “Just one more moment . . .”

Natalia, who was sitting next to Dawn, had her gaze on the flower-molded ceiling, obviously listening for any voices from the dead. On the other side of her, Kiko was cupping his hands around his teacup, a vague smile on his face.

Wasn’t
he
chilled out? Last night after Jonah had left, Dawn and Costin hadn’t found anything new to say to each other, so she’d left her bedroom and discovered Kiko in the midst of the sweats. But he sure was composed today. Dawn suspected that he’d used some Friends, who were even now waiting outside, to calm him again.

Mrs. O’Connell emerged from behind the screen, her hands full of snapshots and knickknacks. “I fetched all the photos of Ellie I could find. Keep telling myself I’ll put them in a scrapbook, but I never seem to come round to it. Perhaps you’ll find Sara in a picture with her while we talk of Ellie?”

“Great idea,” Dawn said, positioning herself on the edge of the love seat as the elderly woman spread the photos and random objects over the table. If the items had belonged to Eleanor, Kiko would be able to use them. “We really appreciate your help, Mrs. O’Connell.”

“Not a mention of it.” She stood next to Dawn, smelling like rose oil.

Kiko placed his cup and saucer far away from the photos and went for a small doll decked out in a green shamrock-printed dress, flame-yarned hair, tiny black button eyes, and a red-thread mouth that made it seem like her lips had been sewn shut.

“Did this belong to Eleanor?” he asked.

“Yes, she hand made dolls, and she also knit Aran jumpers for fairs in what free time she had.” The elderly woman bustled off to another part of the house, saying, “I’ll bring one of those back for you to see. The craftsmanship is so lovely.”

Kiko held the doll, trying to get a reading while Natalia and Dawn scanned the pictures. Most of them featured a freckled, auburn-haired child laughing as she did things like riding a pony or licking an ice cream cone. More recent photos showed a bohemian-looking woman with a wide smile and blue eyes holding up one of those sweaters she must’ve knitted.

Since Dawn was recording their interview for Costin’s sake, she took out her camera phone and snapped away for him, too. The quality of her digital pictures would suck when he saw them, but she wasn’t about to steal any of Mrs. O’Connell’s keepsakes.

Then she whispered to her coworkers. “You get anything?”

“Not with Mrs. O’Connell,” Natalia said. “She sounds and looks human. Yet there is . . . something. . . . A murmuring around us.”

Dawn’s pulse jammed. “So you’re hearing a voice?”

“Not a clear one.” She sat back, concentrating.

Not to be outdone, Kiko jumped in with his own findings while laying the Irish doll on the table.

“I saw a few things,” he said, “but nothing that pops out as being meaningful right now. I just know that Eleanor was at her happiest when she made these dolls.”

A creaking on the stairs told them that their hostess was on her way back. The group zipped their lips as she appeared with a sweater.

Holding the thick, green gray creation up to her slight body, Mrs. O’Connell said, “Lovely, yes?”

She handed it over to Dawn, who fingered the intricate knit. Cozy. Dawn handed it to Natalia, who inspected it with the same diligence.

Mrs. O’Connell added, “I always told Ellie she missed her calling. Yet she said she was doing more with her real job than entertaining folks with dolls and jumpers.”

As Kiko got ahold of the sweater, Dawn picked up a larger photo of Eleanor wearing a business suit and posing in a studio setting, obviously for some kind of professional headshot. “And what exactly did Ellie do, Mrs. O’Connell?”

“She was a senior finance manager for a global technology conglomerate.”

They’d already known that, but maybe the elderly woman would reveal something more. . . .

“Ambitious,” Mrs. O’Connell continued, “and smart enough to have gotten to such a position at thirty-two. Made a fine salary. Ellie was particularly adept at investing her personal funds, so she lived high, that one.”

Eleanor’s obituary had also said she’d died tragically about a year ago, drowning in a hot tub in her stately Kensington flat. She’d been intoxicated, and Dawn was anxious to ease into that topic.

Mrs. O’Connell bent near Dawn. “Did you find your friend in any photos?”

“Not so far.”

Their hostess looked the snapshots over, then clicked her tongue, weeding out a couple of pictures that had been peeking from under the first layer. “You aren’t interested in these.”

On top, she held a polished, full-length picture of what seemed like a school photo for a young Eleanor. But along with the same freckles and delicate features, there seemed to be something slightly off-kilter with this particular image: maybe the wider-set eyes, maybe the less sincere smile.

And she was wearing a skirt with a white shirt and a red tie.

Hadn’t Kiko mentioned that the girls in Justin’s vision had been wearing ties?

“Ellie had a uniform for school?” Dawn asked.

“Oh.” Mrs. O’Connell gazed at the photo, her blue eyes going cool. “This is her sister, Briana, not Ellie herself.”

Kiko scrambled over Natalia to see the picture. Mrs. O’Connell gave it to him, and he settled back into place, Natalia brushing her lap off to straighten her pantsuit.

When he looked back at Dawn, his eyes sparkled, and she knew, just
knew
, that he’d recognized Briana from the group of possible vamp girls in his Justin vision.

Now, if only Justin hadn’t been imagining those fangs he’d seen on the leader of those girls while he was in a drug-induced haze. . . .

A vein throbbed in Dawn’s neck, the beat echoing in her head.

Mrs. O’Connell considered the picture of Briana. “The older students at Briana’s school don’t have to wear uniforms, but evidently she and her friends had their own way of dressing. You know how it can be with a crowd of like-minded girls—the same hairstyles, the same jewelry . . . anything to show you’re a part of them.”

A group of girls with the same clothes, Dawn thought. And maybe the same kind of teeth, too.

Their hostess went on. “Ellie, herself, did wear a uniform in the early years at the Kings High School near Bath. They had a top-notch modern languages program there. However, the girls’ parents sent Briana to Queenshill near St. Albans because of their arts courses. She was quite adept at sculpting in particular, and she begged her parents to consider that in their choice of institutions. Where Ellie and Briana were concerned, that’s the best their parents ever did, of course, with all their world hopping and leaving their daughters to boarding at school instead of providing a true home. Now that I think of it, it’s no wonder the girls had such wanderlust.”

One word in particular stuck in Dawn’s mind.
Queenshill.

If Briana was hanging around with schoolgirl vampires, guess where the team’s next appointment should be?

Dawn hated to take advantage of Mrs. O’Connell’s clear naïveté and willingness to help, yet it was time to bring out the massive fibbing guns. “You know, we did see Briana’s name mentioned in our paperwork, but it was just a first name and we weren’t sure how to contact her. Did the sisters share friends? I know they don’t seem very close in age, but is there a possibility that our Sara could have contacted
Briana
at any time?”

“We want to look into any connections,” Kiko said.

Natalia stayed quiet.

But Mrs. O’Connell was all about sharing. “Oh, Ellie and Briana didn’t socialize within the same circles. They didn’t ever see each
other
.”

Her cheerfulness had clouded over, and she went for her chair, fairly sinking into it. “They were sixteen years apart, those two. When their parents died overseas on a small plane flight during yet another holiday, Ellie became Briana’s guardian. Ellie’s career, which required constant travel, allowed her to cover Briana’s schooling fees, so it was a trade-off in many ways—Briana’s education at the price of Ellie’s absence. So you would think Briana would show interest in visiting with Ellie when she stopped in London, wouldn’t you?”

“You’d think,” Dawn said.

“Yet,” Mrs. O’Connell added, “neither sister went out of her way to see the other. Strangely, though, when Ellie perished, it was a surprise to hear how Briana carried on.”

“And how was that?” Kiko asked.

“Why, she ran off, as if she were more upset about her sister’s death than anyone ever guessed she might be.”

“She . . . ran off?”
To an Underground?
Dawn thought. “You mean she disappeared? Never heard from again?”

“Yes,” their hostess said. “Now, I never saw Briana much myself—she preferred school to the company of an old cousin—but Ellie always said she was a temperamental child. Very much ruled by her emotions.”

Next to Dawn, Natalia gasped. When Dawn looked at her, the new girl was staring at the ceiling.

She was hearing something again.

“There are times . . .” Mrs. O’Connell started to say before stopping herself. “My. Here I am, indeed sounding dotty.”

“Not at all,” Dawn said. “Say anything that comes to mind. We’re very interested.”

The elderly woman folded her veined hands in her lap, then smiled, as if seeking reassurance. “If I told you that Briana won’t allow me to sleep some nights, would you think me daft?”

Dawn glanced at Natalia, who gave her a look in return. She
was
hearing something again.

Kiko slid off the couch. “Mrs. O’Connell, we don’t think you’re daft. And, actually . . . I’m going to be honest with you.”

Oh, oh—Dawn could see some turbo bullshit headed their way.

“I get ‘feelings,’ too,” Kiko said. “What I mean is that our friend Sara came to me in a dream, and she told us that her passing wasn’t peaceful, that she needed help to move on. That’s why we traveled over here all the way from the States—because we know she isn’t resting easy and we have the resources to see that she does.” Kiko paused,
acting!
at its finest. “We would’ve done anything for Sara. We will do anything.”

Mrs. O’Connell had her hand to her chest, sympathy lining every wrinkle.

“We didn’t tell you,” Kiko added, “because we thought you’d think we were crazy and wouldn’t let us in the door.”

The elderly woman shook her head. “No, not at all. I understand more than you’ll ever know.” A faint smile lit over her lips. “I still hear my husband’s music. I feel it.”

Kiko nodded, and Dawn wondered if he or Natalia could see any telltale lights around Mrs. O’Connell—signs that the Mr. might still be with her.

Dawn gestured to the picture their hostess still held. “What do you mean by saying Briana won’t let you sleep some nights? Do you think she’s trying to communicate with you?”

“Yes, but . . .” Mrs. O’Connell’s voice fell to a whisper. “I hear her when the moon is out and all is quiet. She tells me she has no place to go. No place to settle but here. I’m her closest living relative, you see.”

Good God. Were a vampy Briana and her group of fangy buddies wandering over to Mrs. O’Connell’s some nights, using preternatural mind games on the sweet old lady?

Why would they do that?

“Mrs. O’Connell,” Dawn asked, “do you think Briana is still even alive?”

Her color receded, her skin seeming withered now. “I hired a private investigator when Briana first disappeared. He didn’t come up with a thing. Not a thing. So I truly don’t know where she might be or in what sort of state.”