I frowned at him, took my tea, and led the way back to the elevator. I was getting tired of Eli following, protecting, and taking care of me. I wanted to do something to shake things up, shake him up. Okay, I was grouchy. Maybe it was the caffeine or the lack of sleep, but whatever. I sipped the tea, trying to remember why I was grouchy. I really did need sleep.
* * *
The main elevator opened on the huge storage room, which took up most of sub-four’s floor space. Eli and I stepped off and the elevator doors closed, the cage going back up.
The room was dry, thanks to the witch spells that kept groundwater from seeping in, and was well lit, well ventilated, and packed full of vamp stuff. There were paintings stacked in front of paintings, in every corner and along the bookcases, which themselves were filled with thousands of books and manuscripts, trunks, wooden boxes, heavy cardboard boxes, hat boxes, wig boxes, and various stuff collected by the vamps who had come through HQ for centuries. There were steamer trunks on the floor, lamps, birdcages, jewel boxes, suitcases, and photograph albums. It was disorganized enough to look like a bad episode of Hoarders, and took up most of the subbasement. There were tons of . . . junk. And history. And . . . stuff.
I wandered to the right, sipping, through trails between piles of very expensive and valuable junk, now following Eli toward the paintings that were stacked in front of the safe. “So did you ever figure out if there’s a system to the junk stored here? Maybe a caretaker?” I asked.
“Bethany,” Eli said, humor in his tone.
“Bethany. Crazy-as-a-bedbug Bethany. Bethany, who was somehow involved with the Son of Darkness before, during, or after he was injured? That Bethany?”
“One and the same. Seems that once upon a time, she was sane. Ish.”
I sighed, stopped in front of the paintings, and stared at them, stretching my shoulders. I drained the teacup and set it on top of a flat-topped trunk, immediately forgetting it. The lack of sleep had caught up with me. My brain had shut down. But the paintings drew me.
I knew a lot of people in them. Satan’s Three, dressed in the height of fashion back in the days of poufy drawers and tights, now dead. The Three and their maker, Le Bâtard, a vamp I hoped to kill someday. And Adrianna, now gibbering on the floor of Leo’s special scion room. Her I’d killed more than once, yet she just kept coming back, over and over again. Next time I’d take her head before Leo could stop me. The promise was growing old.
Eli began moving paintings. I stood and watched as paintings of Leo and Katie emerged. In one, they were wearing what might have been the height of style for the late seventeen hundreds, the couple shown standing on a steamboat, black smoke belching into the night sky. Leo was looking at Katie with lust in his eyes. Katie was laughing. She had been in love with Leo for a long time. I wondered if he really understood that.
There was a painting from the last century, of Grégoire and Dominique. The two blonds stood in front of scarlet draperies, Dominique in risqué stockings and garter belt, corset, and little else, Grégoire wearing a black tuxedo and big fluffy tie. Cravat. Whatever. And a top hat. His arm was around Dominique and she was bent back, chest outthrust, one knee raised to curl around his legs, staring at him, in love with him, just as Katie was in love with Leo. Leo and Grégoire had no idea. Men . . .
Eli slid the painting across the floor, exposing the safe. “It’s a Victor Safe and Lock, the company out of Cincinnati, Ohio. This one was patented in 1904, which we knew. The two front doors are composed of layers of steel, six inches thick, sealed with a combination lock. Inside, if it’s built according to the usual style, it has five inner doors of drawers, two on top, three smaller ones on bottom, each with its own combination lock and its own combination.” He held out a hand and I placed the keys and numbers in his palm. Eli went to work.
“I need more caffeine,” I said, toneless and wan, as Eli managed to get the outer doors open to reveal the inner doors and drawers. My fingertips were tingling from exhaustion.
“This will wake you up. Remember that necklace on Brute?” Eli asked.
I slid my eyes from the dark metal of the safe to Eli. “I’m sleepy, not brain-dead.”
Eli grinned, looking as fresh as a daisy. Dang him. “The data on the jump drives was mostly recoverable. Alex started cleaning them up and did a cursory search of a couple of them.”
That woke me up. “And?”
“They were Reach’s data files. Or some of them at least. Best idea on how the Son of Darkness got them is that he took them off one of his rescuers. No idea how they got them. Alex is downloading, collating, and upgrading our information system. Soon we’ll have at least some of Reach’s information at his fingertips. Then it’s just a matter of reading everything so we know what we have. Which will take time, but it has Alex’s total attention.”
“I love your brother,” I said.
“Cougar.”
“Am so.”
CHAPTER 22
Cast into the Day
According to Alex, who was read into the current action on Eli’s headset, the safe was a standard design for this model, with thick outer doors and five inner compartments. Leo’s combination numbers worked on only three of the inner doors, however. Someone had changed two of them; the right upper and center lower drawers were unavailable to us. The left upper contained velvet and leather bags that looked perfect for holding magical toys, but they held only gems and gold coins, none of which felt or smelled of magic. My life was totally off any kind of solid foundation when a fortune in gems and gold was uninteresting.
I counted the bags. Seven dark blue velvet bags contained rough, uncut gems, three red velvet bags contained faceted gems, mostly diamonds and bright red rubies, which vamps adored, and two padded silk bags contained pearls as big as my thumbnail, which Eli proclaimed were South Sea pearls and worth a fortune. I didn’t ask how he knew that. Courtesy of Uncle Sam, he had traveled the world and he knew lots of things I never would. The leather bags held the gold, some of which had been minted into uneven coins stamped with Spanish words and old-fashioned heads that Eli said were likely from the time of the Spanish invasion of the Americas. One bag held old earrings and bracelets etched and pressed with symbols that might have been Aztec or Mayan. Not counting the archeological value, I guessed the weight of the gold to be around ten pounds; Leo had his own bank. We put everything back where we found it and closed that compartment.