“Of course I can.” I forced a smile. “Thank you for showing me the paintings, Mrs. Johnson.”
“Anytime, dear.” Sunny’s mother wandered off, leaving me alone with the man.
“I’m Catlyn Youngblood,” I said. “I work across the street.”
“You’re the girl Martha hired, of course. I’m Nancy’s husband, Jack.” He sighed. “I’m sorry if my wife frightened you. She’s … not herself.”
“You don’t have to apologize, sir,” I assured him. “I shouldn’t have bothered her.”
“Let me walk you out.” As he did, he looked back a few times, and as soon as I left he turned the OPEN sign over to CLOSED and pulled down the door blind.
I hurried across the street and let myself into the bookstore. Only when I’d locked the door behind me did I let out the breath I’d been holding. “No more window shopping,” I told myself as I went to take care of the alarm.
The unnerving encounter with Sunny’s mother left me with a jumpy feeling I couldn’t shake. I didn’t understand why at first, until I took my tally sheets into Mrs. Frost’s office and switched on the computer. That reminded me of the day in the school media center, when Barb Riley had sabotaged one of the computers and almost got me in trouble for it. At the time I hadn’t known how disturbed Barb was. Seeing me with Aaron Boone on Halloween night had somehow pushed her over the edge, and she’d attacked, almost killing Boone and Jesse in the process.
The way Mrs. Johnson had talked to me about Sunny had made her sound a lot like Barb when she’d talked about Boone. I was no shrink, but even I could see that Sunny’s mother was seriously losing her grip on reality.
Although Jesse had been taking care of the computer data entry part of my job, I needed something to focus on, and so I sat down and got started on the first tally sheet. Working with the numbers helped me stop thinking about the dreadful events of Halloween night, and I decided to keep working until Jesse showed up.
An hour later I finished entering the counts from the last sheet, but still, no Jesse.
He told me that he might not be able to come every night, I thought as I went to the fridge and retrieved my dinner. His parents must have wanted him to stay in tonight.
Seeing Jesse almost every day had spoiled me, and I refused to sulk. I called home to check in with Trick, who told me that from now on either he or Gray would be picking me up at the store.
“I haven’t had any problems walking from the store to the bus stop,” I reminded him. “I’m also not stupid or careless.”
My brother wouldn’t budge. “This is how we’re going to do it until they find those girls.”
Once I tidied the office I went back to the storeroom to look at the bins. I really didn’t want to work on the collection by myself, but I was already two days ahead of schedule on the shelf counts.
I walked back out and stood over the tunnel hatch. To avoid getting caught Jesse and I had been staying in the store; I hadn’t been back down in the tunnels since that first night.
He never told me I couldn’t go by myself, I reasoned, and thought of the storage closet in Jesse’s underground vault. Maybe I can see what sort of art supplies he already has, so I’ll know what he doesn’t need.
I took care to go down the ladder slowly—the last thing I needed to do was fall and knock myself out—and followed the tunnels in the direction I thought would lead me to Jesse’s vault room. To my surprise I didn’t get lost or take a wrong turn; my feet seemed to know the way there.
Once I walked inside Jesse’s work room, I felt immediately better. I could almost feel him there, as if he’d spent so much time in that place that he’d left behind an imprint on every object in the room. Even picking up the jacket he’d left draped on the back of his desk chair gave me a little thrill, especially when I held it up to my nose and smelled the sweet-spicy scent he’d left on the material.
“When you start sniffing his clothes,” I told the shelf of carved birds, “you know you’re stupid in love.”
I had forgotten one thing: the door to the storage closet was locked. For the first time I also realized how strange that was. If no one but his parents and Sheriff Yamah knew the tunnels existed, why did he have to lock up anything down here?
“It’s just a closet,” I told my overactive imagination. “Not Bluebeard’s secret room of ex-wives.”
I looked through the drawers and cubbyholes of his desk, but didn’t find a key. Then on a hunch I searched the pockets of his jacket, and found a ring of keys, all the same size and brand.
“Here we go.” I took them over to the storage closet and began trying them one after the other, until I found the right one and popped the lock.
“Catlyn?” Jesse’s voice echoed down the tunnel.
“I’m in here,” I called back. I took off the padlock, but found the door knob jammed. “Not having much luck snooping through your stuff, though.” I rattled the knob, working it back and forth. “This place is like an underground Fort Knox.”
I felt a rush of air behind me, and then a cool hand covered mine.
“I’m sorry I’m late.” He drew my hand up to his mouth and kissed it. “What are you looking for?”
“I can’t tell you.” I grinned up at him. “You’ll have to wait until Christmas morning.” Finally I felt the knob turn all the way. “What have you got in here, anyway?”
“Catlyn, don’t—”
A light came on inside the closet as the door opened, and then I saw it wasn’t a closet at all, but another room that was the same size as his work room.
A crowded room, I thought as I looked at the long rows of painted canvases leaning against the walls. He had installed wide shelves on the walls to hold more canvases, although these paintings were stacked face-down in tall piles. The shelves marched all the way up to the ceiling.
“They are not very good,” Jesse said, and took my arm. “Why don’t we go back to the shop?”
He sounded upset, and I was almost willing to believe that he was simply being shy about his art. But something told me not to go. “What’s in those crates over there?”
When he didn’t answer, I pulled away and went to look inside.
Birds, carved out of wood, filled the crate. Some had been painted, others left bare, but they looked just like the birds on the shelf in the other room.
I saw something behind the crates, and walked between two of them to a big steel cabinet. “Is this where you keep your supplies?” I was almost afraid to look inside.
“Catlyn, it’s not what you think.”
I made myself open the door, and caught a book that fell out as soon as I did. It fell open in my hands to reveal Jesse’s elegant handwriting covering both pages. I closed it and went to put it back on one of the shelves, which like the others was crammed with more journals. I knew it took me six months to completely fill a journal; Jesse had finished hundreds.
Maybe that’s why there’s so much. I came out to look at him. “How long have you been storing things down here?”
“Too long.”
I didn’t understand why he sounded so disgusted. “Jesse, why didn’t you want me to see any of this?”
“I don’t paint or carve anymore. It upset my parents.” He wouldn’t look at anything but me. “I still keep a journal, but that isn’t … part of this.”
“But this is amazing.” Why would Sarah and Paul object to what he’d done? He must have spent years filling this room. “What have you been painting, anyway?”
“Nothing of importance.”
“Well, I still want to see.” I went over to one shorter stack and picked up the canvas on top, turning it over. It showed Jesse’s parents performing their circus act. “I’ve seen this one before.” I looked at the next painting, which was the exact same scene, as was the next, and the one after that.
I stopped looking through the paintings after seeing ten more copies of the same scene. “Jesse, are they all like this?” He nodded. “Why would you paint the same over and over?”
“It is something else we share with vampires,” he said slowly. “We sometimes become obsessed.”
“You mean, like obsessive-compulsive?”
He nodded. “Those who attacked and changed us had caves filled with gold and jewels and other treasures they’d taken from the humans they’d killed. Ordinary human thieves would simply sell everything they’d stolen, but not the vampires. It was as if they could never take enough to satisfy their strange need for it.”
I studied the racks of paintings again. “And this is your version of that.”
“I’ve always been able to overcome a compulsion and stop myself after a time. But sometimes”—he gestured at the paintings—“sometimes it takes many months.”
I walked out of the room and gently closed the door. Then I looked down at the other keys on the ring. “Are there more rooms like this?”
“No. Once I conquer the compulsion, I destroy whatever I’ve accumulated.” He eyed the door. “I stopped painting last summer, and I had planned to burn these.” He shook his head. “Since meeting you I haven’t thought about them at all. Until you reached for the door, I’d forgotten they were there.”
“You never have to hide anything from me.” I looked around his work room before I met his gaze. “If this happens again, tell me. Maybe I can help.”
“You have already.” He touched my cheek. “Nothing has taken hold of me since the night we met. Being with you has changed my life.”
I wanted to believe him, but I remembered how many times he had come back to the farm, as if he couldn’t stay away. “What if I’m your latest compulsion?”
“I have considered that,” he admitted. “I know that if I were only obsessed with you, nothing could keep me away. I’d have no choice but to spend every waking hour with you.” He picked up my hand and pressed it against his heart. “I never enjoyed any of my obsessions. I’ve feared and despised them, and fought them until I finally freed myself. You were nothing like that. From that first night you were a part of me, the other half of my heart.”