Turning away from the vista of bare tree limbs and dead leaves on the ground, he pictured what the porch would have been like some ninety years ago, the beds plugged into docking stations as if they were rowboats in danger of drifting off on the current of the wind.
He’d seen the pictures, down in the records room in the basement. He’d read the logs of the dead—or at least flipped through them.
He felt as helpless as those haunted patients had in those old black-and-white photographs, nothing to look forward to, no choices to be had, no future to speak of.
Sick of himself, sick of the place, sick of . . . everything, Lucan took himself back inside. As always, before he could leave the floor, he had to look at the patient room directly across the way. 518.
Unlike the treatment spaces in the front of the building, these back rooms had no access to any porch, just a single window. Same beds, though. No tables or stools, however.
During his perusals of the records room, he’d learned that the back side was where the people who were going to die were moved to. No reason to try the therapy of the air, anymore. Had they known what the shift across the hall meant?
They had to have known.
Just like he’d known when his cousins had come to him with that look in their eyes . . . he’d known they were going to kill him and he had been ready for the fight.
Except instead, they’d framed him for the murder of a vampire so they could get him permanently out of the way without having any blood on their hands.
Cowards. They’d always been cowards.
Lucan walked off to the stairs that ran down the terminal of the wing. After he pulled open the creaky fire door, he jogged the descent, dodging the debris in the stairwell, the empty, faded beer cans, melted candles, and dingy red balls that the humans thought the ghosts of the children would move cluttering the way.
With every step, he thought of that human woman in the alley.
How could she be involved in such a horrible business?
And no, he wasn’t being sexist.
Even an asshole like him wouldn’t have a damn thing to do with drugging if he’d had a choice.
But maybe she didn’t, either. Maybe she was just like him. Trapped.
She was playing a dangerous game, though. It was one thing to be on the supply side, like he was. Distribution on the streets was how people got killed, and she was in the thick of it.
Then again, she’d walked away from being hit by a car like she was Wonder Woman.
Clearly, she was immortal.
Rio came awake with a gasp and a jerk that brought her head up. Before she could focus on where she was, a quick physical inventory commanded her full attention: She had a screaming pain in the back of her skull, a gag was in her mouth, and she couldn’t move her arms or her legs— She was in a chair. She was tied to a straight-backed chair with her hands behind her and her ankles locked in place.
And there was water falling in front of her.
Water? Wait . . . was that a fountain?
As she blinked to get her eyes to work properly, the inconceivable became improbable . . . which then transitioned into the yes-that’sactual: It appeared that there was, in fact, a white marble fountain about five feet in front of all her going-nowhere, and the details were getting clearer by the moment. From its wide basin to the stylized, carved carp in the center that was standing on its tail and arcing water out of its mouth, the fixture seemed like the kind of thing that belonged in a castle or museum.
What do you know, the rest of the room was just as fancy, great lengths of lemon-yellow silk pulled shut over what she guessed were tall, thin windows, the floor a black-and-white chessboard of marble squares, the walls covered with painted murals of pastoral scenes.
But what did the decor matter. Whether she was in a Versailleswannabe or a trap house, she needed to get out of here.
Pulling at her hands, straining to kick her legs free, she got a catalogue of all kinds of pain. She had a sharpshooter in her neck, like her head had been slumped mostly to the left, and her shoulders were screaming, as were the tops of her thighs. Everything below the knee was numb on both sides, and it was a toss-up whether that was good or bad. Probably bad, because she was going to have to make a run for it and she knew if she couldn’t feel her feet, that wasn’t going to go well.
Twisting her wrists, she got nowhere, and her ankles were so immobile, it was like they were going to have to be surgically removed from the spindles of the— “You’re awake.”
Rio’s eyes flared. Mozart?
The voice was coming from directly behind her; except when she went to look over her shoulder, she saw nothing but more of the decorations. Glancing in the other direction, the same was true—and she had the sense he was stepping out of her view, keeping himself hidden.
Like he always did.
A hand snaked around in front of her face and removed the gag. “I’m sorry if your Uber lift was a little rough.”
Rio took a huge breath. And then another.
“It wasn’t the ride,” she said hoarsely. “And if you’d wanted to meet me, I could have just come over.”
“But then you’d know where I live.”
They were going to kill her. Even seeing this one room of Mozart’s house was too much for his hyper-privacy routine.
“Ever hear of a blindfold?” Her words were slurring, and she deliberately let them run together. “Or if you don’t want to out your address, we could have met somewhere neutral.”
“I prefer to have people come to me.”
“No you don’t. You refuse to meet with anyone in person.”
“Well, let’s just say your unique charms seduced me.”
Staying out of her sight, he moved around, hard-soled shoes sounding sharp over the hard stone floor. As the man paced, she searched for anything with a reflective surface. The fountain wasn’t any help, but there was an ornate fireplace set with unburned birch logs—and on its mantel, there was a fancy golden clock that was operational. By tilting her head, she could almost catch a reflection in the circular glass that covered the face.
She didn’t get very far with an ID, though.
“So you’ve created a problem for me,” Mozart murmured.