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And he didn’t like it, which no doubt meant there was something wrong. Something we should check out.
I stopped just inside the door, my bottom lip caught between my teeth as my gaze swept the room. The furnishings—though sparse—were of good quality. The main living area was L-shaped, with a kitchen tucked in the shorter end of the room. There was a hallway to my right, with a number of doors leading off it.
I couldn’t see anything out of place, nor could I hear anything or anyone. Which I guess wasn’t surprising; Azriel had already said there was no one here. I flexed my fingers, then headed into the hallway. A quick check revealed two bedrooms—one messier than the other—a bathroom, and a small laundry with a door leading out into an even smaller courtyard. There was nothing odd to be found, and no sense that Vonda had, in any way, feared for her life.
But then, neither had Dorothy Hendricks, and our hunter had been bleeding her to death here while burning a brand into her forehead on the astral plane.
I retreated back through the living room and went into the kitchen. It was small, neat, and filled with the latest in cookware—which was an odd thing for a vampire to have.
I crossed my arms and walked over to the front window, staring at the back of the first house. The back door was ajar and there was no security or wire door in place. Which seemed odd with a small child in the house, even if he was asleep.
Is the woman still standing where she was? I asked.
She has not moved since we appeared on the other side of the street.
Which was not normal behavior. Not for the mother of a small child. Sitting, I could understand. Even catching a nap. But simply standing there like a zombie? I’m sure looking after a young child made mothers the world over sometimes feel like the rambling dead, but this was definitely something stranger.
I swung around and headed for the front door. “Rhoan, I’m going to talk to the people in the first house, and see if they can tell me about Vonda’s recent movements.”
“Be careful.” His voice reverberated inside my earlobes and made me jump. I hadn’t actually realized the connection was two-way. Which meant he could tell me off if I did something wrong—just what I needed.
I crossed the little patch of sunshine between the two houses, then pressed my fingertips against the rear door and carefully opened it. The small laundry was filled with clothes—some in clean stacks on top of the washer, others in sorted piles on the floor. The door of the front loader was ajar, and half filled with dark clothing. She’d obviously been in the middle of loading when she’d decided to move into the living room and stare out the window.
Odder and odder.
I stepped over the piles and stopped at the next doorway. The only sound to be heard was the gentle ticking of a clock coming from the right. The air was rich with the scent of humanity, but underneath it ran something else—something sharper.
Fear.
Tension tightened through me. I flexed my shoulders, but it did as little as flexing my fingers had earlier. To the left was a hallway with several doors leading off it. If the layout of this house was similar to the other, then they’d be the bathroom and bedrooms. I hesitated, then padded softly to the first door and carefully pushed it open. A small child lay still and silent on a cot. For a moment I thought he was dead, and it felt like someone had punched me in the gut. Then I noted the slow rise and fall of his chest. Asleep, as Azriel had said. Whether it was natural or something else was the question that needed to be answered.
I closed the child’s bedroom door and stared at the next one. Though I had no doubt that the father would also be asleep, I couldn’t escape the notion that I had to check. That I had to confirm whether this sleep was natural.
Of course, if it was, I’d feel like a complete and utter idiot. Not to mention how furious he’d be about being woken by a complete stranger.
Trust your instincts, Azriel commented. There is something odd here, as I have said. Their minds have been . . . touched, although whether by drugs or telepathic intervention, I cannot say.
But you usually can sense it, so why not here? I walked to the other bedroom door and opened it. A fully clothed man lay stretched out on the queen-sized bed, his hands—resting on his chest—rising and falling with each breath.
If this is telepathic interference, it is only very minor, and that is often hard to catch or define.
Meaning what? That someone has simply forced them to sleep? Why in the hell would anyone want that?
He didn’t answer, but I really wasn’t expecting him to. I walked over to the bed and lightly touched the man’s shoulder. He didn’t react in any way.
I pinched his cheek. Nothing. I pinched harder, but the result was the same. This definitely wasn’t a natural sleep. “You seeing this, Rhoan?”
“Yeah. And I’m liking it a whole lot less. Check the third person.”
I spun and headed down to the kitchen. It was less tidy than Vonda’s, with baby bottles in various states of cleanliness scattered over the sink and a half-made sandwich sitting on the counter.
I kept walking into the living room. The woman was still standing at the side window, but as I entered, she slowly turned to face me.
Shock hit like a hammer, and I stopped.
Burned into the woman’s forehead was a raw and bleeding K-shaped mark.
It was the exact same mark that had been burned into Dorothy Hendricks’s forehead just before she’d died.
