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Chapter Seven
~Claire~
Tears pricked at my eyes as Booker read aloud from the carvings on the far side of the sarcophagus. The resting place of Victor Galt, a vampire who loved his mate so completely, that when she was ripped from him he gave up everything to avoid spending even a single day more without her by his side.
“And thus is the impetus,” Booker continued, his fingers following along as he finished this vampire’s tale. “Of my imprisonment for all time. I can only hope that my torpor will give way to true death, and that…”
Booker looked up at me, his eyes wide as he trailed off.
“What?” I asked, my brow furrowing as Mindi leaned over her husband to read where he had paused.
“Oh my God,” Mindi whispered, a smile pulling at her lips as she too turned to stare at me.
“What?” I asked again.
“I can only hope,” Booker repeated, turning back to the story. “That my torpor will give way to true death and that Claire DuBois and I will be reunited in the hereafter, so that I may offer my soul to her to replace the one ripped from her.”
I stared at Booker, my brain not willing to fully process what he’d said for a few moments. Then, as it sunk in thatmyname was Claire DuBois, I felt myself shaking my head violently.
“Obviously it’s not me,” I insisted. “I’m very much human. As are my parents and both sets of grandparents. Believe me, plenty of monsters have dug into my past, wanting to claim me as one of their own. It’s just not true.”
“Who were you named after?” Trudi asked softly. “A distant relative perhaps?”
I thought about her question, unable to recall anyone ever mentioning that I was named after someone at all. It wasn’t as if Claire was an unusual name. It had to be just one of those freaky coincidences.
“This is crazy,” I said finally. “Clearly it’s just some kind of cosmic fluke that his soul mate and I share a name.”
A rumble of thunder sounded outside the cave, and I shot a dirty look at the coffin as if it had personally offended me.
“Oh, shut up,” I hissed, rolling my eyes. “Can we please focus on the actual situation?”
“Which is?” Colton asked, his tone thick with humor as he turned to raise an eyebrow at me.
“You have a centuries old vampire locked in torpor in the middle of your island,” I reminded him. “One that, if the spells are to be believed, will stay that way until his soulmate returns.” I looked between the people around the sarcophagus who just stared back at me. “What are we going to do with it?”
“Right,” Colton said, as if that hadn’t occurred to him until I spelled it out. “What do you suggest?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “We can transport everything to the Monster Museum in Dublin. It would remove the threat from your island, if this is in fact what is causing your storms. I’m leery of leaving it here, to be honest. I have no doubt your guests will be respectful, but a tomb in the middle of an island is too tempting to trust that someone won’t mess with the things in here.”
“Or,” Candi suggested, her eyes sparkling even in the dim light of the tomb. “We can open it and reunite him with you!”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Booker said, his tone a warning. “What we are definitely sure of is that inside this coffin is a vampire that has been laying in torpor for almost two hundred years. Whether or not Claire is some kind of reincarnation of his lost soul mate, we cannot risk waking him in the presence of a human.”
“Right,” Colton agreed. “Perhaps we should exercise a brand of caution that I feel is beyond the abilities of the LaFey triplets and leave things as they are for now.”
“Hey!” Candi yelled as Mindi and Trudi both stuck their tongues out at Colton.
“I agree,” I said. “I’d like to spend some time looking into the history of Victor Galt and the actual Claire DuBois. See if I can find any information about them.”
“An excellent idea,” Colton agreed. “We should head back to the resort, together. Claire, anything you need I will make available to you.”
“Thank you.” I gathered my stuff and slid my backpack over my shoulder before following the monster parade out of the tomb and back to the resort.
The moment I was back in my room, I dug out my laptop and started digging into the history of Victor Galt and Claire DuBois. I hadn’t expected to find much publicly available, considering it had been so long ago, and monsters were quite adept at hiding even two hundred years ago.
Fortunately, I was able to find mentions of them both in old records of French-Canadian genealogy reports. From there, I was able to track down property ownerships and discover that Victor Galt was the original owner of Isle Aux Monstres. He was listed as Victor Galt VI, but as I dug deeper into the digitized records kept in the Monster Museum, it seemed that every few decades, Victor added a number, as if he were his own son. Which was a common practice for immortals and was sometimes still employed today.
There was not much on Claire at all, which probably just meant that she hadn’t been of public importance as much as Victor had been. There was just a footnote in a newspaper clipping that Victor’s bride-to-be had perished in a fire on his farm.
After firing off an email to the museum curator, requesting any further records that might not be available online, I glanced at the clock to see that I’d worked through dinner, and it was nearing midnight already.
Sleep felt more important than food, so I changed into my pajamas, crawled under the covers, and closed my eyes. Once I was deep into a mystery like this, it was easy for me to ignore things like food and sleep, but having slept so fitfully the night before, I knew that I’d feel better if I at least tried for a few hours.
Victor and Claire would still be waiting for me in the morning.
