Biting Bad_ A Chicagoland Vampires Novel(93)

I popped out the earbud and handed it to him. “Give this to them, so you have someone immediately accessible. I’ll call you if I find anything.”

“Thank you,” he said, his relief obvious.

“No problem. This is what partners are for.”

I just hoped I could find out something that helped him—and Brooklyn.

—

Brooklyn’s brownstone was in Wicker Park, not far from Mallory’s. It was narrow from front to back, and had windows along one side of the front façade. The windows were dark. A set of covered brick stairs on the other side led into the building.

I got out of the car and headed up the sidewalk. The front door was locked tight, so I pulled out the keys Jonah had given me, selecting the one I thought looked most like a building key.

“Sorry for the intrusion, Brooklyn,” I quietly said, then slipped it into the lock and felt the tumblers shift and drop.

The door popped open, revealing a small foyer with a rack of mailboxes that led to a staircase. So the brownstone had been parceled into apartments.

I walked inside and pulled the door shut behind me, feeling a little like the heroine in a caper movie. On the lookout for prying eyes, I quietly climbed the stairs, which squeaked beneath my feet like unintentional intruder alarms.

I heard steps on the landing above me and faked nonchalance as a guy in his twenties passed me on the stairs. He smiled, just a little.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” I said, politely but without interest, hoping that would be the end of it. When the door opened and closed downstairs, I breathed again.

Brooklyn’s door was at the top of the landing, the brass “2” hanging sideways beside the “B.” I unlocked the door and stepped inside, closing it quietly behind me again.

The apartment was nice, but small, with hardwood floors and arched passageways. The furniture was sparse, mostly vintage, but good quality. Nice chests of drawers and buffet tables, a long, low couch with a built-in table at one end. There was an inset area along one wall that probably would have held an old-fashioned telephone back in the day. Today, it held a vase of wilted flowers. Whatever had gone wrong, maybe it hadn’t gone wrong here.

Otherwise, the apartment looked completely normal. Not too tidy, not too messy.

A kitchen was tucked beside the living room. The refrigerator was ancient, but humming steadily. I pulled it open. It was bare, but for two unopened bottles of blood and milk two days past its expiration.

A carton of orange juice sat on the counter. I picked it up and found it empty. An empty glass sat nearby.

I stepped on the trash can’s pedal and peeked inside. It was empty. No evidence of drugs or empty bottles of juice from a “cleanse” that might have explained Brooklyn’s condition.

Floors creaking beneath me, I walked back into the living room, and then into the small hallway off to the side. There was a small bathroom, mostly clean. The medicine cabinet held the usual suspects. Toothpaste, mouthwash, lotion . . . but there were no mysterious “medicines” a vampire wouldn’t have needed, in any event.

Thinking the bedroom was at the other end of the hallway, I tiptoed across the wooden slats, which creaked beneath my feet, and peeked inside. The bed was unmade, the sheets tossed around as if Brooklyn had had a few bad nights of sleep. The room smelled unwashed, as though the odors of many nights of sweaty bodies had collected there.

So she got sick, lay down in the bed, and didn’t get up for days? How could that happen to a vampire?

I wandered back into the living room. How did a woman who seemed otherwise healthy just stop eating and drinking? As a vampire, her bloodlust should have kicked in long before she got to her current state. She’d have been biologically driven to drink, even if she didn’t have the emotional capacity for it. I’d have expected a blood-drinking frenzy—even attacks on her neighbors—instead of the normalcy I’d found.

I looked around the room, searching for anything that might give me a hint about her condition, or the “medicine” she’d ingested.

I spied a pile of mail on a table behind the couch and walked over to inspect it. I flipped through the stack but found only bills, magazines, and solicitations from charities. Nothing that hinted about a problem.

A postcard fell from the stack that I tried to rearrange on the table in its previous position. I bent down to pick it up, when a glint of something on the carpet caught my eye.

I put the postcard back on the table and walked closer.

There, in the middle of her living room rug, was a silver and glass syringe, with an old-fashioned plunger of two circles of metal pressed together.

I was smart enough not to touch evidence with my bare hands. I walked back to the kitchen and searched through drawers until I found a box of zip-top plastic bags. I took one, apologizing for my thievery, and walked back to the living room.