All I Want for Christmas is a Vampire(14)

 

Howard chuckled. "Made a good impression, did he? Look, he's not showing up on any of my monitors, so you'll have to find him and make sure he's all right."

 

"I'm sure he's fine. Where would he go? He's dead. That sorta cuts down on his mobility."

 

"Yes, but we're responsible for these guys during the day. You can't guard a corpse if you don't know where it is. So find him."

 

Toni groaned silently. There were five floors in this townhouse, six counting the basement, more than eighteen bedrooms, and a bunch of bathrooms and closets. It would take all morning to search the whole place.

 

"I'll call back in ten minutes." Howard hung up.

 

Ten minutes? Toni dropped her phone into the pocket of the men's trousers she was wearing, and still barefoot, she rushed into the hall. He wasn't conveniently sprawled out dead in the hallway, so she would have to hunt him down.

 

She jogged down the stairs to the ground floor. She didn't expect to see him here, but there were surveillance cameras in the foyer and the kitchen, and she knew Howard would expect to see her pass by in her search.

 

She'd been hired on a probationary status for two weeks, and Connor had warned her that the cameras in the townhouse were linked to monitors in White Plains. In other words, she was watched constantly to make sure she could be trusted. As if she would ever try to harm one of the Vamps.

 

Connor had stressed the fact that once she took the vow to protect Vamps, that vow would be sacred. The cost of betrayal was severe and final. If she incurred their wrath, there would be no place to hide where they couldn't find her. Her body would never be found. Then he'd proceeded to tell her about the great medical/dental plan, high-yield money market accounts, and vacation opportunities that MacKay Security and Investigation offered its employees.

 

Under normal circumstances, she would have chosen option number one: having her memory erased so she could return to her normal life. But circumstances weren't normal, so she'd gritted her teeth and taken the vow.

 

Ian was not to be found on the ground floor, so she headed down to the guardroom in the basement. Her gaze flickered to the couch by the wall. Nope, not there. She glanced up at the surveillance camera and shook her head.

 

She paused by the door of the dormitory. She was required to check this room four times a day, but it still gave her the chills. Well, not the room so much, but the dead bodies inside. She took a deep breath and entered.

 

Dougal was on his back in his coffin, wearing an old-fashioned nightshirt that reached his knees and looked a bit like the nightgown her grandma used to wear.

 

Phineas was sprawled across his twin-sized bed, wearing nothing but red silk boxer shorts. Toni glanced at the framed photos on his bedside table. An elderly woman and a young girl and boy, most probably the aunt and younger siblings he talked about. She wondered if they knew he'd been transformed into a vampire almost two years ago.

 

She peeked inside the bathroom and winced at the towels and clothes littering the floor. Thank God she didn't have to clean up after them. There was a Vamp-owned maid service that came in at night. Her gaze landed on a stack of girlie magazines in a basket. Aack! What pigs.

 

She jogged up the back stairs to the ground floor, then went up another flight on the grand staircase. There were no surveillance cameras on the top four floors, so at least she didn't have the uncomfortable feeling of being watched. She sprinted past her bedroom to check the remaining five bedrooms on the second floor. Then she rushed through all the bedrooms on the third floor. With time running short, she dashed through the rooms on the fourth floor.

 

Dammit, he wasn't in any of them! She checked the last bedroom with a growing sense of doom. She even looked in the closet. Had she made a mistake by not checking all the closets below?

 

Cum on feel the noize! She jumped and dug the phone out of her pocket. "Howard?"

 

"Toni, have you found him yet?"

 

"No." She was breathing heavily from all the running about. "I've searched every floor. Except the fifth one."

 

"Check it out."

 

She blinked. Connor had warned her not to venture into Roman Draganesti's private office and bedroom. Apparently the big kahuna still had some stuff there. Probably a skeleton in the closet. "I thought that floor was off-limits."

 

"Normally yes, but we can't go all day without knowing where Ian is. So go look around." Howard hung up.

 

She dropped the phone in her pocket and climbed the stairs. On the top landing, she discovered two doors that flanked an oil painting of some ruins. She tried the door on the right. It opened.