Dead of Night (11 page)

“They are not very good,” Jesse said, and took my arm. “Why don't we go back to the shop?”

He sounded upset, and I was almost willing to believe that he was simply being shy about his art. But something told me not to go. “What's in those crates over there?”

When he didn't answer, I pulled away and went to look inside.

Birds, carved out of wood, filled the crate. Some had been painted, others left bare, but they looked just like the birds on the shelf in the other room.

I saw something behind the crates, and walked between two of them to a big steel cabinet. “Is this where you keep your supplies?” I was almost afraid to look inside.

“Catlyn, it's not what you think.”

I made myself open the door, and caught a book that fell out as soon as I did. It fell open in my hands to reveal Jesse's elegant handwriting covering both pages. I closed it and went to put it back on one of the shelves, which like the others was crammed with more journals. I knew it took me six months to completely fill a journal; Jesse had finished hundreds.

Maybe that's why there's so much.
I came out to look at him. “How long have you been storing things down here?”

“Too long.”

I didn't understand why he sounded so disgusted. “Jesse, why didn't you want me to see any of this?”

“I don't paint or carve anymore. It upset my parents.” He wouldn't look at anything but me. “I still keep a journal, but that isn't … part of this.”

“But this is amazing.” Why would Sarah and Paul object to what he'd done? He must have spent years filling this room. “What have you been painting, anyway?”

“Nothing of importance.”

“Well, I still want to see.” I went over to one shorter stack and picked up the canvas on top, turning it over. It showed Jesse's parents performing their circus act. “I've seen this one before.” I looked at the next painting, which was the exact same scene, as was the next, and the one after that.

I stopped looking through the paintings after seeing ten more copies of the same scene. “Jesse, are they all like this?” He nodded. “Why would you paint the same over and over?”

“It is something else we share with vampires,” he said slowly. “We sometimes become obsessed.”

“You mean, like obsessive-compulsive?”

He nodded. “Those who attacked and changed us had caves filled with gold and jewels and other treasures they'd taken from the humans they'd killed. Ordinary human thieves would simply sell everything they'd stolen, but not the vampires. It was as if they could never take enough to satisfy their strange need for it.”

I studied the racks of paintings again. “And this is your version of that.”

“I've always been able to overcome a compulsion and stop myself after a time. But sometimes”—he gestured at the paintings—“sometimes it takes many months.”

I walked out of the room and gently closed the door. Then I looked down at the other keys on the ring. “Are there more rooms like this?”

“No. Once I conquer the compulsion, I destroy whatever I've accumulated.” He eyed the door. “I stopped painting last summer, and I had planned to burn these.” He shook his head. “Since meeting you I haven't thought about them at all. Until you reached for the door, I'd forgotten they were there.”

“You never have to hide anything from me.” I looked around his work room before I met his gaze. “If this happens again, tell me. Maybe I can help.”

“You have already.” He touched my cheek. “Nothing has taken hold of me since the night we met. Being with you has changed my life.”

I wanted to believe him, but I remembered how many times he had come back to the farm, as if he couldn't stay away. “What if I'm your latest compulsion?”

“I have considered that,” he admitted. “I know that if I were only obsessed with you, nothing could keep me away. I'd have no choice but to spend every waking hour with you.” He picked up my hand and pressed it against his heart. “I never enjoyed any of my obsessions. I've feared and despised them, and fought them until I finally freed myself. You were nothing like that. From that first night you were a part of me, the other half of my heart.”

“You know I feel the same about you.” I brought his hand to my heart. Whenever we touched, our heartbeats changed rhythm, as they did now, until they beat together in sync. “I love all of you, Jesse. The good, the bad, even the obsessive-compulsive.”

He kissed me. “There is something I wanted to show you tonight.”

I went with him back into the tunnel passage, where he led me down to the very end. There the walls widened into a room filled with mechanical equipment and another ladder leading up to a grate.

Jesse jumped up to the top of the ladder, pushed the grate aside and then turned to beckon to me. “It's up here.”

I followed him up through the opening into a narrow, cylindrical space made of rough wood. He pushed against one spot, which swung out like a hatch. As I stepped through, I saw we'd been inside the hollowed-out trunk of an enormous black oak. It had been chopped off about six feet from the ground, and used to form part of an archway engulfed in vines. Big hedges flanked a stone path that wound around overgrown flower beds before it branched off in different directions, some toward the lake and others into the woods.

I looked around. “What is this place?”

“It's called the Jester's Maze.” Jesse guided me over to a small shrine made of stone and shells. Inside the shrine stood the statue of an old-fashioned clown riding backward on a big white horse. “That is Stanas, one of the circus performers who came over to America with us. He built the tunnels under the town for my parents. He created this maze, too, in secret, as a tribute to the girl he loved.” Jesse gestured to another shrine across from the clown's. A delicate bower of shell-flowers protected a sculpture of a girl holding an armful of wildflowers. The girl seemed to be smiling at the clown.

“That's so sweet. Did they get married here?”

“No.” His expression turned sad. “She was killed during the attack on our caravan.”

“How awful.” I glanced at the hedges. “He must have worked on this a long time.”

“Years. The paths go from the gardens to the woods and keep going for miles.” He crouched down to brush some dead leaves from the statue. “When my parents discovered what he had done, Stanas told them that whoever solved his maze and found its heart would discover a great treasure he'd hidden there. But no one ever has.”

“Have you looked for it?”

“A few times,” he admitted as he stood, and his expression turned rueful. “I've never been able to locate the center on my own. Perhaps there is none, and Stanas had the last laugh on us all.”

“That seems like a lot of trouble to go to, just for a practical joke.” The temptation to follow the path into the maze was almost irresistible, but I imagined the phone in the store ringing off the hook. “Come on, we have a bunch of creepy old books to catalog.”

Eleven

A
s we worked our way through another bin of Julian Hargraves's books, I told Jesse about what had happened over the weekend.

“My parents are very concerned about these missing children,” he mentioned. “My father and I checked some of the unoccupied houses in town tonight. That is why I was so late.”

“Gray told me that he dreamed of Melissa Wayne being abducted.” I related the details of what he'd said and how I'd forced him to report it anonymously. “Do you know if the sheriff has any idea what happened to these girls?”

“James believed the Johnson girl was a runaway, but now that the Waynes' daughter has vanished, he is not as convinced.” Jesse frowned at a book he'd taken out of the bin. “This will not open.”

“Don't try to force it. The pages may be stuck together.” I looked at the book, which had unmarked covers and a leather binding that looked older than it felt. “No title. Okay.” Gently I ran my fingers around the edges. “This isn't paper. It's some kind of plastic.”

“Is it a bookend?”

“I don't think so.” I felt a seam at the bottom and turned it over, locating a tab. When I tugged it the entire bottom came off. “It's a book safe.”

“What is it safe for?”

“Not that kind of safe. The kind you keep valuable stuff in.” I reached in and pulled out a tissue-wrapped package, which I carefully opened to reveal another, smaller book. “Hmmmm. Why would you hide a book inside a book?”

“It's not a book.” Jesse picked up the smaller edition and opened it to show me the writing on the pages. “It's a journal.”

I got up and looked inside the bin. “There are more of them in here.”

We unloaded the bin, which contained twelve more book safes, all with journals hidden inside.

“Julian wrote these; he signed his name inside the covers.” Jesse put them in order by the date of the first entry. “He began writing these two years ago.”

“Should we read them?” I thought of how I would feel if someone had found my journals, and felt a pang of guilt. “Or maybe we should put them back.”

“I don't think Julian would have any objections.” Jesse opened the last journal, which was half-blank, and skimmed through it until he found the final entry. “He stopped writing them last October.” He read the page. “He was very ill. His assistant thought he was dying.” He frowned. “He didn't want to go to the hospital. He fired the assistant for calling his doctor to the house.”

“No one likes to go to the hospital,” I reasoned as I picked up the first journal. “Maybe this is why he left the collection to Mrs. Frost. He didn't trust anyone else.”

“Julian was a devoted recluse,” Jesse said. “He likely didn't know anyone else.”

The first words written in the earliest journal weren't in English, so I showed him the page. “Do you know what language this is?”

“It's German. He quoted a line from Gottfried Bürger's poem ‘Lenore.'” He met my gaze. “In English it says, ‘The dead ride quick at night.'”

“Wait a minute.” I got up and went to my backpack, and brought the book I'd been reading to the table. After I flipped through the pages, I found the passage I recalled. “Bram Stoker quoted almost the same line in his book. See?” I pointed to the page.

Jesse compared them. “They are the same line. The English is different because Julian used the Ayres translation, but Stoker quoted Rossetti's.”

“You know a lot about this poem.”

“When I was human, Gottfried Bürger's ballads were very famous. Some considered them the finest ever written in German.” He hesitated, and added, “Just after we were changed, my parents read everything they could find about vampires. Some scholars believed Bürger witnessed or learned of a vampire attack in a graveyard, which inspired him to write ‘Lenore.'”

“Supposedly Stoker did the same thing.” Seeing the line from the novel written in the dead man's journal was just too much of a coincidence for me, though. “Is it possible that Julian knew about you and your parents?”

“My parents and I have never had any personal contact with the Hargraves family,” he told me. “They were not our people, so they were never included in our circle of trust.”

“Maybe Julian found out about you anyway,” I said. “He lived here all his life, which was pretty long, and there are things you can't hide. Like the fact that you and your parents don't age. If anyone would have noticed, it would have been him.”

He looked worried now. “He did live here more than a century.”

“I think we need to read these journals and find out what he knew.” I checked my watch. “You'll have to do the reading part. I can't risk sneaking them home, and besides, Gray will be here to pick me up in ten minutes.” I explained how Trick had vetoed me taking the bus home.

“Good,” Jesse said, surprising me. “I have been worried about you walking to the bus stop at night.”

“You've been standing on top of buildings watching over me,” I reminded him as I put the journals back in the bin. “There isn't a girl in this town as safe as—” A hammering sound from the front of the shop interrupted me. “Oh, wonderful, he's early.”

I went to the front of the store, but the person banging on the door wasn't Gray. It was Mrs. Johnson.

My steps slowed as I saw how wild she looked, but I forced a smile and walked up to the door. “Mrs. Johnson, hi.”

“Open this door,” she demanded, jerking on the handle. “Now.”

“I'm sorry, ma'am, but I can't let anyone in the store.” I took a few steps back and glanced at the phone. “Why don't I call your husband? I'm sure he's worried about you.”

That seemed to calm her down. “That won't be necessary.” She turned and went to a little station wagon parked at the curb and drove off in it.

I retreated to the back of the store. “That was the mother of one of the missing girls,” I told Jesse. “She thinks I know something about it, and she's a little crazy, but she's gone now.”

“You handled it very well.” He kissed my brow and picked up the bin. “I will read through these tonight. Don't leave the store until you see your brother's car.”

After Jesse left with the journals, I put away my paperwork and went around to shut off the lights. Then I stood by the front door and watched for Gray, and when I saw his headlights I set the alarm and let myself out.

A blur rushed at me from one side, and as I saw the hands reaching for my neck something hot and angry billowed up inside me. I brought up my arm and knocked away the hands before I grabbed my attacker's upper arms and shoved as hard as I could.

Mrs. Johnson went down on her backside and slid four feet down the sidewalk. She scrambled back up and shrieked, “Where is Sunny? Tell me!”

“I don't know.” As she came at me again, I made a gliding movement to one side, circling around her. How I did that, I didn't know—my body was calling the shots, not me. “Mrs. Johnson, please, stop.”

She turned around, panting now. “I'll make you tell me.” Her hands curled into fists. “I'll beat it out of you.”

“No, ma'am, you won't.” Gray stepped between us, and caught Mrs. Johnson's wrists as she tried to hit him. “You leave my sister alone now.”

The woman stared up at him, and then collapsed against him, sobbing hysterically. Gray glanced at me. “Go inside and call the sheriff, Cat.”

It only took Sheriff Yamah two minutes to arrive at the store, but by then Gray had managed to calm down Sunny's mother. He led her to his patrol car, and locked her in the back before he came to talk to us.

I briefly described the strange way Mrs. Johnson had been acting since meeting me, and how she had tried to get into the store earlier. “I don't know why she thinks I know something, but I honestly don't, Sheriff,” I added. “I've never even met Sunny.”

“Nancy's been under a terrible strain,” he said, glancing at the patrol car. “I'll take her home and have a talk with Jack.” He turned to Gray. “I appreciate you taking care of this.”

Gray nodded, and then walked with me to his truck. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” I wondered if the complete calm I felt was my own form of hysteria. “Thanks for saving me as usual.”

“She won't give you any more trouble,” he said, as if she were nothing more than another bully at school.

No one ever picked on me after Gray had a talk with them, and now he'd done the same thing with Mrs. Johnson. He'd confided in me about his dreams; maybe he could do other things. “How do you know she won't?”

“I just do.” He got in and started up the truck. “You'd better tell Trick about this.”

Yet another good reason for my big brother to make me quit my job; I'd been attacked by the grief-crazed owner of the shop across the street. I slumped back against my seat. “Do I have to?”

“If you don't,” he warned, “the sheriff will.”

Fortunately when we got home Trick was asleep, and the next morning he left before I woke up. I made my own breakfast before I tackled my chores, and when the housework was done I went out to the barn to talk to Gray.

I saw two box fans whirring just outside the end stall that Trick had mucked out and sprayed down the previous morning. The strong smell of varnish made me cover my nose as I got close to the stall and looked in.

My brother wasn't putting down new bedding, but was swiping a wide paint brush back and forth over the wall panels. “Whew. Can't you wait until spring to do that?”

“Not unless you want to foal Rika outside.” He bent to dip the brush into the tray of clear varnish he had sitting on a stool. “We can't keep the wood clean unless it's sealed.”

I picked up a bottle of Tek-trol, which we used to disinfect the stalls every couple of months. “Good idea.” I saw that along with the bedding he'd cleared everything out of the stall, including the feed bucket. “Are we going to starve her, too?”

“Trick doesn't want anything in here when she delivers,” he told me. “It's to protect the foal from bacteria until he nurses for a day or two. And don't put any fresh bedding in here until we know Rika is ready to deliver.”

“We should get a foal alarm,” I said, remembering a little electronic kit that included a sensor that hung from the mare's tail, which sent a signal to a monitor the owner kept in their office or home. Even with an alarm, it wasn't going to be easy. “The vet said there's like a dozen mares foaling this month. What if he can't get to us, and we have to do this on our own?”

“Then we do it.” Gray set down the brush and took the bandanna from his back pocket to wipe the sweat from his face. “She'll be all right.”

“This is her first time foaling,” I reminded him. “She's not going to know what to do. Neither do any of us.”

“Breeding means foaling.” He hesitated before he added, “That show girl stopped by this morning. She said she'd come over and help.”

My brows rose. “That show girl? Are you referring to Mena, your arch-enemy?”

He moved his shoulders. “She's okay. For a pushy girl who think she knows everything about horses.”

“I'm pretty sure she does, actually. She also seems to like you a lot.” I observed his lack of reaction. “You should feel flattered. Not that many people like you.”

“I'm not interested.”

Oh, yes, you are
,
I thought. “I was going to make a big batch of meatballs and sauce to freeze for future meals. I can leave some in the fridge for you guys to have for dinner tonight.”

“I'm tired of pasta,” my brother complained. “Trick overcooks it so much it tastes like mush, even with your sauce. Anyway, he was going to grill something tonight.”

“Make something else, then,” I suggested. “Heat up the sauce and meatballs in a pan, put them on hoagie rolls with some provolone cheese, and you've got meatball subs. Versus eating whatever Trick turns into charcoal on the grill.”

“Thank you,” he said, and he meant it.

“No problem.” I decided to take advantage of his improved mood. “Can I ask you something?” He gave me a wary look before he nodded. “Last night, when Mrs. Johnson jumped me, did you see what happened? I mean, what I did to her?”

“You didn't do anything wrong,” he said. “You didn't hurt her.”

“The thing is, I've never been in a fight,” I lied. I had been, with Barb Riley, but I wasn't supposed to remember that. “I didn't know what to do. So she should have been able to beat me into the sidewalk. Only she didn't, because I pushed her away.”

“You were defending yourself.”

“Gray, I pushed her so hard she almost ended up on the next block. I'm not that strong.” I saw him avert his eyes. “Am I?”

He shrugged. “It was probably the adrenaline.”

“I also moved so fast she never laid a hand on me. Is that adrenaline, too?” I waited, but he didn't say anything. “Okay. What if the adrenaline kicks in again and I hurt someone?”

He gave me a strange look. “Do you want to?”

“No.”

“Then you won't.” He went back to varnishing.

I wanted to hit him, but as angry as I was I probably would have knocked him over to the next farm. “You know, every time you do something stupid, I stand up for you. I explain things for you. I've probably kept you from being grounded for like half your life. And if you've forgotten, I even helped you with the weird dream thing the other night. So how can you just ignore me like this?”

He dropped the brush and turned on me. “You're strong because you've been riding since you could walk. You move fast for the same reason. Last night that lady scared you, and you reacted. Neither of you got hurt. So now you know you'll be okay in a fight.” Before I could say anything, he glared. “That's all I can tell you. Which you could have figured out on your own if for once in your life you'd use your brains instead of running your mouth.”