Harvest quickly overcomes the embarrassment of her apparent hunger noises. Her body is grateful for the nourishment, and she eats her sandwich quickly, not wanting to delay their questions any further.
It is a pointless act of haste, however, as it takes three hours for the vampires to leave, four hours for Dominic to feel comfortable leaving the bar to make his way to his living quarters in the lighthouse tower, and another thirty minutes for Quinn to feel sure that the vampires in question had well and truly left the area before he knocks on the door.
Dominic’s living space is overrun with remnants of past lives. The room is broken only by the cylindrical column in the middle that rises from the floor and through the ceiling. Mismatched furniture and contrasting patterned rugs fill up the space, while antique trinkets clog the walnut bookshelves against the exposed brick walls.
There is a four-poster bed, unmade with disheveled pillows and partly shielded by an ornate paper screen. She’s slightly surprised by the bed. Vampires don’t need to sleep, but, then again, she supposes vampires must still recline at times, even if sleep eludes them. A pair of stained glass doors open onto a balcony, partially covering a large chunk of stone wall with the chipped remains of an ancient mosaic. Two Roman soldiers are awash in shades of blue.
There are a few reluctant touches of modern life. A phone charger is plugged into the wall. A small television sits on a cedar dresser. A blender and a coffee maker are on the kitchen counter.
Dominic pours Quinn a glass of blood before filling his own glass. He has already given Harvest water, and she sips it while looking out at the ocean, visible from her spot on the couch next to the open balcony doors.
“This is about Locke, isn’t it?” says Dominic, sitting down next to Harvest.
Quinn grips his glass a little too tightly. “It wasn’t, but it is now.”
Dominic grimaces. “I assumed you knew.”
Quinn looks down at Dominic’s arm, where a long white scar mars his otherwise smooth skin. “Has he contacted you?”
“Who’s Locke?” asks Harvest.
Quinn is too distracted to shoot her a look for interrupting or to notice that Dominic hasn’t answered his question. “Grayson Locke gives vampires a bad name,” he says wryly, though that does little to convey the brutality and reach of Locke’s criminal empire.
Although Locke is still quite young for a vampire—only around four hundred years or so—he has made a reputation for himself by cornering the market on stolen antiquities and priceless art, with the occasional foray into weapons smuggling. There were rumors of gambling and drugs, but no confirmation of such activities. This, of course, only proves that Locke is decent at hiding the evidence, not that the activities don’t exist.
On the whole, Quinn doesn’t care about the theft or the smuggling. He has lived through enough centuries to see the impermanence of material possessions. Death is the only certainty in life, and when that’s taken away, it’s easy to be a bit cynical about the value of historically significant objects.
After all, everything is forgotten at some point.
But the bodies that Locke seems to leave in his wake are what sours his opinion of the vampire. Locke isn’t afraid to get his own hands dirty—Quinn is sure of that much—but he also has a reputation for using others to his benefit and their detriment. Dominic was one of Locke’s first business partners until a particularly delicate deal fell through and ended in bloodshed.
Quinn was already a Bureau agent and managed to help Dominic extract himself from his contract, the result of which is the scar on Dominic’s arm. Quinn looks at the mark again, wondering if the scar is still just that.
The flicker of Quinn’s eyes does not go unnoticed by Dominic, who gives his friend a short shake of his head before he continues. “A group of them have been hanging out around the bar,” he says, switching his blood for whiskey. He fills Quinn’s glass without asking and, at the last second, offers some to Harvest. She accepts it absentmindedly. “The one downstairs earlier, Roderick, has been in almost daily. Orders a vodka on the rocks and tries to con tourists out of their money. I’ve had to kick him out a few times.”
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“Anything more serious than that?”
“Not that I’ve seen,” he begins, but pauses, considering something with a frown. “Well, yesterday, there was a group of them in here with a woman. A witch, I think.”
Harvest, who was about to sink back against the couch, lulled by the sharp tingle of liquor and the sounds of the ocean, sits up straight. “What did she look like?”
Dominic cocks his head to the side. “Kinda like you, if I’m honest.”
“What exactly happened?” asks Quinn.
“It was a small group. Roderick, this vampire named Ozias. The other two were demons. I don’t know their names. But the witch was with Ozias. He had his arm around her shoulders, but she said something he didn’t like, and he shoved her. Hard enough that she bumped into a table and knocked over someone’s beer. She was holding her hip, but she said she was fine. She ordered the customer a replacement beer and stormed out.” He takes a sip of whiskey. “She told me to put it on her tab, but I put it on Ozias’s tab instead,” he adds with a smirk.
“Credit card?”
“Cash. Always.”
“Did Ozias follow her?”
He nods. “But not right away. He had another drink and played a round of pool. Then sauntered out. I saw them walking down the boardwalk later, as I was closing up.”
“And you didn’t recognize her at all? Had she been in before?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t been working the later shifts lately,” he admits. “I was only filling in for one of my employees who was sick yesterday. She could be coming in when I’m not here.” He looks between Quinn’s creased brow and Harvest’s wide eyes. “Who is she exactly?”
“Hazel Rosenbloom,” says Harvest. “My sister.”
“Is she okay?”
“I don’t know. That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
“If they come back,” says Quinn, sitting his empty glass on the table next to a perfectly available coaster. “Can you let me know?”
Dominic nods and stands to show them out, patting Quinn on the shoulder in goodbye. Quinn is already making his way down the steps when he hears Dominic saying, low enough that he’s sure he meant it for Harvest’s ears only, “I don’t know what your sister has gotten herself into, but if the answers you’re looking for lead you to Locke, maybe you shouldn’t be asking those questions.”
----------------------------------------
The car ride is silent, and Harvest seems grateful. She is lost in her thoughts, staring out at the darkening sky. Quinn can see her reflection in the window, her eyes narrowed at something yet nothing at the same time.
“You’re worried,” he says.
His voice startles her, and she turns too quickly to look at him. “Sorry. I was just thinking.”
“Feel like sharing?”
“I was just wondering if Ezra knows this guy that Hazel was with. Ozias. Maybe he was a friend of Hazel’s? Maybe…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll ask him. I can run the name through the database too.”
“Do you think something is likely to come up?”
“No. But we have to start somewhere.”
She nods and looks out the window again.
When they turn down her street, Harvest directs Quinn on where to park. Her neighborhood is one of the few with brick roads in the area and is lined with crape myrtle trees, though at this time of year, they are bare skeletons casting spindly shadows against the broken sidewalk. The car bounces as Quinn maneuvers into a space in front of her apartment, a two-story Art Deco building that was divided into two rental spaces in the 1960s. He has the vaguest memory that the bottom floor used to be a pawn shop.
Harvest waves hello to the red, glowing eyes peeking through the curtain of the downstairs apartment. Mrs. Halloran, Harvest tells him, is a bit of a busybody.
“At least I don’t have to worry about anyone stealing packages from the doorstep,” she adds.
Quinn decides to walk her to her door, and he follows her into the building. The stairs creak beneath their weight, the threadbare puce carpet doing little to silence their movements. The walls seem to slant toward them as they ascend, making their way to the second floor. At the top of the landing, Harvest freezes, and he hears her heartbeat increase, pounding against her rib cage.
It takes him only a second to register that the door is open. He walks around her and, with the back of his hand, pushes the door open just wide enough for him to step inside. “Stay here,” he says over his shoulder.
He knows she hasn’t listened to him when he hears the crunch of her boot against some fallen object that he had the wherewithal to step over. “Go outside,” he says calmly, without looking back at her.
Still, she doesn’t listen, and he hears the click of her boot heel, too loud against the tile, then muffled as she comes to stand on the rug in the living room.
“Don’t touch anything,” he says. He can hear one other heartbeat in the apartment, and there is a faint whiff of something in the air, a hint of smoke, and something else—something earthy and coppery that makes his gums hurt. Blood.
He looks over at Harvest to see that she has already made it across the room and to the door on the opposite wall. She’s standing just inside the doorway when her posture straightens, her breath freezing in her chest. Her hand is clutching her neck as if she’s trying to hold in a scream. Her heartbeat is frantic.
Quinn looks over her shoulder. The first thing he sees is Ezra, standing in the middle of the room with a blank, shocked look. Ezra looks from Harvest to Quinn and then to the bed.
Quinn follows his gaze and sees the shape of someone lying on the queen-size mattress, flung across at an angle as if they had been too exhausted and flopped down haphazardly, feet hanging off the edge. From where Quinn is standing, he can’t see the person’s face, but the shade of auburn hair is unmistakable.
What’s even more clear, however, is the stiff, slightly curled hand dangling over the side of the bed, blood dripping from the fingernails.