Anyway, I had sat back and relished the sensation of my friend drinking from my wrist. She never liked me looking at her while she fed, and I didn’t blame her. She was a mom, after all. A respected private eye and one-time federal agent. She didn’t want to be seen as a monster. Again, I didn’t blame her. But, of course, she was a monster. A beautiful monster.
Our bloodletting sessions were not sexual. Not like my sessions with Victor. No, Sam and I were friends only, and, well, we didn’t swing that way. With that established, our bond was pretty tight. So tight that she and I had almost instantly become telepathically bonded. The bond was growing stronger, too. Sometimes, I caught whiffs of her thoughts from great distances. Up close was different. Up close, we might as well be in each other’s minds.
Yes, last night had been another bloodletting. Samantha Moon had drunk deeply from me, so much so that I’d actually felt weak. The wound on my wrist had healed instantly, as soon as she’d pulled away. Sam had looked away shyly, as she always did, her face delicately flushed, my blood on her lips. She never licked her lips in front of me. She always turned away to do that. My friend was an adorable monster. And a fastidious feeder. She never left my apartment looking like a crime scene. I appreciated that.
So, it was of no great surprise that I was certain I could feel his wife’s pain. Certain, because I knew she was in the room with us now.
* * *
“Your wife’s name was Isabelle,” I said.
Peter nodded and calmly wiped his eyes. It was late evening and the big house was quiet. Correction, not quite. I heard the old place settling, creaking here and there. Nothing supernatural. At least, I didn’t think so.
“I feel her sadness,” I said.
He kept nodding and kept wiping his eyes. Except he wasn’t able to stay on top of the wiping, and tears spilled down his cheeks.
My skin prickled. I felt cold. I wasn’t good enough at this yet to slip inside her thoughts, to hear her, or even to pick up any symbolism she might be using to reach me. I just heard her name, and felt her sadness.
“I’m not a medium,” I said. “I’m not very good at this, but your wife is here with us now and she is very, very sad.”
I could have made up all of this. Her name would have been easy enough to find. Telling him his wife was here would have been easy enough to say. Except...
“You know she’s here, don’t you?” I asked.
He nodded and finally gave up wiping his tears. His startling blue eyes were now red-rimmed. “I’ve seen her, standing behind you over by the fireplace. I’ve seen her twice. I...I thought I was going crazy.”
“You’re not going crazy,” I said. “We are not alone.”
He nodded, took in some air, excused himself politely, and left the room. I heard him creak through the big home and shut himself into another room. What came next I would remember for the rest of my life. Deep, wracking, shuddering sobs radiated through the entire house and seemed to come up through the floorboards themselves. Up through my feet and legs, they completely took hold of me.
But the sobs lasted for only twenty or thirty seconds. Just as quickly as they had started, they stopped. I heard water running, and a few minutes after that, Peter appeared at the arched doorway. That the man had just produced some the loudest, most gut-wrenching sounds I’d ever heard, one would never guess. He looked calm...although mostly, he looked empty.
He said, “I can show you Penny’s room now, if you’d like.”
Chapter Six
He led me up a spiral staircase.
It was my first spiral staircase. I somehow managed to hide my excitement; after all, saying “Whee!” at a time like this didn’t seem appropriate.
The stairs led to an upstairs covered with dark mahogany walls and deeply cushioned floors. Once again, I just wanted to take off my shoes and run up and down the hallway on the plush carpeting, which, I suspected, little Penny had done often.
Although I felt an elder and younger presence in the house, neither Peter’s mother nor daughter had come through. Not the way Isabelle, his wife, had.
Peter led me down the hallway and past a few generations of family portraits. I had a sense of old money. A sense of his family doing some great things...and not so great things, too. Someone in his family tree had been a shyster who’d ripped people off. Or maybe I was misinterpreting my feelings. It was easy to do sometimes.
Either way, I got good vibes from Peter himself. I hadn’t asked what he did for a living, and I didn’t look into it, but I saw money around him. I saw stacks of money, and I suspected he was in banking. Very high up in banking, too. My guess would be a vice president of a big bank. The family business, I suspected, was banking.
As I walked past a particularly old portrait, of a man who stared down with snake-like eyes at the camera, and wearing a bowler hat, I knew that not all of the Lauries were good people. I shivered as I walked past the picture.
Down the long hallway—and past an enormous study with a leather-tooled surfaced desk and a chair fit for a king—or at least a vice president of a bank—we soon came upon a row of bedrooms. Six to be exact. Damn big house, although not as big as that island resort I’d had the displeasure of nearly dying in. Or, rather, of being possessed in.
But that was another story.
At one such door, Peter stopped, looked at the handle for a heartbeat or two, then reached for it, turned it and pushed open the door. It swung open silently enough, only squeaking when it reached the end of its arc.
“This was Penny’s room,” he said, stepping aside and allowing me to enter ahead of him.
As I did so, I got a psychic hit, or a knowing, as I called it. “You don’t come in here very often.”
“Only a few times, and not for a long time,” he said behind me. Peter no longer seemed surprised by my knowings; at least, he didn’t question them anymore.
The room was enormous, and dusty. I suspected that Peter had instructed even the maids to stay away. As I stepped into the dark room, he flipped on the lights. Dust motes swirled. I left actual footprints along what had would have been a beautifully polished hickory floor.
The room was a typical girl’s room...a little rich girl’s room, actually. There were posters on the wall: cartoon characters, Justin Bieber looking quite young and intense, and horses. Lots of horses. The poster closest to me was slightly faded along its edges. Rust from the thumbtacks had stained the corners a little. In the center of the room was a small bed for a small girl, with lots and lots of floor space around it. A big rug covered some of it and I had an image of a little girl playing with her dolls and reading and even talking on a cell phone, right here on the floor, on the rug. I even had an image of her sleeping on the rug...with her mom. A sort of campout in upscale sleeping bags that had never been used for outdoor camping, only slumber parties. I kept these impressions to myself.