A feeling of dread filled my gut. “I knew there was something wrong with him when I saw him,” I muttered. “Can you show us the footage from the dining hall yesterday evening? About eight p.m.”
Harutaka got busy doing as I asked. I sipped my coffee, my anxiety rising. To distract myself, I said to Kane. “The coffee is perfect, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
I wanted to say more, but couldn’t find the words. And besides, I wasn’t about to talk about the day before with Harutaka there. So I bit my lip, and took another sip, my eyes glancing away from Kane.
“There,” Harutaka said.
It was a video feed of the dining hall. I could spot parts of the chandelier at the edges of the image. Just as I had suspected, the camera was hidden in it.
All the waiters—including me—were setting the tables, and Jonathan Roth was strutting around pompously, but I couldn’t see Maximillian Fuchs.
“Fast forward a bit,” I said.
He did, and it ran quickly. We watched until nine p.m. without Maximillian making an appearance.
“Rewind,” I muttered. “Slower.”
He did. After a while, I leaned forward, gripping my chair. “Stop.”
He paused the image.
“See there?” I pointed at the screen. “Where that waitress dropped the plate? It fell but didn’t break, which was a huge relief. Those plates probably cost more than a hundred bucks each.”
“Okay,” Kane said. “So? Is there a significance to the plate?”
“When the plate fell, Maximillian was in the room,” I explained. “I remember, because I thought he’d say something. But he didn’t.”
“Is he standing somewhere outside the camera’s range?”
“He’s standing right there.” I pointed at an empty spot on the screen. “I’m sure of it.”
“There’s no one there, Lou.”
“Something was wrong, I knew it even then,” I muttered. “See how clean and polished the floor is? You can see the tables and us reflecting in it. But you know what? I think Maximillian cast no reflection. Not in those huge windows, either. That’s what I noticed, subconsciously. That’s why he felt so wrong. And that also explains why we can’t see him in the footage, and why there’s no image of him in the personnel file.”
“Because cameras can’t take his picture,” Kane said slowly. “He’s a vampire.”
I nodded. “And that means we can’t pick his pocket—he’ll notice it. And we can’t trick him into drinking truth serum. Vampires drink nothing but blood.”
Chapter Twenty-One
I had less than ten hours to come up with an alternative plan, or our chance to break into the dragon’s mansion tonight would be blown.
Harutaka had gone to sleep in the bedroom upstairs, leaving me and Kane in the dining room alone. I fiddled with my empty Starbucks cup as I tried to figure out what to do.
Now that we knew Maximillian Fuchs was a vampire, his nightly excursions to pick up women suddenly took on a much darker aspect. He was picking up his dinner. I doubted he killed them; he probably only drained as much as he needed. Vampires who killed their prey didn’t survive for long. The vampire community was small and tight, and policed its own. A vampire who killed his food endangered them all, which meant he had to go. But still, I doubted that these women Maximillian picked up knew what they were getting themselves into.
Could we use it? Maybe one of these women would help us somehow? Could they know something about him? Or they might serve as a distraction—barging up into the banquet, throwing accusations…
No. I couldn’t see how that would help us, and I was leery of using anyone else for this job.
“You want to discuss it?” Kane asked. He stood by one of the dining room windows. He’d opened the blind and was gazing out at the garden.
“Discuss what?”
“The plan. Obviously we need to change it a bit.”
“I’ll think of something.”
“We can think of something together,” he suggested, turning to face me. “Brainstorm it. Throw ideas into the wind. No idea is too dumb to consider.”
“Fine. Sure. What do you have in mind?”
“We could force him to open it,” Kane suggested.
“How exactly?”
“With a holy symbol. Or garlic. Threaten to drive a wooden stake through his heart.”
“That’s a dumb idea.”
“I don’t think you understand the whole brainstorming concept.”
“Vampires don’t really fear holy symbols, and they have no problem with garlic, you know that as well as I do. Besides, we’re burglars, not fighters. I doubt if even the five of us together could overcome one vampire.”
“What about running water? Vampires can’t cross running water.”
“So what do you want to do? Dig a canal?”
He walked over to the table and grabbed the chair adjacent to mine, sitting down. “I’m just thinking out loud. Why are you being so hostile?”
“Because we’re screwed, that’s why! There’s no way we can beat a vampire. Maybe if we had a week to plan… but the banquet is tonight. And Breadknife knows what we’re planning. He knows tonight is the night. He’ll show up tomorrow morning at my door, wanting his box and his Yliaster crystal, and I’ll have to tell him, ‘sorry, dude, but it turns out that a vampire got in our way, no hard feelings, right?’ And then he’ll burn my shop and… and…”
Kane grabbed my palms, squeezing them lightly, his grass-green eyes looking into mine. I stopped rambling, lost in the depth of his gaze, feeling a sudden warmth in my stomach. I took a deep breath.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“Breadknife is our client?”
“Yeah.” I already regretted blurting that. “He just wants the box with the Yliaster crystal, nothing else. You don’t have to worry about that. Breadknife is my problem.”
“I see. And we’re talking about the Yliaster crystal? The one that can contain souls?”
“You’ve heard of it?” I tried to laugh it off, but it came out as a strange gurgle. “I doubt the Yliaster crystal is real. It’s a box with a crystal inside it.”
“But Breadknife thinks it’s the Yliaster crystal?”
“It really doesn’t matter, okay?”
“Okay.” His fingers slid along the back of my hands, rubbing them in a soothing motion. “Then let’s figure out how to handle this vampire problem.”
“How?” My breathing became husky. I wanted him to keep sliding his fingers up my hands forever. I wanted him to go higher, up my wrist, my arm, to my neck.
“Maybe we don’t need to beat the vampire. Maybe we can figure out how the dragon enters his vault and use that.”
“Harutaka is right, dragons are incredibly powerful. It could be anything. Maybe he can teleport. Or move through walls. Anything is possible. It might take days to find out how he does it.”
“I think we might have to try, Lou. Vampires can’t be easily tricked. They are faster and deadlier than almost anything. They can smell the fear in our blood. They want nothing that we can offer them. We can’t tempt them with lust or bribery or gifts—”