Dru stood, gaping and horrified, until she heard a creak and another groan.
The wooden door was moving back into place.
Desperately, she flung herself to the floor of her room.
She turned to see one of the built-in bookcases slide back to cover the entrance to the tunnels.
As she clung to the floor, panting, she couldn’t help thinking about her nightmare about someone being in her room.
She pulled herself up to a sitting position and pulled her knees up to her chest.
Had someone really been in her room?
Dru noticed a stray piece of paper stuck to her boot. It must have been the crinkly thing she’d stepped on a moment ago.
She retrieved it and smoothed it out to find that it was a receipt from the little coffee shop in town - a slice of lemon cake and an iced soy peppermint mocha, dated two days ago.
It hadn’t been a dream after all.
Someone had been in her room.
11
Dru pulled herself to her feet and stood in the center of her room.
The once-familiar sloped walls were no longer cozy, the space didn’t feel like home.
It felt like a trap.
Everything here was a trap.
The murder, the fallen tree, the snow, the hidden passage to her room, all of them kept her penned in and vulnerable.
And her feelings for Viktor were the biggest trap of all.
She closed her eyes, thinking of his intense blue gaze, the delirious pleasure of his body pressed to hers.
He’s a vampire.
And he was probably in here spying on me.
But if Viktor had wanted to murder her and drink her blood, he’d certainly had ample opportunity already without having to sneak around.
And if he wanted to kill her, why did he look at her like he cared about her, like the sight of her caused him pain, but he couldn’t look away?
It was time to get some answers.
Instinctively, she stepped out into the corridor, locking the door behind her.
Her feet carried her down to the second floor, toward Viktor’s rooms. She could hear the voices below and feel the soothing warmth of the lobby fireplace curling up the staircase.
She knocked on the door of the Sapphire Suite once, to be polite.
There was no answer.
Without overthinking it, she let herself in using the skeleton key and closed the door behind her, knowing that Gert wouldn’t be there to interrupt her search during the housekeeping rounds.
Dru walked slowly through the bedroom. The bed was made, the chair was empty.
The closet still held a modest array of Viktor’s clothing.
The giant trunk was still in the corner.
She headed into the sitting room and the bathroom.
There was no trace of Viktor anywhere. But she still had the Onyx and Quartz rooms to check.
On the way back through the bedroom, she felt herself inexplicably drawn to the antique trunk. It was massive, the metal corners dented and scratched from years of heavy use.
The leather strap was still unbound.
Dru crept closer to it and extended her hand to touch the soft leather.
There was a loud buzz and she pulled back, stumbling over her own feet and nearly falling.
But it was only the sound of Brian Thompson’s phone in her pocket.
She went from terror to elation in a heartbeat. The cell towers were up again.
But when she pulled out the phone, she saw it was only a low battery warning. There was still no signal.
Dammit.
She slid the phone back into her pocket and headed back to the corridor, locking the door behind her.
There was no point searching the other two rooms. She already knew she wouldn’t find Viktor in either of them.
But she went through the motions anyway, knocking on the door of Onyx and searching the empty space, then doing the same with Quartz.
The dressers looked like ghosts draped in their sheets in the shadowy rooms.
But as she suspected, there was no trace of Viktor anywhere.
Whatever Viktor was, he was not available to her right now. She would have to confront him after dark.
If that meant what she thought it did, she needed to get some sleep.
This might be the only safe time to let her guard down.
The thought of lying down in her bed in a room connected to the catacombs was terrifying, but the hotel was overbooked already. There wasn’t anywhere else to go.
She headed back to her room and surveyed the scene.
The bookcase needed to slide sideways to open. If she could shove something in its way, then no one could get in, and maybe she could get some sleep.
Unfortunately, it looked like the only thing in the room large enough and heavy enough to block it was her bed.
She locked the door behind her, then grabbed the thick wooden headboard and gave it a tug. The bed was heavier than she expected, the solid wood frame getting stuck on the rug and every loose or uneven floorboard - which was most of them.
A few minutes later, and after some noises that definitely would have made anyone passing by wonder exactly what was going on, Dru smiled with grim pleasure at her handiwork.
The bed was the perfect width to be wedged between the wall and the shelf.
This meant lying down with her back to the corridor. But she was so exhausted now that it felt imperative to lie down and rest her aching body, even if she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep.
She crawled under the covers once more and closed her eyes.
Don’t think about Viktor. Don’t think about the murderer or the snow or the tree or the tunnels…
Her body felt heavy. Her own warmth finally began to fill the blankets, draining the deep chill out of her bones.
She wondered how they would get Brian’s phone charged up to search it tomorrow if the generator wasn’t working. Maybe she could siphon power from someone’s laptop if anyone still had any juice.
It seemed like a small problem compared to the problem of unlocking the phone. And she’d managed that all by herself.
Before she could stop her wandering mind, she thought of Brian Thompson’s body again, grotesque and rotting in the rug down in the tunnels.
She rolled over, trying to erase the image and only thought of his body rolling inside the rug as she wrapped him back up again.
Think of something good instead, something that makes you happy.
But the image that came into her mind was a vision of Viktor’s beautiful face as he cupped her cheek.
His words rushed back to her.
I want to be where you are, always…
“Please don’t be a danger, Viktor,” she whispered into her pillow.
The wind rattled the windows and she thought of the snow and the tree blocking them from the rest of the world, leaving her trapped.
But sleep took her anyway.
12
Dru woke to the sound of someone knocking.
For a hair-raising instant, she swore the sounds was coming from the tunnel beyond the bookshelf.
Then she came to her senses and realized that of course the knock was coming from the hallway.
She slid out of bed and made her way to the door, feeling totally gross in the pajamas she’d worn while wandering the catacombs.
Hugh Channing gave her a look as the door swung open.
“What?” she asked.
“You can’t just open the door when someone knocks,” he scolded her. “What if it was the murderer?”