“I think I need to go upstairs and catch my breath for a minute,” she told Viktor.
“Of course,” he told her. “I’ll come with you.”
She went back to the front desk, but Hailey was nowhere in sight, so she grabbed the Bee Right Back sign. The guests could do without her for a little while.
“I’ll take over for a bit,” Zander said, moving to join them.
“You don’t have to do that,” Dru said.
“What else do I have to do?” he asked. “I can’t get back home. I already told Hailey to go get some rest.”
“Thank you,” she told him sincerely. “You can use my room to shower and sleep and stuff until they open the road back up.”
“Thanks, Dru,” he said with a smile that looked tired, but genuine.
“Come, Drucilla,” Viktor said impatiently.
She turned to him, noticing once again how brutally handsome he was. His dark hair was tousled from the wind outside, and his icy blue eyes seemed to cut through her like diamonds.
She headed for the stairs without a word, Viktor shadowing her.
The wide wood planks of the lobby floor looked pale and naked without the rug that had covered them for over a hundred years.
There would be no way to be in the lobby without remembering what had happened.
She headed down the darkened corridor, using her phone for light. It occurred to her to worry about what would happen when the battery died.
“Weren’t they supposed to turn on the generator?” she remembered.
“I thought so,” Viktor agreed.
They walked on in silence.
At last, Dru reached the door to her room.
“Listen, Viktor, I kind of want a moment to myself,” she told him.
He looked uncomfortable, but nodded. “I’ll be right here,” he told her. “You don’t have to worry.”
“Thanks,” she said, unlocking her door and slipping inside.
She tried to lock the door silently, but of course it made a crisp click when she turned it.
He had definitely heard that. She hoped it hadn’t hurt his feelings.
She paced the floor, allowing all that had happened to wash over her.
There had been a murder, an actual murder, with blood and slashing and a dead victim wrapped in the lobby carpet. It made the horror story she’d been trying to dream up for her book seem a little silly.
And while Channing had them all busy collecting evidence and dealing with the body, no one was talking about the most urgent issue.
There was a murderer at Hemlock House.
The killer was guaranteed to still be among them, because there was literally nowhere else to go. No one could get in, or out.
And Dru was going to be a sitting duck down at the desk all night long.
She would be alone, in plain view of the landing and stairs above her, the lobby in front of her, the dining room and the corridor behind her, and the vending machine alcove to her right.
And she would be not ten feet from where the body had been discovered.
Meanwhile, she had no weapon to defend herself with, and no clue who the murderer was.
It could be the nice photographer lady. It could be the family man with the wife and kid.
It could be the weird guy who reserved three rooms, but didn’t seem to sleep in any of them.
No, she thought to herself. It can’t be Viktor.
But suddenly her mind was picking at the loose threads.
Viktor was so pale. She only saw him at night.
He’s got international business to attend to.
He had strange, heavy trunks that traveled ahead of him.
He deals in antiques.
He had covered his mirrors and windows.
I would do the same if I had trouble sleeping during the day.
But other thoughts were suddenly crowding her mind.
She had thought there was something funny when she was out walking with him that first night.
She closed her eyes and pictured it - the snowflakes falling, her breath pluming in the air.
In her mind, she looked over at Viktor. His breath didn’t plume.
She shivered and paced some more, thinking back to the time they had spent together.
She pictured herself eating dinner in the solarium and Viktor telling her he had just eaten. She had never seen him eat or drink anything.
But that didn’t make him a murderer.
She thought of his reaction to the murder itself.
He was so shocked, so upset by it…
She could still see him, gazing out the window into the snow, looking despondent and horrified.
Had he been faking a reaction? And maybe playing it up a little, for the sake of the witnesses? Or had he just been overwhelmed in the presence of so much blood.
He had never told Dru anything about himself. He always turned the conversation to her.
What was he hiding?
She’d read enough horror novels to see how the pieces of this puzzle fit together.
No breath, no food, weird reaction to blood…
Take it easy, Dru, she told herself. You can’t really think that your boyfriend is a vampire. The throat was slashed, not bitten. The body wasn’t drained. There was blood everywhere.
But of course the slash could have been deliberately placed to hide two puncture wounds. Plenty of blood could have been missing before the fatal wound was administered.
And then there was the missing cross…
Weren’t vampires afraid of crucifixes?
It hit her that there was a vampire book on one of the shelves by the window seat.
She scrambled across the room for it, slamming her shin into the side of the desk on the way.
“Ow,” she moaned to herself.
“Drucilla?” Viktor called to her from the hallway. “Are you okay?”
“I-I’m fine,” she stammered. “I just need another minute.”
He knocked on the door.
She made it to the bookshelves and ran her fingers along the dusty spines.
Viktor was banging on the door now.
“Drucilla, I’m worried about you,” he called to her. “Please let me in.”
“I’m f-fine,” she called back, scanning desperately for the book she wanted.
Finally she saw the thin scarlet volume, grabbed it, and shoved the Encyclopedia Vampirica into her bag.
She jogged over to the door, suddenly panicked about what to do next.
She didn’t want to be alone with Viktor now that she suspected his secret.
But she couldn’t exactly accuse him without endangering herself, or at the very least embarrassing herself.
She unlocked the door and opened it slowly.
“Thank God,” he said with seemingly heartfelt relief. “What was that noise?”
“I bumped into the bed,” she said, shrugging.
He smiled and his blue eyes crinkled. “I was picturing the worst, of course. Someone waiting to ambush you in your room, grabbing you, forcing you at knife-point to tell me that everything was okay.”
“You watch too many movies,” she teased, impressing herself with her ability to play it cool.
“Guess so,” he said.
She still couldn’t bring herself to go out into the corridor with him alone. She was just beginning to feel panicky again when she saw Mayor Tuck heading down the hallway with Melody the photographer.
“Mayor Tuck,” Dru called out in a bright voice. “I wanted to ask you about that… thing at the last council meeting.”