advertising local bands, tutoring services, fundraisers, and more. I peered between the flyers, looking in at the darkened store. Row after row of cramped plywood bookshelves stood with bulging shelves, exactly as I remembered them.
“Are you all right?” Lena asked softly.
I walked past the store to a glass door that led to a split staircase between Ray’s store and what had once been a barbershop, but appeared to have been converted into a tattoo parlor. I had climbed those steps a thousand times as a student, heading up to Ray’s apartment for my true studies.
“There’s a security camera,” I said softly as I led my companions through the door and down the steps. Incense from a new age shop hung heavy in the air. I ducked into the cramped opening beneath the stairs.
While Ted examined the graffiti scratched onto the wall, I pulled out a Robert Asprin paperback and skimmed the pages. “Hold this, please.”
While Lena gripped the edges of the book, I reached inside with both hands and tugged out a sheet of invisible fabric. I had to stop several times to roll and crumple the material so it would fit through the book. Invisibility was a common enough trick, but most rings and cloaks were only good for one person. This sheet should be enough to cover us all.
Minutes later, we were climbing back up the stairs to the apartments above, invisible to humans and cameras alike. Unfortunately, the sheet also trapped the stench of death, rot, and Old Spice rising from Ted’s body as he pressed close to me.
I swear he was deliberately treading on my feet as we walked, but it was Lena’s body against mine that was truly distracting. She held the edge of the sheet in one hand and her twin bokken in the other, but her hip and thigh brushed mine with each step.
“No need to ask which apartment,” Ted commented.
Toothpick-sized splinters littered the worn seventies carpeting of the hallway where the deadbolt and lock had been smashed in. A new latch was bolted to the door and frame, secured by a heavy padlock.
Until now, it had only been words. Stories. Here was proof of Ray’s death, of the violence of the attack. His killer had stood in this very spot.
Lena set her weapons against the wall and picked up a six-inch sliver of wood. “Are you ready?”
I checked Smudge, who was calm and cool, then nodded. Lena slid the sliver into the padlock. Moments later, the door swung inward.
“Don’t touch anything,” I warned.
“Oh, please.” Ted snorted. “Like this is my first time breaking and entering.”
A powerful antiseptic smell lingered in the air as I stepped carefully into the apartment. It couldn’t hide the metallic scent of blood. Ray’s blood. I reached to the side and flipped on the light switch with my elbow.
Ever since Deb told me about Ray, a part of me had hoped it was a mistake, that somehow he had survived and escaped into hiding. Seeing the ruins of his apartment crushed that hope, leaving only a hollow sensation in my rib cage.
Black fingerprint powder covered light switches and the wall of the arched doorway to the kitchen. Clean, rectangular stripes cut through the dust where the police had lifted prints.
A half-finished mug of tea sat on the end table beside the fold-out sofa in the living room. I had crashed on that couch many times after late-night magic sessions, or in one case, a Mystery Science Theater marathon.
I stepped closer, examining the book that lay open on the carpet: a collection of Shakespeare’s comedies. I could see Ray’s handwriting, tiny and machine-precise in the margins.
He always wrote in his books, a habit that had driven me crazy from day one. I could barely bring myself to highlight my textbooks, and he desecrated every one of his books with notes, analyzing historical context, referencing other books and stories, analyzing word choice… he would have made a great literature professor if he had been more comfortable speaking in front of groups.
The drywall behind the couch was cracked, a round indentation showing where the attacker must have slammed Ray’s head against the wall. A few small shards from a broken lamp lay on the carpet, though the lamp itself was gone. The upright piano to the right of the couch had been smashed. Broken ivory keys and snapped wires made it looked like a gutted animal.
“They came in fast,” Lena said as she studied the room. “He didn’t have time to stand. A vampire could be through the door and incapacitate a normal human in less than a second.”
I looked to Ted for confirmation.
“One of us did this.” Ted’s pupils were wide, and his pale lips had drawn back from his teeth. His breathing reminded me of an animal, quick and predatory as he sniffed the air. He nodded toward the kitchen. “In there.”
“Ray didn’t invite them in,” I said. That eliminated more than thirty potential species of vampire. How had they gotten past the security camera? A few species could move quickly enough to avoid being seen. Others could dissolve into mist. Or maybe the killer simply wore a baggy sweatshirt or jacket to hide their identity. I needed more information, but I wasn’t yet ready to enter the room where my friend had died.
I moved to the small antique desk in the far corner of the living room, next to the window. Ray’s computer was gone, leaving a clean rectangular outline in the dust. The police must have taken it to check his e-mail or chat logs. They wouldn’t find anything. A spell on the motherboard would have wiped the hard drive the moment it passed through the matching enchantment in the doorway. That spell was a standard Porter precaution, courtesy of the late Victor Harrison.
A hand closed over my shoulder. Lena didn’t say a word. She stood beside me, giving me time, but letting me know she was there.
“He didn’t deserve this.” I swallowed, trying to ease the tightness in my throat. I had always had a vivid imagination. It was part of what made me a good libriomancer, but now it tortured me, recreating the possible details of the attack: the jolt of adrenaline as the door crashed inward; the shock, pain, and confusion as inhumanly strong hands ripped him from the couch; the fear when he realized what was happening. Had he called out for help as the vampire hauled him into the kitchen?
I steeled myself and stepped past Ted, who had stopped at the boundary of the kitchen where carpet met brown linoleum. Faded smears of blood marked the walls, and the floor was tacky. Someone had done an initial clean-up, possibly the landlord, but it would take industrial cleaners to make this place habitable again.
The pantry was smashed in. A few stray Cheerios crunched beneath my feet, and I spotted tiny ants moving across the floor. The knives from the wooden block beside the sink were missing. Probably taken to a police forensics lab.
I opened Smudge’s cage, allowing him to climb up to my shoulder. He immediately turned around and perched low to watch Ted. Heat wafted from his small body.
“It’s the blood,” Ted said. “I can taste it.” His face was even paler than usual, and his tongue flicked over his lower lip. His eyes had taken on a reddish tinge. “I’ll just wait back here.”
“Good idea.” I’d hate to have to kill Ted after going to all that work to drag him down here. Not to mention the questions a layer of vampire ash could raise in whoever came to clear out Ray’s belongings. Probably his ex-wife or daughter. I wondered whether the Porters had talked to them. They deserved to know the truth, but that would never happen.
Lena had moved to the round wooden table tucked into the corner. Bloodstains darkened every scratch and gouge in the surface. Thin streaks through the stains showed where the police had swabbed samples of the blood. Of Ray’s blood.
I forced myself to move closer, examining the fresh scars in the wood and the faint spatter of blood on the wall. I stepped to the side, moving my hand down as if I were swinging a knife, then wrenching it free. “Whoever killed him stood here.”
The white ceiling showed the blood better than the walls. There was nothing careful or precise about what had been done to Ray Walker. Every violent wrench of the knife would have sprayed blood from the blade onto the wall and ceiling. From those lines, Ray had been stabbed at least six times.
“This feels personal,” Lena said. “It’s overkill.”
Personal, and completely different than the attacks on me back in Copper River. The sparklers had been pissed, but not like this. And Deb had tried to trick me into coming with her. “How does it compare to the attack on Doctor Shah?”
“The vampires who hit us were organized and smart.” Lena’s words were tight. “If they’d come in with this
