Another lie, but when Tango had called her just after the sun went down, Miranda hadn’t exactly been able to say, “Why don’t I meet you later, after my pack has gone out and beaten someone to death?” Instead, she had invented something about a long-planned evening at an alternative theater, and tickets to a version of Hamlet written from Ophelia’s point of view, a favorite of Tolly’s. Which, of course, had necessitated a fast description of the pack. It was all only .a partial fabrication. There really was such a play, and Tolly loved it. Unfortunately, it had run last year, and then only for a brief time. The lead actress had vanished mysteriously, about the same time Tolly had gone missing for a few days. The mad vampire had come back with flowers in his hair, wet clothes, and a well-fed grin on his face.
Tango had accepted her explanation, though, suggesting that they meet after the show. She had been very clear that this wasn’t a social engagement. It was serious, a potential link in finding Riley, and possibly dangerous. She would owe Miranda another favor, she had said; Miranda had rather hastily agreed in a way that she hoped didn’t sound too greedy. In fact, she had forgotten that she was supposed to be charging the changeling for her services. The urgent concern that Tango expressed whenever she talked about Riley made Miranda feel even worse for being late.
It had taken longer to find a suitable victim than she had thought it would. Solomon’s plan to terrify Toronto was already working. Even early in the evening, and in spite of the apparent connection to sex, people were starting to move around in groups. Maybe they were guilty of a lot more than they seemed. Miranda watched Tango fasten her seatbelt and added, “You know, you really shouldn’t be waiting around on your own with these murders going on.” Maybe the comment would help erase any connections Tango had drawn between the vampires and the dead men from Hopeful.
Tango snorted. “I wouldn’t mind meeting whoever is committing them. We’ll see what happens if they try to pick on me.” There was anger in her voice. “You heard about last night?”
“Yes.” Miranda turned the car back onto the road. “Where to?”
“Left here, straight for two blocks, then right. We’ll drive past the apartment first — I think we should be able to see if there are any lights on. Hopefully no one is home. There’s a parking lot a couple of blocks away. We’ll park there and walk back.”
“You make it sound like this is a break-in,” Miranda observed.
“It is.” Tango glanced at her. “That doesn’t bother you, does it?”
Miranda kept her expression neutral, suppressing a grin at the irony of the changeling’s question. “No.” “Good. I’ve known vampires who were willing to kill if they had to while they were hunting, but who were very sensitive about doing anything else that might disturb humans.” A snort escaped from Miranda, and Tango glanced at her again. “What?”
Bitter irony,
thought Miranda. “They must have been Camarilla, trying to cling to their humanity,” she said instead. She spun the car around a corner. “The Sabbat knows that humanity has no place in a vampire’s existence.”
Tango didn’t reply, just looked out the window at the quiet houses moving past. Miranda bit her tongue. Poor choice of words. She drove in silence, two blocks straight and a turn to the right. She slowed down. “Which building?” she asked finally.
“That one.” Tango peered at a medium-sized apartment building that gleamed white in the darkness. Window boxes, large potted plants and colorful windsocks were visible on many of the balconies. “Lights are off.”
Miranda drove on. “That could mean she’s home but asleep.”
“That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
The parking lot was mostly empty. They parked and walked back to the building. “How are we going to get in?” Miranda gestured at a small bag that Tango carried with her. “You have something useful in there?”
“Yes. Maybe.” Tango shook the bag, and its contents rattled metallically. “I got a whole bunch of stuff out of Riley’s apartment. Whether we can use it or not is another question. I was actually hoping we’d find someone like a security guard or a resident around the lobby that we could get over to the door and you could hypnotize into letting us into the building.”
“I should be able to do that. Then what? Pick the lock on the apartment door?”
Tango shrugged. “We’ll see when we get there. Riley had lockpicks — this sort of thing is bread and cheese for pookas. I used to be pretty good at picking locks, but I haven’t done it for....” She took a breath and blew it out again. “Maybe since the early seventies.”
Miranda blinked. “How old are you, Tango?” “Almost sixty. There are things Kithain can do to slow down their aging.” Tango looked closely at Miranda. The inspection made Miranda uncomfortable. “You?”
“I became a vampire six years ago.”
“That’s longer than most Sabbat vampires last, isn’t
it?”
“I try not to do anything stupid.”
They reached the apartment building. They were fortunate: a couple was just coming back from walking their dog. It took almost no effort at all for Miranda to convince them to hold the door open for the two women. They rode the elevator up one floor rather than draw attention to themselves by looking for the stairs. Apartment 210 was at the far end of the hall. Tango knocked briskly, waited, then knocked again. There was no answer. Quickly, she took a flat case from her bag and drew two thin metal tools out of the case. “Cover me,” she hissed. Miranda shifted to stand between her and the rest of the hall in case someone came out of their apartment. Tango cursed quietly; the light in the hall was poorly placed, and her shadow fell across the lock. She couldn’t see what she was doing. She started a little bit when Miranda brushed the shadow aside. “Handy talent.”
“So’s being able to pick locks. Hurry up.”
It took Tango a few minutes and a good deal of muttered cursing to spring the lock. The door opened and they stepped quickly into the dark apartment, quietly shutting the door behind them. Tango brought two small flashlights out of her bag of tricks and offered one to Miranda. The vampire shook her head. “I don’t need it. I can see in the dark. How did you know this was the right apartment from outside?”
“I pretended to be interested in renting an apartment earlier today and got a tour of the building. Another floor, but apartment 10 is always in the same place on all the floors.”
“All right.” Miranda looked around. “Who lives here and what are we looking for?”
Tango snapped on her flashlight. “Her name is Atlanta Hunter. We’re looking for anything that might have to do with Riley or with a little girl named Cheryl, maybe her daughter. Anything related to San Francisco would probably be good, too. Be as neat as you can.” That turned out to be difficult. Every time Miranda moved and replaced something, it felt as though she had shifted it by a mile. Atlanta Hunter’s apartment was already orderly, clean — and excruciatingly pretentious. The walls of the living room were painted a very light, earthy tan shade. All of the furniture was pale, unstained wood. The upholstery and rugs had coordinating Southwestern patterns. There was Native American art on the walls and Native American artifacts on shelves and in the corners, but the kind of art and artifacts selected more for their aesthetic qualities than their character. Miranda glanced into the kitchen. It was all chrome and white tile. She went back into the living room and started going through the cabinets and shelves. Atlanta had all of the right CDs, all of the classic movies. She had a state-of-the-art video and stereo system tucked away where it wouldn’t interfere with the look of the room. There were no books. The woman’s life seemed frighteningly organized. Down on the bottom shelf of a corner cabinet, however, were a number of photo albums* Miranda pulled one out and started leafing through it.
All of the pictures were standard tourist destinations, mostly from North America, a few from around the world. There were very seldom any people in the photos, except maybe as crowds on a New York street or other tourists snapping pictures of the Saint Louis Arch. Strangely, there were also a number of pictures of very plain rural landscapes, suburban developments and anonymous small towns mixed in with the international destinations. Many of the pictures had dates written or stamped on them. Some went back fifteen to sixteen years. Miranda took the rightmost and presumably newest album out of the cabinet and flipped to the back of it. There were half-a-dozen blank pages, but the most recent pictures, dated only the week before, were of the Golden Gate Bridge, Ghiradelli Square and cable cars. San Francisco.
It was a link of the sort that Tango wanted. She would have to show the pictures to the .changeling. For now, however, Miranda started to put the photo album back. The other albums fell over with a noisy thump. Wincing, Miranda straightened them, then tried again. This time, however, the album jammed against something at the back of the cabinet, as if something else had fallen over. Miranda looked back into the shadows. There was another album there, small but thick. She reached in and fished it out. It was the sort of album where only one picture fit on each page and new pages were added when necessary — a brag book. It was covered in a pretty floral fabric that was completely at odds with the rest of the apartment. At least the pictures in the small album had people in them, although they were always the same two people. A platinum blond woman and a little girl. The scenes in the photographs were the same as those in the other album, one photograph per destination. Then Miranda noticed something else.
The photographs were dated, just as the others had been. To judge by last week’s date, the latest photo was from San Francisco, although it had been taken in an undistinguished airport lounge. But the other photos covered the same range as the scenery photos. Fifteen to sixteen years. And across that range, the fashions changed, the mother’s hairstyle changed, she became almost indistinguishably older... but the girl’s face and hairstyle never altered. They were always the same.
“Tango!” she hissed. There was no response. She looked up. The changeling was somewhere else in the apartment. Hurriedly, Miranda replaced the larger photo albums, then went looking for Tango. She met her in the hallway that led to the back of the apartment. “Did you find something?”
Miranda simply handed her the small album. Tango’s face grew confused. “What the hell...?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t find anything else in the living room. What about you?”
“Nothing.” Tango looked up. “There’s nothing in the master bedroom, and no sign that a little girl ever lived here at all. But the second bedroom is locked.” She tapped the album. “At least now we know we have the right apartment. This is the woman from the plane. And this is Cheryl.”
“What do you think is in the second bedroom?” Tango snapped the album shut and pulled her lockpicks out again. “I’m going to find out.”
The lock on the bedroom door was far better than Miranda would have expected, a key-locking deadbolt that would have been more suitable on a front door than a bedroom door. She held the flashlight for Tango while the changeling probed the lock’s inner workings. It gave her a chance to look around the back of the apartment. The bathroom was done in dark green tile and polished brass, so clean it looked like it was barely used. The master bedroom was Mediterranean blue, perfect, but without character. Pretentious and orderly, just like the rest of the apartment.
“Got it.” Tango stood and opened the door.
It was like looking into another world.
The second bedroom was also decorated in blue, but a soft, powdery, pastel blue. The bed was white with a blue canopy and a thick comforter. A few favored stuffed animals resided on the fluffy pillows, but more crowded the shelves of a bookcase, the seat of a rocking chair and the top of a dresser. There were posters of horses on one wall and a few books scattered around. Behind the door was a growth chart. A table in one corner was topped with fashion dolls and doll-sized furniture. The drapes on the window were a cascade of lacy fabric. On a low vanity dresser were laid out the toys of playing grown-up: brushes, barrettes, a jewelry box, lipgloss, old compacts of blush and eyeshadow, empty adult perfume bottles, a half-full bottle of a candy-sweet girl’s perfume. A coatrack beside the vanity held a big, floppy straw hat, a grand boa, and other clothes for dress-up. There was none of the pretension of the rest of the apartment here, only the feel of a room created by a mother to spoil a precious child.
Except that there was no child. The room was pristine, the bed unwrinkled, the deep pile of the powder-blue carpet showing the criss-cross tracks of a vacuum cleaner, unmarked by a human foot. If Atlanta Hunter cleaned this room, she vacuumed the floor as though she were painting it, backing up toward the door. Miranda felt as though she were walking into a shrine as she stepped across the threshold.
“Maybe Cheryl lives with her father?” she suggested. “No. I don’t think there is a Cheryl.” Tango walked into the room and went to the closet, opening it. The clothes that were inside were all brand new, perfectly arranged. She opened a dresser drawer and lifted out a shirt still creased from the store. “Maybe there was, once.”
“But the pictures? The new clothes?”
“I don’t understand it.” She looked around. “This is the sort of room I would have loved to have as a little girl.”
“Changelings start out as children?”
“Of course. What did you think happened?”
“I thought you were just sort of...” Miranda shrugged, embarrassed now that she had even mentioned it. In spite of what she had said at Hopeful the other night, she was jealous of Tango’s knowledge of the world. She felt a little bit ignorant every time she was with her. Her only real experience with other supernatural creatures was limited to Tango herself and to Solomon
— and she didn’t dare tell the one about the other. “Eternal. Like characters from fairy tales.”
“Maybe real faeries are, but Kithain are born and grow up just like humans. We only stop being human when we realize who we really are. Something like a vampire being Embraced.” Tango touched a set of ceramic wind chimes shaped like prancing unicorns. “What about you?”