The Undead Pool

Eyes scanning, I slowly explored the spacious room as Ivy padded from door to door, listening. Cormel had done little to change Piscary’s underground apartments: pillars, white carpet, high ceilings, fake windows with long curtains, and one of those huge vid screens that let him safely see the outside during the day. It was expansive, decorated sparsely but with taste, and my eyes went to the informal dining nook placed before the vid screen where I’d beaten Piscary into unconsciousness. Anger still lingered at what he’d done to Ivy, and the vampire was long dead, really dead. Ivy’s former lover, Skimmer, had killed him. I understood Ivy’s fear, her frustration. I’d loved Ivy. Still did. Letting go had been the right thing to do.

My hand went to the small of my back, and I pulled my splat gun. I reached out a sliver of awareness, touching a line. We weren’t too far underground. Piscary had liked his magic.

Ivy turned from the last pair of tall oak doors. “They’re not in this room,” she said, but it was obvious. My brow furrowed. Dan had said Felix had refused to leave. They were down here somewhere.

As if my thoughts had drawn him, Jenks hummed out of a hallway, looking out of place among the carpet and drapes. “Are you sure Piscary didn’t have a second way out of here?”

“They aren’t gone,” Ivy said. Vampire fast, she strode into a corridor. My heart pounded as I jogged after her, being careful to look for attack since she wasn’t. “They’re in the safe room,” Ivy said as she stopped before a formidable door. It was old, made of wood, and had been hacked, burned, and dented in the distant past, the damage under at least two clear varnishes by all appearances. No attempt had been made to erase them. Badges of honor, perhaps, or trophies?

“Piscary’s safe room?” I asked, wondering where the electronic safeguards were when Jenks dropped down and wedged his sword into the keyhole.

“It’s his bedroom,” she said, fidgeting as Jenks worked. “The safe room is somewhere in it. I think I know where, but I’m not sure.” Her eyes met mine, black and beautiful. “He never trusted me with it. I’m surprised Felix found it.”

“Got it!” Jenks sang out, the dust spilling from him turning a bright silver.

“But the undead tend to think alike.” Ivy waved us to be quiet and I retreated a good eight feet back. Seeing me ready, Ivy opened the door just enough for Jenks. I listened, ears straining as Jenks flew in, inches above the floor.

“It’s empty,” he called, and Ivy flung the door open. “It’s just a bedroom,” he said, shrugging as I followed her in. “A really freaky bedroom. You want me to do another sweep?”

I shook my head. Slipping a frustrated brown dust, he hung at the doorway to watch the hall. Freaky was the word, and I edged in, my feet silent on the thick rugs with patterns of faces in the flowers. It looked like an Egyptian bordello, maybe, with palms and pillars, and gauzy drapes falling from the ceiling to enclose the heavy-looking circular bed holding court in the center of the room on a raised dais. There was only one other door that I could see, and it led to a bathroom as evidenced by the tile and fixtures. A chandelier, yellow with age and almost as big as the bed, hung to the side, casting a faint light.

“I told you there’s no one in . . . there,” Jenks said from the doorway, his last word faltering when Ivy pointed her katana at him to shut up.

“Help me move the bed,” she said, and I tucked my splat gun in my waistband.

“There’s a secret room under the bed?”

Ivy had put herself at the headboard, and she nodded as I came up the wide, shallow steps. “I think so,” she said, and Jenks snorted, arms over his chest as he hovered in the doorway. “I’ve never seen it, but I once found his room empty when I knew he hadn’t left. There’s either a room or a way out of here, and the bed is the only thing that could hide it.”

The bed was substantial, and I tried not to think about Ivy splayed across it in a blood-induced stupor as I grabbed the frame and lifted the foot. At least, I tried. The thing weighed a ton. It didn’t move even a hairsbreadth, like trying to move the fountain at Fountain Square.

Ivy gave up before I did, frowning at the ceiling and the gauzy drapes. There were cords wrapped in velvet at the four corners, and with a dark expression, she plucked one. It was suspension-bridge tight. My eyes ran from the ceiling to the bed. Were they designed to lift the bed? Someone could go down, then replace the bed and no one would be the wiser.

I looked for anything that might control them, spinning back when Ivy grunted and a sliding sound broke the stillness. She was ending a power-filled strike with her katana, the rope before her snaking up into the ceiling as if being pulled by cheetahs. The cord vanished into a hole with a snap. Faint through the walls came the heavy thump of a counterweight falling.