Page 48 of Hunting My Vampire

“Maybe you should,” he agreed. “Take the heat off you. Even if it is only for a week or two.”

“What about you?” I said. “Can you handle being without me?”

He punched my shoulder. “Please, who do you think was doing the work around here while you were away?”

I arranged for someone to come in and help Tina with Princess while I was away. Then I packed a bag and told nobody where I was going. Not even Fuzz.

I wanted to get as far away from vampires as I possibly could.

Chapter 20

Jack

Chelsey Manor was the estate of the Fitzgeralds; the family that the Beauforts had been feuding with for centuries. The peace agreement came after numerous battles between us, which had ended with my father killing one of the family heirs. This had followed their sinking some of our ships, at the time causing irreparable damage to the family fortune. My father negotiated with their family matriarch, Beatrix Fitzgerald, fondly called Bee by those who knew her. I remembered her as a soft-spoken lady, with eyes of cold steel.

But I hadn’t been to the estate in sixty years and I was shocked to see how much it had changed since then. The gates needed paint and were rusted. Weeds grew all over the grounds and the lawns were not recently mowed. The house, once the family’s pride and joy, had windows that were boarded over with broken window panes.

I drove up to the front of the house, having been let through at the gate.

This meant Bee knew I was coming. A bit of a gamble, but this was the game I was playing now.

A servant led me into the house and to the back patio, where Bee was seated at her rose garden.

“Jack, my goodness, it’s been a while,” she said, with a polite smile.

“You’ll forgive me not getting up.”

“Of course,” I said, not believing for a minute that she was frail or elderly.I told her she was looking well and she acknowledged the compliment with a gracious nod of her head.

“Shall I order us a snack?” she asked, calling a maid over.

I couldn’t help noticing the disrepair on the patio as well. Broken cobblestones and cracked fountains from which water once gurgled delightfully.

“I must say, I’ve been expecting you,” she said, giving me a shrewd look. “But you took your time.”

“Have I?”

She nodded. “I thought perhaps you thought the time for talking was over?”

She left the question hanging in the air.

“What do you mean?”

She pointed at a newspaper lying in front of her. There was a report of a hit-and-run accident. A young woman, gruesomely decapitated. I recognized the name, it was her granddaughter, Ellen Fitzgerald.

“My condolences,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes; the accusation was obvious.

“That was not me,” I said.

“No?”

“I swear it,” I said.

“I thought… perhaps you thought we were to blame for the gas explosion at that restaurant?”

Again, the shrewd look.

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