Page 31 of Unbroken
Leaving Ves the only Rune, besides their mother and grandfather. Which…was fine. Good, even. He was glad for Noct, glad his brother had found somewhere he fit.
“Last load,” Sebastian announced as he carried a basket out of the house. “No diapers, thank God.”
“Mama!” Tommy shouted from the direction of the front yard. “Someone’s here and wants to talk to Uncle Sebastian or Uncle Ves!”
Ves exchanged a frown with Sebastian, while Noct paused in the midst of pinning up one of Jossie’s frocks and a shirt of Willie’s. “We’ll go see what’s happening,” Ves said. “If there’s any need to hide, one of us will come back and let you know.”
Leaving Bonnie and Noct with the remainder of the laundry, he hurried around the side of the house, Sebastian following. Tommy sat on the sidewalk, holding a toy truck in his hand and gazing up at a messenger boy on a bicycle.
“You gents Sebastian Rath and Vesper Rune?” the messenger asked, then didn’t wait for them to answer before thrusting out a slip of paper in their direction.
Sebastian dug a dime from his pocket and exchanged it for the message. “Thanks, mister!” the messenger exclaimed, then immediately wheeled back out the front gate and vanished down the street.
“I want a bicycle!” Tommy said, tugging on Ves’s trousers.
“Ask your mother,” he replied absently, most of his attention on Sebastian’s expression as he read the message.
“We need to go to the library.” Sebastian folded the paper and stuck it in his pocket. “It would seem Penelope Tubbs attempted to break in.”
“Oh God.” Paul Tubbs sat in a chair in the museum’s security office. Mr. Quinn stood nearby, and a young security guard hovered in the corner. “This can’t be happening. This is some sort of sick prank you’re all playing on me.”
They’d come as quickly as possible, with Sebastian paying for a cab so they didn’t have to wait for the trolley. When they arrived, it was to find Mr. Quinn had summoned Tubbs as well. Why, Sebastian couldn’t imagine.
“I assure you, Mr. Tubbs, I don’t play pranks,” Mr. Quinn said, his silvery eyes like frost. “You are her kin, and already involved, so I did you the courtesy of letting you know.”
Sebastian wished he hadn’t, and suspected Mr. Quinn would also soon regret his generous impulse.
Tubbs looked around at them. “If you’ve violated her grave, I swear?—”
“Mortimer and I tried to tell you Siewert came back as a bloodsucking fiend, but you refused to believe it,” Ves snapped. “I even suggested you secure your sister-in-law with a mortsafe, but you wouldn’t hear of it.”
Tubbs’s face crumpled, and he looked as though he might start to cry. Mr. Quinn turned to the security guard. “Tell us again what happened.”
The guard shifted uncomfortably. “I was doing my rounds as usual, and I heard a strange sound. Stranger than usual, I mean. Like something flopping around on the floor. It was coming from the direction of the library, so I headed there. It looked like a woman, but she wasn’t, uh…in good shape.” Sweat popped out on his forehead. “She was burned up, but the dress she was wearing wasn’t charred at all. She was lying there with something strange coming out of her mouth, twitching. She tried to crawl toward me, and the thing in her mouth was lashing around, so I, uh, discharged my weapon. She didn’t move after that.”
The poor man looked as though he might vomit. Mr. Quinn took pity on him and said, “Thank you. You may return to your rounds, and we’ll take care of the details.”
“I ought to file a report.”
“No need.” Mr. Quinn gestured at the door, and the guard finally took the hint and left. When the man was gone, he said, “The additional deterrents to after-hours visitors seem to have worked. I assumed from the condition of the body that it belongs to Mrs. Tubbs, but I’d like you gentlemen to confirm her identity.”
“I’ll do it.” Tubbs set his jaw. “I don’t trust you not to lie to me.”
Sebastian sighed. Must the man be so stubborn? “Mr. Tubbs?—”
Mr. Quinn lifted his hand, and Sebastian fell silent. “She is his family. Come along, Mr. Tubbs. You may see her for yourself, if you so wish.”
The pitiful remains of Penelope Tubbs lay in a crumpled heap on the floor in front of the main doors to the library, which remained resolutely shut. She’d been buried in a beautiful, pale blue gown; it was now streaked with dirt and contrasted sharply with her burned skin. The guard’s shot had been true: a small hole in her forehead, and the back of her skull blown away. The same mosquito-like proboscis that Siewert had sported emerged from her open jaws.
Tubbs moaned—then stumbled away to retch in a corner. His pale eyes trained on the corpse, Mr. Quinn said, “The vampire’s bite infects those it kills, or so the stories go. I wonder—are the leeches under someone’s control, or just acting on instinct?”
A good question. “Mr. Tubbs, if this is anything like what happened to Mr. Siewert, her grave may have been vandalized. Can you go look, and report back if anyone wrote or drew something on her headstone?”
Looking numb, Tubbs nodded. “Y-Yes. I can do that.”
Sebastian would prefer to go himself, but he was already on very thin ice with the Lesters, and doubted they would take it well if he was spotted in the cemetery again. And having a task might make Tubbs feel better, at least a little.
“I’d suggest not telling your brother that her body doesn’t rest in its grave,” Mr. Quinn said. “Though of course, that is your decision.”
