Page 19 of Your Final Resting Place

After trying the main doors and finding them predictably locked, I hurried around the side and peeked in a window. The room inside appeared to be an office. Its lights flickered on and off erratically. A chair had been knocked over. Maybe it was always like that or . . . maybe the gremlins had wrecked it?

Moving along to the next row of windows, I found one had been cracked. It wouldn’t take much to pop it open. A quick elbow jab shattered the glass. I froze, letting the sound of raining shards settle to make sure no one was coming, then climbed inside.

This room was another office, like its neighbor, but here the lights were off. The ones outside in the hall flickered and buzzed ominously.

I creaked open the door and squinted into the erratic lighting.

“Victor?”

Besides the weird broken lights, nothing else seemed to be amiss—no alarms, no blood trails, no robot murder dogs. No gremlins either.

“Victor, the vampires are here,” I half whispered. Although invisible, I snuck down the hallway. It didn’t feel right to amble around a building I’d technically broken into.

Just as it seemed as though wandering around without any real sense of direction, or a plan, wasn’t going to get me anywhere, I rounded a corner and found the gremlins in the midst of a riot, much like the one they’d had in my room. Thirty gremlins suddenly looked and felt like hundreds as they ran from room to room, flung anything small enough to hold at each other and the walls, chewed cables, and generally did what gremlins did best—destroyed everything.

“You guys? I think you’ve done enough.”

They didn’t even stop to listen to my disembodied voice. Little Jimmy was the only one who could corral them, and he was probably with Victor. But where?

“Victor? Jimmy?” I called. We really needed to get this show on the road before the vampires realized Zee was wasting their time.

After maneuvering around the gremlins dashing about the hall, I rounded a corner and heard voices deeper within the building. Or more accurately, one voice—Agatha’s. She was not supposed to be here.

Oh dear.

Putting on a burst of speed, I dashed down the corridor, around the next corner, and stumbled to a stop outside closed double doors. Inside, countertops glistened with shiny vials, rows of sparkling gems, and glittering metals.

Agatha, dressed in an all-black pantsuit and wearing sweeping black eyeliner like a teen who hadn’t outgrown their emo phase, stood behind a long countertop littered with lots of tiny jewelry-making tools. Behind her, Victor appeared to be standing in her shadow, awkwardly watching on as she waved a tiny pair of pliers around, ranting about her craft and talent.

He wouldn’t just be standing there, listening to her tirade. Something was wrong . . . I pushed my face closer to the window, and spotted the steel pillar at Victor’s back. Was he leaning against it, or tied to it?

His hair, usually so neat and precisely controlled, had fallen loose of its braided restraints—a sure sign something was wrong. Somehow, Agatha had gotten the upper hand on him, and probably tied him to that structural pillar with reinforced bindings of some kind. Or she’d gotten the anti-ward ring off him. But it seemed unlikely he’d just hand it over . . .

Whatever had happened, Victor was her prisoner.

“I’m trying to save you from yourself, Victor,” Agatha explained. “As a friend. You should understand.”

“I’d prefer you save me by letting me go . . . as a friend.”

“If you joined us, you’d be wealthy again.” She turned to face him, still holding the small pliers. Did she mean to use them on him? “You’d have your social standing back. You’d be the glorious apex predator I know you to be, instead of this terribly pathetic shadow of your former self.”

“I’d also be as miserable as you knew me to be.”

Agatha gave the pliers a dramatic snip-snip motion.

Uh-oh. Was Victor about to lose another finger again? Or worse?

I’d told him he should take Zee. This was what happened when one of us went alone into danger. Although . . . he’d had Jimmy along. But Jimmy wasn’t here now. And Jimmy hadn’t always gotten along with vampires, in general.

Hm, time to intervene.

I gave the door a little shove, and popped the seal enough to glide in, still invisible thanks to the ring.

Agatha glanced over her shoulder. I froze, and held my breath. She didn’t have vampire hearing, so she wouldn’t hear my heart, but Victor would. And sure enough, his frown suggested he had.

“Huh?” Agatha squinted in my direction. “Who’s there?”

“Just the breeze,” Victor said. “You were saying how I should join you and Gideon Cain?”