Page 34 of Fangs, Frost, and Folios
“Merde.”René blinked. “The old man knew about it all?”
Nick frowned. “You’re saying Elise is right? That there is actually a vault of treasure here in the library?”
Beatrice wanted to point out that gold and historic weapons really couldn’t compare to the vast wealth of a properly curated library, but she had a feeling it wasn’t the time.
“You.” Elise shoved Nick at the burly man holding Barnes. “Take him.”
Beatrice immediately calculated how she’d take out the human in the black mask, but that still left Barnes with Elise’s gun on him.
“Take me to the vault.” She put the muzzle in Barnes’s back and shoved the old man toward the far wall. “Open the safe and we’ll leave you alive.”
René caught Beatrice’s eye, but she shook her head slightly. She didn’t want to risk Barnes getting shot.
“Wait.” Elise kept the gun on Barnes and looked at Beatrice. “The vampire goes first. Then René and my men, then Nick, then me.”
Dammit. The minute the woman’s back was to Beatrice, she’d been thinking she could get her hands on her and flood her system with amnis to knock her out.
The woman wasn’t dumb.
They dutifully lined up in the order Elise had stated. The vampires holding René waited for Beatrice to walk in front of them, then Nick and the henchman followed with Elise holding Barnes at gunpoint and bringing up the rear. They marched down the center of the library toward the bookcases that lined the far wall.
They fanned out to the side while Barnes pulled a dummy book from the middle of the shelf. Beatrice heard a soft click, and the old bookcase swung out from the wall. The hinges moved in silence, revealing a simple metal door with an electronic lock and a large wheel with a combination in the center.
“It looks like a bank vault,” Nick said.
“It’s similar.” Barnes bent over and began to enter the combination, which led to a heavy-sounding metallic clunk from somewhere behind the door. Then he began to spin the wheel in a pattern Beatrice quickly memorized. Moments later, Beatrice heard another click and the metal door unsealed.
“Lord Mortimer.” Barnes pulled back the door. “The Mortimer vault.”
“Bonfire.”
“Yes.”
“Dancing.”
“Maybe.”
“A goat.”
Ben put down the pen he was using to take notes. “No. For the last time, we are not getting ‘just a small goat’ to butcher for Sadia’s… whatever this is.”
“Coming-of-age ritual.”
“Coming of— Tenzin, have you actually talked to Sadia about any of this?” He rubbed his temple. He knew he was a vampire and vampires didn’t get headaches unless they were deprived of blood for too long and their bodies began to go into stasis, but this entire conversation was making him remember headaches.
For good reason.
“It’s not her job to plan her own party.” Tenzin was floating over the bed, braiding colored thread into a strand of hair that was hanging in front of her. “She has enough going on; she doesn’t need that kind of pressure.”
“But we are planning a ceremony for her, trying to recognize her culture and link to her ancestors, and you’re not asking her about it.”
Tenzin settled on the bed. “You’re right. We should ask Dema what a traditional Syrian coming-of-age ceremony would look like.”
Dema wasn’t as helpful as Ben had hoped.
“Seriously?” Dema raised an eyebrow. “I grew up in Southern California. All I wanted was a drivers’ license and a car when I became a teenager.”
“What about Syrian Muslim traditions?”
