Page 84 of The Paranormal Investigation Bureau
I was sure Bellatrix had something planned for me as I watched her watching Marsden watch me. I could see her seething, but if his gaze ever moved from me to her, she smiled sweetly. It was fucking uncomfortable, to say the least. Merlin pulled off this amazing turn sequence. Madame Lucinda yelled in delight. Marsden didn’t even look.
I meant to grab him after class, but he got up and disappeared shortly before we were done. Bellatrix rushed out, so I guessed she knew where he was going. Merlin grabbed me and pulled me over to his dance bag.
“I pulled some of the photos out of the box for us to go through at lunch. We shouldn’t go through them in the building. Bevan and Nyx think we should go to the Rusty Anchor.”
“Like onThe Golden Girls?”I asked.
“Yes, girl!” Nyx said. “It’s right on this block. It’s a café dedicated to Blanche Devereaux, and all the servers are cute, gay cabana boys. Bevan likes to go fishing there.”
“Shut up, Nyx. I do not.The Golden Girlsis life, and they have amazing soup. You always invite yourself when I say I’m going.”
“Only when the drag queen playing Bea is singing.”
“Okay, wehaveto go there,” I said.
“The soup is pretty damn amazing, and the booths are private,” Nicolai said.
“Bea isn’t going to be there this early, but the food is delicious,” Nyx said.
We walked to the café. I hadn’t fully explored the streets of New York yet, because I started working right after I arrived. It was on the opposite side of our building to the route my walk to the studio usually took me. It was something else. It was decorated similarly to the house on the show, and the guys were barely wearing any clothes. There was a stage up at the front, with a beat-up grand piano, probably for Miss Bea Arthur.
We took a booth at the back, and they were right. It was very private. I could see why they liked this place.
“Okay, Bevan, you are bringing me back here when there is live music,” I said.
Bevan just grinned at me.
“I’ll text her and find out when she’s on next.”
I smiled. It would be nice to get out and just enjoy life for a bit, considering everything going on I could use a chance to let loose. The menu looked amazing, and they all said the food here was good. I ordered the chicken salad and the cream of shrimp soup. Merlin, Arden, and Bevan all had photo albums in their dance bag. They pulled them out and distributed them.
I cracked mine open.Thank Lilith, they were labeled!The photos were glued to the pages and, at the bottom, in neat handwriting, was the date and name of the people in the photo—score one for Nicolai’s shady ancestors!
I’d always been interested in history. If I didn’t desperately need to find Santiago, I would have pored through these photos a lot more thoroughly. But, once I saw how many boxes we had to go through, I just scanned every name on the page and then moved on to the next. I did sometimes pause if I saw a name I recognized. There were a ton of famous people at the parties in these photos, not just dancers either, there were actors, musicians, and politicians, too.
We didn’t eat in silence. Everyone was finding treasures in these albums. We just weren’t finding Santiago.
“Look at this,” Nyx said, setting her album on the table. “Look at the vampire in the background.”
I leaned over. They took this one at our theatre. It didn’t have any major players in the curse we were dealing with, but the photo had several dancers in the company hanging out on stage. There was a ballerina in the back who wasn’t in costume, she was just chatting with someone, but she had a presence. She stood out among everyone else in the photo. I recognized the way she held herself. Unfortunately, her name wasn’t written at the bottom of the photo, but that was definitely Madame Lucinda when she was a young apprentice withThe P.
“We should show this to her!” Bevan said. “She loves telling stories from way back then, but it took her a long time to be able to afford a camera. She kept press clippings until she could afford a camera, but there’s a lot of her life that she just has memories of.”
“Definitely gonna show her this,” Nicolai said. “Her memories are still quite vivid. She could probably tell us exactly what show they were doing and what she was talking about when this photo was taken. My uncle won’t be angry if we take this photo out and give it to her.”
Thatwas why I kissed Nicolai. He liked to pretend he was an asshole—-and I’m sure he’d treated many women like garbage before I met him—but, he was different around me, and I saw how he was around Madame Lucinda. He genuinely loved and respected her.
“We should have invited her,” Merlin said. “She probably knows so many people in these photos. Vampires live a long time, and most of these people aren’t around anymore. She’d probably love looking at these. I know our priority is to find Santiago, but she’s been through a lot lately. We all know she didn’t want to let Bellatrix and Ivory back into class. This might brighten her day.”
Andthatwas why I wanted to kiss Merlin, too.
Chapter26
Merlin
Ifelt so helpless. It wasn’t like me to just sit back looking through photos to find someone who wanted to kill me and the people I cared about. Not when my dad was who he was. I never called in favors with him. If I had been honest with him about why I was asking about Santiago, we’d already know what he looked like.
My dad didn’t take threats against me lightly. He’d met Bevan and Nicolai and knew they were my brothers. If he found out they were in danger, and a girl I was interested in was, too, then Marsden and Santiago would already be long gone.
