Midnight Moon (2)

Chapter 21 - Sacrifices

Neveah

I started where most people wouldn't, at the end.

Johanna Reids, a 37 year old who'd vanished without a trace last Tuesday. Only a vampire was capable of leaving no traces. Her apartment smelled stale. Nobody had come searching for her.

The phone monitor blinked with messages, but other than that, there was no sign of a moving living thing in the room. It was oddly discomforting to see the apartment so still yet so obviously lived in, as though someone had pressed pause in a film. The cushions lay imprinted on the couch where someone had laid down and forgotten to fluff them out. The carpet was angled slightly and several socks littered the floor. On the table, a ring of cold coffee lay where a mug once sat.

She'd intended to go home of course. No one would just leave their things like she did.

I turned to the photos on the mantelpiece. She was in most of them but there were also pictures of a young boy. I took a closer look. He had curling golden hair with blue eyes and an ugly nose. Her son. But no room in her apartment had a crib, a whiff of toddler's saliva or milk. Were these old photos?

I sniffed the back of the prints. New, but she could have printed them out later, after he'd grown up.

I searched the bedrooms and toilets, but other than a towel with Steve McQueen's face on it, I found nothing out of place. I slammed the cupboards shut. A trail of dust slithered down from the ceiling catching my attention. I looked up, reaching to touch the white plaster. It was hollow.

That's when I spotted the faint outline of a trapdoor embedded into the ceiling. I reached over and pushed it up. Based on the lack of dust that fell, she'd been here often. I looked around, searching for clues. There were empty moving boxes that looked untouched and sat in impecabbly orderly rows. But at the farthest end, one box was tilted slightly, its flaps ever so slightly off place.

I went closer, pulling the top open. There were dozens of memory books and picture frames inside. Each one showed Johanna, her son and another man. He was bearded with blue eyes and dimples. He smiled in every photo, either looking at Johanna or the baby boy. The photos had his scent along with Johanna's. Nothing seemed strange about the box, but then I caught a whiff of the sweet perfume that could only belong to one creature. A vampire.

I closed the box and replaced it, leaving the attic and entering back into the apartment. What would the vampire be doing looking at photos? It didn't make sense.

I checked the apartment again. There wasn't an abscess of any more vampire scent that compared to that of the attic. I looked around one last time, memorising the placement of all the furniture, when I caught a familiar whiff again. I sniffed once more, tracing the strange familiarity to the shoe cupboard. That's when I smelled it again, the man from the photo's scent.

Suddenly everything clicked into place. I gasped, and covered my mouth quickly. I needed to get out of here, reroute and restart. I'd gotten it all wrong.