Vampire Debt - Supernatural Battle (Vampire Towers #2) - Kelly St. Clare Page 0,38

controlled. She wasn’t tied to them.

Yet even then, she’d stayed here to help her friends.

Fred’s gaze tracked me around the room. “I would imagine it’s no small shock—though not as much as discovering the beasts exist in the first place.”

They aren’t all beasts.

I rubbed my forehead. “I hate that she had to bear that alone.” Had I known, things could have been so different. I might have been here when she needed me.

“My knowledge on such matters is limited,” the butler said softly. “But you can go through your grandmother’s records.”

I snapped my head up, lowering my arms. “What?”

He got to his feet. “Agatha Le Spyre had not a passive bone in her body.”

True.

“Do you really think she’d let vampires take the city, her friends, and her beloved granddaughter without a fight?”

Not one fucking bit, but the glint in his eyes was almost frightening. Finally, I got a glimpse at what others saw when they looked at the butler.

Scary.

“How did she fight them?” I stated, lifting my chin.

Fred crossed to the bookshelf and pulled out the copy of Tom Hanks’s autobiography. My grandmother had never read it but bought the book out of loyalty because Sleepless in Seattle was her favourite movie.

The butler pressed something in the gap and stepped away.

My mouth bobbed as the bookcase swung inward.

Well, shit.

Turns out I didn’t know all the hidden nooks on the estate.

“Why don’t you head down and find out for yourself?” he suggested.

I tore my gaze from the dark wooden hall visible through the bookcase door. “You aren’t coming?”

He bowed. “This is a matter for the head of estate, Miss Le Spyre. And you can rest assured that once the bookshelf is sealed shut again, the area below is entirely soundproof.”

“That’s me,” I said, my tongue thick in my mouth.

A small smile curved his lips before it faded into an expression as grave as I’d ever seen on him. “Time to find out what else that entails.”

Two flights of stairs and low-ceilinged hall descended to a circular room that I guessed was somewhere beneath the vicinity of the kitchen.

The secret room was part of the original house if I had to guess. The other hidden passages were added during the second world war by Gloria Le Spyre and didn’t use the same materials as the original structure, whereas the mahogany floors here matched the rest of the house.

I scanned the room—absorbing the huge bird’s-eye map of Bluff City covering the walls. There were nine colour blocks surrounding me which correlated to the nine suburbs. The estates were in another section and the agricultural district in another. Eleven in total.

The map couldn’t be coincidence.

“You knew the game existed,” I whispered. “Not just them.”

Turning in a full circle, I took in the filing cabinets lining the walls below the map wallpaper. Beneath the estates’ section of the map was a desk identical to the one upstairs.

I perched on the upholstered chair and studied the contents of the heavy desk, swallowing hard at the picture of nine-year-old me with my parents a few months before they died.

A piece of paper stuck out from the silver frame. Working the paper free, I read the letters and numbers on it.

“Password,” I murmured. It had to be.

Switching on the middle monitor, I clicked on the login box and drew the keyboard to me, typing:

LavEnDeR!2274#

Not as impressive as the code for Kyros’s lair.

Scowling, I tuned into the vampire prince again, relieved to find a vague peace floating through him. Was he sleeping? Colour me surprised he could sleep with so much on his conscience.

All three screens flickered to life, and I took a deep breath, pushing up my glasses to scan the contents. The left screen showed an open email browser with a stack of unopened messages in the inbox.

The right was a reporting system that looked similar to Monocle.

The middle desktop contained one file labelled Basilia.

“Fuck, okay. What have you got for me, Agatha?” I shook out my hands and touched the file on the screen, tapping twice.

My grandmother’s face appeared on each of the three screens.

“Basilia,” she said.

It was a video!

Fumbling, I rushed to tap the pause icon. The image froze and I stared at the video of my grandmother, breath harsh and quick.

Not even three weeks had passed since her death. I wasn’t ready to see her.

To hear her voice.

My hands shook as I studied her direct topaz gaze, the colour an exact match for mine and my father’s. Her shoulders were relaxed, and she was