Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(37)

Four weeks ago, the time had been right. The ties that kept her loyal to her Mistress broke at last. Elyna’s stubbornness had been rewarded and she was free.

Elyna moved from the bathroom. Her hotel room was eleven stories to the ground and had a fine view of the Loop and the big lake beyond that.

In contrast to the thirst for vengeance that had driven her since her death, hope seemed such a fragile thing.

•   •   •

In the end, she paid a little too much for the apartment turned condo, but a lot less than she’d been willing to pay.

She moved into a furnished efficiency apartment whose greatest assets were its location a few blocks from her home, its basement entrance where no one would see her comings and goings, and a storage room with no windows.

She went shopping at a few thrift stores and then took her newly acquired laundry to the nearest Laundromat. Three middle-aged women eyed her as she sorted her laundry. When she put the first load in, a grandmotherly woman came up to her and explained the ins and outs of the neighborhood laundry.

By the time she’d folded the last of her towels, Elyna had learned a nifty trick to get lipstick out of washable silk; that there was a scary-looking man who washed his clothes on Tuesdays who was a retired Marine, horribly shy, and a dear, sweet man, so she wasn’t to let him frighten her; and that there was a local man, someone’s cousin’s sister-in-law’s nephew, who was a contractor.

•   •   •

Peter Vanderstaat was a neighborhood man, a police officer who ran remodel jobs with his partner and a half dozen other people on the side. He’d agreed to meet Elyna at her condo and look at it, even though what she wanted wasn’t the kind of project they looked for. He usually bought a place, fixed it up, and sold it at a profit, but he was between projects.

He looked to be in his midforties with tired, suspicious eyes. Short and squat, Jack would have said—built like a wrestler. Peter didn’t talk a lot, just grunted, until they came back to the living room.

“Where is the money coming from?” he asked. “I don’t want to have my men put hours in and then not get paid.”

Elyna had money. She’d started by stealing a little bit from her victims and continued with investments. Investments she’d successfully hidden from Corona.

“My family has money,” she told him. “I can pay you.”

She had been painfully honest when she had been human. Lying was one of those skills she’d had to learn to be a successful vampire.

Vanderstaat bought her story, turning his attention back to the apartment. He frowned at the mismatched windows. “You want me to match the vinyl?”

“Please, no,” she said, involuntary horror in her voice.

He looked at her and lifted a shaggy eyebrow.

“Vinyl is good. I’m sure that would look terrific in a modern place, but . . .” She let her voice trail off.

“But,” he agreed. “What do you intend to do with the floors? Some of those boards can’t be saved, expensive to find replacement boards of the same quality. There are some very good laminates on the market; I can get you fair prices.”

“Can’t you fix the floors?” she asked in a small voice.

That time she got a grin. “A girl after my own heart,” he said. “Not the most profitable way to go—but we’re in it for fun, too. No fun slapping together crap no matter how much more money you make at it.”

Peter and his men worked evenings, he told her, five days a week but not on Saturday or Sunday. They’d stop at ten every night for the neighbors’ sake, which made for a long remodel—the reason they usually didn’t take on a contract like this. They shook hands on it and agreed that he would start in two days to give him time to put together his crew.

•   •   •

Ghosts and cats don’t like vampires. Dogs, on the other hand, didn’t mind Elyna—which was good because more often than not, Peter brought his yellow Lab as one of the crew. Peter was initially dubious of Elyna’s need to help, but when she proved useful, he started ordering her around like he did the rest of his crew.

The first job was finishing the demolition, clearing out the old for the new. They started with the bedrooms and moved forward. Some nights it was just Peter and Elyna; other nights they had as many as eight or ten men.

“Hey, you guys,” said Simon, a twentysomething rookie cop and drywall man who had pulled down a chunk of plaster from the living room wall and held it up for everyone to see. “Look how this is stained. Do you think this is blood? My mom says that back in the late twenties a man was killed up here in this apartment. Or at least he left a lot of blood behind and disappeared.”

No one was looking at Elyna, which was a good thing.

“I remember that story,” agreed one of the other men. “Something to do with the gangsters, wasn’t it? And the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

“The massacre was 1929,” commented Peter.

“Yeah,” agreed Simon. “The guy who lived here was an architect just hired by John Scalise—one of Capone’s men. Story was that the architect’s wife went missing a few weeks before Valentine’s Day. Right after the massacre, the neighbor across the hall and several police officers broke down the door—”