Chapter 12

Professionalism Abounds

We migrated down to the kitchen. No proper girl-talk session can be completed without a bowl of ice cream or other assorted junk foods. Possibly both. Milly discovered some vanilla with macadamia nuts in it way back in the freezer. The top was a little crystally, but when we scraped that off it was just fine.

I was scooping me out a bowl while Milly safaried in the humongous fridge for the toppings.

“So,” came Milly’s voice, echoing from the depths of her refrigerator. “Where do you think Zo really lives? You’ve gotta have some idea, knowing you.”

Shrugging, though she couldn’t see it, I replied, “I’m not totally sure, but most vampire houses have a central location where the power base is. It could be there.”

She turned around with her arms full of chocolate, caramel, strawberry, and cherry toppings, kicking the door closed on her way to the table.

“Central location like what?”

I carefully extracted the caramel from her arms. “It depends. In bigger cities it’s usually some type of overlooked building, like a warehouse or something. Smaller communities it might just be somebody’s actual house, especially if it’s on the edge of the town, or in some place more rural.”

Milly said slowly, “Okay, so they try to stay out of the way?”

“Yup.” I could see her gears turning. “Why, what are you thinking?”

“Well,” she said, “there’s this private suburb out of town a little ways, like a gated community, you know? It sounds like it’s a little more up-scale than normal, but it is very isolated and no one knows a whole lot about it.”

“A gated community?” I mulled that idea over, stirring my caramel-covered ice cream into itself. “I suppose it’s possible, but like I said, they usually try to stay low-key.”

I caught her staring at my ice cream. “What?”

“You actually eat it like that?” There was a strange mixture of awe and revulsion on her face. “What are you, five?”

Grinning, I scooped up a big glob of it and slurped it down. She shuddered.

“Anyway,” I said. “What’s the name of this place?”

“Umm…” Milly trailed off. “I dunno. Something like Spooky Mountain or something.”

“Spooky Mountain?” I drawled, brow arching. “Really, Mills?”

Her face flushed. “Okay, so it’s not that, but it’s something like that.”

Suddenly she sat up straight and her face brightened. “I know, we can ask my mom.”

“Your mom?”

“Yeah,” Milly said. “She might have something on them in her files.”

“She’s a realtor, right?” I asked.

“She’s a real estate management professional,” she replied archly.

“Ohhh.” I held up my hands in surrender. “Excuse me.”

Milly glanced at the clock. “If I run upstairs and take a shower really quick we can make it there in plenty of time. The office doesn’t close until five, and she usually stays until six or so anyway to finish up.”

“Shouldn’t your dad be home by now?” I asked.

“He’s usually here a little after four.”

“Okay,” I said. “Why do you need to shower anyway?”

“My PE class is the last class I have, so I usually don’t bother until I’m home.” She gave me a look. “Anymore questions or can I go now?”

I waved a hand in front of my nose. “Please do.”

When Milly said quick shower, she wasn’t kidding. She was only gone for like ten minutes before she reappeared. Mountain fresh and squeaky clean. She’d left her hair down to dry.

On the way out to my car she called her dad at the school to let him know where we were going, then she called her mom to give her a heads-up. We made it to her mom’s office not too much later.

Abby looked great in some dark slacks and an off-white blazer. Milly and I looked a little out of place in our jeans and t-shirts. Abby was on the phone when we opened her office door, but she waved us in.

She said her good-byes and then turned to us. “So you guys want to know about the Iriy Hills Estates, huh?”

I poked Milly in the side. “Iriy Hills Estates? That sounds exactly like Spooky Mountain.”

“Oh, bite me,” she said.

Abby laughed and pushed a folder across the desk towards us. “There’s not a whole lot on them, really. As far as I can tell they’ve owned that property up there close on forever. The ownership papers aren’t even in our files, they probably only exist at town hall now.”

“Property up there?” I said, eyes scanning the pages even though they didn’t make much sense to me. “Up where?”

“They own a big mess of land up the hill a ways,” Abby said. “It’s on the other side of the town from us.”

“The mountains across from the ridge you came in on,” Milly offered.

I nodded, picturing the layout of the town. “That would be on the same end as the college and stuff right?”

“Yes,” Abby replied. “But further out.”

She held out her hand and I gave the folder back to her. “Speaking of the college, the estate owns several apartments in the college-approved housing section, probably for kids from the community that go.”

“Imagine that,” I said. Milly rolled her eyes at me.

Flipping a few pages into the folder, Abby pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to me. There were names of apartment buildings listed with street addresses and other information.

“Those are just the ones they lease through us,” Abby went on. “They could rent others directly from the complexes themselves.”

I flipped the paper to the back. The apartment building Zo didn’t live in was listed.

“Apart from that, there’s not much else.” Abby pulled some more papers out of the folder. “They bought the lot next to the public library, then donated it to the library board on the condition it was used to increase the children’s section. They’ve also been known to buy old buildings and remodel them for cheap. They then sell them to new buyers or newlyweds or whatever for a special rate.”

That was interesting. Vampire humanitarians. Who knew? Of course, if you were trying to win people over to your side, selling a desperate family a new house for cheap was a good way to go. I caught Milly giving me a look, and figured she was having similar thoughts.

But the elder Ms. Parker wasn’t exactly an idiot either. Her eyes moved between us slowly.

“They aren’t in trouble are they?” She asked. “I know the lady who comes down to handle their affairs, Sheila something, and she’s always very nice.”

“Gorn,” Milly offered. “She’s Knox’s mom.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Abby said. At the same time I asked, “Knox?”

“A boy in my class,” Milly said.

I stared at her. “You never said you knew anyone from there.”

She shrugged. “I told you, they don’t talk about it much.”

“Are any of the other kids in your school from there?”

“Maybe, but I don’t know any of them.”

“Just this Knox guy?”

“Yeah. And I don’t know him that well, he’s kind of a loner.”

I sat there for a minute, mentally chewing on all this information. A picture was beginning to form, but I would need more information before I was sure.

“Anyway, that’s all I have.” Abby closed the folder and handed it back. “There’s a few other tidbits in the folder, but we went over the most relevant stuff.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking it from her.

“Anything I can do, Regan,” she said. “You know that.”

I gave her a winning smile, Milly gave her a quick hug, and we left.

“That was interesting,” Milly said as we got back in the car.

“Yes, it was,” I said absently. “I’m pretty sure the flippers-with-a-heart thing is a scam.”

“How do you know?”

I gave her a look. “Because I am an undead management professional.”

She laughed, and held up her hands. “Excuse me.”

We sat in the car for a few moments, me drumming my fingers on the steering wheel.

Milly prodded, “Where to now?”

“I’m not sure,” I sighed. “I really wanna go up there and snoop around, but the hunter in me says we don’t have enough intel yet.”

“We could go the library,” she said. “If the place has been around forever, like Mom says, than they have to be in some of the books about local history.”

“You know,” I said as I started up the car. “I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”