Her voice broke. “Well, he’s—he’s dead? I mean, he’s really dead. I just came over and he was here and I didn’t know that they even left bodies; I thought they went to dust or something—”

She kept rambling, so I broke in, trying to sound soothing. “It depends on the vampire, Esther. When they’re killed the magic leaves them, the years catch up with them, and their bodies revert to where they should be. So very old vampires do turn into dust, just like in the movies. But new vampires may just look like a slightly rotted dead body, and so on.”

When she answered her voice was very small. “I didn’t know that.”

“Can you take me to the body?” I said gently.

“Oh. Right. This way.” I followed her into the cottage, which was barely furnished at all: a couple of folding chairs and a cheap TV in the living room, a card table in the kitchen. There was no refrigerator, no signs of food. “I don’t eat much,” she said, catching my look. “He’s—the body is down here.”

She opened a door in the kitchen, revealing a set of wooden stairs. A basement. Great. Vampires have a talent for finding the few houses in LA that actually have basements. It doesn’t necessarily mean this is a trap, I told myself. I certainly didn’t feel anything Old World in my radius. But I motioned for Esther to go first.

The downstairs was the opposite of the first floor: wall-to-wall carpeting, gorgeously framed art prints on the walls, a flat-screen TV, couches. Everything was well kept but comfortable looking: someone spent time here. Esther continued toward the back wall, where another door led to a tiny bedroom. I could see the dead body lying in the doorway. “That’s him,” she said unnecessarily.

The body had a sort of mummified look: most of the flesh had wasted away, but a few tendrils of hair and skin still clung to the skeleton—male, judging by the clothes. He was wearing a simple button-down men’s shirt and dark slacks that weren’t new but still contrasted heavily with the decrepit skeleton. He’d also been wearing black loafers, but they’d fallen off when his body shriveled up and were lying on the floor near his feet. In the middle of his chest, a gaping hole had ruined the nice line of the shirt. I looked closely and saw the little wood splinters. He’d been staked. Vampires die when their heads are detached from their bodies, or when their hearts are destroyed, or by fire. You don’t technically need a wooden stake to destroy a heart; that’s just something that worked well in the Middle Ages. We have better weapons now, but the stake is a classic, and a lot of people believe that its long history makes it more powerful.

I looked around, but didn’t see anything stake shaped. I didn’t really smell him, just the faintest whiff of old decay. The vampire had been a vampire for a couple of years, at least. I was pretty confident now that this wasn’t a trap, but I was still glad when Esther hovered near the stairs, staying in my line of vision. I dropped my oversize duffel bag of supplies and crouched down, balancing on my heels as I pulled out a thick, disposable plastic body bag and my surgical gloves. “You found him like this?” I asked. “You didn’t pull the stake out?” Vampires don’t die very often in LA, and when they do, Dashiell has to know about it. If it had been after sunset I would have called him immediately after my first conversation with Esther, but since he’d be unavailable for a few more hours I’d have to remember all the details myself and fill him in later that night.

“No, I think she took it with her.”

“She?” I said. “Do you know who did this?” Excellent. I could simply tell Dashiell and be done with the matter.

Esther nodded, biting her lip. “I think so. I think it was his…friend. She’s a vampire too, but she gives me the creeps.” She shuddered and wrapped her stick arms around herself.

“Know anything else about her?” I asked, mostly focused on spreading the body bag out next to the corpse.

“Just her name. He introduced her as Olivia.”

Chapter 20

Olivia’s name hit me like a slap, and I lost my balance, toppling over onto the carpet. Fully seated on the floor, I stared at Esther, and then back at the desiccated corpse. The shape was right, but just in case, I asked her for the vampire’s name.

“Albert,” she whispered. “His name was Albert.”

So Olivia had killed her accomplice. One of her accomplices. I had no idea what to say next, and I suddenly couldn’t stand being in the same room as the corpse. “Can we go up to the kitchen and talk for a second?”

Shrugging and biting at a fingernail, she led me back up the stairs. I sat down at the card table and nodded toward the other chair. Esther sat.

“How did you find me?” I began. “How did you know where I’d be?”

“I didn’t. But Albert gave me your phone number in case of emergencies. He said if something happened to him, I should call you.”

That seemed odd. Jesse had said that Albert was off the grid, on the run from Dashiell. Why would Albert direct Esther to call me, one of Dashiell’s employees? Unless…“Did Albert suspect something might happen?”

Esther hesitated, thinking it over. “I think…I think he loved Olivia? For whatever reason. But he didn’t really trust her.”

“Okay. Who owns this house?”

“Albert did. It wasn’t in his name, though. He said it used to be one of his former human servants?”