07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

short shake of curls and then a yawn. “If they were really going to move it…they should have sent me
away or something.”
“Well, maybe they were concerned for your life.”
“Wha’?…” Bonnie yawned again, not sure what he meant. “I mean, an old, old safe with
a combination? I told them…that those old safes…could be…really be…easy to…to…” Bonnie let
out a sound like a sigh and her voice stopped.
“I’m glad we had this talk,” Damon murmured in the silence.
There was no answer from the bed.
Pulling Bonnie’s sheet up as high as it would go, he let it drift down. It covered most of
her face. “Requiescat in pace,” Damon said softly. Then he left her room, not forgetting to take the
mug.
Now…“him chained and going down to the root cellar.” Damon mused as he washed
out the mug carefully and put it back in the cupboard. The line sounded strange but he had almost all
the links now, and it was actually simple. All he needed were twelve more of Mrs. Flowers’s
sleeping cachets and two plates heaped with raw beef. He had all the ingredients…but he’d never
heard of a root cellar.
Shortly thereafter, he opened the door to the basement. Nope. Didn’t match the criteria
for “root cellar” he’d looked up on his mobile. Irritated and knowing that any moment someone was
likely to wander downstairs for something, Damon turned around in frustration. There was an
elaborately carved wooden panel across from the basement, but nothing else.
Curse it, he would not be thwarted at this point. He would have his life as a vampire
back, or he didn’t want any life at all!
To punctuate the sentiment, he slammed a fist against the wooden panel in front of him.
The knock sounded hollow.
Immediately all frustration vanished. Damon examined the panel very carefully. Yes,
there were hinges at the very edge, where no sane person would expect them. It wasn’t a panel but a
door—undoubtedly to the root cellar where the star ball was.
It didn’t take long for his sensitive fingers—even his human fingers were more sensitive
than most—to find a place that clicked—and then the whole door swung open. He could see the
stairs. He tucked his parcel under one arm and descended.
By the illumination of the small flashlight he’d taken from the storage room, the root
cellar was just as described: a damp, earthy room to store fruit and vegetables before refrigerators
had been invented. And the safe was just as Bonnie had said: an ancient, rusty combination safe,
which any whiz cracker could have opened in about sixty seconds. It would take Damon about six
minutes, with his stethoscope (he’d heard once that you could find anything in the boardinghouse if
you looked hard enough and it seemed to be true) and every atom of his being concentrating on
hearing the tumblers quietly click.
First, however, there was the Beast to conquer. Saber the black hellhound had unfolded,
awake and alert from the moment the secret door had opened. Undoubtedly, they had used Damon’s
clothes to teach him to howl madly at his scent.
But Damon had his own knowledge of herbs and had ransacked Mrs. Flowers’s kitchen
to find a handful of witch hazel, a small amount of strawberry wine, aniseed, some peppermint oil,
and a few other essential oils she had in stock, sweet and sharp. Mixed, this created a pungent lotion,
which he had gingerly applied to himself. The concoction formed for Saber an impossible tangle of
strong smells. The only thing the now-sitting dog knew was that it was surely not Damon sitting on the