Blood Lily (Lilith Adams Vampire Series Book 1) by Jenny Allen Page A

lock pick gun and closed her kit before following him.
    It took mere seconds before the front door popped open. She paused long enough to pull on purple neoprene gloves and slip the booties over her shoes. Chance looked down at her feet with an amused smile and just shook his head. Lilith was about to step over the threshold when Chance stopped her with a hand on her arm. He leaned in close and whispered while he stared into the dark hall of the house. “Remember, one room at a time and keep talking to me. Okay?” She looked up at him and his eyes caught hers for a second with a serious warning in them. All business. She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat and nodded.
    Reluctantly he let her go and pulled the gun up, training it just over her shoulder. Now it felt like a movie. With her stylish orange glasses in place and her UV wand clicked on, she stepped into the dark. She scanned the floor looking for drops of blood. She seriously doubted she’d find any kind of prints on the floor. The land around the house seemed pretty dry and the red clay dirt this area was famous for was fine like sand when it was dry. It was unlikely that any dirt tracked in would actually hold any sort of helpful pattern.
    Her olive eyes scanned over every s urface of the entryway. There was a high table set to the right of the door with a gilded painting framed on the wall of some generic country scene. Dried flowers sat in a squat basket and there was a set of keys on the corner. Probably Duncan’s keys. She grabbed the keys and tucked them in a zip lock baggie.
    “Entryway is clear. I’m stepping into the room to the left. Just try not to touch anything in case I need to go back through and dust for prints.” She took her search around the corner into a pale blue room. There was a cheap faux wood desk with a computer monitor to the left. Family photos were all over the room, hanging from the walls, cluttering the desk, covering the short shelves on the opposite wall. The Indian style rug in odd light blues and creams was spotless. The whole room had the air of planned chaos. It didn’t seem lived in, more like a staged photo shoot trying too hard to be Middle America.
    “Any startling revelations yet?” Chance leaned into the doorway but his eyes were still on the dark living room in front of him.
    “I don’t think he ever used this room. The computer monitor isn’t even hooked up to anything. The computer cabinet is empty. There’s nothing here but a ton of family photos.”
    “Maybe someone stole the computer. They could have been looking for something.”
    Lilith looked over the computer desk with a careful, calculating eye. “No. there is a very thin layer of dust at the base of the computer cabinet, like the door hasn’t been opened in quite a while. This is just a show room. She was standing back up when her eye caught a splash of color. There was a large family portrait on the wall near the door. She remembered the photo. 10 years ago the entire family got together in St. Louis for a reunion.
    It was a year after her mother died, and a couple months before her 17 th birthday. Spencer left the next summer for Amsterdam to study at the Van Gogh Museum. He wasn’t much of an artist but he had a very deep appreciation of the subject. Duncan, Gregor and Aaron stood in the center, the three brothers. Lilith, Spencer, Miriah, Michael, and several of the other kids surrounded them. Standing next to Miriah was her husband, Malachi. They were married the summer before the reunion. 
    She didn’t know the rest of the extended family that was composed of grandkids all the way to their grandkids. Of course there were cousins galore as well. In total there were about 100 people in the photo. They’d had a hell of a time getting a photographer with decent enough lighting equipment to come to the park at night and capture the shot.
    She held her light up to get a better look and suddenly noticed a dark splotch covering Duncan.