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

Lilith put down her case quickly and pulled out a swab. She ran it over the glass directly through the dark spot. Blood absorbs UV light and can appear dark when everything else reflects it. She added a few drops of the pink vial, a protein that reacted specifically with key markers in vampire blood. It turned a brilliant fuchsia color and her eyes went wide. She grabbed her normal flashlight and held it up to the glass. Sure enough there was a faint reddish brown smudge over Duncan’s smiling face.
    After shoving the swab into a plastic tube and snapping it shut, she labeled it with a tiny magic marker and placed it in a side tray of her kit. Her mind was reeling over just what that smudge could mean. Out of context there were just too many possibilities. There was nothing to say that it was Duncan’s and nothing could tell her how recent it was. It could have happened years ago, but somehow she doubted it. Obviously this room was cleaned on a fairly regular basis or the layers of dust would be much thicker. No matter how light that blood smudge was, it wouldn’t have been missed. She needed more information to put the pieces together, but this wasn’t a good start. It gnawed at the back of her mind as she grabbed the case and pushed past Chance, who was still lingering in the doorway.
    “Come on. I told you I don’t need you underfoot.” She didn’t bother looking at Chance’s reaction to her snappy tone. She couldn’t handle his male bravado right now. There was work to do.
    With her UV light in hand again , she carefully checked over the living room. It was a big open space with a cluster of couches and chairs closing in around a big screen TV. There was a river stone chimney in the corner that was framed in pale, lacquered wood. The wood trim ran all the way to the ceiling and then stretched across it. The walls on either side were painted a deep, rich red. It was a dramatic look but somehow still country.
    The couches and chairs looked lived in, but clean. There were no traces of anything in the living room but it took her a good hour to determine that. Chance would speak up every minute or two from the hallway and it irritated her to no end. He could see her from the hallway and he kept breaking her concentration. Her skin was tingling with irritation by the time she was done. All she could really determine was that this area was used more than the first room, but not by much. Considering Duncan’s reluctance to move into the age of modern technology, Miriah and Spencer probably used the big screen TV more than Duncan. She couldn’t exactly picture her uncle sitting in a recliner watching American Idol, although the thought was funny enough to calm her fraying nerves for a moment.
    She moved on , checking two bedrooms that Duncan obviously never used. There were only sheer curtains on the windows and Duncan would need a light tight room to sleep in at his age. The kitchen and dining room were clear too, as well as two bathrooms. She wasn’t going to waste her time dusting for prints, not until she found something that stood out. Duncan lived here and Miriah and Spencer visited regularly, which would mean a lot of prints to eliminate. Somehow she doubted that Chance would have the patience for her to spend hours in each room. Besides, if something was truly wrong, Duncan wouldn’t have the time. Until they actually got to Tennessee she’d been more concerned about Gregor’s hidden agenda than Duncan’s safety. The scales were tipping.
    At a quarter till 4 am she’d found nothing but the smudge on the glass of the family portrait. She stared down a flight of stairs leading to the basement as Chance came up behind her. Before he could say anything she turned around and held up her hand. “Stay here. I’ll keep talking. We’ve been here a while, Chance. If there was someone here that wanted to attack us, I think they would have made their move by now. Don’t you?”
    Chance frowned but stayed silent at