Page 65 of The Hunter’s Affection

“The next best thing. He’s a bit more organized than we are.” Jim looked at his wife, shrugging his shoulders as if to say sorry and continued. “His non-displayed items are separated into marked tubs, and sure enough—”

“The journal,” Torr said next to her, his tone urgent. Why was this journal so important?

“Did you read it?” Laria asked.

Jim carefully opened the book, its pages thin and obviously delicate. To say everyone sat on the edge of their seats wasn’t simply an expression. Even Charlotte, who seemed to know the least about the journal, was leaning forward.

“‘May 2, 1855,’” he read. “‘Have I made a deal with the devil? We shall see. They’re coming to Stone Haven. The fate of our town is in their hands.’”

He closed the journal and glanced up.

“This book belonged to Mayor Walsh, the first of that title in Stone Haven.”

“Annabel’s great-great-grandfather?” Lawrence suggested.

“Something like that,” Birdie said. “Tell them the rest of it, Jim.”

He looked at her as if to say he was trying, then turned toward the rest of them. “It’s no wonder Annabel is so desperate to get her hands on this. It’s quite a tale.”

“Have you heard of the Jewett City vampires?” Jim asked the group.

Charlotte watched Torr’s face as he concentrated, thinking.

“Connecticut?” Lawrence asked.

“Yes. I looked it up. In the early 1850s, a family blamed vampires for multiple deaths—”

“Yes,” Laria exclaimed. “I do remember. It was actually tuberculosis.”

Torr picked up the thread. “But it started a war between the New England vampires and the Sect—”

“Exactly,” Lawrence said.

The nonvampires in the room, Charlotte included, watched the exchange with fascination. It was easy to forget that this family had already lived several lifetimes.

“Well,” Jim continued, “it seems you weren’t the only ones to have heard about the incident. The mayor’s daughter confessed to her father that she’d fallen in love with a newcomer to the town, a man who had purchased a farm and lived, by all accounts, quiet peaceably on the outskirts of Stone Haven. Apparently she panicked, telling her parents of her lover’s plans to turn her—”

“Turn her?” Charlotte blurted. “He was a vampire?”

Jim nodded. “Yes. As you can imagine, the revelation didn’t sit well with the mayor. At first he didn’t believe her. Letting the daughter believe he condoned the relationship, he investigated. And eventually ended up in Griswold, Connecticut—”

“Let me guess. They were only too happy to explain how they’d taken care of their vampire problem,” Torr said.

Charlotte had to think for a second. He was saying—

“Exactly,” Jim confirmed. “They helped the mayor contact the same members of the Sect who’d slaughtered the vampires in Connecticut. The journal mentions Holy Island off the coast of England.”

“And brought them to Stone Haven,” Laria concluded.

“Where our lone vampire was hunted down and killed, followed into death by the mayor’s daughter, who took her own life when she realized the course of events that had transpired after her confession.”

No one spoke. There was a lot to unpack in Jim’s story. The Derricksons and Morleys were not the first vampires to have stepped foot in Stone Haven—vampires had a presence here before then, and Cheld too. Cheld who were in the Sect.

“She knew.” Lawrence stood up and reached for the journal, which Jim gave him. “Annabel’s sister knew. All of it.”

Jim and Birdie nodded. “The journal has been passed down from generation to generation. And with a clue as to how to find them as well. Take a look at the notes in the back.”

“Does this mean Annabel knows everything too?”

“Annabel never saw the journal,” Jim said. “Flip to the last few pages. Her sister had a falling-out with the entire Walsh family. Something about a boy. An engagement.”

“Ironic,” Charlotte thought aloud.

“If you believe in irony,” Birdie said. Clearly, she did not.

“But Annabel obviously still knows of its existence. And, at least in general terms, its contents,” Toni finished. “Why hasn’t she tried to retrieve it before?”

“Maybe to her it was just a story,” Toni said. “But then Birdie started asking questions about the Cheld—”

“Not a common word,” Birdie admitted. “Plus the boys and their spending habits . . .”

Charlotte loved that Birdie called Kenton and Lawrence, two deadly seven-hundred-year-old vampires, “boys.”

“So she suspects something, but wants that journal as proof.” Toni stood. “Do you guys realize what this means?”

“It means,” Lawrence said, looking from Laria to Torr, “we’re on borrowed time in this town.”

So much for toasts to The Vault. It was as if that journal had sucked all signs of life from the room.