Sierra Dean - Secret Unleashed

“Or ours,” Holden noted.

“True. But Tiffany’s mistress was special. She was a vampire.”

I raised an eyebrow and looked across Maxime to Holden. He shrugged, but he too appeared interested in this development.

“It seems his vampire mistress had a special longing for the sun. She missed it more than anything else from her human life, and she begged him to find a way to bring the sun back to her. They both knew she wasn’t able to see real sunlight again, so Tiffany tried to find a way to capture the sun for her. He started by designing lamps, hoping to convey the essence of sunlight through different colors and shapes.”

I thought of the lamps in Calliope’s mansion. My half-fairy/half-god guardian had an impressive collection of original Tiffany works lighting her waiting room, and I loved those lamps. I could see now how their creator had been inspired, and loved their jewellike glow all the more for it.

Artificial sunlight. What a genius idea. He must have loved his vampire mistress a great deal to set about making art like that for her. Judging by the expression on Holden’s face, he too was impressed by the lengths a human man had gone to for his vampire lover.

“While she loved the lamps, she still craved more. They were such a small offering compared to the greatness of day. So Tiffany began constructing work on a larger scale.”

Maxime opened the web browser and typed Tiffany ceiling into the Google search. An astonishing blue-green circular dome ceiling was the first thing he showed us, and it was so beautiful I wanted to reach out and touch it.

“This one is in a library in Chicago. Or, from what I gather, a former library, which is now a tourism office.” He shrugged as if it was hard to keep track of how buildings changed purpose over the years. Going back to the image search, he showed us literally hundreds of ceilings and windows Tiffany had designed.

“His vampire mistress loved them all, but nothing seemed to achieve his goal of bringing her the sunlight she desperately wanted. She grew sullen and dark as time went on. Meanwhile, Tiffany’s star was on the rise, and his designs became coveted by elite families across America. Including Sarah Winchester.”

Maxime went back to the files with images of the Winchester Mansion. He showed us several we’d already seen, but stopped on a small one set into an interior wall. It was patterned in pink and green, with thirteen crystals of various size mounted in it, appearing like dew drops caught in a spider web. It was incredible.

“This window was designed specifically for Sarah Winchester. Tiffany agonized over its construction, setting those crystals—which are actually prisms—in such a way they would take the sun’s light and cover the entire floor of a room with rainbows. He considered it one of his greatest achievements.”

“But…it’s inside the house.”

“Yes. It is. It was the single most expensive window in the Winchester Mansion, and Sarah had it installed in a place where the sun would never reach it. When Tiffany’s mistress found out what Sarah had done to the window, she was furious . She believed this window might have been the one to finally achieve what she’d asked Tiffany to do for her, and to discover it was being squandered made her livid. She begged Tiffany to buy it back, but he refused. After his death, she attempted to get it from the Winchester estate, but they were unwilling to sell it. Since then she has spent decades trying to get it back, and after so many failed tries at going through official channels, she got tired of waiting.”

“It’s Eilidh, isn’t it?” I asked. Only a vampire in her position would be able to send a warden out to steal a window .

“Yes. After we left San Francisco she has spent a great deal of time and energy working to retrieve the window. She’s made generous offers to the restoration team, as well as to the museum that now exists there.” The way he said museum was so dismissive he seemed offended to be using the phrase.

He opened the web browser again and pulled up a website for Winchester Mystery House. I could tell what had made him sneer. Sarah Winchester’s house had been turned into a bizarre hybrid of museum and amusement park. Guided tours were offered through specific areas of the house, while others were off-limits to tourists because of structural damage from multiple earthquakes.

The place even offered moonlight ghost tours.

“Is it actually haunted?” I’d had some run-ins with ghosts. Enough exposure to believe in them without a shadow of a doubt. I wasn’t worried my expedition might be hindered by spirits, but it was better to know when a transparent specter might jump out at you. Kept the girly screaming to a minimum.

“Who knows. A house that old, with so many people dedicating their lives to working there. Work that never, ever ended? I’d wager one or two spirits are lurking in the halls. Sarah died there.”

I looked at the website, which offered fewer photos and less history than I’d gotten from Maxime, and put it together with what I’d learned during my meeting with the Tribunal.

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“What makes you say that?”

“If Eilidh sent Sutherland to get her the window, that’s all well and fine. But he didn’t get it. There would have been some news about it going missing if it’s as valuable as you say. So, there’s more to this. They told me they were afraid the item might fall into the wrong hands. Sutherland doesn’t have the window, which means they’re worried about something else entirely.”

Maxime and Holden both stared at me. I was a little offended by their shocked expressions. This was hardly the first time I’d made an astute observation.

“As far as I know, the window was the Tribunal’s endgame. Eilidh wanted it, and she sent Sutherland to get it.”

I shook my head. “Then we’re all being lied to. They want me to find Sutherland because he went to get the window and found something else. And whatever it is he found, that’s what they’re really after.”

I hated being lied to.

I liked being used even less. Having been a pawn to one council for most of my adult life, I didn’t appreciate another council treating me like one now. I was their equal, but they sought to use me in some master scheme.

They thought I was foolish enough to charge ahead without asking questions because the quarry was my father? How stupid did they think I was?

I didn’t want an answer to that.

I took the laptop from Maxime and asked him to leave Holden and me alone. I wasn’t sure why I needed the computer. It wasn’t as if I was going to be able to hack into the Tribunal’s master files and glean their secrets. I could barely file an online tax return.

Taking a second look at the photos didn’t tell me anything new, nor did an Internet search on Sarah Winchester or Charles Tiffany. If the item we were hunting belonged to the home owner or Eilidh’s former lover, the Internet wasn’t offering me any clues.

Maxime’s story about Eilidh’s obsession with the sun was all we really had to go on, which made me think this item we were looking for was related.

“Have you ever heard of anything that could grant a vampire the ability to walk in the sun?” I asked Holden.

“Aside from a death wish?”

I shot him a venomous glare. “Be serious.”

“I am being serious. I’ve never heard of anything that could make what you’re talking about possible.”

“Do you think I’m being paranoid? Maybe this really is just about the stupid window.”

“No. I think you’re right. They’re freaking out because Sutherland is missing, and if the window isn’t gone, they’re worried about something else.”