House of Cards by Ilana Waters Read Free Book Online

to admire it. Undulating leaves and branches formed part of the design, and she marveled at how long it must have taken the craftsman to complete this piece. It was so highly polished that she could almost see the gleaming green leaves as they wound their way across the top. They certainly didn’t have anything like this at the furniture stores her father dragged her to when they first moved to Paris. Trying to recall what she’d learned about period pieces from her father’s girlfriend, she estimated that most of the room’s furniture was roughly five hundred years old.
    Opening up the wardrobe, she found the finest, softest linens she’d ever touched, all folded neatly in piles, along with a few dresses and coats hanging on the door. Some of them were decades old—she swore she’d seen a pair of bell bottoms. One blouse was made of delicate lace, perhaps from the Victorian Era? It should have been yellowed with age, but presumably the cold and lack of sunlight kept it perfectly preserved. A beautiful porcelain brooch, painted with tiny violets, was pinned to one side. Sherry brought the ornament closer so she could admire it, only then noticing the dark brown stain on the collar.
    Blood. These were the clothing of people they’d killed.
    Sherry backed away in horror and quickly shut the wardrobe doors. She’d try not to go in there again if she could help it.
    What looked like a wall of latticed windows stood to one side, but they had all been painted black. Without the candlelight, the room would have been cast into eternal night. But the dark paint was fine with Sherry—she had no desire to see what lay beneath it. She had certainly seen enough dead bodies for one night, and possibly for a lifetime. Tapestries, rich with color and detail, hung on several walls from long iron rods. She was pretty sure they were from the eleventh or twelfth century. And perfectly preserved, away from dust and sunlight, like the clothing.
    It was sort of like being a princess in a castle. Except it was a dungeon. And she wasn’t royalty. Other than that, it was a perfect fairy tale. She rolled her eyes at her own misplaced romanticism.
    A hope chest sat at the foot of the bed. Curious about its contents, Sherry hesitated as she knelt down to open it. What if it was the corpse of someone they’d recently fed on? Or a collection of bones like those in the catacombs? Or more blood-stained clothing?
    She took a deep breath, opened the chest, and gasped. It looked like pirates’ sunken treasure, the immeasurable wealth of a ransomed king. Gold coins, crowns, tiaras, necklaces, pins, earrings, bracelets, and rings. Diamond and rubies and emeralds—oh my! she thought. This truly was too much. Sherry gingerly picked up a string of pearls and held it up. It glowed with a magical sheen in the soft candlelight. All too soon, she realized that these priceless items must also have been stolen from the vampire’s victims. Their styles, different through all centuries, could not have been gathered from just one person at one time.
    She wondered if the victims would be angry seeing her now, the way she fingered their treasures. Tears welled in Sherry’s eyes. Would her meager belongings end up here as well? The few rings she wore now, the silver chain around her neck? Perhaps her clothing, too, was destined for the wardrobe. Maybe in another hundred years, a girl like her would open that door and find Sherry’s jeans and shirt behind it.
    All of a sudden, Sherry collapsed on the floor and started sobbing. She picked her head up for a moment, to look for any potential exits. But soon she was on the floor again, crying harder than before. What was the point of searching for a way out? The vampires would never put her in a room from which escape was possible. She quickly pulled her cell phone out of her pants pocket and turned it on. “No signal.” Of course she couldn’t get a signal underground.
    It was all so . . . unfair ! She hadn’t