"Well?" I called down as I finished packing the bag. "Did you find her?"
"Yeah, I found her," Bob called.
"About time," I said. I went down the ladder in a hurry, and flicked several candles alight with a muttered word. I got out a roll of parchment about a foot and a half square. Then I spread it onto the worktable in the lab's center and set a fountain pen beside it. "Where?"
"Not far from Cabrini Green," Bob said. "I got a good look around the place. "
"Good. You've got permission to come out long enough to show me what you found. "
He made a sighing sound but didn't complain. The usual cloud of glowing orange motes of light slid out of the skull's eye sockets, though perhaps it was a little less bright and swirly than usual. The cloud of light surrounded the pen, and it rose up of its own accord, then began scratching a drawing of the lair on the parchment. Bob's voice, a little indistinct now, said, "You aren't going to like this. "
"Why not?"
"It's a shelter. "
"A homeless shelter?"
"Yeah," Bob said. "Does some rehab work with drug addicts, too. "
"Stars and stones," I murmured. "How could vampires take something that public?"
"There's no real threshold on a public building, so they didn't need an invitation, I think they probably came in from Undertown, right into the shelter's basement. "
"How many people have they hurt?"
Bob's pen flickered over the parchment. When I draw maps I usually end up with a series of lopsided squares and wavery lines and incomplete circles. Bob's drawing looked like it could have been done by da Vinci. "There were three bodies stacked up in a corner of the basement," Bob said. "A few of the shelter's staff had been made into rough thralls and are covering for them, sort of. Maybe half a dozen people hadn't been enthralled, but they were tied up and locked into a cedar closet. "


Blood Rites Chapter 27, Page 214-215