I went back to the bedroom and kicked a black stiletto out of my way. “What do you mean?”

   He threw his hands out wide. “Look at all this stuff. There are thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of designer clothes here. Not to mention those ridiculously expensive shoes and purses and all that overpriced champagne in the bathroom.”

   “So?”

   “So this looks like it was Deirdre’s home base. There’s certainly a lot more of her stuff here than there was in that penthouse in Ashland.”

   “But . . .”

   Owen shook his head. “But there’s not a single piece of paper anywhere in the suite. I have papers all over my house, even if it’s just a receipt from where I bought gas on my way home. But Deirdre? She doesn’t even have so much as a room-service slip in here. Roxy and Brody must have taken it all, every last scrap.”

   I’d been so focused on Deirdre’s clothes and jewelry that I hadn’t thought about something as simple as receipts, but Owen was right. Everybody had paper. Some people, like Ira Morris, had far too much, but Deirdre seemed to have none at all.

   “Anyway,” he said, “I’m going to go check on Finn and Bria. You coming?”

   “In a minute.”

   Owen nodded and walked down the hallway, disappearing from sight.

   I looked out over the bedroom again with a far more critical eye. It wasn’t just paper that was missing. There were no knickknacks, no mementos, no odds and ends of any kind—nothing personal. Not so much as a crumpled wrapper in the trash can that would tell me what kind of gum Deirdre had liked to chew.

   Oh, I hadn’t thought that Deirdre would have a collection of ceramic dolls or a secret love of macramé, but she’d had photos of Fletcher, Finn, and herself. She’d had to have kept those somewhere before she came to Ashland. And you would think that there would be more pictures here, even if they were only of herself.

   But Owen was right, and Roxy and Brody had taken it all, probably on Tucker’s orders, searching for clues about the gems. I had to admire how efficiently and completely they’d sanitized her suite of anything important. Roxy and Brody had stripped this place bare better than a pair of locusts.

   Still, the longer I stared at the haphazard heaps of Deirdre’s clothes and shoes, the angrier I got. This had been nothing but a gigantic waste of time. Tucker had probably told Roxy and Brody exactly what to leave behind in the suite, just to get our hopes up, just so we would think that we were finally getting somewhere. The vampire kept dangling carrots of information in front of me, and like a stupid fool, I kept trying to get them, even though he snatched them away from me every single time.

   Once again, Hugh Tucker was playing a game with me—and I was losing badly.

13

   Disgusted, I went back out into the main part of the suite where the others were.

   Finn was standing by the windows, his arms crossed over his chest, staring out at the view and brooding. Bria and Owen were going through all the drawers and cabinets again, searching for false bottoms and secret panels, just in case we’d missed something. I looked at my sister, who shook her head, telling me that Finn was still upset and to give him some space. Well, he wasn’t the only one who was angry, but I decided to channel my frustration into something productive. So I joined Bria and Owen in their renewed search, and the three of us left Finn to his own thoughts.

   I ended up at the white Christmas tree in the corner. It was one of those artificial, pre-wired trees, so I plugged it in, just to see if it actually worked. The lights immediately flared to life, going from white to pink to green to blue and back again, and casting out pretty patterns on the glass windows. No ornaments hung on the tree, though. I supposed that Deirdre hadn’t had time to decorate it—or order someone at the resort to do it for her—before she’d come to Ashland. So I sat down on the floor and started going through the boxes of ornaments, curious as to what kind of decorations she would have.

   Just like with the rest of Deirdre’s things, they were designer—elaborate swirls, loops, and towers of silver, gold, crystal, and stained glass, hammered into snowflakes, wreaths, icicles, and gingerbread men. They were all lovely, if totally impersonal. No Baby’s First Christmas, no handmade snowmen, no tacky mementos from places Deirdre had visited. All the decorations were jumbled together, telling me that Roxy and Brody had already pawed through them the way they had everything else in the suite. Still, going through the ornaments was a pleasant enough pastime, so I kept pulling them out, examining each one, and then setting them aside.

   In the very bottom of one of the boxes, I found a crumpled wad of tissue paper, which I pushed aside to reveal a large snow globe. Unlike everything else, the globe had obviously come from the theme park, since it featured a miniature scene of Main Street, complete with a small sign with sparkling stones that spelled out Bullet Pointe. I shook it and watched the tiny silver boot- and spur-shaped glitter swirl around inside before slowly settling back down.

   Two more snow globes were also nestled in the bottom of the box. One featured a summer scene of Bullet Pointe Lake made out of dark blue pebbles with fish and sailboat glitter, while the other contained a winter scene of the hotel, covered with ceramic snow, shimmering red and green holiday decorations, and wreath- and tree-shaped glitter.

   Bria crouched down beside me. She stared at the Main Street snow globe that I was still holding before glancing at the other two that I’d placed on the floor with all the other decorations. They all looked like unwrapped presents perched under the tree.

   “I saw some of those globes down at the Silver Spur earlier today. Cute, if a bit tacky,” she said. “They remind me of all those snow globes that Mom had. Remember how you, me, and Annabella put them all on our Christmas tree that last year?”

   “Yeah,” I rasped. “I remember.”

   That had been such a normal afternoon, and something that I’d all but forgotten about until now. No, that wasn’t true. Ever since I’d found out that my mother had been part of the Circle, I’d been thinking back, trying to remember every single thing I could about her, especially if she’d ever shown any hint or sign that she was involved with such dangerous people.