Read Online Vampire "Unseen" (Vampire "Untitled" Trilogy Book 2) by Lee McGeorge - Free Book Online

shop could all remember their English or American visitor. He was polite, a little unsure of himself, dressed in clothes that the women of the shop found memorably nice. He was clean, brushed his hair and despite speaking no Romanian was charming, polite and adoringly shy. They all remembered him and they all thought he was lovely.
    The woman in the R.A.T. cabin remembered him very well. She spent her days sitting in a cubicle no bigger than a phone booth selling bus tickets. He only bought from her once but it was so out of place to have a foreign visitor in Noua that he was impossible to forget.
    At the apartment block a story emerged of how on his first day in Noua, literally within an hour of his arrival, Nealla and Raul had singled him out and fought with him in the street.
    “They pulled him to the ground,” one woman said. “They were going to cut him with a knife, I saw it.”
    “And did you do anything to help? Did you call the police?”
    “Oh, no,” she said. “I didn’t want to get involved.”
    Different witnesses, always the same story. Nealla Stolojan and Raul Ponta had bullied and attacked Paul McGovern in broad daylight and nobody lifted a finger to help him. The source of the animosity was unknown, but it got serious enough to attack him in the lobby of his own building so badly that the walls still held blood stains.
    But at the centre of every recollection there was another player yet to be accounted for. The Romanian Girl in a white coat. Everybody knew her, the women in the shop, the woman selling bus tickets, the curtain twitching neighbours; when McGovern was seen he was normally with this girl.
    Ciprian stood outside McGovern’s block shuffling his feet back and forth in the snow as he spoke to another of the curtain twitchers through her kitchen window.
    “Do you know who the girl is?” he asked. “People keep telling me the Englishman was seen with a Romanian girl and I need to find her.”
    “I don’t know who she is,” the woman replied. “But she lives close. I always see her putting trash in the rear bins.”
    “The bins on the back?” Ciprian asked pointing to the side of the building.
    “She must be in one of the close blocks, but she doesn’t live in this one.”
    Cirpian thanked the lady and made his goodbye with a half wave half salute. He walked around the block to look at the bins, a walled concrete enclosure filled with huge metal dumpsters. These bins served four blocks. The girl didn’t live in McGovern’s block.
    He knew she was pretty and slim, in her late teens, had very dark shiny hair, always wore a white puffer jacket and was often seen with the Englishman.
    Ciprian went into the first of the possible blocks to speak with the superintendents. The blocks were managed by groups of old men who took care of the bills and maintenance issues. They were always old men, always retirees, and more often than not knew everybody in their building.
    “It could be the Popescu girl.” the superintendent said.
    “Popescu?” Ciprian replied.
    “White jacket, one of those puffy ones the kids wear. She’s about seventeen or eighteen and has long black hair.”
    Ciprian checked the mailboxes in the lobby. Family Popescu, apartment fourteen.
    He composed himself as he rang the doorbell and was greeted by a grey haired old lady and the smell of fresh baking.
    “Buna,” he said. “I’m looking for a young lady who I believe lives here. Miss Popescu?”
    “Ildico?” the woman asked. “Do you want my daughter?”
    “I believe so, is she here?”
    The woman called out loudly, “Ildico!”
    There were sounds of movement and footsteps. The old lady stepped away as a young girl came into the hallway. The moment Ciprian laid eyes on her he knew she was the one. Everything he had been told was embodied in the person before him.
    “Hello... You are Ildico, yes?” Ciprian said.
    “I am Ildico.” She looked nervous.
    “Ildico, do you know a man called Paul