Treasure hunt

Vanessa 1976

"Here," I hand the homeless woman a fifty before walking away from her. I don't even give her the chance to say thank you. 

At least, I think I gave her a fifty. On the other hand, I might have given her a hundred-dollar bill without realizing it. I honestly hadn't been paying much attention when I pulled it out of my purse.

It didn't matter what she spent it on, as long as she had it. I didn't need it; honestly, I could care less if she used it to buy herself some food or drugs. 

That might be callus, and it was, but I didn't have it in me to care about people anymore. My heart felt frozen under a thick layer of ice, and nothing I did made it feel any better.

People might look at what I was doing and think it was charity and kindness, but that wasn't what it was.

I needed to get rid of the money.

Why? Why had he left me everything? Why would he do that to me?

Had I been all Romulus had anymore? What about his family? I knew they weren't dead, he'd talked about them several times over the years, but I'd never met them. There was so much about the man I'd loved I didn't know about, including the amount of money he had.

It was a myth that all dragons had hordes of gold and treasure. You couldn't even compare most dragon savings to a treasure humans would consider worth stealing. Yes, we lived a long time, but it wasn't easy to hold your treasure in caves or underground. 

Especially when humans began digging up pieces of their history. I've seen museums full of Entit'a treasure that left them without a penny in the world.

The other problem was that you never knew what was worth keeping and what wasn't. 

I had a comb and mirror set from when I was a child in my room that was worth twenty thousand dollars on the black market, simply because it was from so long ago. 

Even if you could hold onto your horde as a dragon, we lived so long that it meant carefully spending those savings. You couldn't lose yourself in a high-class life when you had centuries to go.

Romulus must have thought that way because he had an enormous fund in banks and trusts worldwide. He was too young to have so much, and I couldn't help wondering what my lover got involved in during his life.

I don't know why but ever since the royal court sent a lawyer to my parent's house to give me Romulus's will, I've had this ugly sticky feeling in my brain. The money felt tainted, and I didn't want it.

There was enough to make sure I never had to work. Even if the markets crashed, if the world caught fire, or if a plague ravished the earth and started killing people like flies, I never needed to lift a finger.

I didn't want it! It hurt to have it be mine. As if somehow, Romulus knew he would die before me, and instead of waiting for his mate, he made sure I was taken care of first.

Yes, I was angry at him for dying. I can even say I hate him a little for it. Not because I didn't know it was possible. That had been a reality from the start, but because I didn't realize how badly he'd cut me open.

'Did you know you were going to die out there?' I asked the ghost of the dragon I still couldn't get over. 'Is that why you made me go to my family? Did you know you'd never come back?'

As always, I have no answer to my questions, no matter how often I ask them. 

Maybe I never would, but what was clear was that Romulus had secrets he'd never shared with me. Things I needed to know about. If for no reason, it would help me stop obsessing about him, and it might give us peace.

I felt like I was conjuring him up whenever I thought of him. It was like summoning his spirit to this world, but I didn't have the power to see or speak to him. 

Looking up at the large building, I look at the address in my book and confirm I'm at the right place. When the lawyer gave me all the documents in Romulus's will, he told me there was more that had been set to be sent to me at a later date.

Whatever Romulus wanted me to know, he made sure I had to wait for it. 

I arrived in Seattle a few days ago. It was the latest letter I'd received at my parent's house in Georgia, and I'd taken the first flight out when I read the instructions. It might sound foolish to follow a treasure hunt left by your dead boyfriend, who worked for a blood-thirsty king, but Romulus knew how much I loved a puzzle. I think that's why he did it this way. Maybe to keep me from drowning in sorrow or to keep things safe. I didn't know and wasn't sure what I'd find at the end of all this. Whatever his reasons, it was both morbid and somehow just like Romulus to do something this crazy.

It was always a different prize at the end. In the last three years, Romulus surprised me at every turn. 

The first time, I discovered that he'd been an artist. The bank I'd visited in New York had no money in it. Instead, there was a vault full of works of art. Paintings that were as beautiful as anything in an art gallery. All of them had the same signature. No one would have known it was his because he never used that signature in anything legal. I only knew about it because he'd shown it to me when we talked about human customs we didn't quite grasp. 

The most heartbreaking thing to see was a portrait he'd made of me. It wasn't how I looked when I was fully human. It was the real me. 

The letter with it said he'd been selling these to a gallery in town and that if I wanted, I could keep doing that until they were all gone, but that this painting was only for me. He'd painted it because that's how he saw me, the woman he wished I'd be again.

Romulus had known me before the fire, and I guess he'd always hoped I'd go back to that wild, reckless way, but as I'd told him so many times, you can't make innocence return once it's been lost.

I've visited twelve other places like that one. Each holding a piece of who Romulus was as a dragon. Some of it was what I expected, but most let me see that I hadn't known him as well as I'd thought. 

The last one had left me cold. It was his weapons vault, and he had so many by all the gods. Yes, I knew what he was, but I'd always stayed blind to the reality of what Romulus was actually doing. 

Did that make me naive? Maybe but I wanted to see the good in him, not the killer.

Funny, as a dragon, we don't see ourselves as killers or murderers. The vampire in me feels the same way. However, the elf and the human blood send shooting pains of guilt at the idea of taking another's life.

That was something I'd never done, and I wasn't sure I had it in me to do it either.

"Can I help you, miss?" A bank teller asks me politely when I walk up to her counter.

"Yes, I'm here to check my safety deposit box," I followed the instructions Romulus had left me.

"Of course, ma'am," she smiles and motions for me to move aside. "Let me get someone to help you with that."

"Thank you," I managed a smile back before removing my sunglasses and headscarf. It was raining heavily outside, and though I didn't mind getting wet, it never got me sick. Humans tended to get distressed when they saw a woman without an umbrella covering her hair.

A plump man in a business suit comes over to me with a professional smile.

"How may I help you, ma'am?" He asks curtly.

"This young lady would like to visit her safety deposit box," The teller speaks for me. It was something I saw a lot of in high-security banks. 

"Of course," The man grins, looking much more comfortable now that he thinks I'm a client. "Do you have your account number and key?"

"Yes," I nod, pulling them out of my purse. "And the password."

"Excellent. Why don't you follow me?" He waves his hand towards a large door before leading me towards it.