Chapter Twenty-Four
CASIMIR
When we reach the medical examiner’s office, we’re stuck waiting for her. During that time, I’ve been forced to watch Ezio cradle Julian in his wolf form in the passenger seat.
“You’re just so cute!” Ezio says as he ruffles Julian’s ears. Julian looks like he’s loving it, tail whapping back and forth at hyper speed. It’s irking me that they’re acting so… familiar with each other.
“Julian, why don’t you shift back so when she gets here, we’re not waiting on you to get dressed,” I urge.
“ And deny these tummy rubs? Hell no .” His tail wags as he rolls onto his back on Ezio’s lap. Then he starts wiggling around as Ezio looks down at him in delight while scratching him.
“I didn’t use to like wolves, but you’re so huggable! It’s absolutely delightful!” Ezio says as he squeezes Julian to himself and buries his face against the fur on Julian’s chest. Julian’s head tips back to look right at me so he can make sure I’m witnessing this irritation.
“Knock it the fuck off,” I growl as I grab Ezio’s hair and jerk his head back.
Ezio glowers at me and leans to the other side of the passenger seat to whisper in Julian’s ear. “Someone’s jealous.”
“I’m not fucking jealous. I just think you’re acting ridiculous.”
Ezio gives absolutely no shits that he’s irritating me. He’s literally the only vampire who ignores everything I say, and Julian is the only werewolf who does. Now all I need is a human tossed in the mix, and I’ll just be surrounded by all kinds of irritations.
“My, what big paws you have! Look at them!” Ezio says as he squeezes Julian’s paw pads, making his nails stick out a bit more and then laughing as he holds his paw against his hand.
I shove Julian’s paw back down. “That’s enough.” Why the fuck does this irritate me so much? You know what? Nah, this is perfect. Julian deserves someone good, and while Ezio isn’t good by any sense of the word, he’s attractive, and he’d never hurt Julian and would keep him safe.
“Fine, why don’t you two get together?” I say, and the moment it’s out of my mouth, I realize how much of an idiot I am.
Why can’t Julian realize that I’m doing this for his own good?
Julian and Ezio both look over at me and it’s quite clear they also think that I lack some kind of common sense, which is fine. Because I’m doing this for Julian. It was all fake to start out with. All fun, and now I suddenly look like the bad guy.
“She’s pulling in,” I inform them, and Julian shifts right at that moment… you know, completely naked in Ezio’s lap.
“Oh, excuse me,” he says as he gives Ezio a grin.
“Damn, you don’t need to excuse anything ,” Ezio responds. “Do I still get to rub your belly?”
“HA HA HA!” Julian’s laughing far too loud and trying way too hard as he gives Ezio a playful smack. “You’re hilarious , Ezio. Like… the funniest man I’ve ever met. OMG.”
And then he climbs into the back seat where his clothes are as I realize that I’m crushing the steering wheel.
“What’s up, bud?” Ezio asks like he has no idea.
What’s up?
I slowly look over at him and find that he won’t meet my gaze. Why? Is he scared of me? Ezio is never scared of me. Is there something wrong with my face which would make him not look?
“What are you two doing, she’s waiting for us,” Julian says as he pops out of the back seat, fully clothed.
“Ezio?” I whisper.
“Yeah?” he whispers back.
“I wish you a long life,” I say as I get out of the car.
“T-Thanks? I think?”
Of course he didn’t realize it was a threat.
I join up with Julian as he reaches the front door and follow Ezio inside.
“Hey, Noel,” Ezio says. “This is Julian.”
“Good evening,” Noel says. She’s a human who is knowledgeable about our kind since she’s Dan’s great-granddaughter.
While many vampires leave their human families behind, some of them stay with their family who assure them that they will stay quiet.
It helps in instances like this, where we need someone who knows about our kind to perform some of the examinations. “You have a picture?”
Ezio shows her the picture, and she scrutinizes it for a moment.
She goes over to her computer and looks through it before showing us a picture of the wrist of the dead woman.
Noel uses her mouse to circle an area on the picture.
“So the tattoo is similar, but it’s not the same.
I know it’s hard to tell on the body you found, but this area opens up on opposite sides.
The tattoos and styles are old. I remember being curious about it when I came across the woman.
With them so similar, it could be something like they were from the same community or maybe they were lovers or family.
So I do believe they’re related somehow. ”
“We never managed to ID her, right?” Ezio asks.
“No.”
That’s when something hits me. “The bodies from the walk-in freezer that I found before she died, do you have anything on them?”
“Yeah, give me a second.”
Julian looks over at me curiously and I realize that I probably never told him about them.
“The day I bought those candy bars from you, I was trying to find the vampires who ended up attacking you since there were rumors of them killing people. I tracked them to a building where they’d been stashing the bodies in a freezer.”
“There were seven humans inside. Four men and three women,” Noel adds.
“The women, can you tell us anything about them?”
“You’re thinking that we’ve already found the body of the woman Ivo loved?” Ezio asks.
“Possibly.”
“We were able to ID two of them with help from their families. The final one we have no record of. No one claimed her body.”
“Do you still have the body or has she already been cremated?” I ask.
“I think we still have it. Let me check. It’s generally out of my hands at that point.
I think there was still hope that she would be claimed.
Come on,” Noel says as she heads out of the room and down a hallway.
She unlocks the door and walks inside and over to a drawer with a tag on it.
She pulls it open, but there’s nothing inside.
“Well… shit,” she says.
“Is there a camera in here?” Ezio asks.
“No, there’s not. We have an outside camera… I think that’s the best we can do.”
“The door is always locked?”
“It is.”
“A locked door probably doesn’t matter because the guy can control people,” Julian comments. “He could have walked up and ordered one of them to grab the body for him.”
“True… we need to figure out who that woman is. But if this is the case, the vampires killed her, not the wolves,” I say.
“You know, it’d be fun if we could actually ask this vampire instead of playing like cryptic message phone tag,” Julian says.
“If I see him again, I will kill him,” I declare.
“Yeah, that doesn’t help as much as you seem to think it does,” Julian replies.
Noel takes us back to her office where she spends some time trying to watch the security footage of when the body was removed.
It takes a while, but Ivo’s arrival seems to correlate with the day that information about her body went out to the public in the hopes of finding her next of kin.
In the footage, he walks up to the door and is immediately let in by a man that I recognize as a wolf, dispelling my theory that he can’t affect wolves.
After the wolf stands there stone-still for a few minutes, Ivo walks out with the woman’s body.
“I… kind of feel bad for him. I mean, no, he doesn’t need to go killing people, but I feel bad he lost someone he clearly cares for,” Julian says.
“Does that mean it was targeted?” Ezio asks. “We originally thought the group of vampires who attacked Julian were killing indiscriminately, but were they actually killing with a purpose?”
“So they targeted Julian from the beginning?” I ask. “I mean… he is the alpha’s son, so it’s highly possible.”
“Let me take an image of her and see if any of the vampires recognize her,” Ezio says. “Cyrus should be done with his shift after that, and I’ll swing by and pick him up. Julian, do you want to come along?”
“No, but I’ll meet you at Casimir’s.”
“Deal.”