Page 34 of Even Vampires Bleed (Even Ever After #2)

Cassiopé

I softly urge the butterfly-shifter inside Notre Dame.

It takes a bit of time, but I’m getting there, and when I get inside the church, Léandre is waiting for me with a shirt and pair of sweatpants.

He got dressed in the meantime, and I don’t know if I’m relieved by the fact, or if I’m disappointed.

I don’t want to dwell on it, though.

We need to assign my tiny new friend a room, and…

“Where is the lizard-shifter?” I ask Léandre, suddenly remembering that we didn’t free only one shifter.

His smile is tight.

“Don’t tell me you lost the lizard…” I start saying, but Léandre doesn’t let me finish.

“They’re alive and well. Or at least they were still sleeping when I left to retrieve you. We might just not be able to see them immediately,” he says, as if only now realizing the mistake he made in where he dropped the lizard-shifter.

I look at him with an annoyed look and tap my foot on the floor to show him his answer isn’t enough, even if I know the effect is all but ruined by the fact I’m doing that barefoot, and, by consequence, it barely makes any noise and won’t annoy him at all.

“They’re in the operation room with my father,” Léandre finally says with a grimace. “I don’t know if the doctor is done with him, but we can go take a look,” he quickly adds.

“Lead the way,” I tell him, and we walk there together.

We climb the stairs and end up in the room next to my dad’s—right next to the stairs.

I’m not surprised. They put the two people needing medical assistance next to each other and the closest to the entrance.

Léandre knocks at the door and waits.

“Just a minute,” says an elderly voice that I recognize as Alban, our usual doctor.

We wait and as if Alban monitored time, he precisely opens the door one minute later.

He doesn’t let us in, though.

“Are you here to get your misplaced lizard?” the human doctor asks with a mix of annoyance and amusement.

In his hands is a lizard with a flange around his neck and what looks like a tiny sterilized suit.

I don’t know if the doctor dressed the lizard because he felt the need to since it was in the room or if it’s just a joke to him.

He still laughs when he sees our faces at the sight of the lizard.

“It tried to bite me. Now get it out of my room. I’m not completely done,” he says as he thrusts the little lizard in Léandre’s hands without another look and closes the door in our faces.

At least that answers part of our questions. Gabriel doesn’t have his wings back yet.

I walk a bit and open the door after my dad’s. It’s not locked and looks empty.

“The lizard-shifter can have that one,” I say as I pull a set of clean sheets from the wardrobe. We’re at the end of July. I doubt they’ll need more than that with the heat we’re currently going through, but just in case, I add a blanket at the end of the bed.

Léandre lets the lizard down from his hand to the blanket, and I slowly approach them so I can remove the flange.

They hiss at me first but seem to understand what I want to do and let me get closer. I don’t bother with the sterilized suit, and it seems to be fine for the lizard, who makes circles on the blankets. Then they drop in a circle on top of it and close their eyes.

Well, one down.

“We’re going to be back to bring you food,” I tell the lizard before Léandre and I leave the room.

I check the next door over, but it’s locked.

Someone is already using it.

The next after is empty, and I prepare the bed the same. Léandre is helping and brings the blanket to the bed as I catch the butterfly in my hands.

“This one is yours. Do whatever you need. You must be tired. I’ll be back with some food for you too,” I say softly and then approach my hands to the blanket.

It takes more time for the butterfly to leave me and drop to the blanket than it took for the lizard, but in the end, it still happens.

Slowly, I get away from the bed and the butterfly flies in my direction.

“No, no, no,” I tell them. “This is your room. I have one, too, but each of us needs to sleep in their room. I’ll be back very soon though. I promise you.”

The butterfly seems reluctant, but it still goes back to the blanket. Léandre and I leave the room once again.

We do as I said and get down to the kitchens to get food for the two new occupants of Notre Dame, and without surprise, they’re both asleep when we get back to their rooms.

I leave the food on their desk with a cloche on top to avoid the chicken, green beans and rice but also the chocolate cake to go bad .

It’s also a way to ensure those two shifters try to get back to their human forms so we can meet them, have a normal conversation, and see where to go from there.

Léandre is silent while I deal with everything, but it’s not awkward. It’s more like he’s trying to study me.

He’s never seen me in any other situation than planning a robbery or executing said plan.

If you forget the first time he found me crying, of course.

He’s silent, and that leaves me with the chance to think.

“Did you have anything with you when you came to pick me up?” I finally ask as we make our way to Elhyor’s office.

The team is bound to be back soon and some things need to be addressed before I go back to the Sacré Coeur.

“Not much,” Léandre answers, but seems to stop himself. “Wait, that’s wrong. I had my holo. It slipped my mind when we shifted and flew away. But it’s still there and has the blueprints of the entire palace.”

“Where did you get those?” I ask.

But I know the answer even before the words pass his lips.

“Luc.”

“We’re screwed,” I tell him as I hear the front door.

I don’t know what’s worse for Léandre, though.

That no one talked about the fact his memory could be erased again or the fact that when—not if because I know it’ll happen—Michael’s soldiers discover our clothes in the darkest corner of the cell, and Léandre’s holo at the same time, the archangels will have proof to incriminate Elhyor by association.

The archangels like their freedom and don’t usually have cameras inside Versailles’s castle, so there was no recording of the attack we launched against Versailles a few months ago. The only trace left are the currently-being-mended wings of Gabriel and my still-in-a-coma dad.

But now, they’ll have a way—tangible proof—to show in court that one of Elhyor’s men invaded the privacy of their home.

It’s going to be a mess.

Not sure that it would be a worse mess than what this is already, but I don’t think adding a layer of lawyers on top of everything is going to make anything easy.

My thoughts are still spiraling inside of me when Elhyor arrives at my side and hugs me from the side.

“Are you okay, Cassie?” he asks with genuine care.

“I’m good,” I say.

Because, yes, physically I’m good. My mind is a place I would wish on no one—even my worst enemies—but my body is completely fine.

I circle my arms around him and enjoy the hug Elhyor is offering me.

“We need to talk,” I tell Elhyor when I let him stop hugging me.

I needed that hug; there’s absolutely no way I’m releasing him completely until I get a full dose of serotonin.

Elhyor looks at me at arm’s length, and I can see questions dancing in his eyes.

“Let’s get inside then,” he says. “I need to put some clothes on.”

Oh, right. I didn’t even notice.

This is weird that when Elhyor is naked, it doesn’t even cross my mind that he has nothing on and I don’t even want to look. When it’s Léandre… Well, when it’s Léandre, it’s like my eyes want to devour every centimeter of skin he graciously lets me see.

Weird.

I know.

I follow Elhyor inside his office, and soon Angélique joins us, too.

She’s already dressed in black shorts and a large tank top that I’m sure she went to pick up upstairs before joining us.

“It was bound to happen,” she says as she drops in Elhyor’s chair behind the desk.

“With her newfound hobby…” she adds .

I was wondering if Elhyor and Angélique knew about what I was doing with the humans of Libération, but now, there’s no doubt.

“This has to cease, though,” Elhyor adds. “How am I going to tell your father that you got caught and ended up in prison? The official one, not one of those dungeons Léandre most likely found you in.”

If he ever wakes up.

I want to scream those five little words until they don’t threaten to overwhelm my mind, but instead, I stay silent and let them warp my thoughts.

I don’t look sheepish, though.

I’m not going to apologize for wanting to be useful.

I’m not going to apologize for wanting my revenge.

Sadly, I might have fulfilled the former so far, but I’m far from fulfilling the latter.

“You just won’t tell him,” I say with a shrug.

Elhyor looks at me with doubtful eyes, but I’m not going to lose my sleep over this.

“We have another problem though,” I pause so everyone looks at me.

“Well, actually, you have two problems. First, Léandre came to rescue me with his holo, so there’s now something that can be traced back to you inside one of the archangels dungeons.

And second, well, I don’t know if this is a problem yet, but depending on your answer, someone might think this is very much a problem. ”

I take a deep breath.

“Did you contact the electronic girl so she could double-check Léandre’s microchip?”

They all look at me like I’ve grown a second head.

“It completed its mission, so why would we double-check it?” Angélique asks.

I take another deep breath. That’s what I was scared about.

“Because it might still be possible to activate it again .”

“What makes you think that?” Léandre asks, suddenly a little scared for his own mind.

Yeah, you’ve already been there and done that, I think to myself.

“The microchip is still here and from what I saw, it looks intact. What I mean is it doesn’t look like all the energy it contained got released in a burst or something. That means it could possibly be still working,” I answer.

Now they all look at me like they’ve seen a ghost.

“I need this shit to be double-checked,” Léandre bursts out.