Page 23 of High Stakes and Soulmates (Fanged Mistakes #3)

EZIO

“So then Cyrus was like, ‘I have plans tonight with a secret someone who I can’t tell you about.’ But of course, I had to be a good person and go, ‘Oh, have fun!’ While inside I was like, ‘Is it a new man? Is it the love of his life and I’m merely a rug for him to wipe his beautiful feet on?’”

“He definitely has a man,” a guy says.

“No… no,” a woman counters. “He shared a bed with Ezio. If you have a new man, you don’t share a bed with someone.”

“Maybe he’s a cheater?”

“If he was a cheater, he’d have laid some moves on Ezio,” a new woman explains. “He didn’t. He likes him—just can’t admit it.”

The door opens and Julian looks in. “What the… I step out for one minute and you just… slip on inside?” he asks incredulously. “You’re not allowed in the classroom!”

I give this monster I call a friend a look of disbelief as I wave at his students. “They were giving me love advice!”

“That sounds horribly concerning. Anyway, this is an art class.”

“Fine, fine,” I say as I hurry over to the whiteboard and grab a marker. I draw two stick figures. “So this here is Cyrus and this is me.”

“He’s taller than I thought he’d be,” the chatty guy comments.

“And handsome,” the first woman says.

Julian stares at the board. “He’s a stick figure! How can a stick figure be handsome?”

“You’re the art professor, you should know,” the guy says, and everyone in the class laughs while Julian gives me a look. Evidently, I’m the new favorite. I should try my hand at becoming a professor if it’s this easy.

“I would like to go from here…” I say as I draw an arrow from the two stick figures over to a new drawing of a bed with the two stick figures simply… spooning each other.

“Ezio! You can’t just… draw sex on the board! Even if they’re adults, this isn’t a sex ed class!”

“They’re spooning! That’s a clear spoon!” I declare.

“They’re obviously spooning,” the guy says.

“Malcolm, don’t you dare encourage him,” Julian threatens.

“And then we’d go to this.” I draw Cyrus and myself getting married.

“It’s beautiful,” one of the women says as she wipes a fake tear from her eye.

“Brandy, you too. Do not encourage him,” Julian warns, but honestly, the whole class of about seventeen or so agrees with me! He’s the only one struggling with any part of this.

And then Julian, the demon, heads over to start erasing my life dreams.

“Professor, you’re stunting his creativity,” Malcolm says. “You told us that we should never stunt someone’s creativity.”

“Thank you,” I say. “And then after marriage comes some of this?—”

“That is clearly sex!” Julian interrupts.

I throw out a gasp in an attempt to make Julian seem like the ridiculous one here. “Julian! You heathen! It is not. We are giving each other horsey rides!”

“And what are you doing there?”

“Looking for his contact lens.”

“He doesn’t wear contacts!”

“I know! That’s why it’d be strange, but I’m a gentleman, so I’d still help him find it,” I explain, drawing a third one that must be bad enough that Julian is rushing after me with the eraser.

“Julian, have a sense of adventure. We are simply playing leapfrog! You’re an art professor.

You should be looking at the finer details. Analyzing it, you know?”

“Stop drawing them faster than I can erase them!” he says as the class laughs, enjoying every bit of this. I’m not going to lie… it encourages me to draw another.

“And here I’m helping him fix the washing machine. He can’t reach the knob, so I have to lean over him.”

“Who fixes a washing machine with another body in between?”

“I’m showing him how!” I explain. “If he was behind me, he couldn’t see. He has to be in front of me?—”

Julian viciously rips the marker out of my hand before I can depict any more of my after-marriage life.

Since he’s busy scrubbing every sign of my artwork away, I turn to the students. “Class, as you can see, this man here is called an art critic. They will tear you down and try to destroy your work, but you will grow as a person by ignoring their sad attempts to ruin your creativity.”

“I think you should be our teaching assistant,” Malcolm decides.

“Thank you! I will. When’s your next class?”

“Tomorrow… wait… we have tomorrow off, right?” Brandy asks.

“Yes, tomorrow’s class is cancelled,” Julian says, since tomorrow is a full moon and he definitely can’t make it. Instead, he’ll be locked away in a little cage… or just manhandled by Casimir, who knows.

My phone starts ringing and I freeze when I pull it out and see the name shown on the screen. “Class! Class, he is calling.”

“Put it on speaker,” Malcolm urges.

“Invite him to a nice dinner, no strings attached,” Brandy suggests. “Just say that there’s this nice place you’ve been hoping to check out, but you didn’t want to go alone.”

“Good, good,” I say before answering the phone on speaker. “Helllllo, sweet Cyrus.”

“Hey, bad news. Another dead couple. The wife is staked to the wall of the kitchen. A huge mess?—”

I quickly take that off speaker while the class stares at me in horror. I don’t even want to turn and see what Julian’s face looks like. “I… will be right there. Send me the address.”

And then we end the call.

“Well… this was fun,” I announce.

“A dead guy?” a woman asks.

“He says another,” Malcolm says. “Is there a serial killer?”

“Nope. Ha ha.” And then I hastily leave the room while Julian tries to take control of it. I grimace a little as I go.

When I reach the crime scene, it’s already quite busy.

I climb onto the porch and step up to the door just as someone comes running for it.

I hear them, but I don’t expect them to bust through it so hard it whips open, smashing me right in the face with enough force I hear bones break.

How hard was he planning on throwing that door open that he’d break the nose of a damn vampire?

“Shit!” the young man yells before rushing over to the edge of the porch and proceeding to vomit over it.

“New guy. I think the scene caught him off guard,” Cyrus says as he exits the house and looks at me. “You’re bleeding all over the porch. Let me get you something.”

I touch my recently broken nose, but it’s already healed, so it really doesn’t matter.

I let the door swing shut when Cyrus returns and starts wiping my face with a tissue, and even though I’m positive I could wipe my own face, I’m enjoying it far too much.

He scrutinizes my face intently, even taking my chin in his hand and pointing my face this way and that.

“Turner. When you’re done there, we need to get this blood cleaned up here. Can you do that?” Cyrus asks. “We don’t want it contaminating the crime scene.”

Detective Turner slowly pushes himself off the railing. “Yes. I’m so sorry. I’ve just… I really apologize. I’ve never done that before.”

“It’s fine. We were all new once as well,” Cyrus says as he pulls me back. “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Your shirt is all stained. It looks like a nice shirt. Some hydrogen peroxide should get that out.”

“I thought you were gone tonight?” I say, knowing it’s wrong to be pleased he isn’t when I’m sure the reason he can’t go is the dead couple inside. I don’t love the idea of him going off on his own with this shit going on.

“I was supposed to be but I got a call right before I left.”

“Oh… that’s good you hadn’t gotten on the road with your… friend yet,” I say, trying out the word to see if it fits.

“Right? It would have been a pain if we had.” He dabs at my shirt but at least he doesn’t correct me. “Ezio, make sure you spray something on this right when you get home.”

“I will. Thank you for cleaning me up.”

“It’s not a big deal,” he assures me. “I just didn’t want you getting blood all over my crime scene.”

“Is that the only reason?” I ask with an arch of my eyebrow.

His eyes flick over to mine like they’re challenging me. “Sure is.”

I’m not so sure that’s true, but I say, “That’s disappointing.”

Cyrus simply watches me until the noise of someone walking by draws my attention. “Here comes Zach to woo you.”

“I’ve already been wooed,” I inform him. “By you.”

Zach gives me a nod but gets caught up by Maeve before he can come over.

“Uh-huh. I hear you,” Cyrus says as he picks up some gloves and snaps one at me. I think he’s hoping it’ll actually hit me, but I catch it and pull it on. He replaces his, and once we’re geared up, we head inside.

“Again, it’s a couple; again, one is drained; and again , the other is staked to the wall.

These houses have no security systems in place.

None of the neighboring houses have anything that would catch it.

No one sees anything. It’s impossible to draw anything from the cases.

I don’t understand. We do know that the blood on the wall has an anticoagulant, so it’s not fresh at any of the scenes. ”

So… it could be blood reserved for a vampire’s feeding, then. Most feed right from the source, but in dire situations we always have blood on hand. It won’t revitalize us like the blood straight from a human would, but it keeps us from starving.

I follow Cyrus into the kitchen and look at the woman pinned to the wall.

“How is no one aware this is happening?” I ask, uncertain how an unregistered vampire has gotten past so many people and absolutely no other vampire in the city has seen them.

“Oh, the son of the last victims found… nothing came of him, right? The guy we ran the fingerprints and blood on?”

“No. But the scenes have been meticulous. The only blood has been from the victims and the blood used on the wall. And then we have the confusing fact that some of the human victims were involved in the death of other victims. Are they making them kill each other?”

“Could be how they’re getting into their homes,” I suggest. “In the case of the older couple, they knew their neighbors. If they needed to get in the house without any sign of forced entry, having a neighbor bring the killer in would definitely work.”