Page 8 of High Stakes and Soulmates (Fanged Mistakes #3)

EZIO

Present

Julian warned me to play it cool. He said that leaping out of my chair with enough force to fling it back just because Cyrus wanted me to pick him up was not playing it cool.

Clearly, Julian doesn’t understand the excitement that is rippling through my body when I hurry toward the door.

“You don’t even have pants on!” Julian yells.

“Shit, you’re right.”

“Why the fuck isn’t Ezio wearing pants?” Casimir asks as he walks into the dining room where I’ve been sitting and helping Julian with schoolwork to distract me from my woes.

I figured that since he allowed me to grade stuff the other day, I might as well help him again today.

“It was actually my fault. I just… had this pop, and then your dog threw his body in front of me and out of terror that I’d pour sticky red pop on his new do, I flung it at Ezio. So can he borrow some pants from you so he doesn’t show up in his underwear?”

“You thought it was fine letting another man display himself in front of you?” Casimir asks.

“Well, my one true love was off doing who knows what, so I had to,” Julian teases.

“I was trying to get shit with the hotel figured out and you’ve already moved on!” he says, shooing me off to his room while Julian laughs.

“Hey, you should only be paying attention to the part where I nearly lost my life by tripping over your dog.”

“Sounds like you were neglecting Gustov and he had to throw his body in front of you for attention.”

“Yes. That’s definitely what this sounds like,” Julian says with much sarcasm as I head up the stairs to his room.

I can still hear him laughing. I really am glad that after so long, Casimir finally found someone to share his life with.

He really never knew what he was missing out on.

It was well past time for him to stop beating himself up over something that happened nearly five hundred years ago.

I find a pair of pants and slip them on before rushing back down the stairs. “Excuse me while I meet the man of my dreams.”

“But are you the man of his nightmares?” Casimir asks.

I glower at him. “You are not funny, Casimir. You’re evil.”

“Thank you,” he says before I dash out the door to my car where I proceed to drive at breakneck speeds. Strangely, it’s so fast that a police car pulls me over right outside of Cyrus’s house.

Cyrus seems oddly horrified to see the whole thing as he comes rushing out and smiling at the officer who knows him. “I’m sorry. We had an emergency, and I told him to quickly drive here… I think he misunderstood how quickly I meant.”

The man, who thankfully isn’t the one whose car I yeeted, doesn’t seem overly convinced, but does let us go.

Cyrus slips into the car, and I beam at him.

The beam is evidently doing wonders as his eyebrows rise higher and higher. “You were in such a hurry that you got pulled over by the police, but now you have time to just sit here and smile at me?”

“I sure do. I just love that you’re involving me to the point where I’m now picking you up. Would you like me to pick you up before work every day? Because I will.”

“No.”

“Understandable,” I say as I start driving with his instructions.

When he reaches forward to turn the air up, I notice he has a different smell to his clothes, so I lean in and sniff him.

“Why are you sniffing me?”

I hesitate as I realize he smells like another man. He seems to use more natural scents and nothing as thick as this. Is Zach already staying at his house? Is Cyrus wearing his shirt? Is that what this is?

“Ezio?”

“Hmm?” I ask.

“You’re acting weird and it’s creeping me out.”

“I’m sorry,” I say as I continue driving while the car falls into a deafening silence. It seems like we really only ever talk if I have something to say. Does he not even want to talk to me?

Julian is right, I need to move on. It’s not like I want to mold him into the image of the man who offered me the world.

I know they are very different people, though I really do like Cyrus for who he is.

Even if I’d never met Arturo, I would have wanted Cyrus.

But honestly… I’ve asked for too much already. Now I’m just getting greedy.

“What’s going on?” Cyrus asks after about ten minutes of silence.

“With?”

“Something’s wrong with you.”

“Ah. Ha ha… nothing. I’m sorry.”

“I thought for sure you’d be ecstatic that I allowed you to pick me up… wait, are you just so thrilled, it’s broken you?” he asks. “That’s… should I be concerned?”

“How can something this perfect break? I am unbreakable.”

Cyrus gives me a look, eyebrow rising. “Yeah? Are you sure about that? Not the breaking part—the being perfect part.”

“The only person more perfect than me is you.” I even give him a wink to cement this.

He chokes out a laugh. “Why the hell did I even question if something was up with you? You’re clearly as confused as ever. Possibly more than ever.”

“I’m confused just the right amount,” I assure him.

Honestly, I’m just happy I get to speak to him normally.

I really shouldn’t fixate on all of that other shit.

None of that is important. What’s important is that I have people who care about me and I’m living a life for myself. Not for anyone else.

When we reach the crime scene, I follow Cyrus out and over to another nice suburban home that’s surrounded by police cars.

Once we’re geared up, we head inside to where I can instantly smell blood.

But instead of leading me over to a scene similar to before, I’m taken over to a woman sitting on the couch, likely drained of blood.

They seem very interested in her when it’s the source of the blood that I’m more interested in.

“Where’s the second body?” I ask.

“Haven’t found a second body,” Maeve says as she watches me. “I take it we missed something?”

“Is there a basement?” I ask since the smell is coming from down below.

“We haven’t come across a door leading to it, but there might be a cellar. Hey, let’s start looking for a cellar,” she calls to the others. “Search under rugs. It’s likely a hatch in the floor somewhere.”

“Did you pull any information on the house? It might tell you,” Cyrus says.

“We haven’t gotten there yet. Daughter walked in from her college classes and found her stepmother on the couch. The moment I saw her, I knew I needed to contact you.”

“In the kitchen!” a man shouts, so we head that way, and I notice the smell gets thicker.

He’s pushed a large rug back and moved a decorative table to reveal it.

The hatch only has a hole and no obvious way to open it without a hook, but I reach down and pull it open by snagging it with my finger and drawing it up, which would have been quite hard for a human.

The smell of blood hits me hard as Maeve shines a flashlight down into the hole, but she doesn’t need to. I can see the dead man from here.

There’s very little space to stand since it’s a simple old cellar for storing canned produce. There are still a few jars on the shelves, but they’re empty.

While it’s not a tall room, he’s still been pinned to the wall. I move to jump down but Cyrus stops me.

“Let’s get some good light in there so we can make sure we don’t step in the blood. There’s really not much room to stand.”

“Okay,” I say, but even from here, I can see the smudge of blood on the wall. With the puddle of blood undisturbed right where the killer would have had to stand to apply it, I can’t help but wonder if the killer had done it before staking the man to the wall.

Cyrus asks Maeve, “How long was the daughter away from the house? These deaths look quite recent.”

They smell recent.

“While she doesn’t live here, she does come from her college to visit. She talked to her father this afternoon and told him she would be dropping by to spend the night.”

“The streak of blood on the wall is in the same spot as last time but it’s at a different angle,” I say.

Maeve shifts her flashlight up. “You’re right. Okay, let’s get a team in here.”

I turn around and nearly run into Zach, of all people. He flashes me a smile as I try my hardest not to glower at him. Should I draw forth my inner Casimir and scare him off?

“Good evening!” he says a bit too loudly. Is he nervous because Cyrus is nearby?

“Evening,” I force out.

He’s still all smiles as I hurry away, really wanting to get Cyrus away from whatever that was. I wander the house for a bit until my nose brings me to the bathroom where I eye the clothes hamper. “Cyrus?”

“Cyrus is in the kitchen, but can I help?” Zach asks, appearing right when I don’t need him.

I’d rather he didn’t.

“Can we go through the clothes in the hamper?”

“Yeah, is there something specific that drew your attention to it?” he asks.

“I’m just curious,” I say. So he goes about getting them carefully laid out until I stop at the one thing that smells the most… a simple hair tie.

I guess that makes sense. If they disposed of the clothing the wife had worn, she might not have thought about the hair tie which she must have touched with bloody fingers. It probably fell into the hamper when she was changing or going to take a shower.

“What’s going on?” Cyrus asks when he walks in, and there’s a sharpness to his voice that I don’t miss.

“Ezio wanted to examine the clothes,” Zach explains as I feel the tension in the room. Like does Cyrus think I’m going to swipe up his new boyfriend? Or maybe he thinks I’m going to threaten him.

“Excuse us a second, Zach,” Cyrus says.

“Of course.”

He slips out and Cyrus turns to me. At first, I assume I’m going to get chewed out for glowering at his new man, but instead, he nods at the hair tie. “What’s up with it?”

“It just smells… bloody.”

“Okay… odd.”

“You don’t think they’re related in some way? Like both couples participated in… something.”

“I… don’t know why these two couples were targeted,” Cyrus admits. “You think the decaying smell and the blood you smell here could connect them?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “You know who you should get out here? Julian.”

Cyrus laughs before he realizes I’m not joking. “How the hell am I going to tote a wolf around?”

“Just tell them he’s part wolf but a trained scent dog. It’ll be fine.”

“Will it?” he asks, looking skeptical. “You know what, what do we have to lose?”