Page 95 of Death is Familiar

His movements were somber. Apologetic. But I didn’t want to do serious right now, so I poked him in the chest. “Bring food.” When he nodded, I continued, with another poke to his chest, “And your brain.” Then I switched to signing, since I wasn’t sure how much to disclose about the case in front of a child, “We’re going to. Get to bottom. Of what happened with vamps.”

“Does that mean vampire?” Remy’s mouth hung open in disbelief.

Instead of answering her, I responded to Todd, “She’s cute.” I smiled, then said aloud, “She looks like you.”

“Heyyy!” Remy was indignant. “Take that back! I’m not that scary!”

“I don’t know,” I laughed. “Some of your special agent skills were pretty scary.”

She filled her lungs, inflating like she was about to rebut, then deflated, “Yeah, okay that’s fair.”

Todd cocked a brow. It only seemed reasonable to warn him about her newly acquired ‘skill’, a warning that perhaps he’d share with Remy’s mother and stepfather when they arrived to pick her up. “Remy is really good at marking escape routes. Aren’t you, Remy?”

“Oh, I’m the best!” Something about her changed, the child-mode I’d only gotten a glimpse of was activated. She spun in a circle, then ran to the window at the far end of the room. “Yeah, that’s a long way down. We’d definitely need a fire escape ladder to get out at this height.” She spun back to face us. “Don’t worry dad, I’m going to teach Rory, and we’re going to be spies, and I’m going to learn how to sneak into the snack cupboard when mom and Raph aren’t watching!”

Todd turned to me wide eyed, just as I slipped out the door with a smile. If there was a parent out there who could handle their child learning evasive techniques it was Todd. Plus, I’d left them both with something to talk about.

†

Freshly showered and full—of instant noodles and candy—I turned the air conditioning on full blast and wrapped myself in a comforter on the couch. With the impromptu detour to Eureka, I’d spent far too much time dealing with my own personal drama. In doing so, I’d also derailed the agents from the vamp case, and no small part of me was feeling the guilt of my actions.

I’d been brash. And furious. And… selfish.

I tried to remind myself that my own personal safety was in jeopardy with Mads on the loose, but I needed to get the vamp case back on track. If anything bad happened to any more familiars, it was on me. So, I sure as hell needed to ensure that we figured out who, exactly, was responsible to ensure they couldn’t hurt anyone else.

Notebook in hand, I started with my routine of writing down the knowns, unknowns, and questions yet-to-be-answered.

We knew familiars were being killed after fang ceremonies. They disappeared after they were bitten and were taken to a nearby graveyard where they were injected with epinephrine until the point their bodies gave out. We also knew that whoever did the killing, thought they were trying to save the familiars before they could transition into vampires, and when that didn’t work, the victims were laid out in a cross formation, their bodies aligned cross-spires that illuminated at the first light of day.

Then there was the elfish woman—yes, I refused to learn her name because the idea of what she was doing infuriated me and I refused to believe that a real person would be this foolish and selfish—with the false confession. Someone must have convinced her to take the blame. But, who, and how? What did she think she was getting out of this deal?

Whoever, convinced her to play scapegoat must have known her motivations, and knew what she would be willing to do to take the blame.

On top of that, there was also the strange interaction with that random officer, Officer Ellis, who approached me in the police station parking lot to give me grief over the hickey Carmen deposited on my neck. Said that people around Huntington were getting mugged because of them.

Which, all in all, seemed strange. A mugging, in the vamp case, was a social deterrent at best. Random at worst… unless the mugging, was covering the real motive for these attacks. I wrote a couple of thoughts down, then circled them twice with the intent to address possible motivations with the agents.

Flipping back and forth between the pages, one thing was clear. The vamp hunters were responsible for all the moving pieces.

Of that I was certain.

But who, precisely, was responsible, and why, was what we needed to figure out. There were plenty of people online and in small communities who fancied themselves anti-vampers, but that was more of a protective measure. They were people who toted garlic, and crosses, and crystals, and warned of welcoming strangers into homes. I didn’t know of any anti-vamper, or vamp hunter groups, whose beliefs were extreme enough to go to these lengths. And I sure as hell didn’t know any groups that operated on the belief that epinephrine would be an effective anti-vamp transformation counter measure.

Fittingly, “epinephrine” was the word I chose to welcome Todd, whose brow furrowed at my greeting. Still, he followed me in, two bags in hand. “We should be able to trace the epinephrine,” I continued. “Whoever’s responsible for injecting the victims, would have had to buy it somewhere. Or stole it. A whole lot of it.”

Todd unpacked a takeout container from one of the bags he brought, handing it to me. “It was stolen.”

“Wait, really?” I sat back on the couch, container on my lap. “How do we know?”

Todd ceased what he was doing. “The world didn’t stop when we dealt with Mads, Delilah.” He tossed me a handful of napkins, as I opened the box. Burger and fries. Perfect. “Fawzy and Zhou followed up with police, they asked for reports of stolen auto-injectors or epinephrine solutions.”

“And?”

“They were stolen from ambulances.”

“Ambulances? Seems harder to rob than a pharmacy.”

“But if done right, they’re more likely to get away with it.” I popped a fry in my mouth as Todd explained, “Paramedics conduct stock checks at beginning of shift. Restock after use. If no calls required epinephrine, no one would think to restock until the beginning of the next shift.” He rolled up his sleeves. “We’re headed into the office to meet with the team tomorrow for an update. They were busy.”