“Of course.”
“And I guess it’s also never crossed your mind to call Jack and let him know what you’ve figured out and let him get a warrant and take care of it.”
“That might take them hours. Besides, it’s the middle of the day. There’s not going to be anyone at the blood bank right now. We can get the info, get Eldromir to confirm my theory, and then we can tell the Enforcers so they can arrest Titus.”
Willow rolled her eyes. “And obviously this has nothing to do with figuring out who killed Luca before Jack does.”
“Me? Being super petty? Does that really sound like me?” I asked with a wink.
“Fine,” Willow said. “But if we get arrested, I am fully throwing you under the bus.”
“Deal.”
I was about to find proof that Titus was the killer. It had to be him. It just had to.
Chapter 22
There was no problem wandering around town completely visible. After all, the blood bank was in the middle of the neighborhood populated almost entirely by vampires, which meant that all the residents were currently in bed, and there was nobody on the streets in this part of town at this time of day. It was actually kind of eerie; I had never really had any reason to come over this way before, and it was strange to see this part of town like this. It almost felt abandoned, and I half-expected a tumbleweed to start rolling through the streets.
Or maybe just a giant snowball.
We got to the blood bank and I looked around furtively.
“Wow, way to not look the least bit suspicious,” Willow said to me with a smile. “Come on. Let’s get inside.”
She cast a quick spell that unlocked the front door, checking for wards first, and the two of us stepped back into the creepy blood room.
I muttered a quick spell under my breath and the tip of my wand lit up, illuminating the room and making it look slightly less creepy. Emphasis on the ‘slightly’. I wandered around until I found a light switch that illuminated the room more easily.
Willow looked around. “Are these… shelves full of blood?” she asked.
“Yup, welcome to the little room of nightmares I never knew existed,” I said. “The office is back here. Come on.”
The two of us made our way into the office where I had first met Titus.
“I’ll take the computer,” I said. “Why don’t you look through the rest of the papers?”
“What are we looking for?”
“Anything suspicious,” I replied. “Since Luca went to an accountant, my bet is he thought there was something weird going on with the finances here. Maybe Titus was skimming off the top, maybe he was falsifying invoices, that sort of thing. If you see bills made out to Totally Not Titus Inc, for example, that might be a big clue.”
“Got it,” Willow said with a laugh. “It would be nice if it really were that obvious.”
I sat down at the desk Titus had sat in the last time I was here and flicked on the computer. It was password protected, but a quick spell got through that real quick. Most witches and wizards didn’t bother password protecting anything – wards acted as better protection anyway – so it was kind of cute in an antiquated way to see Titus using it on the blood bank computer.
I opened up the file directory and quickly found all of the charity’s financial statements. I did much the same as I had when looking at the grocery store’s files and took pictures of everything I could find. While I did look at the information contained, I couldn’t really make heads or tails of it. I mean, I could understand the basics, but that was it.
“Found anything good?” I asked Willow after about ten minutes. She had looked through most of the stuff on the desk, and was now going through the cabinet.
“Not yet. Hold on.” I glanced up as Willow began moving files out of one of the cabinets.
“What is it?”
“I think there’s something under here.” She reached down, then pulled out a large, leather-bound book that had been underneath all of the files. “Someone definitely went to some effort to make sure we didn’t find this.”
“Bring it over here,” I said, clearing a space on the desk in front of me. Willow walked over and put the book down, opening it up immediately. It was full of hand-written documents, ones that looked a lot like the financial documents I’d been looking at.
“What are these?” Willow asked. “Business statements? Profit and loss? Balance sheets?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I have some here, too. Hold on.”
I opened up a couple of the files I’d seen that matched the ones we were looking at in this new book. I began comparing the numbers, and it didn’t take long before I realized they didn’t match up.
“The numbers in this book are different,” I said, motioning to the leather-bound book.
“So Titus is keeping two sets of records,” Willow said. “It looks like you were right. We’ll have to ask that accountant elf in New Fang to confirm, but my bet is that Titus was hiding something. Probably funneling money from donations right into his own bank account instead of using it for blood bank purposes.”
“Don’t touch the outside of that book anymore,” I said to Willow. “I bet Luca found it. If his fingerprints are on it, that would prove he found it.” I began taking pictures of the book, the inside and outside of it, being extra careful so as to not ruin any evidence that might prove Luca knew about this book.
“Do you think he confronted Titus about it?”
I frowned. “You know, I have a hard time believing he did. After all, he didn’t even tell Eldromir what he was thinking, and that was just after figuring out that the receptionist was related to Titus. So no, I think Luca probably kept it to himself. My bet is he wanted to confirm what he thought, and then he probably would have gone to the authorities from there.”
“That leaves one question, then: how did Titus find out that Luca was onto him? If Luca didn’t confront him, there was no way for Titus to know.”
“That’s a good point,” I conceded. Maybe Flavius, the receptionist, told his cousin about a vampire from Mt. Rheanier that came to see his boss. I don’t think Flavius is involved in this at all, but he could have just told Titus conversationally. Then Titus could have figured out that it was Luca who had been in there, and come to the same conclusion that I did.”
“That Luca was visiting an accountant in New Fang because he didn’t want anyone in Mt. Rheanier to know what he was doing, and so he would have suspected that Luca had found the second set of books,” Willow said, nodding in understanding. “That makes sense. It would have to mean Flavius and Titus were in regular contact, though.”
“They may very well have been. They were cousins, after all.”
“How often do you speak to your cousins?”
“I don’t have any, mom’s an only child.”
“Right, I forgot. Well, I can tell you that I talk to my cousins twice a year. Thanksgiving, and Christmas. That’s it.”
“Yeah, well, maybe Titus’ family is closer than that,” I said.
“Maybe,” Willow said, but she didn’t sound convinced. “It would be nice to be able to pin down how he found out.”
“I can tell you exactly how he found out,” Titus’s voice said from the doorway, and he stepped inside and into the light. He was holding one of those weapons from the human world, a gun, and he had it leveled right at me. Great. “When I began skimming off the top of the donations, I was worried that someone might find out what I was doing, or find the other book. There weren’t a lot of vampires allowed in this office, but you never knew. So I had a secret camera installed, along with a motion sensor. Anytime I wasn’t in this office, if someone else was, my phone would alert me and I could see what they were doing.”
I groaned inwardly. Security cameras were such a rare thing in Mt. Rheanier that I didn’t even bother to check for one.
“Where is it?” Willow asked, looking around.
“In the middle of the picture frame there to y
our left,” Titus said. I glanced over and sure enough, there was a tiny black speck in the middle of the frame that I hadn’t noticed before. That had to be it. I never in a million years would have picked that to be a camera if I hadn’t known ahead of time, though.”
“So you saw him come across the book,” I said. “He found it, didn’t he? And he had enough of a rudimentary knowledge of accounting that he suspected what it meant.”
“He must have. I saw him on the camera. He took pictures of every page in that book. Then he put it back where he found it.”
“How did he find it?” I asked.
“Just dumb luck,” Titus replied. “I heard him calling out into the hall, we had a donor who wanted a receipt for their taxes, and Luca was going to get it for him. But it meant finding the file, and it wasn’t in the right spot or something. Eventually Luca just grabbed all the files and took them out to have a closer look, and it was when he was putting the files back that he spotted the book at the bottom of the case.”
“So you killed him because he figured you out,” I said. “Did you even know he had gone to the accountant your cousin worked for in New Fang?”
Titus’ eyebrows rose in surprise. “I didn’t, no. Don’t tell me someone else already knows about this.”
“You’re in luck there,” I said. “Luca saw Flavius, recognized the family resemblance and got cold feet. But Willow and I know everything. So I guess you’re not all that lucky after all.”
Titus laughed. “Please. Have you ever seen one of these things?”
I shook my head no. Titus pointed the gun at the wall, squeezing the trigger. A loud bang erupted through the room and I jumped slightly. The wall now had a small hole in it.
“Next one goes in your head.”
Oh boy. This was not good.
Chapter 23
“It amazes me that more vampires don’t use guns,” Titus said to me. “They were the weapon of choice when I was a human, and they have come a long way, technologically, in the last couple hundred years. In a world where witches and wizards are able to cast spells at will, vampires are at a significant disadvantage. The gun levels the playing field significantly. If either one of you tries to pull out a wand, I’m going to put a bullet in your brain.”
I gulped. My wand was in the back pocket of my pants. I’d seen how quickly Titus had managed to get the shot off with the gun; there was no way I could pull my wand out in time, let alone cast a spell before he managed to shoot me.
I looked over at Willow, who had gone pale. Boy did I ever feel bad for bringing her along. I had thought it was foolproof; Titus was supposed to be sleeping for at least another five hours or so. And yet, I’d managed to mess this up, and now my best friend and I were both being held hostage by a murderer. I had a sneaking suspicion Titus had absolutely no intention of letting us go.
“If you kill us here, you’ll never get away with it,” I said, intent on buying as much time as possible. I at least needed Willow to get away. If I died, well, that would suck. But at least I was actually investigating this crime. Willow just had the bad luck of being my friend that I dragged along with me, and I was going to do everything I could to make sure she got out of here alive. “How are you going to hide the evidence that we were here? There will be blood everywhere. All over these papers. Eventually someone is going to notice, and is going to call the Enforcers. And then you’ll be toast.”
Titus bit his lip as he thought over what I was saying. “Fine,” he eventually answered. “You’re right. I’m not going to kill you here. I’m going to kill you where a little bit of blood isn’t going to look out of place.”
He motioned for Willow and I to get up, which we did.
“I do have one more question, though,” I said. “Did you delete the pictures off Luca’s phone?”
“Yes,” Titus answered. “As soon as I killed him. I wanted the phone to be found, but there couldn’t be a trace left of the photos he had taken. Not a single clue that might lead back to me.”
I nodded. That made sense. Well, there was a good chance I was going to die now, but at least I knew what had happened to Luca.
“You’re not going to get away with this,” Willow said. “There are too many things that can go wrong. You can still let us go.”
Titus laughed, a sound with no humor behind it. “Right. No, I am going to get away with it. Your bodies will end up in the lake, which is going to freeze over soon. They won’t find you until at least the spring, and by then all the evidence of what I’m going to do will disappear.
The two of us walked into the creepy blood room. I really didn’t want to die in here. I mean, I supposed there was no good place to die, but this felt like adding insult to bullet hole.
I didn’t have any time to get to my wand. How did humans stop people with guns? I didn’t really watch any human-world movies, so I didn’t have any idea. But there had to be something. They had to have a way.
I looked around the room. The lights were still on, at least. That was something. Vampires didn’t deal well with light, whereas witches did. There were also the vials full of blood.
Looking closely at Titus, I didn’t think this was going to be as easy for him as he thought. His hands were shaking slightly, and his forehead shone with a light sheen of sweat.
He had to be nervous about killing us. Was it the sort of thing that got easier the more you did it? Somehow, I doubted it. So I had one chance.
I was going to rely on instinct. I turned and faced the shelf of blood vials.
“Any last words?” Titus asked, and my blood ran cold. But I couldn’t just freeze up; that was a guaranteed way to die. A sob escaped from Willow, and it just made me more resolute.
“Yeah. Catch!”
I reached forward as quickly as I could and grabbed a couple of the blood vials, turned around and threw them at Titus.
Sure enough, instinct kicked in and he stumbled backwards, trying to avoid being hit by them. One of the vials smashed against the wall behind him, while the other one hit him in the shoulder and fell to the ground before exploding.
The second vial hadn’t even hit the floor before I’d turned around and rushed Titus. I slammed into him, the force driving both of us back into the shelf on the other side of the room. Vials of blood smashed all around us, but more importantly, the gun in his hand clattered to the ground.
Willow let out a squeal as I kicked Titus as hard as I could in the leg, hoping to incapacitate him. He let out a howl of pain.
“Stupid witch!” He reached over and punched me square in the face and pain seared through my nose, the wet feeling of blood already dripping out of it. I stumbled backwards from the shock and pain, and Titus took the opportunity to reach down and try to get the gun again.
Before he got to it, though, I kicked him as hard as I could in the ribs and he fell over, clutching at his side.
“You broke my ribs!” he shouted. “What is wrong with you?”
“A lot of things,” I replied as I reached down and grabbed the gun, pointing it right at him. “Now, get up, slowly.”
“I can’t, you broke my ribs.”
“I’ll break more than just that if you don’t do what I say,” I replied. “Willow, call Jack.”
“Already on it,” Willow said, her phone to her ear.
I looked over at Titus once more. He was struggling to get to his feet.
“Now, I want you to get your phone out of your pocket, and throw it toward me,” I said. Titus paused. He definitely didn’t want to do it. “Now!”
Reaching into his jacket pocket, Titus pulled out his phone. “I don’t want to throw it, what happens if the screen breaks?”
“What, are you going to share inspirational posts to Facebook from jail?” I replied. “Throw me the phone.”
Titus did as I asked, and it landed about a foot in front of me. He winced in pain as he tossed it, and I knew it was over.
“You’re a stupid witch,” he spat at me.
&nbs
p; “Well, this stupid witch is about to get your butt hauled off to jail.”
Willow pulled out her wand. “Rhea, goddess mother, freeze this vampire so he can’t move asunder.”
Every muscle in Titus’ body froze just then, and he was stuck with that scowl on his face. Only his eyes could move, and he glared at me and Willow as I grinned at him and put the gun down.
“Well, that’s that. The phone should have all the evidence we need to get him locked up forever, seeing as it’s probably where the recording from the camera in the office is.”
Just then, Jack and Andy burst through the door, wands at the ready. As soon as he looked at me, Andy rushed over.
“Are you alright? I’m getting you to the hospital straight away.”
“I’m fine,” I said, waving him off. “It’s just a nosebleed.” Andy gave me a strange look.
“Ok, you definitely need the hospital.”
Willow laughed. “She is fine, she just doesn’t realize what she looks like right now.”
I gave her a curious look, and Willow pointed her wand at the wall. “Rhea, goddess mother, on this wall I need a mirror.”
A full-length mirror appeared on the wall across from me and I made my way toward it and gasped. I looked like I had just been involved in a massacre. There was blood all over the front of my clothes. I pulled out my wand and cast a quick spell, making it all disappear. Now, the only blood left was that dripping from my nose.
“I’ll take that, too,” Andy said, carefully taking the gun from me.
“What on earth happened here?” Jack asked.
“Titus killed Luca, we found out, and he tried to kill us,” I replied.
Jack stared at me. “Seriously?”
“What?” I asked with a shrug. “In my defense, we thought we were just breaking and entering a closed blood bank, we never thought we were going to come face to face with a murderer.”
“You’re completely insane,” came his reply.
I supposed there wasn’t really much I could say against that right now.
Potion Sickness Page 13
