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Turned out I was hungrier than I’d thought, and the coffee perked me up a bit. “Thank you for doing that, Tittwell.”

“The doctor is welcome,” Tittwell said around his last mouthful of tuna. “What’s next?”

I thought maybe I could learn to like the little guy now that I had some food in my stomach, but I couldn’t have him around if I was going to use this lab for my own work. Not to mention if anything incriminating turned up on the case. I’d have to talk to Julian about it, but in the meantime, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings again.

“I’m going to put together a report for Julian on this morning’s findings. Why don’t you see what other evidence we need to go through and organize it?” I already knew there wasn’t much aside from some DNA samples I’d been provided from the victims’ homes so we could match them to the remains. That was something I could let Tittwell do since there had been eyewitnesses to the murders and the identities weren’t in question.

“Aye aye, Doctor.”

“You can call me Char,” I offered.

“Tittwell prefers to keep things formal, Doctor. Wouldn’t want to explain to the Lieutenant any sordid affairs with Tittwell’s boss.”

I nearly choked on the last bit of coffee in my cup. “Good idea to keep it formal,” I said, once recovered.

By the time I’d prepped the report, Tittwell had confirmed two of the four bodies were a match to the victim’s DNA and I was ready to talk to Julian. The moment I grabbed the tablet with the report, the elevator appeared in the center of the lab.

“Would the doctor like Tittwell to accompany her?” my assistant asked, blinking behind enormous goggles that magnified his already huge eyes.

“No, thank you. You can keep working on the DNA matching. Let me know if anything unexpected turns up.”

“Aye, aye, Doctor.”

When the doors slid closed, I leaned back against the wall and huffed out a breath. “You better be taking me to Julian,” I said.

The elevator opened onto an office similar to mine but larger, decorated in glass and black instead of the pristine white everywhere else. An enormous bookshelf filled with an assortment of tomes lined the wall to the left. Julian waited, standing behind his desk as I strode out.

“Did you find something?” he asked eagerly.

“Well, I found it interesting that one of the victims didn’t completely disintegrate,” I said, suppressing a flinch at his earnestness. The truth was I knew a hell of a lot more than I let on and found the guilt of hiding that information rivaled the guilt of having created this mess in the first place.

“Yes. We wondered about that,” Julian said, gesturing for me to sit.

“The only difference in the composition of the corpse was the presence of two types of blood,” I reported, sliding the tablet across the desk for him to examine. “Which leads me to believe she’d recently fed.”

“On more than one human,” Julian said with a frown. “That’s unusual.”

“Unless she died while fighting more than one person,” I offered. I’d seen that happen before as a child. It wasn’t pretty. I cleared my throat. “Or had more than one lover shortly before being killed.”

Julian’s eyes flashed. “Have you had a vampire lover before, Charlotte?”

He knew how to make me blush, that was for certain, and I couldn’t help but picture his body pressed against mine. I shook my head and forced a smile. “I don’t have to have experienced it to know that vampires can use their glamour and venom to enhance intercourse. I don’t think my personal sexual history is any of your business.”

“My apologies, I was simply surprised at your knowledge of the subject. It’s assumed in pop-culture, but I wasn’t aware that it was a known fact about my species.”

“Unfortunately, everything else was naturally occurring in the body,” I said, changing the subject. It wasn’t necessarily more comforting to press forward on my fib, but it was easier since I was prepared for it.

Julian leaned over the desk, sliding the report to the side. “I would think that’s a finding in and of itself.”

“I suppose so. My assumption is that the drug magically disappears after use.” I gave him my rehearsed explanation.

“Or it’s made up of natural compounds and is undetectable among the remains, which would indicate a malevolent intent by the creator.”

I bit my cheek. That was the actual answer minus the evil intent. The fact the evidence disappeared was a side effect of the chemical makeup.

“We can’t know which it is from the current evidence,” I said.

“We can look for residual traces of the magic you proposed,” Julian said. “I’ll have a witch go over it.”