Free A Fang in the Sass: BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance (Sassy Ever After Book 6) by Milly Taiden

misunderstanding on a one-time thing.”
    Emma scowled. “How do we do that? Embraced is burned down and most of the bad guys are dead.”
    “Well,” she sat back in her chair, “if they were taking humans over all these years, then there might be a lot of missing persons’ reports.”
    “Maybe strange death stats and obituaries,” Emma said. “We can find all the stats on the city at the library. Then we can go to the police to see if they can tell us anything. What else?”
    “I didn’t even know about the stats at the library, so I have no idea where else to look.”
    “Maybe someone at the library or police can give us an idea,” she said, stuffing a cookie in her mouth. She slammed the lid on the ice cream and tossed it back into the freezer. “Let’s get going.” Emma grabbed her purse and they were off.

 
     
    SIXTEEN
     
    After the drive into the big city, Aria and Emma sat in the main library’s backroom fiddling with technology older than they were. Well, not her, but Emma for certain. She sneezed as she dusted off another box of…
    “What is this called again?” she asked as she took out the two reels containing the film.
    “Microfiche,” Emma said. “I had to use this when researching stuff in college. Not everything had been transferred to digital yet.”
    “Got it. But I’m still not sure what we’re looking for. There’s so much stuff here.”
    “You said Penelope said we needed to find a history of continued abuse to show this wasn’t a miscommunication or whatever BS.”
    She snorted. “BS is right. But what historical evidence is there in human files?”
    Emma sat back in her metal folding chair. “I was thinking something that showed a difference between time ranges or parts of town. Like if one part had a higher or lower missing persons’ percentage, or higher than other cities. Or if there were more reports of strange creatures in the area. I’m not really sure what else. This sounded much better in my head on the way over.”
    Aria laughed. “It’s fine. I hear being preggers makes you kinda of crazy.”
    “I remembered Karla got emotional all the time. I thought I was going to scream every time she burst into tears for no reason other than her shoe came untied. I told Mason I’m wearing flip-flops the entire pregnancy. Oh, hey. Look at this.”
    Aria scooted her chair closer to her friend’s. “This is an old article, seventy-five years old, with city stats. Which is what I was hoping to find.” She scanned the image. “It says the west side of the city had much lower crime than the east side, despite that it was the richer side.”
    She was quiet as she read further. “This says the economically depressed parts of town had more missing persons than other places, and the city overall had a higher missing persons than anywhere else at the time. It goes into employment stats, but I don’t see how those help.”
    Aria put forth her interpretation. “So the rich were safe and the poor went missing in the olden days. What does that mean?”
    Emma scrubbed a hand over her face. “I don’t know. Nothing? That the poor people who normally stole from the rich were taken by vamps before they could rob them?” Poor Emma looked exasperated.
    She sighed and slumped in her chair. “Shit, Emma. That could be it.”
    Her friend looked at her with surprise. “What do you mean? It’s right?”
    “That’s one of the things my grandfather and parents always made sure of. The clan needs to stay small enough or spread out enough so trends like this aren’t noticed in the local areas. When we had the clan meeting the other day, I remember thinking it was way too big. With this many vamps in one area, someone would eventually see a pattern and investigate.”
    “Let’s see if there’s anything for a follow-up.” She watched as Emma scrolled from image to image. “Doesn’t look like there’s—this is cool.”
    “What?” Aria leaned closer.
    Emma zoomed in on the