When Jubilee’s door had closed, Jesse opened the door in front of us and flicked on a light switch. “Go ahead,” he said, tilting his head. “I want to hear your impressions.”
I should have been angry that he’d dragged me out here only to give me the silent treatment, but he was beginning to really freak me out. I straightened up and stepped forward, looking around the small bedroom. I saw the enormous bloodstain on the carpet right away, and glanced back at Jesse. His arms were folded in front of him, face expressionless. No help there. I squatted down for a closer look. The stain ran almost the length of the room, maybe five or six feet. It had to be at least a few hours old—I figured Jesse’s crime scene guys had come and gone already—but it still looked soaking wet. It was also much longer than it was wide—vaguely person shaped, I guess, but more like a snow angel than a chalk outline. I deal with blood all the time, but usually it’s just little spatters. The vampires, of course, don’t waste much blood, and the werewolves usually start healing before it gets this bad. The only other time I’d seen this much blood in one place was during the massacre in La Brea Park in September. I shuddered. Turning to look at Jesse, I spotted a framed picture on the wall of a young woman, twenty or so, smiling arm in arm with Jubilee. She had light-brown hair, an easy smile, and a hint of something secretive in her eyes. Erin, I presumed.
“Is this…Erin’s blood?”
“We think so. Blood type matches, though it’ll take a while for DNA.”
“Did your experts think…can she still be alive?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“No. With that much blood loss, unless she’d basically been at the hospital…she’s dead.”
I sidestepped the pool and continued around the room. The girl who lived here was a student, judging from the textbooks that were stacked on the small bookshelf above the computer table and the backpack tossed against the wall just inside the doorway. All of her belongings also had this look like they’d been purchased separately over time. The curtain and bedspread were a matching purple-and-green pattern, but the desk and desk drawer were a different green that didn’t quite match. The desk lamp was from a completely different style…genre, I guess. I’d seen the same thing when my brother Jack was in college; it happens when you move a lot.
I turned in a circle, and finally figured out what was bothering me. The entire room was fairly neat, especially by my own low standards, but the half with the desk and the bed was slightly tousled. Books were stacked haphazardly on the shelf instead of lined up, and the pillow and covers were thrown across the bed, like someone had shaken them out without smoothing them down. In a hurry. That could have just been Erin’s style, except that the opposite half of the room was pristine.
And the window…Erin’s window was standing open, and had no screen or bars. When I stepped closer I realized why—the whole apartment building was like a big hollow box, with a little courtyard in the middle, containing a few picnic tables and a small spa pool. This window faced inward, with a straight thirty-foot drop to the courtyard below. Cool air drifted into the room, and I shivered in my wool peacoat, which had seemed too warm only a few minutes ago.
“We found the window screen floating in the spa,” Jesse’s voice said behind me. Reading my mind. I pulled my head in and turned around.
“Did your guys find anything else?”
He gave me a little not much shrug. “There was some gray dirt on the floor. The roommate says they were both pretty careful about tracking mud in, so we’ll try to match it to a pair of her shoes to see if it’s related.”
I went back to the bloodstain and crouched down, automatically tucking the bottom of my jacket against my body so it wouldn’t drift into the blood. There was just something wrong with the bloodstain, and in spite of the hour and the travel and the cryptic detective beside me, I was getting interested. I ran through a grisly list of injuries in my head, things I’d seen or heard about: gunshot, stabbing, decapitation, dismemberment, throat cutting. Nothing seemed to fit. If Erin had died from straightforward blood loss—a stab wound, for example—there would be a smeared end where the body had lain, and then the rest of the stain would be circular, if the floor was even, or all misshapen and wispy on carpeting like Erin’s. If she’d died from a cut artery, there would be blood spray everywhere. This wasn’t right. I looked up at Jesse. “It’s too…neat.”
He nodded, and his voice had an edge. “Techs said the blood is nearly the same depth over the whole stain.”
Huh. “What causes that?”
“My crime-scene people had one theory, but only in a half-joking kind of way, because it was so out there.”
I froze.
“They said it looked like she’d been crushed. Slowly.” He gave me a pointed look, and I finally understood why I was here. It wasn’t for my expert opinion. It was an accusation.
The crime scene had been cleaned. Professionally.
Chapter 2
“I don’t know anything about it, Jesse. I just got off a plane, remember?” As I said it, I was really wishing that I’d gotten a chance to check my messages before Jesse had grabbed me in baggage claim. Eli, my apprentice/former sex buddy, had been in charge of the cleanup business while I was in New York. He would definitely have called about a complete body; those were rare. Jesse didn’t know that Eli was the one covering for me, though, and since what we do is technically illegal, I wasn’t about to tell him.
He took another step toward me, looking angry. “I know you did. But someone was filling in for you while you were out of town, right? I mean, the Old World doesn’t stop making messes just because you aren’t here to clean them up. Look around—someone tampered with this room.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re right. No human being could stack books that way.”
He didn’t smile. “This is serious, Scarlett,” he snapped. “Ordinary murders don’t look like this. And the only reason to take the body but leave the blood is to hide what was done to the body, which just screams Old World. So who cleaned the room?”
Now I was starting to get mad. “Are you kidding me? You of all people should understand that even if this is an Old World thing—which I have absolutely no idea about, by the way, because I just got here—there’s no way the police can get involved.”
“Look where you are right now,” he hissed, not backing down an inch. “This room belongs to a twenty-year-old kid whose roommate is devastated. Her parents are catching the first flight out of Michigan, and I have to tell them something when they get here. Maybe you don’t know—yet. But you’re involved, or you’re going to be. So who’s been covering for you?”
Dammit. Jesse hadn’t just grabbed me at the airport to get to the crime scene faster: he had picked me up instead of calling or coming to my house because he hadn’t wanted to give me a chance to get my story straight with someone. That was so…cop-like. I rubbed my eyes, which were stinging with tiredness, and thought about it for a second. If Jesse knew that Eli worked for me, it would put Eli in legal danger and be yet another way for Jesse to mess around in Old World affairs. Dangerous for everyone. “I can’t, Jesse. But if I hear anything that I think would be useful to you, I’ll pass it on.”
“That’s not good enough,” he said heatedly, switching tactics. “What if I just go over your head? I could stop at that bar and ask the werewolves. Hell, I know where Dashiell lives. How about I go knock on his door and see what he says?”
Jesse started to push past me, toward the door, and I skittered sideways, trying to block his path and still avoid the blood. “Stop! Are you trying to get dead? You know better than to screw around with these people, Jesse. You don’t want to so much as remind Dashiell that you’re alive, much less start poking around in Old World business again. Last time you almost got—” I stopped, but we both knew what I had been about to say: got yourself killed. Dashiell had threatened Jesse’s life, and only his good behavior and silence had kept him alive. And it hadn’t hurt that I’d just saved Dashiell�
��s wife, Beatrice, from being killed for good.
“So help me.” He folded his arms and stared at me defiantly.
My mouth dropped open. “This is your plan? You’re going to bet your life that I care enough about you to keep you from getting killed? You’re an idiot.”
He took the last step toward me, the one that put him all the way in my personal space and forced me to turn my head up to see him. His dark eyes searched my own, and I felt heat flutter in my stomach. “I’m still right, though, aren’t I?” he said quietly.
I glared at him. “I hate you.” I took a step back, putting more space between us. “You could have just asked for my help, you know.”
His smile turned sad. “I was hoping that when you saw her room…you’d offer.”
Ah. I’d failed another of his little morality tests. I felt the old gulf between us settle back into place. Jesse still believed in always doing the right thing. I believed in survival on whatever terms necessary. I wouldn’t say that there were no lines I wouldn’t cross, but in Jesse’s eyes I was willing to do a lot of things that were neither legal nor ethical. Like not get involved with this case. Jesse, on the other hand, still practically radiated integrity and goodness. Maybe it was proof that I was just a soft touch, but I would get involved for him. And he knew it, the bastard.
“I’ll make a couple of calls,” I allowed.
He smiled at me, for the first time that night. Then the smile faded, and he cleared his throat. “Listen, um…there’s something else I should tell you. I’m sort of seeing someone.”
I blinked. “Oh,” I said stupidly. I don’t know why I was surprised. Jesse was a kind, cheerful, gorgeous man living in Los Angeles. Women had to be throwing themselves at him every day. I tried to keep the sting off my face.
“Yeah, well, it’s only been a couple of dates, but she’s…very sweet. Gentle.”
Ouch. I knew that probably hadn’t been a direct shot at me, but sweet and gentle were definitely two things that I wasn’t. I pushed the thought away. Jesse had paused, looking at me nervously.
“What?” I said finally.
“Are you still going to help me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Captain Ego. You’re still my friend. Or whatever.” He had the decency to look embarrassed.
I checked my watch. It was almost 5:00 a.m. in New York, and a half-assed catnap on the plane wasn’t enough to clear my head for thinking. “Okay, look, you have to give me some time to make some inquiries. Can we get together for lunch?”
His eyebrows furrowed with irritation. “Breakfast.”
“Jesse…” I said. Okay, maybe it was more of a whine.
“I’ll pick you up for brunch at ten. Final offer.”
“Ugh. Fine.”
“And I want the body,” he pressed.
I shook my head. “I can’t do that.”
He was fuming. “Knock it off, Scarlett. This isn’t the time to be cute.”
“No, I mean, I literally can’t do it. If—again, if—this is really my kind of thing, the body is gone. Like, gone gone.” If Eli had cleaned the scene, he would have gone straight to my incinerator guy in Van Nuys. Jesse’s sudden glare was full of ferocity and something like betrayal. “Jesse, it was gone before I got off the plane. Giving me the stink-eye isn’t going to change anything.”
Jesse sighed, and the glare collapsed into something sadder. “Sometimes…I just don’t know how you do what you do.”
I couldn’t help it. I flinched.
We got back on the freeway, and Jesse dropped me off at Molly’s house in West Hollywood less than twenty minutes later. It’s amazing how fast you can get around LA at two in the morning.
Molly, my landlady, roommate, and pseudofriend, is also a vampire. She and I have a deal: she lets me live there practically free, and I help her age. Molly was turned in Victorian Wales at only seventeen, and although she was considered an adult when she was alive, in the twenty-first century she couldn’t legally vote, have sex, drink, etc. When she’s around me, Molly becomes human again, and ages like any normal person. She also has to use the bathroom, sleep, and eat while she’s near me, which is a constant source of wonder and amusement for her, since apparently toilet habits have changed in the century since she was alive. At this point she looks like a college student, about twenty, and I’ve often wondered what age she wants to get to before she’ll kick me out. I love her house, which is old and cute and filled with carefully chosen things, but I’ve never really thought of it as my home.
“Scarlett!” Molly squealed, and ran up to hug me. Molly is surprisingly touchy-feely for a vampire. I usually beg off the hugging, but it had been a while since we’d seen each other, so I allowed myself to be enveloped. She was wearing supertight jeans that probably cost more than all the clothes in my suitcase, and a T-shirt with a skull and crossbones. Only the skull had a little pink bow where its hair would have been. She also had on one of those fancy phone headsets, the kind where the microphone wraps around to be in front of your mouth.
“Hi,” I said when she’d let go. She paused to straighten the headset around her hair, which had recently been dyed blonde and cut into sort of a long bob. I have no idea why vampires’ hair continues to grow. Chalk it up to magic. “What are you up to?” I asked cautiously.
She pointed toward the laptop that had been plopped on the couch. “Online gaming.”
“Oh, Molly.”
“What?” she said, defensive. “Geeks are in now, remember? And it’s soooo addicting.”
“I remember. Last time you started that stuff I barely spoke to you.”
She shrugged. “You were gone for like a month. I got bored.” She crossed her legs. “Besides, they’ve got this new one that’s all about vampires, see?” She pointed to the little screen, where an avatar woman with tight jeans and a black T-shirt was frozen, waiting for her real-life counterpart. Sure enough, she had comically long fangs pointing out of her mouth and a little wooden stake in one hand.
I rolled my eyes and picked up a stack of my mail that Molly had deposited on a side table. “I wonder what Dashiell would think of this.”
“He’d probably love it. Well, not ‘love,’ exactly, but he would find it amusing. I think he likes when American pop culture makes fun of vampires. It makes it all the less likely for anyone to actually believe in us.”
This was true. I’ve often wondered if there are vampires working in Hollywood, actually setting up the schmaltzy stuff to make the existence of vampires seem all the more ridiculous. I know that in the past they’ve started rumors about themselves—the whole “vampires fear religious objects,” for example, is bullshit designed to help real vampires pass as human—so that kind of modern PR blitz doesn’t seem unlikely.
I flicked through envelopes. “Except for maybe a coalition of teenage girls, who are of course known for their discerning intelligence,” I said absently, then looked up in time to see Molly’s face darken with sudden memory. I winced. Oops. “Sorry, Molls, exhaustion has reunited my foot and my mouth.”
She shrugged again and sat back down on the couch. “Did you learn anything in New York?”
“Yes and no. I learned a couple of new tricks, but not…what I was looking for.”
This was a somewhat dangerous subject. New York had been a fact-finding mission, though Molly didn’t actually know the whole story behind my going. A few months earlier, the first time I’d helped Jesse with an investigation, I had accidentally turned a vampire named Ariadne back into a human—permanently. Until it had happened, I hadn’t even known it was possible, and I was keeping it under wraps: so far only Dashiell knew what I had done. But the whole thing had made me realize that I didn’t know much about what I was. Hence the trip to meet the only other known null on this continent. Unfortunately, he had never heard of a permanent turn, either.
“What was the other null like? Was he yummy?”
“Molly! He’s nineteen years old!” But I thought of Jameson, and may ha
ve blushed just a teensy bit.
“Yeah, yeah.” She gave me a smirk. “You’re twenty-three, Scarlett. It’s not exactly May–December. Maybe May–late June.”
I pretended to stare at the ceiling, whistling innocently, until Molly laughed. “Fine. Be that way. Are you off to bed?”
“I wish. I have to go see Eli to, uh, get my van back,” I said. So smooth, Scarlett. Theoretically, I could just call Eli and ask about the Studio City scene, but I’m extremely paranoid about discussing certain things on the phone. And besides, I really did need to get my van back.
“Tonight? Now?” Her eyes sparkled. Molly didn’t really know how involved Eli and I had become, but she at least knew I had slept with him. “And perhaps get a little something-something else?” Laid, she mouthed, with a smug nod. Molly likes to pretend our lives are more Sex and the City and less Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The book, not the atrocious Keanu Reeves movie.
I rolled my eyes good-naturedly. “It’s not like that. I’m officially back on duty, is all.” I turned to go, but stopped and looked back at Molly, who had unpaused her video game. “Uh, Molls? You didn’t hear anything else from Olivia, did you?”
The last time I’d seen her, Olivia had stalked me outside the hospital, shortly after I’d turned the vampire human again. For whatever reason, the effort to turn Ariadne had almost killed me—and resulted in me temporarily losing my radius. That moment outside the hospital was the perfect opportunity for Olivia to kill me, but she hadn’t done it—which made me believe she wanted to toy with me first. Trying to get to Molly would be just her style.
“Nope,” she said cheerfully, her little vampire avatar leapfrogging over what appeared to be an undead bodybuilder. “Besides, I don’t think she’d mess with me. I’ve got a lot of years on her. And I’m scrappy.”
“Yeah, I know…thanks. You gonna be around later?”
“Nah,” she said, and gave me one of her wicked, not-human smiles, which she managed to pull off even though she was currently human. “I’m probably gonna go check out the after-hours scene.” Ugh. Feeding. Molly had more than enough control to keep from killing her food, and as far as I knew she always left them happy and satisfied, pressing their minds so they would believe whatever story she wanted. I suppose there are worse things in the world, but it still leaves me feeling sort of icky.
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