Trail of Dead

by Olson, Melissa F.

  There was a long, heavy pause. Finally, Kirsten said, “Scarlett, the truth is that we don’t know. No one knows all that much about your power. We only know what doesn’t work against it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’ve seen all the old books at my house, right?”

  I nodded.

  “There are stories in there, plenty of them, about witches trying to cast a spell against a null. Nothing ever worked. Then in the twenties a New York witch became friends with a null, and they did a little experimenting. I can tell you with absolute certainty that there’s no spell that even works against you, much less can take away your power. If we physically, permanently change something, you can’t undo that, but there’s just no active spell that can work against you or around you. We know that much, but we don’t know where your power comes from or why it works against magic.” Her voice rose with frustration.

  I glanced at Will and Dashiell. Will was shaking his head. “The wolves haven’t had a ton of interactions with nulls, and we certainly don’t have documentation. We just know that when we get close to a null—in either form—we’re suddenly normal humans again. Simple as that.”

  “Dashiell?” I asked. “Any ideas about how Olivia turned?”

  He shrugged gracefully. “Don’t you think I would tell you if I did?”

  I had a few potential answers to that, but without warning, Kirsten slammed her hand against a side table. “Enough with the prince of darkness evasion crap,” she snapped. “If you’d kept us in the loop from the beginning, this might never have happened. You knew, you knew who she was, how crazy she was, and you still let her live in your city after she turned. You let her live, period, even knowing what she did to Scarlett.”

  I figured this was what Kirsten had been wanting to say since she’d entered the house that night, and she wasn’t wrong. As she spoke I felt her power flare again. The feeling was incredible, like I was a socket with a bunch of cords plugged in and one of them suddenly surged. For the first time, I thought I felt whatever was different about me actually push back at something, as though my nullness were saying down, girl to Kirsten. And although I felt her magic strain against me, I never doubted my ability to ground it. It was extraordinary, and I had to make an effort to hide my surprise.

  Something like guilt flew across Dashiell’s face, and then he remembered how to control his human expressions. “I do not answer to you, Kirsten,” he said coldly. “You have both”—he turned his head to include Will—“agreed to my leadership in this city. That I would have final word. It was a condition of this little experiment, our working together. If you don’t like the way I am running things, you’re welcome to try to take what I have built for yourself.”

  I’m not sure how it happened, but suddenly I was laughing. And then I was laughing a lot, while everyone in the room stared at me. And then I was doubled over with tears of laughter dripping onto my jeans. “I’m sorry,” I said when I could breathe. I sat up. Dashiell was glaring at me; the others just stared with their mouths open. I giggled again, until I managed to say, “I’m sorry, Dashiell. Really. It’s just a lot of tension, and then you’re all ‘Grr! My way or the highway!’ And I’m just really tired, and you need better dialogue.” I cracked up again and saw Will trying to smother a tiny smile. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down.

  “I’m going to attribute that to the apprehension, and not insubordination,” Dashiell said stiffly. At that, I kept my jaw clenched shut, but I couldn’t help the giggles escaping through my lips. “What?!” he finally said, exasperated.

  “Did you know, Dashiell, that when you’re stressed your speech patterns gain, like, a master’s degree? Food for thought,” I said as soberly as I could manage. I’d never talked to Dashiell like that. “But more importantly, I don’t know that much about how deep Olivia’s manipulations go—as Will so helpfully pointed out, I pretty much fell for all of it—but whether or not she planned this, I would bet that she would love what’s happening right now. Us arguing. Me losing it. All that good stuff.”

  There was another long silence, and then Kirsten spoke first. “She’s right. I’m sorry.”

  Dashiell tipped his head. “Human emotions and reactions still feel strange to me,” he allowed, which was as close to an apology as we were likely to get. To be fair, I did often forget how difficult it must be for the vampires to be around me, given what they are. The wolves retain their human emotions—often, like their metabolisms, they’re even revved up—but the vampires seem to lose their grip on feelings over time.

  “Okay,” Jesse said after a beat. “You’ve told me what we don’t know—who is working with Olivia, and how she became a vampire. So what do we know?”

  Will said diplomatically, “I think one thing we can all agree on is that there is some kind of pattern or plan here. Olivia is working toward something.”

  “Kirsten suggested that Olivia wants Scarlett,” Jesse said. I had a sudden elementary-school urge to punch him in the arm for tattling. All the eyes in the room turned toward me with speculation, like they were all trying to figure out what Olivia saw in me.

  I started picking at a cuticle, my hands hidden under the table. This was probably the most uncomfortable I’d ever been in my life. Everyone at the table knew that I’d been Olivia’s puppet, and that I’d fallen for her psychopathic bullshit for years. Not to mention that the two men I had a sort-of thing for were both sitting right there in front of me, aware of each other. I wanted to get up and leave so badly that all I could think about was the route I’d need to take from where I was sitting to the front door. Even if I made it that far, though, I didn’t have my van. Jesse had driven us. I fought the urge to bury my face in my hands.

  “You’re probably right, Kirsten. But if all she wanted was Scarlett, she could have taken her after Scarlett’s…injury…last fall. She had the opportunity, and Scarlett’s defenses were down. And there would be no need to have an accomplice or kill the two witches,” Will said thoughtfully. “There is something else at stake here, as well. I’m guessing that Olivia is saving Scarlett for last.”

  Jesse said, “My concern is that we won’t find our answers until it’s too late.”

  There was a moment of grim silence.

  Eventually, Dashiell broke it. “Given what we do know about Olivia’s past behavior,” he said, “I think we can safely say that Scarlett needs to be protected.”

  There was a round of agreeable murmurs. Now? Now they all decide they’re going to get along? Unbelievable. I was thoroughly annoyed, mostly because I had been trying to convince myself that I wasn’t pee-your-pants terrified of whatever machinations Olivia had in motion. The last thing I wanted was for everyone to agree that I was in deep trouble. And when had they all started discussing me like I wasn’t actually a person?

  “Scarlett,” I retorted, “who is sitting right here, by the way, can protect herself from one newborn vampire.”

  “I agree,” said Jesse, to my surprise. I felt a flush of gratitude that he was taking me seriously. But then he added, “Scarlett shouldn’t be alone, though, if for no other reason than to trap Olivia when she does decide to come for her.”

  “Yes, of course,” Dashiell said smoothly. He gave Jesse a cool smile. “Someone will need to either kill Olivia or keep her still until I can arrive.”

  Jesse looked perturbed, but didn’t comment, and I felt like I’d missed a chunk of the conversation. Dashiell seemed to be daring him to argue, while the rest of us glanced back and forth between the two of them in bewilderment. Finally Dashiell continued, “It’s settled then. For the immediate future, Eli will handle all cleanup problems, except any future crime scenes that relate to Olivia. Detective Cruz will stay with Scarlett for the time being. When you need time away, call one of us at this table to be with her instead.” He looked around as he spoke, making eye contact with each of us in turn. “Do not trust anyone else with Scarlett’s life. We don’t know who else Olivia
may have gotten to.”

  Everyone but Jesse and I simply accepted this pronouncement and began gathering their belongings to leave. Jesse looked confused, his eyebrows knitted in a classic wait, what just happened expression, and I sat there sputtering. Dashiell is the cardinal vampire in Los Angeles, but I was a person, not a pet kitten that had to be kept inside while there was a coyote running loose in the city. This wasn’t three months earlier, when I had temporarily lost my radius of protection. Olivia—or the witch who was helping her—couldn’t lay a fang or a spell anywhere near me now. In some ways, I was better equipped to handle Olivia than any one of them.

  I was just mounting a really reasonable and articulate argument along those lines—really, I promise, it was inspiring—when Eli, who had been watching me flail for words, spoke up to stab me in the back. “It’s for the best, Scar,” he said woodenly, not exactly meeting my eyes. “You’ll be safe with Jesse.” My jaw may have dropped open a touch. After everything we’d talked about the night before, after I’d let him sleep in my bed sober, he was going all white knight on me? Hell, he was pushing me toward Jesse?

  Bullshit.

  Chapter 11

  As Jesse and I approached the car, he helpfully distracted me by humming the theme song from The Bodyguard.

  I wanted to smack him, but I settled for a glare. “It’s not funny, Jesse. What the hell just happened in there?”

  We were still in Dashiell’s makeshift parking lot, and he tilted his head to urge me to get into the car to continue this conversation. Fine. I opened the passenger door—and spotted my own gym bag sitting on the driver’s seat. I frowned. There was a yellow Post-it note stuck to the strap, secured by a couple of extra pieces of Scotch tape. Thought you might need this. Molly.

  Jesse leaned forward to peer at the note in the car’s dim interior light. “How did she—”

  “Dashiell,” I said shortly, pissed all over again. “He had her pack up a bag and drive it over at sunset.”

  “The car was locked,” he pointed out. I just shrugged. I’d seen vampires do much stranger things. “But that means…he knew all along we would have to stick together.”

  “Old World politics,” I groused. “Never surprising, yet never predictable.”

  Jesse looked pensive for a moment, like he was trying to decide whether or not he had been manipulated. Finally he just shrugged at me and started the car. “It’s okay,” he said. “At least this way I can keep an eye on you. And you were going to help me with the investigation anyway, right?”

  I thought for a long moment before answering. I didn’t owe Jesse anything—I’d asked around just like I’d promised, and he could no longer threaten to poke around in the Old World, since he’d basically been invited in. But Kirsten…she was another story. I thought about how her power had jumped erratically during the meeting, and how broken she’d seemed at the bar. Then I remembered her brave, trembling smile after she and Eli had taken down Jared Hess to rescue me three months earlier.

  Yeah. I owed Kirsten.

  “Where are we even going?” I said finally. “I’ve never been to your place.”

  “My place is a shoe box with a hot plate.” He’d turned the car around and was coasting down Dashiell’s driveway. “So let’s go to my parents’ house. There’s more room, they’re out of town, and I have to let the dog out, anyway.”

  I just nodded tiredly. I couldn’t believe it was only 8:00 p.m. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the stress, or just jet lag, but time was starting to fuzz together for me. Had it really been less than a day since Jesse had picked me up at the airport? And here we were again, with Jesse driving and me falling asleep against the window like it had all been a dream.

  “We’re here, Scarlett,” Jesse said softly. I sat up, blinking in the unfamiliar glare of a motion-sensor security light. We were parked in the driveway of a sprawling two-story house with well-tended landscaping lining the path toward the front door. There was a string of colored lights doodling over the shrubbery, and there were so many delicate white icicle lights lining the roof that for a second I almost believed we were somewhere truly cold. Then I recognized Jesse’s parents’ house.

  “You sure they won’t mind?” I said sleepily.

  “I’m sure. They’re with my mother’s people in Hermosillo. Mexico,” he added.

  I sat up suddenly. “For the holidays, right? Oh, Jesse, I’m sorry. I’m keeping you from them.” Honestly, I kind of kept forgetting about Christmas. My parents had made a huge deal out of it every year, but now they were gone.

  He shrugged. “It’s only the nineteenth. I wasn’t planning to head down there for a couple of days anyway. And if I don’t make it, I don’t make it.” Off my look, he said, “Christmas comes every year, Scarlett. And I’ve missed more than one because of work stuff. It’s no big deal.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He waved it off. “Come on in, say hi to the pup.”

  I brightened. When we’d worked together before, Jesse had brought me to meet his parents’ hyperactive pit bull mix, a muscled knot of energy named Max, who had introduced himself by knocking me down in an effort to show his undying love. Not because I was anyone special, but because I was there. I love animals in general, but dogs are the pinnacle of pet ownership, as far as I’m concerned.

  This time when Jesse opened the front door, I was braced and ready. The dog shot out onto the porch, ridiculously fast in the poor lighting, and came right over to put his two front paws on my stomach, trying to lick my face. “Goofball,” I said, laughing. I scrubbed at his neck and ears with my short fingernails until he dropped down to go greet Jesse.

  “Oh, so you do remember me,” Jesse said, mock offended. Max’s whip-tail wagged hard enough to sting as it hit my leg. Jesse scratched his back for a minute and then bent down to grab a long cord that was fixed to the porch. He ran it through his fingers until he found the metal clasp at the end and fixed it to Max’s collar. “Go run, boy.” To me, he said, “Come on in.”

  I hadn’t been inside his parents’ house before, so I stopped just inside the doorway while Jesse walked to an adjoining wall to hit the lights. The two-story foyer lit up with a warm glow, the light stretching into what looked like a living room on the left and a sunken dining room on the right. “Watch your step,” Jesse advised as he led me through the dining room, which featured a huge, ten-foot Christmas tree with a neat row of gorgeously wrapped presents under it. Jesse pointed. “Those are just the fake ones,” he said, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. “They took a big carful with them when they left.”

  “My mother used to wrap empty boxes and leave them under the tree too,” I said absently. I stepped closer to look at the ornaments. There were a lot of the nice Hallmark ones—I pressed the button on a Muppets trinket that made Waldorf and Statler holler belligerently—and even more of the homemade kind. I touched a small, neat frame made out of popsicle sticks. There was a picture inside of a handsome, smiling boy of about eight. “You?” I asked.

  “Nope, that’s my brother, Noah. This one’s me.” He pointed to another frame a few inches lower. This one was haphazardly glued together, with messy red coloring along one side of the popsicle stick.

  “Not much of an artist, huh?”

  “Hey,” he protested. “I was six! That’s damn good for six.”

  “Remedial,” I informed him. “Remedial arts-and-crafts work.”

  He grumbled, but gave me a few more minutes to study the tree before saying, “Hey, I heard you say something to Corry before, but I forgot to ask. Is it really true that vampires need to be invited into a house?”

  I turned around, forgetting the ornament I’d been examining. “Yes.”

  His brow furrowed. “Why? I mean, what’s stopping them.”

  “Magic,” I said briefly, but he made a rolling gesture with his index finger to indicate I should keep going. “Honestly? I have no friggin’ clue. Something to do with families and blessings and faith. You could ask Kirst
en about it.”

  He held up his palms in surrender. “Okay, okay. So that means vampires can’t come into this house, right?”

  “Uh…yeah, that’s my bad.”

  “The null thing again?”

  I nodded. “The protective magic forms a bubble around the house, covering every possible entrance—all the doors, the pipes, the vents, the windows, even a damn chimney. It’s actually kind of like my radius.” I pointed in the direction we’d come from. “But anytime I get within ten feet of an exterior wall, I short that section out. Not the whole thing, it’s not built that way, but that specific area that touches my power.” Concern had spread across his face. I added, “As soon as your family comes back, living in the house and loving each other, it’ll come back, though. Don’t worry.”

  He sighed. “I’m not worried about that, Scarlett. Hang on a minute.” He looked around the living room, eyes narrowed with concentration, and finally turned back to me. “Wait right here.”

  “Jesse—” I started, but he’d disappeared back the way we had come. I heard the front door open, and a heartbeat later Max came bounding toward me, panting happily and doggy grinning like he’d just accomplished something amazing. I bent down to sit cross-legged on the floor, and Max put his front paws on one side of me and his back paws on the other, collapsing gleefully across my lap. He had to weigh sixty pounds. I laughed and petted him again, his tail whipping back and forth against a coffee table. If it hurt him, he didn’t seem to notice.

  Jesse came back a few minutes later with a big armful of pillows and what looked like sleeping bags.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’re going to have a campout,” he announced.