Trail of Dead

by Olson, Melissa F.

  I gave him a dubious look. “Excuse me?”

  “Look,” he dropped the pile next to Max and me—Max craning his head at an impossible angle to lick Jesse’s face, as if not wanting him to feel excluded—and sat down. “We came in the front door, and walked into the house. We’re not within ten feet of an exterior anything, as far as I know, and the bathroom is farther in still. As long as we stay here, there’s only one way they could possibly come in, right?”

  “Yeah, but, Jesse, we don’t have to sleep on the floor. I haven’t been in a sleeping bag since, like, high school. My people are not camping people.”

  He was already shaking his head. “I thought about it. All of the upstairs bedrooms are against exterior walls.” He pointed to the couch at the far end of the living room. “That’s an exterior wall. I’ll move the couch closer, and you can sleep on that. I’ll take the floor.”

  “You really think Olivia’s going to, what, dynamite your parents’ wall to get to me?” I said skeptically. “Ninja-jump through a second-story window?”

  “No, I don’t,” he said primly, mock offended. “I think that sounds ridiculous. She shouldn’t know where my parents live. And I personally don’t think she could get within two hundred feet of the house without this mutt”—he pointed at Max, who was still panting and looking from one of our faces to the other like he was in heaven—“sounding the alarm, which is an impressive one. But the two things we know about Olivia for sure are that she’s motivated and that she’s completely nuts. I don’t want to risk it.”

  “But—”

  “Scarlett, for all you know, she could be working with a witch who can cast a spell to get them close to the house without making a sound, and to remove a damn chunk of the building.” My mouth snapped shut. That was kind of a good point. I’d once seen Kirsten drop a section of flooring down to rescue me when I was trapped in a basement. “Besides,” he overrode me, “I don’t want to not be able to sleep all night, imagining her and her crony creeping up on the house. This way they can only come at us from one possible direction, and that feels a lot safer to me than having the whole house exposed.”

  I sighed and looked down at my lap. “What do you think?” I asked the dog, who focused on my face and wagged his tail hard enough for his butt to wiggle. He licked the air in front of his face a few times, having probably been trained that people didn’t want face kisses. I laughed. “Fine. Max says campout.”

  I went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. To my surprise, Molly had played nice and just packed flannel pants and a gray T-shirt as my pajamas. She ordinarily wouldn’t miss an opportunity to dick around with my wardrobe—it would be just like her to pack me, say, a negligee or something involving a thong—but she probably felt bad about being in on Dashiell’s plan to shanghai me. Well, good.

  When I came out, Jesse was standing in the living room holding a big armful of quilts, with a cell phone tucked between one ear and his shoulder. When he saw me, he said into the phone, “Me too. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He dropped the blankets so he could hang up the phone.

  “The girlfriend?” I said, in what I hoped was a casual manner.

  “Yeah.” He fidgeted with the blankets for a second, making them into a nest on the floor.

  “Is she…upset?” I asked, not even sure how I would feel about it if she was.

  “No. I was a little vague on the details, I guess,” he said uncomfortably. “I’m just gonna run to the bathroom.”

  While he was gone, his phone made a little ping, and I impulsively picked it up. New text message from Runa. I didn’t open the message, but I couldn’t help but see the picture that popped up on the screen for Jesse’s new girlfriend. The woman was even more beautiful than I had feared: all white teeth, glowing tan, and white-blonde hair. She was standing on the beach with a camera strapped around her neck and one hand shielding her eyes. The hand was attached to a very tanned, toned arm. She looked happy and lively, just bursting with good health and enthusiasm for life.

  Of course.

  I put the phone back where I’d found it. When Jesse came out we finally got settled, me on the couch and him on the floor with Max stretched on his tummy against one of Jesse’s legs. I listened to the silence for a few minutes. It was quieter here than at Molly’s Hollywood bungalow, and darker too. You could almost believe we were out in the country somewhere, instead of in the heart of Los Angeles.

  “What about her background?” Jesse asked suddenly. “What do you know about Olivia’s personal life?”

  I blinked at the new topic and hung my head over the couch to squint at him. “Why do you ask?”

  His blankets moved in a shrug. “I don’t know what else to ask about her.”

  I lay back and stared into the darkness, thinking it over. “She was married once, but her husband died a long time ago. He left her some money. She didn’t really need the job cleaning for Dashiell, but I think she got off on the power. On knowing secrets.”

  “What else?” Jesse prompted.

  “I don’t know…she never really talked about her childhood or her family or anything. I got the impression that her parents were dead, and she never mentioned siblings.”

  “What did she like? I mean, what did she do for fun?”

  It took me a long moment to answer. “She didn’t care about most of the things people do for fun—drinking, television, hobbies. She liked going out to fancy dinners, I guess, and shopping. But mostly she just liked playing with her favorite toy.”

  “You,” he said softly.

  I didn’t answer, and after a moment he said, “What? What’s bothering you?”

  “That couple in the Jeep,” I said. “The ones she killed for me.”

  “Scarlett, that wasn’t your fault.”

  “That’s not what I mean…it’s just, killing them really doesn’t fit Olivia’s style. She does everything on purpose, for a reason. Killing those two witches theoretically makes sense, to hide what she and her partner were going to do,” I said. “But I don’t see the point of killing the Reeds.”

  “Can’t they serve a purpose as a scare tactic?”

  “That’s just it,” I said, getting frustrated. I couldn’t explain why, but something about the Reeds’ deaths felt wrong. “The thing about Olivia is that she doesn’t do threats or scare tactics. She’s already scary because she just does these things. Killing the Reeds, it’s like a taunt, but that’s all. It’s an empty gesture.”

  “You think maybe they have a different significance? Like they knew Olivia somehow, or knew what she was planning?”

  “No, not exactly,” I said. “I just…have a bad feeling about this. I think we were supposed to make the connection between Olivia and the witch murders. Then we were supposed to have a big meeting tonight to worry about her. I think she’s pulling our attention in one direction, on purpose.”

  “That’s starting to sound kind of paranoid, Scarlett,” he said, not unkindly. “And even if you’re right, there’s not much we can do about it tonight. We should get some sleep.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said absently. But I couldn’t turn off my brain. This thing we were all apparently doing, where I was the bait or the trap or whatever, that was an awful feeling—after all, how was being a tool for Dashiell any different from being a toy for Olivia?

  I rolled onto my stomach, cuddling into the quilt. Olivia had always treated me like I was this vaguely human-shaped piece of clay, and she got to be the master sculptor who made me into whatever she wanted. I was her confidante, her apprentice, her foster daughter, her servant. I’ve always thought brainwashing is a stupid word—this isn’t the Cold War—but it was something along those lines.

  And I was the perfect plaything for Olivia. She made me start running every day, and fussed over my clothes and my grammar and my food until I could hardly pick between soup or salad without consulting her. It took me years to wake up. It was like one of those Lifetime movies where the wife finds a lipstick stain
on the collar and suddenly these pieces fall into place—the late nights at “work,” the mysterious phone calls, the sudden disappearances. Then the wife always feels colossally stupid. That was me, only instead of a cheating husband I had a bat-shit crazy homicidal mentor who’d wormed her way into being my only connection to life.

  Luckily, when I finally did realize all that, she was dying. Or she was supposed to have been dying. My employers seemed to have dismissed the problem of how Olivia, a null, had managed to get herself infected with vampirism, but it bothered me. No vampire should have been able to get near her without becoming a human again. I was used to not understanding things in the Old World, but I was also used to having someone to ask for the answers I needed.

  I thought back to when I’d permanently turned Ariadne. The effort had caused my radius to weaken, leaving me vulnerable to magical attack for a few days. Was it possible that Olivia could do the same thing? No, she’d been way too weak at the end to channel that kind of energy.

  Or had she? I’d found out about Olivia murdering my parents about ten days before she’d died, and I hadn’t visited her again. I had no idea what her final days had been like.

  Suddenly, despite the heavy quilt, I was freezing. I rubbed my hands together under the blanket, but it didn’t help. I peeked over the side of the couch again, but Jesse appeared to have drifted off. Max looked up at me with hopeful eyes, slapping his tail against the blankets. Moving as quietly as possible, I lowered myself onto the floor between Max and the couch, with the dog between Jesse and me. He licked my hand happily, and with the dog’s warmth against my side, I finally fell asleep.

  Chapter 12

  I woke up just before seven, for no particular reason other than a stiff neck. As I started to stretch, I realized that my back was up against Jesse’s chest, his arm around me. I kept my eyes closed and held my breath for just a heartbeat, feeling what it was like to wake up with his Armani-and-oranges scent around me and his breath on my hair.

  Then, of course, my phone rang. The tinny speaker chirped its rendition of “Black Magic Woman.” I extricated myself as fast as I could manage without elbowing Jesse in the ribs and crawled forward to grab the phone. He stirred a little, but his eyes stayed closed. As I sat up, I spotted Max’s tail thumping happily where the dog lay sprawled across the couch. “Traitor,” I whispered to the dog, and then reached for the phone.

  “Hey, Kirsten,” I said quietly.

  “Scarlett?” Her voice was strained and tight, even more so than at the meeting.

  “What happened?” I asked immediately.

  “She made her move,” Kirsten said, a tremor in her voice. “Where are you?”

  I felt an automatic twinge of embarrassment, but reminded myself that I had nothing to be ashamed of. Jesse and I were under Dashiell’s orders to stick together. “Cruz’s parents’ house.”

  “Give me the address. We need to talk now.”

  “Hang on.” I poked Jesse with a foot until his eyes opened. He stared at me blearily, and I held out the phone. “Tell Kirsten how to get here. I’m gonna jump in the shower.”

  I showered quickly and brushed my teeth, pulling clean jeans and a long-sleeved green T-shirt out of my overnight bag. Thank you, Molly. I needed my comfort clothes.

  Jesse must have used an upstairs shower, because his hair was as wet as mine when I came back into the kitchen. I noticed a startling lack of kinetic energy in the room and figured the dog must be outside. “Coffee?” he asked.

  “You bet.”

  We heard the barking at 7:20, and Jesse went to let Kirsten and an ecstatic Max inside. She wore a denim jacket over brown cords and a peasant-style shirt, and her hair was neat, but there was something off about her. She looked sort of wild-eyed and desperate, like she’d been the night before when she was yelling at Dashiell, but she seemed more relaxed too. Maybe she was just relieved that the other shoe had dropped.

  I was impatient to hear what Olivia had finally done, but Jesse’s good manners acted up and he had to offer her a cup of coffee first. “Only if you’ve got a to-go mug,” she said distractedly. “You and I need to hit the road.”

  “Wait, you and Jesse?” I said with my eyebrows raised. “Not me?”

  “No, I’m afraid you can’t come,” Kirsten replied. She stopped and took a breath, like her brain had just caught up with the fact that she was having this conversation. “Let me sit for just a second.”

  Jesse found a travel mug in the cupboard and filled it for her. Kirsten thanked him and wrapped her fingers around the mug. “When you’re ready,” he said quietly.

  I was less patient. “Uh, Kirsten?” I waved a hand. “Share with the class?”

  “There was a murder last night at Beth Israel, in San Diego. Well, a storage facility near the temple. An elderly rabbi was killed, and something was stolen.”

  “Okay…”

  She looked directly at Jesse, holding his eyes. “Scarlett says that you are a good investigator, and Dashiell seems to trust you to find Olivia. I’d like you to come with me to San Diego and ask some questions.”

  “Sure,” Jesse said mildly. “But it would help if I knew what I was asking about.”

  “Right.” Her gaze shifted to include me again. “How much do you know about alchemy?” she asked.

  Jesse and I exchanged a look. “Common metals into gold?” I offered. My dad had been a history teacher, and spent many a family dinner telling stories and theories to my brother and me. As a result I knew a ton of useless facts and historical anecdotes, without having much actual comprehensive knowledge of any one period in history. On the bright side, I was occasionally excellent at Trivial Pursuit.

  “Certainly, yes, the ancient alchemists worked on things like that. They were scientists. But in witchcraft the term refers to the creation of magical artifacts. Every once in a while a witch is powerful enough to channel magic into an object and have it stay there.”

  “Why?” Jesse asked. “What’s the point?”

  “Think of it like a…shortcut. If you want homemade bread, you can go out and buy all the ingredients of the quality you want, then mix and bake the bread. Its quality will depend partly on your ingredients, and partly on your talent. Spells are a lot like cooking that way: you follow certain rituals, contribute the talent you have, and theoretically get what you want.” She moved the mug toward her face, then paused with her hands in midair. “Cream?”

  Jesse got her some out of the fridge. She nodded a thanks and continued, “With a magical artifact, the goal is to acquire accessible power that is earmarked for one purpose. So instead of following all those steps, you just have what you want ready.”

  “Like a bread maker,” I said, grinning. I earned a weary smile.

  “Yes, exactly. Only you don’t even have to add ingredients anymore. Just push a button and get bread. That’s what alchemy can do.” She looked impatiently at her watch. “Detective Cruz, we should get moving.”

  But Jesse made no move to stand. “Why keep that a secret?” he asked. “What’s the big deal?”

  Kirsten took a long sip of coffee, like she was delaying. Her eyes jumped between Jesse and me. “Because of nulls,” she said finally, and I straightened up in surprise.

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “Not just you, all nulls. Witches have worked to keep such artifacts away from you, because their power is only borrowed.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t get it,” Jesse said.

  Kirsten nodded like she was expecting that and got up. “Watch.”

  She looked around for a moment and then stepped across the kitchen and out of my radius. Picking up a small saltshaker, she held it against her mouth and whispered something. Holding her hand flat again, the little saltshaker began to rock back and forth on its edges, like it was trying to walk. “Holy crap!” Jesse said, then bit his lip. I elbowed him. “Sorry,” he added. Ignoring us, Kirsten took a few steps toward me, the little shaker still rocking. I felt it when she entered m
y radius; even felt the tiny zing of the active spell shorting out, like a fly crashing into a bug zapper. The saltshaker stilled in Kirsten’s hand. Meeting my eyes, Kirsten took a few steps backward, out of my radius. The saltshaker remained still.

  “When I come close to Scarlett, my abilities vanish, but when I walk away again they return to me, because the power to manipulate magic comes from me. That’s what being a witch means. The saltshaker has no power of its own, so when I walk away again it’s still dead.” She shrugged. “This is just a tiny little spell, but real artifacts take years to build, sometimes using the power of an entire coven. And a null can take that away in one second.”

  “You’re saying that I can undo magical objects,” I stated. “Permanently.”

  “Yes. It’s happened before. The emerald table in Ireland, Stonehenge.”

  “Stonehenge?” Jesse said incredulously. “Nulls neutralized Stonehenge?”

  “Yes. It was too big to move or hide, and it was really only a matter of time before a null showed up. It might even have been accidental.”

  I realized then that she’d been politely answering Jesse’s questions this whole time. And at the meeting the night before, she had ceased shooting her death-ray glare his way too. Maybe that was just because she was more pissed at Dashiell, but was it my imagination, or was she softening toward Jesse? “That’s why you don’t tell nulls about magical objects?” I asked, trying to keep that line of thought off my face.

  “Yes. There are only a handful of artifacts left in the world that have dangerous power. Some witches believe we should expose all of them to nulls, for the safety of the world. Others believe those objects are part of our history and should be preserved.” She shrugged. “Both sides have a point.”

  “Now explain the part where this connects to the witch murders,” Jesse prompted.

  “In the car,” Kirsten promised him.

  “Why can’t I come?” I asked, trying really hard not to sound like a whiny kid sister.

  “Because,” Kirsten said gravely, “there was more than one magical object hidden at Beth Israel. I can’t let you get anywhere near the temple without compromising thousands of years of magical history.”