“I want to stay with you,” he said simply.
“I know, but—” Before I could finish that thought, I saw the younger EMT walking around the outside of the house leading a young woman with a long, ugly gash on her forearm. Runa. “Oh, fuck me,” I said out loud. I had forgotten all about her.
“What?” Jesse said. He turned around, following my gaze, and saw his girlfriend being led away from the witch party. The coward in me was glad I didn’t have to see his face just then. “Runa?” he said incredulously. “What are you doing here?” He must have taken in the camera that was still hanging around her neck. Even from twenty feet away I could see the cracked lens. “Was this, like, a gig, or something? What happened?”
Runa looked at me briefly, and back at Jesse. “I sort of got pushed, cut my arm on the edge of the fountain,” she explained, her voice weak. “And, um, I think we need to talk.”
I almost laughed. That was an understatement. Before either of them could speak, though, the younger EMT said, “It’s not that deep, but we should take her in for surface stitches.” She turned to address Runa. “Miss, the next ambulance is going to take you to the hospital. Please wait here with the detective until it arrives.”
“Oh, hey, she looks way more hurt than I am,” I protested, starting to stand up from my stretcher. It hurt, but the pain was already less than it had been a few minutes earlier. “And this is her cousin,” I added, pointing at Kirsten. “I can drive myself to the ER.” Jesse glared. “Or wait for the next ambulance,” I said contritely, before he could yell.
The EMTs exchanged another look, and then the older woman shrugged. “Fine by me.”
Runa came over to the ambulance, and I stood up to climb down. Before I could move to the edge, though, Kirsten’s hand waved weakly. “Scarlett?”
“Kirsten!” I took her hand. It was very cool.
“We need to get going, Miss,” the older EMT said, but I didn’t bother to look at her. I was focused on the witch.
“Kirsten?” I said again. Her eyelids fluttered, but after a moment her deep-blue eyes found me again. “I know you’re hurting, but I have to ask you something.” She nodded slightly. I looked up at Runa and gave her a look. She understood and began engaging the two EMTs in a question about types of stitches.
I took a deep breath. “There was nobody at that party stronger than you, Kirsten. I’m sure of it. But this whole time we’ve been looking for a witch inside your union. What about the witches in LA who didn’t want to join you? Could a powerful witch be operating in the city without you knowing?”
Kirsten mumbled, “I’d know. Go talk to them. Ask them to join us.” Her last two words slurred together.
I frowned. “But witches have said no before, right? Have you ever been turned down by someone very powerful?”
For a moment, Kirsten’s eyes cleared and her eyebrows furrowed. Then her face relaxed, and her head seemed to sink a little farther into the gurney. “There was someone once. Years ago. But she died. There was an accident. Olivia…” She gasped, and both EMTs’ heads swiveled our way in alarm. Kirsten’s face couldn’t get any paler, but her hand squeezed mine.
I leaned forward so only Kirsten could hear. “Olivia got rid of the body,” I said quietly. Kirsten nodded, a tiny, urgent movement. “Only she didn’t.”
“I should have…I should have…” Her eyelids fluttered again. “Mallory,” she whispered, and her hand relaxed in mine.
“Kirsten? What’s her last name? Where does she live?” But her eyes were closed again.
“Miss,” the driver said firmly. “Come down here. Now.”
When the ambulance sped off with Kirsten and Runa, Jesse turned on me. “Did you know?” he asked in a soft voice. “About Runa?”
“I found out about ten minutes ago,” I said honestly.
“Was she…was she sent? To be with me?”
I sighed. “I think so. But you should really talk to her.” I saw Dashiell’s expensive car pull up to the nearest curb spot, and I nodded at it. “Dashiell’s here.” I held out my hand. “You still have the best parking spot, though. Can I sit in your car until the ambulance gets here?”
He automatically dug in his pocket, still dazed, but froze with his keys in the air. “Swear to me that you won’t try to drive yourself to the hospital,” he demanded.
I nodded. “I swear I won’t drive myself to the hospital. I just want to sit down for a second, Jesse, I promise. But I don’t want to sit on the porch by…the body.” And I didn’t want to sit on the ground, because getting up off of it had not been fun the first time, but I didn’t feel the need to mention that.
He searched my face for a long moment, saw that I meant it, and dropped the keys in my palm. “I’ll meet you at the ER,” he promised.
“Oh, Jesse?”
He raised his eyebrows at me.
I told him about the name Kirsten had remembered. “Mallory,” he said thoughtfully. Then he looked back over his shoulder and sighed. “Let me take care of this first.” He took off toward Dashiell.
I limped toward Jesse’s car, feeling the pain in my back. I opened the passenger door, which was closest to the curb, and sort of fell into the low seat. It was better than the ground, I figured. From that spot I could see Jesse confer briefly with Dashiell, keeping his eyes away from Dashiell’s gaze. I felt a silly burst of pride. He was taking care of himself. Jesse talked to some uniformed officers, who began spreading crime-scene tape around the house’s exterior now that the wounded had been cleared away. I leaned back and closed my eyes.
How had everything gotten so messed up, so quickly? The plan had been for me to go to the party in order to identify Olivia’s witch partner. Instead, Olivia herself had shown up and…shot at Kirsten? The gun itself didn’t surprise me; I could see Olivia carrying one on all her recent missions on the off chance that I might show. But unless I’d completely misjudged the angles, it had really seemed like Olivia was aiming at Kirsten, not me, and certainly not Jesse.
Kirsten hadn’t had a picture on the basement wall, though. I had been so sure Olivia’s next move would be to come after someone I loved. Was I completely wrong about Olivia’s plan? Or was Olivia’s plan just on hold until after the night of the solstice? Maybe they were focused on what this other witch, Mallory, wanted, but if that were the case, why come here and kill Kirsten? To keep her from interfering? That seemed awfully random, given that Kirsten was clearly busy and distracted tonight. She hadn’t exactly been about to pound on Mallory’s door.
I rubbed my face in frustration, feeling the muscles in my back cry out from the movement. Tonight was supposed to be about getting answers, and all I had was more frickin’ questions.
I was distracted by my cell phone, which was vibrating in my pocket. I heard the dim strains of “Werewolves of London.” Will. I dug out the phone, wincing at the pain as I leaned sideways. I felt a flash of guilt. He was probably calling about his truck, which was parked on the street back in front of Molly’s house. I’d kind of forgotten all about it. I held the phone to my ear.
“Hey, Will, listen…” I began, but my voice trailed off as I listened to the unmistakable sounds of glass breaking and screaming. Then Will’s voice came on the line, so suddenly I jumped in my seat. “Scarlett!” he screamed. “Get here now!” There was another crash and then a tangle of words, but I could only make out one.
“Wolfberry.”
Chapter 24
So I stole a cop’s car. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I didn’t bother to tell Jesse what I was going to do. He would either insist on coming with me, which would be dangerous for him, or insist that I needed to go to the hospital first, which would be dangerous for everyone at Hair of the Dog. And there was no way in hell I wasn’t going. Eli was at the bar, and if it was Will calling instead of him, then Eli had probably ingested the wolfberry.
As I drove I tried to remember what Olivia had told me about the effects of that strain of nightshade
: it caused the werewolves to completely lose control of both the human and the wolf sides. They couldn’t keep from changing back and forth, over and over, which was excruciatingly painful. They attacked humans at will, which was out of character for both real wolves and the shapeshifters, who preferred to hunt deer and rabbits. Most wolves who ingested wolfberry had to be shot. The lucky ones just lost their minds and spent years recovering. The good news was, all of that was caused by werewolf magic interacting with the herb’s magic, so if a null like me could get close enough, he or she could stop everything. Olivia had once said that the only two ways to stop a werewolf who’d ingested wolfberry were a null or a silver bullet.
Olivia. She had done this. I didn’t know how yet, but unlike the scene at Kirsten’s house, this felt like classic Olivia: a big, messy strike at someone I loved, designed to cause maximum damage with no regard for bystanders. I can hurt you whenever I want; that was the message. No one is safe from me. I worked to keep my breathing even as I drove. I had to stay calm. I had to be able to get in there and do this. I wasn’t going to help Eli if I couldn’t keep my shit together. I bit down on a burst of hysterical laughter, my back aching from the effort. I was so past keeping anything together.
I blew through the traffic and only stopped for a single red light, because I wanted to take the opportunity to dig through Jesse’s glove compartment. I was rewarded, though: I found a great big bottle of extra-strength Advil and shook out four pills. I swallowed them with a flat soda that was in Jesse’s cup holder, and then sped on to the bar.
I parked right out in front without bothering to see if it was even a legal spot. As I ran to the entrance, I saw a thin figure on the sidewalk in a defensive crouch, like she expected someone to run up and shove her over. I squinted against the streetlight and recognized Anastasia, an African-American woman in her late twenties. She was a werewolf and one of Will’s part-time bartenders. He must have stationed her out here to let me in and keep everyone else out.
That made sense, but she was shaking like a leaf. I crouched, very carefully touching her wrist. “Ana?”
Her gaze met mine for an instant, and then she looked away. “Will ordered me to stay out,” she said, her low voice clouded with shock and grief. “My girlfriend’s in there, but he said I had to leave, and I couldn’t…I couldn’t stay.”
Ouch. I understood that she was being literal. She couldn’t go in. As the alpha, Will can control the wolf half of his pack members, but he’s a good guy and doesn’t usually push them. This was probably the first time he’d flexed his power over her, and she wasn’t taking it well.
“Who’s in there, Ana?”
She swallowed. “Some customers. Will. And Lydia.”
“Which wolves?” I said, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. “Who took the wolfberry?”
“Eli,” she said. “And Caroline.”
I didn’t wait for further explanation, just rose carefully—the Advil was already helping, but my back was still stiff and tender—and stepped past Anastasia, into the bar.
The door opened into a tiny alcove, a few feet away from the main bar area. As soon as I stepped all the way into the alcove, I froze and looked down. I was standing on a human hand.
I managed not to yelp but lurched backward, almost slipping in a long smear of blood. When I was steady I pressed my back against the door, which had closed behind me, straining to see in the dim bar lighting. There was a body taking up most of the alcove, a woman lying on her stomach, pointed toward the door as though she were trying to leave. I recognized the short, dark hair, the sweeping, tilted nose. Caroline. A strangled sob escaping my throat, I bent at the waist, spotting at least two bullet holes in her back. Silver bullets.
“Scarlett?” Will’s voice whispered.
Later, Scarlett. Mourn for her later. I held my breath and stepped around Caroline’s corpse into the main room of the bar. Hair of the Dog was in shambles. There was broken glass everywhere, from dozens of framed pictures that had exploded off the walls. It looked like someone had swept an arm around the room, knocking everything violently to the floor, and then rolled around in the broken glass and shaken like a dog. Which was probably more or less what had happened. The smell of blood was overwhelming, and I saw that the dark-colored floor was shining in places. A lot of places. I counted four other bodies on the floor, that I could see.
Against my usual instincts, I ignored them. They were either dead or in need of help, and that wasn’t coming while there was a crazed werewolf running around. I looked at Will, who was holding a huge revolver in his right hand, his left hand flat and out in a “calm down” gesture. They were both pointed toward the back corner of the bar, which I couldn’t see yet. I stepped up next to him, trying to keep as quiet as I could, and rounded the bar to see an enormous wolf—Eli—growling in the back corner of the room. The wolf’s fur was raised all along his back, and his huge teeth were locked around the neck of a young woman in her midtwenties. She was pale, drenched in blood and tears and wolf slobber, breathing in a rapid pant with little whimpering noises. My own breath caught in my throat.
I had seen pictures of Eli’s wolf, but they didn’t do him justice: he was gorgeous, colored in blurred shades of silver and black, with white tips on the bottom of each paw. I couldn’t get over the size of him, either—wild wolves are big, but werewolves weigh as much in wolf form as they do in human form. Eli had to be around two hundred pounds, most of it muscle, and the wolf was the same. His eyes, though…there was unmistakable madness in them. I’d seen werewolves from this distance before, and I’d once seen a rabid dog in our neighborhood when I was growing up. But I’d never seen the two combined.
The woman was scrambling to hold her own weight upright on the slippery blood-and-glass floor so she wouldn’t just be dangling from the wolf’s enormous jaws, while simultaneously trying not to jar the wolf. It was obvious that she was tiring, and with nothing to gain purchase on, she was beginning to slip downward. I tried to swallow, my mouth suddenly bone-dry.
Will must have seen me in his peripheral vision, but he gave a tiny head shake. Don’t move yet. I stayed a step behind him, keeping the wolf’s attention on the bigger man. “Eli,” Will crooned softly, “let go of her, okay? She’s a friend.” The wolf didn’t move, just continued to growl. “He’s shifting about every two minutes,” Will said in the same soothing voice, and I realized he was talking to me. “He’s got maybe a minute and a half. If he starts to change, he’ll bite down. I will shoot him before that happens.”
Will’s voice was firm and calm, but when I chanced a sideways look I saw tears rolling down his cheeks. “Silver?” I asked briefly, though I knew the answer. Will was the one who had shot Caroline. Later, Scarlett.
“Yes.”
“Let me try,” I whispered, as calmly as I could.
For the first time, Will took his eyes off Eli’s wolf to glance at me. “He can snap her neck before you can get a single step forward—”
“No time to argue,” I said. Moving very slowly, I pulled Molly’s sweater over my head, keeping my eyes away from the wolf’s. I spotted a tattered gray bar rag hanging out of Will’s back pocket and reached forward to tug it out at the same speed. “You have to let me try, Will. It’s Eli.” I tried to keep my voice as calm as Will’s, but when I got to Eli’s name I couldn’t keep the desperation out of it. The wolf heard it and snarled in his throat, ears flicking in my direction.
“If he so much as starts to twitch—”
“Shh. I know.” Wearing only my bulletproof vest on top, I slowly lowered my body to the floor. At least we wouldn’t have to worry about Will shooting me in the back by accident.
A cornered wolf was one of the most dangerous creatures in nature. Still, all I had to do was get close enough to get him in my radius, which meant I needed to move maybe fifteen feet. I wanted to try my new expansion trick, but it had backfired on me at Kirsten’s, and besides I just couldn’t trust my ability to concentrate, no
t now. I dropped the sweater on the floor and put my right hand on it. I kept the bar towel covering as much of my left hand as possible, though my finger pads got cut almost immediately. My hands more or less protected, I got down on my hands and knees. Ignoring the pain in my back, I kept my lips closed and my teeth covered as the Velcro on the bulletproof vest rustled softly. My gaze focused on the floor, I made my first “step” on all fours toward Eli’s wolf.
The wolf growled again. I had changed the rules of behavior. I cringed a little but kept going. “It’s okay,” I said softly, keeping my eyes on the floor. I kept my body low, so my face and my imaginary tail wouldn’t appear to be any higher than the wolf in front of me. The struggling woman had started making involuntary whimpering sounds, which probably wasn’t helping Eli calm down any. “I’m a friend. It’s okay.” I kept going, crooning nonsense in the same calming tone Will had used. The bar towel was already soaked through with blood, though none of it was mine.
I flicked my eyes up for the briefest of seconds, to check on the wolf’s reaction. The fur had gone down along his spine. He was still growling, but there was a note of uncertainty in it now.
“My mom was an veterinary tech at an animal hospital,” I said to no one in particular. I just wanted to keep talking, keep the calming sound going. “She worked with abused dogs a lot, crazy dogs.”
“Thirty seconds, Scarlett.” Tension had crept into Will’s voice now. I gave a very brief nod without looking back and kept going. Just eight more feet.
“I know you’re not a dog, Eli, but I’m really hoping the same rules apply,” I added, keeping my voice low. Five more feet. The wolf’s low-throated growl changed slightly, to something that sounded more like whining. His tail, which had been standing perfectly straight and stiff, wilted a bit into a more relaxed pose.
“It’s gonna happen, Scarlett,” Will whispered urgently. As he said it, the wolf made a sudden cry of pain and began to flinch, cringing inward upon himself like he’d been viciously kicked in the stomach. The woman cried out in fear. Without thinking, I dropped and rolled as fast as I could, sliding in the slippery mess. Blood-covered glass fragments cut into my jeans and the bulletproof vest.
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