My spirits dropped again a second later, however, when I saw the next person through the door. Wolf packs are usually led by a mated pair, the alphas, who function like parents, and then there are a whole bunch of intermediate wolves who are like their kids. Ordinarily, the two alphas would go almost everywhere together, but Will hasn’t found a mate yet, so instead, his pack has a beta, a platonic second-in-command who accompanies him on “official” visits like this. Unfortunately, in Will’s pack, the beta happens to be Eli, who trailed Will onto the patio. His ice-blue eyes—the color of a husky puppy’s—met mine and flickered with the recognition you only get from people who’ve seen you naked. I tried not to squish down farther in my seat.
Along with his second-in-command, Will had brought his sigma. Even though the pack hierarchy is sort of vague in the middle, everyone does know who the weakest member of the pack is. In a healthy werewolf pack, the sigma is the absolute lowest member of the food chain—why they’re called sigmas and not omegas is beyond me, but they probably have their reasons. Unlike regular wolves or even dogs, though, werewolves value this person. The sigma is the member most in need of the pack’s protection, and he or she becomes like a favorite younger sibling. Kind of like the Tiny Tim of the wolf pack.
In Will’s pack, the sigma is Caroline Brooks, a petite, competent pixie who also happens to be Will’s personal secretary and office manager at the bar he owns. Bringing Caroline along meant two things: first, it indicated that Will was there on business, requiring her aid, and second, it was a quiet gesture that he was not afraid of Dashiell. Protecting the sigma is vital in werewolf packs, and bringing her along meant that Will didn’t see Dashiell as a threat. Or that Will was powerful enough to bring his weakest member into the heart of the vampire world and keep her safe. I wondered how Caroline felt about being used for symbolism.
The three of them gave Dash a casual, but respectful, greeting as they came through the door. Will came over and ruffled my hair, which I tolerated even though I’d have to redo it later. Except for all the muscle, Will looks like the average suburban dad in any sitcom. He looks to be in his late thirties, but werewolves age more slowly than humans, so who knows. He treats me with fond detachment, like an entertaining but ultimately expendable younger cousin. Caroline bent to give me a hug, whispering, “It’ll be okay,” into my ear. Eli didn’t say anything, just looked at me with his sad puppy eyes.
Okay, fine. I probably should have left a note.
The wolves trooped down the courtyard to Dashiell, where Will took the seat to Dashiell’s right. Then Eli sat on his right, and Caroline took the chair beside him. I suddenly felt as if I were on trial.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” I said to Will.
He shrugged, raising his voice so I could hear. “It was a last-minute thing. But this affects all of us, so I thought I’d show in person.”
“What about Kirsten?” I asked, a little bluntly.
Dashiell and Will exchanged an amused look without answering me. They think that Kirsten is kind of a joke. They do business with her, but neither of them is all that impressed by witches. I personally think underestimating Kirsten is a mistake, but nobody asks me. I’m just the janitor.
I decided to take the initiative. “Okay, look, I know this is about last night. I know I screwed up. But I’m handling things with this cop.”
“We know,” Dashiell said. “But Will and I have discussed it, and we feel that the time has come for you to take on...help.”
Will’s voice was gentler. “She’s been dead for almost six months, Scarlett. And she wasn’t able to work for a long time before that.”
He was referring to my mentor, Olivia. She was the only other null I’d met, and had trained me on crime scene cleanup. Then she and I were partners for four years before cancer took her life. You can be completely bulletproof when it comes to spells and vampire bites, but not even nulls get a free pass from the big C.
Supernaturally insignificant or not, LA is at least a two-person area for cleanup, and every single person on the patio knew that I should have swallowed my feelings and found a replacement for Olivia the day I took over from her. At the time, though, I’d just been through a horrible shock. Besides, I was in no place to trust a new partner, after what I’d been through with the first one. Everything I’d had, really, was because of Olivia.
And everything I had lost, too.
I set my jaw stubbornly. I get crabby when I’m clearly in the wrong. “You can’t just put an ad for a null on Craigslist. There are, what, five or six of us in the world? We don’t exactly have an employment office.”
“We know,” Will said patiently. “But in all likelihood, there are more of you than that. It’s just hard for nulls to find out what they are.” This is true. Most likely, plenty of nulls live and die without discovering their ability. “Besides,” Will continued, “you don’t absolutely have to be a null to do the work that you do.”
Crap. There went my best excuse.
“It just helps. And it’s safer.”
“So here is what we’ll do,” Dashiell said. “I have put out some feelers, trying to track down another null. If that proves too difficult, we will perhaps try one of the witches.” Vampires can’t really do my job, since a) they get distracted by blood, and b) they’re dead during the day. I do get the occasional daytime crime scene. “In the meantime, though, Will has graciously offered one of his wolves to help you. You will begin training him immediately.”
“One of the wolves? That’s not a good...” I started, but then swallowed it. These two are my bosses, I reminded myself. I didn’t really have a choice here, and protesting would just make me look whiny and unprofessional. Olivia wouldn’t have liked that, I thought sourly. I looked over at Will. “Who is it?” I felt a fleeting hope that he had nominated Caroline.
But Will and Caroline both glanced over to Eli. Oh, no. Shit, shit, shit. My one-night stand—well, okay, three-night stand—could not be my apprentice. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” I said carefully, without looking at Eli. Nobody needed to know that we’d slept together. I was not about to turn this into a supernatural telenovela.
“Is there a problem with Eli that we should know about?” Will asked pleasantly.
“No—”
“Then I think he’s the perfect candidate. Obviously his schedule can be flexible.” Since, you know, Will is his boss.
“But will he be all right around dead bodies?” I asked, trying not to sound desperate. “He’ll be working by himself eventually, and I’m told the smell can be very distracting.”
“Eli used to be a paramedic,” Will replied easily. This was news to me, though I’d never really considered Eli’s life before he changed. “He says he’ll be fine.”
Was this Eli’s suggestion? Did Will already know about Eli and me? Maybe. Will didn’t miss much. But he might have just not cared, or maybe he was playing a deeper game here, trying to get me to actively participate in the search for nulls. Crafty Will. He looks like a church deacon, but I’ve long suspected he could be ruthless if he needed to. I was definitely going to have to get to the bottom of who had put Eli’s hat in the ring, but that could wait. For now I just had to suck it up.
“Sounds good,” I managed, and the mood in the courtyard relaxed just a little.
The meeting broke up, and everybody started to leave. I was about to head back to the van and Cruz, who I’d almost forgotten about, but I had an idea. I pulled Will aside—not that it mattered, because everyone on the property who was ten feet away could hear like a bat, with the exception of Cruz and me—and asked him if he had any pictures of the wolves in human form.
“Pictures?” he asked blankly, tilting his head to one side. “Maybe we do. Why do you ask?”
I told him about the bodies, the wolf in the clearing, and the cop. I didn’t mention that he was out in my van at the moment, because Will might feel obligated to inform Dashiell. “I never saw the guy properly, but I
think Cruz did. If I could show him some pictures, we could figure out who it was, see if he saw or smelled anything there.”
I could see Will’s metaphorical hackles going up. “Are you suggesting that one of my wolves may be responsible for this?”
I shook my head. “No. Definitely not. Or at least, not this wolf. If one of the wolves did kill those people, he’d have no reason to leave and then come back to the scene. I honestly think that this wolf was just running in the park, smelled the bodies, and came to see what it was. I just want to ask if there’s anything else he noticed.”
“But you’re also pretty much asking to out this wolf to a police officer,” Will objected. “And me along with him.”
“Will, you didn’t see what happened. It was...It was awful. And a lot of things depend on finding out who did it.”
He sighed, relenting. “I think I have some pictures at the bar from the Fourth of July picnic. You can bring your cop by to look at them.”
“Can we do it tonight? Now?”
Will checked his watch and gave me a weary, indulgent smile. “Fine. I’ll meet you over there.”
I thanked him and tried to head out, but just as I closed the front door behind me, it opened again and Eli stepped out. It felt strange to have people keep popping in and out of my radius, but I’d grown used to it.
“What happened to you?” he asked bluntly. I knew what he meant.
I hugged my arms around me. The September heat wave had broken sometime that day, and the fall night had grown chilly. “I got a call. I had to work.”
“You couldn’t have woken me up? Left a note?” His face was hard, and he was fidgeting.
“Look, Eli—” I began, but he cut me off.
“I get it. You don’t have to do the whole ‘just friends’ talk.”
I didn’t say anything.
“And I want you to know, none of this”—he gestured toward the house, to the meeting we’d just left—“was my idea.”
There was a long, awkward pause, and then he suddenly burst into an earsplitting grin.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry, I just always forget how nice it feels to be around you. How...restful.”
I rolled my eyes. This is exactly why Eli and I will never go anywhere. The remnants of the very powerful magic—the Original magic that led to conduits evolving into shape-shifters and shape-shifters evolving into werewolves—just never leaves the wolves. As I understand it, werewolves constantly have to fight to keep their control, like an itchy humming that’s always in the back of their minds. (Ironically, real wolves have a similar problem—what was once described to me as “genetically coded predatory behavior.”) They can’t help themselves; the magic makes them feel a continuous pressure to be hunting, killing, feeding. Maybe that’s why the shifters chose to become werewolves, I thought suddenly. Huh.
Some wolves have a harder time than others, and Eli really struggles with his inner animal. When he’s around me, though, he is a de facto human again, and all that goes away. If he were an alcoholic, I would be the thing that made him never want another drink. Or maybe I’d be the thing that let him stay permanently drunk.
Some girls would probably get off on that kind of thing, but whenever this happened, with any of the wolves or the vampires, I just felt vaguely used. I didn’t mind when it was Molly because I was getting paid for my services, and because she’s sort of become my friend. But I didn’t want the guy I was...seeing...to be in it for those kinds of perks.
“Listen,” I said brusquely, “you’re working for me now—for me, not for Will or Dashiell. You’re not a spy or a partner; you’re my apprentice, at least temporarily. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. Keep your phone on. The next time I get a call might be later tonight, or tomorrow during the day, or not for another week. But when I call, you need to answer, wherever you are.”
He grinned, and even I could appreciate the irony. Two hours ago, I would have ducked all calls from Eli. Now I was ordering him to pick up the phone from me. Life is funny.
“Okay. Good night, then.” I turned on my heel and marched down the sidewalk to the driveway. So there.
Chapter 6
There were only two cars left in the driveway—Eli’s battered pickup truck and my van. I didn’t see any sign of Officer Cruz at first, but when I got closer, I realized he’d squashed himself down between the seats. I opened the driver’s side door, causing him to jump.
“Oh, hi,” he said nervously, looking embarrassed. “I wasn’t hiding.”
I climbed in and slammed the door. “What were you doing, then?”
“One of the guys who came out of there, he was with this girl, and she turned into a...a wolf,” he said, still a little shaky. The werewolves have to change at the full moon, but most of them are also strong enough to change a few times in between. “They were just playing, you know, goofing around like you do with a dog, but I thought it’d be easier if they didn’t see me.”
“Good call,” I said mildly and saw him cracking his knuckles, one by one, as he gazed intently out the window. I sighed. I had already turned the key in the ignition, but now I shut off the van.
“What?” he asked, finally looking up to meet my eyes.
“Get in your goddamned seat and buckle up. Everyone else has left. We’re fine.” Looking embarrassed, he climbed back into the passenger seat and clicked his safety belt. I looked him over again. “Are we gonna have a problem?” I asked. “Are you gonna wig out and run to CNN or something?”
“What? No,” he said, his focus now entirely on me. He sounded indignant enough that I started the van and began backing into the turnaround so we could go forward down the driveway. As we pulled back onto the street, Cruz finally said, “It’s just...When we were in the park, everything was already so heightened—the bodies, the blood, the fact that I was there alone with the suspect. No offense,” he added. “It’s not like I’d convinced myself that it was all my imagination, it was just...” In the corner of my eye, I saw his hands waving helplessly.
“Adrenaline,” I supplied.
“Yeah.”
I glanced over. Cruz looked calm now, like he was thinking through his words.
“But this time it was so casual and everyday. Like it was...normal.”
“It was normal,” I pointed out. I felt his eyes on me. When I got to a red light and looked over, he was grinning.
“Yeah,” he said in wonder. “Yeah, I guess it was.”
Hair of the Dog—yes, I know, the most obvious bar name ever—is located in one of the funky little stretches of Pico on the West Side. It was after 1:00 a.m. when we arrived, but Will’s place is always busy. Ordinary humans like his microbrews, and the werewolves tend to hang around long past bar close. They’re a pack, of course, but they also tend to stick together just like anyone who shares a common malady.
We came in the front door, and the bartender, an African American werewolf in her late twenties, looked up and nodded at me. I threaded my way toward the bar, Cruz lagging behind me as he tried to study the decor. I’d explained where we were going and why, but it hadn’t really prepared him for the bar’s effect: Will had set the place up to be sort of an overtly kitschy love letter to dogs and wolves. There are posters, cheap calendars, historic articles, Dog Fancy magazine spreads, etc. covering every inch of the brick walls. If you look really closely, you can even see a couple pictures of Will’s pack, disguised in wolf form. It’s a small space, so the effect is sort of like a den, I guess.
“Isn’t this a bit...on the nose?” Cruz murmured at my back.
“Yeah. It’s excessive. But Will’s a fan of the ‘hiding in plain sight’ approach.” To those in the know, it’s ironic and funny. To outsiders, well, lots of bars have themes.
At the bar, I asked for Will and learned that we’d beaten him, probably only by a few minutes. I ordered a Diet Coke and, playing a hunch, got a regular for Cruz. I carried the sodas to a batte
red wooden table that was as far as I could get from the rest of the bar patrons and settled down, with Cruz across from me.
After a long pull of the Coke, he began to study the people around us. “Bernard,” he said in a low voice, “why are half the people in this room staring at you?”
I glanced around. He was right. I was getting a lot of stares from the crowd. Most of them seemed curious but neutral, a few were a little pissed, and more than a few had the same pleased look of relief I’d gotten from Eli. When I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could feel all of them humming in my radius. I opened my eyes again. “Because right before we came in, half the people in this room weren’t human. Now they all are.”
“But they’re...you know. In people form.”
“It doesn’t matter. They never stop feeling the wolf. It pulls at them, like the vampires are pulled toward blood.”
“Really?”
I nodded, a little solemn, and explained about the magic residue. I’m really, really glad I don’t have to worry about ever becoming a werewolf. “Some of them love the feeling, but most have kind of a hard time.” I played with my straw, trying for inconspicuous. “Do you see the man from the park? I warn you, he may be wearing clothes now.”
Cruz smiled and glanced around, but shook his head. “No.”
“Damn. It would have been nice if it were just that easy.”
“Do you come here a lot?”
“I try not to. My being here, it messes with people. Some of them don’t mind—hell, a lot of them like it—but I try not to interfere.” Also, I tend to do stupid things like get drunk and go home with bartenders when I’m not really supposed to be drinking at all, since I’m continuously on call for crime scene cleanup. Sometimes, though, I get sick of being around normal people, who have absolutely no concept of my life.
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