Without another word, he took off back toward the parking lot on the other side of the park.
Caroline rolled her eyes at me good-naturedly and gave me a quick hug before she followed. “Have fun,” she whispered mischievously.
Goddammit. Could they, like, smell it on Eli and me?
“So what do we do now?” said Eli, looking my way.
Oh, right, I was supposed to be training. I pulled out more of my industrial-sized ziplock baggies and told him to gather what was left of the birds. Then I took the bags back to the freezer compartment in the van, pulling out a sack of dirt, Molly sticking to my heels like a shadow. “I want to try something. Let’s see if we can use your nose to help,” I said to Eli. He was starting to look kind of interested. I handed him another baggie, and then Molly and I backed off, far enough to keep the whole area out of my radius. “Okay,” I called to Eli, “now smell for the blood, and wherever you find some on any of the plants or tree bark, pull it and put it in the bag. He followed my instructions, and I watched him very carefully. This wasn’t just about him helping; I also wanted to make sure he could do the work without me around. Werewolves are much more into meat than blood, but even the blood would smell good to him. Eli did fine, though, not even twitching his nose.
“How come it smells so bad?” Molly whispered as we watched Eli.
“That’s what blood and bodies smell like to us,” I told her. “It probably used to smell like that to you, too. You’ve just forgotten.”
“Oh.”
When Eli had all the foliage collected, I ripped open the bag of dirt and started sprinkling it on the part of the ground that had been covered in blood. Then I handed the bag to Eli and backed off again. He sniffed a little, sprinkling in a few spots that I had missed. Then he walked over to Molly and me, and the three of us looked at the scene. You might have thought someone had walked through there, breaking some branches, but nothing else was even a little bit visible.
“Sunset’s at seven fourteen,” Molly said to me. I glanced up, realizing that the light had been fading around me. “What time is it now?”
I checked my watch. “Five after seven.”
“And you still have to show Eli what to do with the chickens, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I had forgotten that I should probably take Eli along to Artie’s. I had gotten used to doing this alone.
“Okay, well, why don’t you give me your keys,” Molly said to Eli, her eyes sparkling, “and I’ll drive your car back to our place? Scar can bring you back there after you’re done.” She held out her hand to Eli, smiling sweetly, and he automatically reached into his pocket, looking at me uncertainly.
When I didn’t say anything, he shrugged and handed her the keys.
“Great!” she chirped, pleased with herself. Vampires can be such jerks.
We spent the next eight minutes loading up my supplies, and at quarter after, Molly took a few experimental steps away from my radius. I felt her pull away from my area, and then suddenly she was vampire. Her skin glowed, and she reached up to stretch. Just to show off, she raced at full vamp speed to the door of Eli’s car, faster than I could follow with my eyes. “See you at home!” she called back to us, and I couldn’t help but smile. Then I looked over at Eli. Alone with the sex buddy/bartender/apprentice. Awesome.
He was staring after Molly with a look of curiosity. “Vampires really like what they are, huh?”
It occurred to me for the first time that he probably hadn’t spent much time around vampires, aside from the formal meetings with Will. “Some of them do. Just like some of you guys like being wolves.”
He looked over at me sharply. “None of us like being wolves, Scarlett. The pack is...like a support group for people who are all living with the same illness.”
“Even the kid with the chickens?” I said, smart mouth fully mobilized.
“We try to have fun with it. You make the best of what you’re given, Scarlett. You should know that by now.”
Touché.
Artie Erickson runs an art studio in the Valley, teaching pottery and watercolors to bored housewives and trés-bohemian grad students. (I know, “Artie” teaches “art.” It’s hilarious, let’s move on.) His building also has an enormous furnace, left over from the prior owner. The students do glassblowing there, and because it’s easier to keep the furnace running than to keep lighting it over and over, Artie also charges local businesses for its use. He had a deal with Olivia, and when she died, I made sure we could still do business together. He’s an okay guy, if a little snooty. Art people can be like that.
I don’t know how much Artie knows about the Old World or what I do, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t really want to know. The whole studio is gated, and the furnace is around the back through a short hallway. I tell Artie I’m coming; he unlocks the back gate and leaves the back door open. Then he sends me a bill for “waste disposal,” which I pass along to the appropriate Old World party. Technically, the entire thing, except for what I put in the furnace, is completely legal.
I explained the plan to Eli on our way.
“So do you even see the guy?” he asked me as we pulled into the parking lot.
“Not usually. Artie’s got a pretty good system. I doubt we’re the only ones who use his services for...questionable materials.” I shrugged, not taking my eyes off the road. “It’s a tough market for artist teachers.”
“Oh.”
I jumped out of the van to open up the gate and then got back in to drive through. Most of Artie’s classes and events take place during the day, so the parking lot was deserted, lit by a few weak streetlamps and the building’s emergency lights. We drove around to the back of the building, where I backed the van up to the enormous double doors leading to the furnace area and turned off the engine. Eli helped me unload the dead birds from the cooler compartment in the back of the van, including the poor backward-headed dove I’d completely forgotten about. Way to go, Scarlett. I flicked on the light switch inside the door and led Eli down the hall toward the furnace room. It was hot just stepping in the door, and Eli flinched at the heat. I handed him my own ziplock bags of dead birds and went up to the iron furnace doors, which were big enough to wheel a piano through. I picked up a nearby industrial-strength oven mitt and pulled open one of the furnace doors, gasping at the heat, and nodded to Eli, who threw in the baggies. Then I slammed the door, and both of us speed-walked out of the room, pausing in the hallway to catch our breaths.
I pulled my sticky shirt away from my chest, flushed with heat.
“That,” he panted, “was a really big furnace.”
Eli followed me back outside, and I clicked the little doorknob lock behind us. I was buckling my seat belt when Eli spoke up.
“Look, Scarlett, we should talk...” he began, his hands twisting in his lap.
I froze. “This isn’t a great time, Eli.”
“Yeah, well, it’s never a great time with you, is it? But we should talk about what happened the other night—what’s been happening.”
I waited, silent.
Eli stared at me and then scrubbed at his face with the heel of his hands. “Look,” he blurted, “do you want to, like, grab something to eat sometime? Maybe have a real conversation in which neither of us is drunk?”
My mouth may have dropped open a little. “You mean like...a date?”
“Yes. An actual date.”
“I can’t,” I said immediately.
“You can’t, or you don’t want to?”
“I don’t know. Pick one.” There was hostility in my voice, and I wondered where it had come from. Why can I never say the right thing?
“Argh!” he grunted, looking frustrated. Scarlett Bernard, frustrator of men. His fingers flexed, and I realized he was angry. “You know, Scar, I get that you got a raw deal. What happened to you was awful. Will still feels guilty that he didn’t see it coming, or warn you, or whatever. But just because she turned out to be—”
“
Shut up,” I said too sharply, then regretted it. “You don’t know anything about that, so just drop it.”
“Tell me, then. Talk to me like I’m a real person and not just a penis that delivers your whiskey.”
“Why?” I asked, unable to look at him. I stared at the steering wheel instead. “What’s the point? You can’t change any of it.”
“Maybe not. But I’d still like a shot at making you laugh.”
I did look at him then, startled. His light-blue eyes were calm and direct—no bullshit. I sighed and reached down to turn on the engine. “Look, Eli, if you don’t want to sleep with me anymore, fine. But—”
To be honest, I’m not sure what I was about to say. I never got a chance to find out, though, because at that exact moment, the driver’s side door was wrenched open, and a large head poked into the car. “Ladies,” said the enormous man, and the passenger-side door popped open, too. Eli had unbuckled, was trying to push his way out of the car, and the guy on my side reached in and punched me in the left eye.
“Son of a bitch,” I gasped, and Eli looked like he was about to howl. Eli is not a small man, and even in human form, I couldn’t believe the guy on his side was able to keep him in the seat.
“Stay, boy,” said the giant on my side of the van. He held up a wicked-looking handgun, pressing it against my temple, and Eli went very still next to me.
“Get her out,” ordered the man who’d appeared next to Eli, a weaselly-looking guy in a cheap dark suit.
Eli and I were dragged out of the van and marched around the back. I saw the slick-looking SUV the two men must have brought idling a few feet away. I’d been too involved in my romantic drama to even notice it arrive.
“Cuffs,” said the giant, and the smaller man pulled out a glaringly shiny set of handcuffs. It took me a second to realize why they gleamed.
Oh God. “Silver,” I breathed.
The giant nodded, looking very smug. “You got it, bitch.”
The weaselly guy put the handcuffs on Eli. “So you can’t follow,” he rumbled, a surprisingly deep voice. Then he kicked Eli viciously in the stomach, and Eli doubled over, gasping. The guy kicked him in the ribs a couple of times for good measure, and I realized that I was screaming. The giant just reached down and picked me up, throwing me over his shoulder and into the back of the SUV, where he scooted in right after me.
The weaselly guy jumped into the driver’s seat, and I ignored them both, turning in my seat to look at Eli, who was struggling to his feet. The SUV pulled away, and I felt the tug when he left my radius. Eli dropped like a stone in a pond, writhing on the ground in the parking lot.
“What are you doing?” I yelled at the giant next to me. I lunged across the seat and punched him, which would have been completely ineffectual if he hadn’t been taken by surprise. Instead, I got a little weight behind it and hit him straight in the nose.
He cried out in pain, backhanding me across the seat. “You stupid bitch!” he hollered.
I was dizzy with pain for a few seconds from where the side of my head had bounced off the window, and when my vision cleared, the big guy was touching his nose, holding his fingers up to see the blood. He did this again and again, fascinated, and I realized that this was a strange experience for him. I closed my eyes and concentrated for a moment, then popped them open. Vampires. Which I should have realized a hell of a lot earlier. My fingers scrabbled at the lock on my door, but there must have been some sort of child safety setting on because it didn’t budge.
I turned back and said, “I work for Dashiell, you assholes, and he’s going to be really pissed.”
To my surprise, they both chuckled, and the bloody giant leaned over and leered at me. “Bitch,” he said smugly, “who do you think we work for?”
Chapter 11
I stayed quiet for a few minutes, adjusting to both the new information and the pain. If Dashiell had sent these guys to collect me, instead of just calling, he was expecting me to be hostile. To resist.
It’d be a shame to disappoint him. I kicked the back of the driver’s seat in front of me. “Hey. Little guy.”
The giant next to me snickered, and the weasel reached up and fiddled with the rearview mirror so he could glare at me. “What?” he rumbled.
“Why didn’t Dashiell just call me?”
He turned his head to exchange a look with the giant, but neither one of them answered me.
I kicked the seat again. “Hey.”
The big guy reached for me, but the driver barked, “Hugo!”
The giant froze.
So the smaller man was in charge. Interesting.
“We’re not supposed to hurt her yet.”
Fear clenched my heart at the word yet, but I pushed forward. “Sit, Hugo. Stay. Roll the fuck over.”
“What’s one more bruise?” Hugo whined toward the driver. “She’s already going to have two.”
“Knock it off,” he commanded, and Hugo sulked back in his seat.
I waited about thirty seconds, and then I kicked the back of the driver’s seat. “Hey. Little guy.”
Hugo snarled, but the weasel adjusted the mirror again and looked at me with a flat expression. “One thing you should have learned by now,” he said calmly, “Dashiell takes care of his own. Now there’s gonna be a reckoning.”
He adjusted the mirror back. I kept trying, but no amount of kicking or whining would get him to say anything else, and Hugo followed his cue. I gave up and leaned into my window, as far from them as I could get. A reckoning? First of all, who talks like that? Well, vampires, obviously, but was there actually a point in history where that didn’t sound stupid?
Focus, Scarlett, I reminded myself. He’d said that Dashiell takes care of his people. Well, I knew that. It’s half the point of having a vampire leader, along with keeping the peace. So Dashiell thought I had done something to hurt his people or disturb the Old World...
Oh shit.
“He thinks it was me?” I sputtered, and yes, it seriously took me that long to put it together. Both vampires flinched but remained silent as we pulled into the long driveway leading to Dashiell’s mansion. And for the first time since the giant one had said they worked for Dashiell, I was afraid.
When the car stopped, Hugo dragged me by the arm through the front door and into the room with the patio doors. He had a death grip on my upper arm, but I clenched my teeth and stumbled along, determined not to cry out.
Dashiell was sitting in his usual seat at the far end of the big table, tapping into a cell phone. He looked up when we arrived and gestured to Hugo to bring me closer. Ten or fifteen feet away, I felt the immortality drain from him.
“Sit her down,” he ordered, collecting himself.
Hugo shoved me toward the chair next to Dashiell’s, and I nearly tripped, catching myself on the chair back. I fought the urge to rub my arm and sat down as calmly as I could.
Dashiell picked up a file folder that had been waiting on the table and removed a thick white envelope. “Albert,” he said to the weaselly guy, “please go deliver this to our friend in the department. Hugo, give us some space.”
Sneering at me, Hugo retreated a few steps back toward the doors, nodding at Albert as the other vampire went by.
When they had moved, Dashiell leaned forward to place three photographs in front of me. The heads were bloodless and bloated, but I knew without being told that they were the victims from La Brea Park. “Joanna,” he said, tapping the photo of the woman. Next was the young man with the punk haircut. “Demetri. And Abraham,” he finished, pointing to the photo of the black man, whose face was ashen with blood loss. “Demetri and Joanna were a useless couple, lazy hangers-on who required your services on at least one occasion. But Abraham,” he continued, picking up the last photo, “he was integral to my financial structure. Losing him is a blow to my business.”
I groped for something to say, and finally just blurted, “I didn’t kill them.”
“No, you’re not nearly
strong enough. But you certainly helped.”
“I didn’t,” I said, working to keep my voice calm.
“Then who did? Abraham wouldn’t have gone without a fight, and you’re the only null within three thousand miles. Do you have an alibi for earlier that evening?”
I bit my lip. I had been with Eli, but there was no point in telling Dashiell; he would either think I was lying or assume that the wolves were somehow connected to the murders. In Los Angeles the different factions of the Old World lived in relative peace with each other, but it was an uneasy peace built on top of centuries of fighting. As small as my own place was in the grand scheme of things, I understood what would happen if war broke out in LA.
People would die.
“No. I was home, alone.”
“And if I asked Molly, would she say the same thing?” Dashiell shot back.
Oops. Backfire. I didn’t know how to respond, so I stayed silent.
Dashiell continued. “Tell me why I should believe you, Scarlett. Tell me why another null would come all the way to Los Angeles, without alerting any of my vampires or the wolves, just to kill three of my people in a public park? It seems far more likely that you were simply paid to be there. Another one of your ‘freelance jobs.’”
I leaned forward, too. “Dashiell, with respect, that doesn’t make sense, either. Why would I bite the hand that feeds me? If this Abraham—who I’ve never heard of, by the way—is important to your finances, and your finances pay my bills, why would I help kill him? And if I had helped kill these three, why on earth would I agree to help a police officer investigate their deaths? Why would I still be in this hemisphere?”
“To turn suspicion from yourself.”
I leaned back again. All of a sudden, the fear that had been growing since the vampires cuffed Eli just...evaporated. All I felt was tired. “Look, Dashiell, you are scary. The power that you have, vampire or not, is scary to me. If I had crossed you in some way, I would have gotten the hell out of town.”
He looked at me for a long minute, considering. The minute turned into two and then three, and I had to work hard not to squirm under his stare. “Hugo,” he said finally, without taking his eyes off me, “leave us.”
Dead Spots Page 9