“Boss, you can’t be serious—” Hugo started from the back of the room, but Dashiell silenced him with a glance.
The mountainous vampire spun and retreated from the room, and Dashiell turned back to me.
“Ultimately,” he said slowly, “I do not care whether or not it was you. I just need a responsible party. Do you understand?”
Dashiell takes care of his own. I knew what that meant now. Dashiell didn’t need the right culprit, he just needed to be able to publicly punish—kill—someone to keep the other vampires happy. And I was the obvious choice. I nodded.
“Good. So let’s say for a moment that I am willing to consider the possibility that you weren’t involved. I will give you until Friday at dawn to bring me the other null, if there really is one, and the person who did the killing. If you don’t know by then, I will assume it was you. If you run, if you so much as leave LA County, I will assume it was you.”
“You can’t possibly expect—” I protested, but he cut me off.
“Of course I can. Dawn is at six thirty-six. I’ll expect you here by six, with whoever is responsible.”
I thought about that for a moment and chose my words carefully. “If I can’t find this person...You’re asking me to show up for my own death. Why would I do that?”
“Because you and I both know that you still have people you can lose. Both here and in Esperanza. You don’t want anyone else to have to die for you, isn’t that right?”
I felt my face turn white. He knew about my brother. How was that possible? I’d been so careful...But it wasn’t the moment to figure that out. He had me, and we both knew it. I would be there at dawn, one way or the other.
He saw understanding on my face and made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Go, then. Bring me the killers, or just come yourself. It doesn’t matter much to me either way.”
My back was straight as I walked out of Dashiell’s, but it was an effort. I went to the end of the long driveway, pulled my cell phone out of my jeans pocket, and called for a cab. I was desperate to get back to Van Nuys and get that silver away from Eli, but I’d still turned down Dashiell’s offer to have Hugo drive me home. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the giant vampire, especially after I’d hit him. I also owed Cruz a call, but my hands started shaking, and I finally just shoved the phone back in my pocket. Tears were blurring my vision. I crouched down to the ground and threw up everything in my stomach. I heaved and heaved until I was empty of everything. Good thing my hair was up.
I scooted a few feet away from the vomit puddle and settled down on the curb to wait for the cab. My insides still churned. Just...goddammit. For a minute there, I’d really thought that Dashiell was going to kill me. And he probably knew about Jack, and maybe Eli, and who knows what else.
Besides, it wasn’t just the confrontation with Dashiell. I had always been comfortable in LA, because from a supernatural standpoint, it was so small—I didn’t have to work too hard or think too much. Now, in the space of two days, I’d been unable to make it to a job, I’d seen the city’s worst crime scene in generations, and my life had been given a short countdown by a very scary guy.
This was not working with my lifestyle at all.
My cell phone rang while I was still calming down. I held it up to see the caller ID—Jack again. I frowned. What the hell? For a brief, dreadful moment I pictured him lying in a hospital bed, dying or in need of a kidney. Jack and I don’t talk, but he’s the only real family I have left, and the image of something happening to him...I couldn’t deal with it just then. I hit Ignore. If Jack needed something, he could leave a message. And if I lived through the next thirty hours, I could call him back.
When the cab pulled up, I scrubbed at my mouth with my shirtsleeve one more time and stood up to meet it. The driver was a little Armenian man with surprisingly perfect English. I gave him the address of Artie’s studio and leaned back, hoping he wouldn’t be too chatty. I hate chatty cabdrivers. He was fairly quiet, though, and I began to organize my plan of attack. First, rescue Eli. Then back to the house to drop him off and call Cruz. I had the vampires’ identities now. We could figure out who their human servants were and interview them or whatever. Maybe that could get us somewhere with the investigation. I frowned to myself. Something else was tugging at me, something about the smaller of Dashiell’s henchmen. Albert. I’d seen him somewhere before, but where? And did it have any relevancy to the murders? Maybe it was the adrenaline or the stress, but I couldn’t place him.
When we were a mile from the studio, I pulled my wallet out of my front pocket. Eyeing the meter through the cab’s bulletproof glass, I counted up the cash I had left. I would have just enough to make the fare, although my tip would not be stellar. When the driver stopped in front of Artie’s gate, I threw the cash through the slot and ran full-out around the building.
Eli was right where I’d left him, collapsed on the pavement behind my van, only now he wasn’t moving. I had a flare of panic. How fast does silver poisoning work? Skin contact isn’t as bad as contact with his blood, so it couldn’t possibly have killed him this quickly, could it? I pounded across the blacktop, calling Eli’s name. I felt it when he hit my radius, and he felt...wrong. Twisted and sick.
I dropped down by his side, looking him over. All the blood had drained from his tanned face, and there were raw, oozing wounds where the silver touched his skin. He had ripped away strips of his shirt, probably trying to get it between his skin and the silver, but had lost consciousness before it could help him. I pulled helplessly at the handcuffs, hearing an anguished sound coming out of my throat. By taking away the werewolf magic, I could make the damage stop, but I couldn’t heal anything.
“Eli?” I gently shook his shoulder, but got no response. I scooted a little closer, touching his cheek, and his eyelids fluttered. His hands, still cuffed, moved up to encase mine, and I almost cried with relief.
“Hey,” he said wonderingly. “You came back.” Slowly, leaning on the van for support, he sat up.
“Of course I came back. Why wouldn’t I come back?” I cried, a little too loudly. I cleared my throat.
“I was afraid they’d killed you.” He laughed suddenly, with an edge of hysteria, and for a second, I thought the silver had gotten into his brain. “Sorry,” he said, seeing my face, “it just...It hurt so much, and then it was gone so fast, like turning off a switch. Thank you.”
With no warning, he took my face in his hands and pulled me toward him. Without thinking, I let him kiss me, and then suddenly, I wasn’t just letting him, I was participating. And then more than participating. His lips were so warm—it’s true that werewolves run hotter than most people—and his long fingers tangled in my hair where it had fallen out of the elastic band. For just a moment, I let go, and the day’s frustration and terror dimmed to a background hum. There was only the kiss. We broke just long enough for him to put his handcuffed arms over my head and around me, and then he pulled me into his lap, settling me against his solid chest. My fingers went into his hair, and the kiss went on as we tumbled backward onto the pavement. If it hurt his back, he didn’t seem to notice.
This is how it always is between Eli and me—natural and explosive at the same time. When I finally pulled away, we were both breathing hard, and I struggled to put words together in some sort of coherent string. I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, which is more or less how I roll anyway.
“Hey,” I panted, “do I smell?”
He gave me a surprised, bewildered grin. “You’re a space in the smell. Everything smells but you.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. I ducked under his arms and untangled myself, feeling suddenly awkward. I stood up. “Um, I think I might have something for those handcuffs.” I didn’t look at him as I opened the back door of the van, climbing in and rummaging around until I found my enormous bolt cutters. When I emerged, he was leaning against the bumper, grinning at me. He still looked pale and worn-out, but miles better than a few
minutes ago.
“Why, Scarlett, you’re red,” he teased.
“Just shut up,” I said roughly. “Hold out your arms.”
His mouth tightened, but he held out his wrists, and I carefully put the bolt cutters around the chain, leaning into it to snap the heavy silver. Eli pulled his arms apart, flexing his wrists, rubbing at the welts. “Scarlett,” he said, and he was looking closely at me. He gently took my chin and turned my face toward the parking lot’s lone streetlight. “Who was it?”
I winced, and for the first time since it’d happened, I could feel the bruise where Hugo the vampire had backhanded me in the car. I reached up and touched the opposite eye, which was swollen but still functional. Hugo had pulled that first punch, no doubt. “The big guy. It’s fine.”
His face hardened, and he was very careful as he let go of my face. I saw his fists clench in their handcuffs. “It’s not fine.”
“Yeah, well, I may have a bruise, but I broke the asshole’s nose. Probably the first time in a hundred years that he’s felt pain, and I got to be there. It’s good enough for me.”
“What did they want with you? How did you get free?”
I told him about Dashiell’s suspicion that I was involved in the La Brea Park murders.
“Didn’t you tell him you were with me?”
I hesitated. “No.”
“God, Scarlett, of all the times to be ashamed of me—”
“It’s not like that! Eli, if I use you as my alibi, Dashiell is going to think you’re lying for me because we’re a couple, and he’ll hurt you to get to me. Or he’s going to assume you and I killed those vampires together. You’re Will’s beta, so Dashiell will have to assume we were acting on Will’s orders, and there could be a war. Either way, dragging the wolves into this puts more people at risk.”
He studied my face for a full minute, until I was starting to itch with the attention. “Maybe not. Maybe he’d just believe us and leave you alone.”
“Yes, and then we’ll all go adopt newborn puppies and play together in a field of marshmallows and glitter.”
He couldn’t help but grin at the imagery, tilting his head to acknowledge my point. Then he looked down at the handcuff bracelets on his wrists, jingling them a little. “So I guess I’m kind of attached to you at the moment. Can you pick a lock?”
I shook my head. “Tried to learn once, but I didn’t have the feel for it. But...I know someone who has a handcuff key.”
He nodded ruefully. “Hey, am I having a great first day or what?”
“Or what,” I said seriously.
Chapter 12
The trip to the airport had taken most of the day. First Jesse’s identity had to be verified by three different groups; then he had to go around meeting with the individual security teams at all seven of LAX’s terminals. And at each new terminal, his identity had to be verified all over again, which must have been a serious pain in the ass for the dispatcher who had to keep taking the calls. As he had expected, no one had seen or knew anything about the three victims. It was all a colossal waste of time, and frustration had itched at the edges of his attention, shortening his patience for each security check.
Jesse hit traffic on the way back to the precinct, of course, and he didn’t arrive until after six. He stopped briefly at his desk to type up a report for Miranda. Yes, I went. No, I didn’t find anything. What a fascinating read, he thought sourly. He sent her the e-mail and packed up to go. This probably wouldn’t go a long ways toward convincing her that he was any good as an investigator, but it couldn’t be helped. Before he left, he called Scarlett’s cell from his desk phone, but she didn’t answer. A little annoyed, he left a message for her to call him back. She was probably napping. He considered just going over there, but he was exhausted himself. If Scarlett got to nap, he should get some sleep, too. Jesse’s apartment was a hole-in-the-wall studio whose chief attraction was its proximity to the precinct. He slept, ate, and watched television there, but never considered it much of a home. Still, the bed was comfortable, and bed was all he could think about just then.
Jesse got his car and headed east on the freeway, thinking about the case with what was left of his fried brain. Scarlett had said that they’d been looking at the wrong victim pool, that it was probably someone from the Old World...But if he was with Scarlett, that person would just go back to being a regular human suspect, right? It was confusing. He suddenly wished he could be going for a run, or taking his parents’ dog to the park, or something. Anything that didn’t involve vampires or werewolves or the glare of flashlights on puddles of blood. Was it really only a day and a half since he’d run into that clearing?
At his apartment, Jesse dropped his gun and badge on the table and kicked off his shoes, collapsing on top of the covers. He put his cell phone on the empty pillow next to his. Despite his eagerness to solve the case, he sort of hoped that Scarlett wouldn’t call him back until he’d gotten a decent amount of sleep.
But only an hour later, he woke up to the screech of the phone beside his head. “Cruz,” he answered, rubbing his eyes. Then he opened them and sat up, fully awake. “You want me to bring what now?”
By 9:30 p.m., traffic had lightened up on the freeway, and Jesse made it from his apartment to Scarlett’s West Hollywood home in excellent time. He parked in the big garage where they’d first met—well, for the second time—and hiked up the ramp and down the block. Consulting the house number written on his hand, he rang the bell of a compact, homey Victorian. The door was opened by a twentyish redhead wearing elaborately stitched jeans, a T-shirt that said Team Edward, and black toenail polish on her bare feet. “Hi! I’m Molly,” she chirped, smiling up at him. “Are you Cruz?”
“Um, yeah...Is Scarlett home?”
“I’m here,” Scarlett walked into the entryway, holding a bag of frozen peas to her face with one hand. There was a microwave burrito in the other hand, and she was moving the peas to take a bite of the burrito, then replacing them. When she moved the bag again, he saw the ugly bruise on her cheek, and the opposite eye was darkening under the bag. She leaned against the doorway.
“What the hell happened to you?” He immediately regretted the harshness in his voice, but she just shrugged.
“Got in a fight.”
“Are you okay?”
“You should see the other guy.”
He suddenly felt very awake, for the first time since he’d left his mother’s house. “Sounds great. Where can I find him?” he asked, an edge sharpening the words.
But Scarlett didn’t answer.
He opened his mouth to press the point, but closed it again. They’d be spending the next few hours together; he could work on her when they weren’t with the friend. He turned to the red-haired girl and tried for a pleasant smile. “So you’re Scarlett’s roommate?”
“Yup. And friend and landlady. Psuedo-employer, too, I guess,” Molly said. She turned to Scarlett. “Listen, Scar, I need to head out. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Molly stepped into sandals, picked up a laptop bag, and was out the door before Jesse could get out a “Nice to meet you.”
He turned and looked at Scarlett, raising his eyebrows. “Was it something I don’t think I had time to say?”
Scarlett sighed. “It’s not you. She’s afraid she’s going to be ordered to kill me, so she’s trying to keep some distance.”
Jesse’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“Get comfortable, Cruz. There are some things I need to fill you in on. But first, there’s someone who needs your help. Eli,” she called, and a stranger came in from the other room.
He was tall and good-looking, leaning against the doorway and shoving his hands in his pockets. Jesse felt a bewildering sense of jealousy. Why should he care if Scarlett had a boyfriend?
“Cruz, this is my...um...This is Eli. Eli has a little problem.” The other man didn’t move, and Scarlett prompted, “Go ahead, show him.”
Looking reluctant, Eli pulled his hand
s out of his pockets and held up his wrists. Jesse saw the glint of cuffs, but there was something weird about them.
“Whoa,” he said, stepping over to examine them. “Where’d you get these? Tiffany’s?” They were just way too shiny. His department-issued handcuffs were stainless steel, but these looked like...White gold? Silver?
“They’re silver,” Scarlett said briefly, and Jesse looked up, startled. As if she had read his mind. Scarlett glanced at Eli, who gave a very small nod. “Eli is a werewolf,” she continued. “Someone put the cuffs on him to incapacitate him. I cut the chain, but I don’t have a key to actually remove them. And until we do, he’s gotta stay within a few feet of me.”
“Um, okay,” Jesse said, pulling a little ring of keys out of his pocket. “I stopped at the precinct and signed these out. One of the vice detectives found this ring of handcuff keys years ago in an S and M shop, and the whole department adds to it whenever we find a weird one.”
They shifted around awkwardly for a few minutes, but after a little discussion, Eli found a position where he could rest one wrist on the arm of the couch, and Jesse pulled up a straight-backed chair so he could began fitting keys in the lock. It was still kind of uncomfortable, being this close to a guy—another werewolf, he remind himself—he didn’t know. It made Jesse talk too fast.
“So the silver thing is true? Poison to werewolves and vampires?”
The blond guy glanced at Scarlett, who gave an it’s up to you shrug.
“Magic does weird things to silver, or maybe vice versa,” he said. His voice was low and gravelly. “I don’t know why. Some magics are enhanced by it, some the opposite. For werewolves, it’s pretty much our kryptonite, yeah.”
“Not for the vampires, though,” Scarlett added. “Silver just makes them itch a little, so don’t go thinking silver bullets will do the trick there.”
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