Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel)

by Melissa F. Olson

  The steady thrum of pain from my leg suddenly intensified, as if to remind me it existed. “Yes, thank you,” I told my leg. I had almost forgotten to catalogue my messed-up knee. Fantastic. I honestly didn’t know what to be most upset about. I leaned back on the couch pillow, feeling trapped and frustrated.

  I wish I could say I tapped into reserves of inner strength and struck upon a plan to fix everything, but that’s not really my style. Instead, I laid there for a good long while, alternately pouting and feeling sorry for myself. I wasn’t even twenty-four, dammit! Most of the people I knew from high school were currently being supported by their parents while they figured out what to do with their useless but enjoyably obtained liberal arts degrees. I shouldn’t have to deal with all of this! It wasn’t fair.

  I might have lain there sulking until Jesse arrived the next morning, except that it was still pretty early when he left, and by nine o’clock I was starving. I tried to ignore the hunger cramps in my stomach, but after a while my head began to ache too, and I realized that, unless I got some food, it was only going to get worse. So I took a deep, slow breath, and did what anyone would do in my dire situation: I called for pizza.

  While I waited for the food, I ran through my options. I needed to do something. Will and Kirsten were both trying to find out more about the Luparii scout. Jesse was making phone calls. Everyone was busy, hard at work fixing my mess while I laid around waiting for pizza delivery. I felt a rush of shame. This had all started with my mistake, after all.

  What I really wanted was someone I could talk to about all this, who could help me work out a plan—but my options were limited. I couldn’t exactly hash it out with humans. I considered calling Corry, but even if I had been certain that bringing her all the way into the Old World was the right play, she was fifteen and probably couldn’t help much. I knew that if I called Molly right then, she wouldn’t answer. She would have already begun to distance herself from me. And everyone else I knew in the Old World were people who were dumb enough to need help cleaning up a crime scene.

  I tried Molly anyway, just in case, but her phone went straight to voicemail. I sighed, tapping the phone against my forehead. There was one other person I could try, but I really, really didn’t want to. “Suck it up, Scarlett,” I said, my voice suddenly seeming loud in the empty house. “Nobody cares about your stupid weird feelings.”

  I dialed the phone.

  A few minutes later, the pizza guy rang the doorbell. I limped to the door to sign the receipt and collect my delicious cheesy goodies. I had barely gotten the door closed when the doorbell rang again, and I opened it, expecting the pizza guy had forgotten to give me a receipt or something—but even before I saw her, I recognized the familiar sensation of a witch in my radius.

  “Um . . . hi,” Runa Vore said hesitantly.

  “You have a really nice place,” Runa said politely, looking around Molly’s kitchen. I set the pizza box in the middle of the table, pulling out a chair for myself.

  “It’s not mine,” I said, a little shortly. I pointed to another chair, and as Runa was sitting down I said, “Do you want some pizza?”

  “No, I ate. And I’m a vegan,” she added.

  Of course she was. I looked down at my greasy, cheesy, sausage pizza. What with the dead animal on it and everything. “Will it bother you to have it here?” I asked reluctantly. I really, really didn’t want her to say yes.

  But she waved a hand. “Oh, no. I don’t expect people around me to live the same way I do, that’s just silly.” I relaxed an inch and swooped up a slice, taking a huge first bite. I was so hungry. “But . . . I guess I don’t really know why I’m here,” she continued, looking almost apologetic.

  “Then why’d you come?” I asked, my mouth still full.

  Runa gestured helplessly, not sure what to say. I swallowed and said with effort, “I’m sorry, that was rude. What I meant to say was, ‘Thanks for coming.’”

  She nodded, her short blonde pigtails bobbing along with her head. I was really having to work hard not to hate her on sight. It wasn’t just that she’d dated Jesse—she was also annoyingly put-together, artistic, and graceful. She gave off a sense of inner peace that I envied much more than her beauty. Lots of people are beautiful, and you don’t live in Los Angeles very long before you notice that, hey, a whole bunch of them congregate here. But Runa also seemed so comfortable in her skin. I, on the other hand, couldn’t even feel comfortable in my sweatpants and ratty T-shirt. I felt a pang of grief for my dad’s Chicago Bears jersey, which Eli had taken away, presumably to destroy.

  Focus, Scarlett. “I asked you here,” I began, “because I need to talk to someone about a really big Old World mess, and frankly my options are limited. Very limited.” She smiled a little ruefully, and I liked her for it. “Sorry again,” I added.

  “What about Jesse?” she said carefully, keeping her face still. “Can’t he help?”

  “Jesse and I are not okay right now,” I answered. No sense tiptoeing around it. “But I’d rather not talk about him.”

  Runa nodded again. “I can respect that.”

  “Thank you. Please hang on a second while I inhale a little more pizza.” This time she grinned at me, and I finished off the slice and reached for another. “I think my body’s still hungry from being unconscious for a couple of days,” I mumbled.

  Runa blinked. “When was this?”

  I stilled. “You don’t . . . Kirsten didn’t tell you?”

  Her eyes flinched away. “Kirsten and I are not okay right now,” she said softly.

  Kirsten was the one who’d sent Runa to get close to Jesse, in hopes of finding out if he was telling Old World secrets to anyone, especially other cops. He’d dumped Runa when he’d found out. I was guessing that this had been what created the rift between Runa and Kirsten, which was interesting, but not really my business. “Fair enough,” I said, shrugging.

  “But I don’t mind being a sounding board, if that’s what you need.” She fidgeted for a moment, pushing loose strands of blonde hair behind her ears.

  “I guess I’ll start at the beginning then. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.”

  So I walked her through the whole thing: the confrontation with Olivia, waking up to Will, getting called back to work, the nova, the investigation with Jesse. She told me about being assigned to the Evergreen crime scene and calling Jesse, after which I picked up the story again. By the time I got to the Luparii, we had moved into the living room, drinking coffee that she’d made. Apparently the coffee Molly bought was already vegan.

  I told her everything, except for the parts having to do with changing Eli back into a human. Will had told me to keep that a secret, and it was the least I could do for him. And besides, it wasn’t really connected to the mess with the nova, not anymore.

  “So Jesse’s still making calls, but I don’t know how we’re going to find the nova,” I summed up. “And the full moon is tomorrow night.”

  Runa sat back in her chair, looking thoughtful. “And you don’t know where the nova is,” she said slowly. “But you think you know where he’s going to be.”

  “Right. But even if Jesse’s right, Griffith is too big, and the Luparii scout is still out there too.”

  “Hmm.” Runa stared off into space for a moment, considering. “And I suppose it wouldn’t do any good for you and Jesse to split up and go after the nova and the scout separately.”

  I shook my head. “Jesse’s a good cop, but he can’t go up against a witch with a lethal dog-monster, or a werewolf in a big natural area.” Griffith wasn’t a clear field where you could see anything coming; it was a dense tangle of brushes, trees, and rocky outcroppings. A werewolf would have no trouble getting the jump on a human, with or without silver bullets.

  Sighing, I pushed hair away from my face. I’d taken out my ponytail so I could rest my head comfortably on the couch. “It’d be different if we could track the nova somehow, or know exactly where he’s going to park his car
and change. Then we could get him in my radius, let Jesse subdue him, and problem solved.”

  A slow smile was spreading over Runa’s gorgeous face. “What?” I asked, confused. “What’d I say?”

  Runa leaned forward. “You think you need to find the nova, but technically that’s not true. You just need something that can find him.”

  “Isn’t that splitting hairs?” I asked doubtfully.

  Then I got it.

  I grinned at the gorgeous witch, suddenly fully appreciating what Jesse had seen in her. “Runa Vore, you clever minx.”

  Chapter 39

  Jesse was having a long night.

  He’d finished all the phone calls, including doubling back on the people who hadn’t answered the first time, by just after ten. It was mostly a fruitless effort. The more he pressed, the less anyone seemed to know about Henry Remus. The guy was a ghost, one very lost soul in a whole city of them.

  The last two on his list were Esmé Welch and Corbin Hurd, the werewolves. Hurd wasn’t home, and a quick text to Will revealed that he had a business meeting in Santa Barbara and wouldn’t be back until the following afternoon. Esmé wasn’t home either, but Scarlett had said she was picking up a few shifts at Will’s bar, and Jesse managed to get a hold of her there. When she answered he could tell she’d picked up the office extension, just based on the lack of bar sounds in the background.

  He explained who he was and why he needed to ask her about Remus, and there was a long, pregnant pause. “Esmé?” he said cautiously. “Are you still there?”

  “It was totally an accident!” she burst out.

  “What was an accident?”

  “Corbin and I were chatting a few months back, while we were waiting for the PAW meeting to start,” Esmé said, and now Jesse could hear tears in her voice. “And we were just talking about our weekend plans, you know, and some of the latest pack drama, and there was this guy, he’d overheard the whole thing, and we said . . .” She took a gulping breath.

  “Let me guess,” Jesse interrupted. “You talked about being werewolves, and changing in between moons.”

  “I didn’t see him,” Esmé wailed. “Then he was running away, and I was gonna call the vampires, you know, like you’re supposed to, but nobody remembered his name and nothing bad happened and I just kind of . . . forgot about it. I mean, who would believe a story about werewolves?”

  Said the werewolf. Jesse managed to refrain from banging his head on the door frame. “What exactly were you guys talking about?”

  There was another long silence. “Esmé, I can come down there, pitch a big fit, and demand some answers, right in front of Will. Or you can just tell me what I need to know right now and save us both the trouble.”

  “There—there’s this place,” she whispered into the phone. “Up by the Sequoias. It’s like a three-hour drive, no chance of running into Will or any of the other pack members. Every month, on the new moon, some of the pack goes up there.”

  “What about you, Esmé?”

  “I went once,” she mumbled. “But I was too scared of disobeying Will. It wasn’t even any fun.”

  Jesse sighed. Well, at least they knew how Remus had found out about the werewolves. Only a guy who desperately wanted to believe in wolves would overhear that conversation and think it was actually true.

  “Why did you run out of the October meeting?” Jesse asked.

  “How did you—”

  “Esmé,” he said tiredly, “maybe you should just assume I know everything, and tell me the truth.”

  “I—I realized that he was nuts,” she admitted. “That was the day the guy overheard us. I went to find Corbin, to tell him the guy might be nuts, because Corbin had missed his speech. By the time I got Corbin out of the bathroom and we came back, they were long gone.”

  “Did you tell anyone else about this?” Jesse demanded.

  “Just my friend Ana,” she insisted.

  Jackpot.

  Jesse asked Esmé a few more questions, but she didn’t seem to know anything else about Remus, especially not where he might hide. By the time he was finished talking to her, Jesse was exhausted, having fueled the last few days on too much coffee and not enough sleep. He texted Scarlett to let her know about Esmé, then went and laid down on the bed in his little studio apartment. Jesse’s thoughts were just spinning, stuck on finding the nova wolf. They knew how the nova had been made, but that didn’t actually get them anywhere.

  Despite his churning mind, Jesse’s exhaustion tugged at him. After a few minutes, he gave up and set his alarm for seven, before giving in to it.

  He awoke feeling just as stuck, but at least a little more capable of rational thought. He showered and dressed quickly before leaving for Scarlett’s. The LA morning was cool and overcast, with a heavy gray sky that seemed to be drifting slowly downward to cover the ground in haze. Jesse had to shake a sudden impulse to stomp on the gas, to see if he could outrun the weather. It was the weekend, and this early in the morning the streets were practically empty. He made it to Scarlett’s in record time.

  To Jesse’s surprise, Scarlett answered her door quickly, with a phone to her ear and her cane tucked under the same arm. She was half hunched over to keep the phone from falling. “I’m on hold,” Scarlett said briefly, and gestured with a shoulder for him to come inside. “Come on in.”

  Without another word she took hold of her cane and hobbled back to the couch. She looked better than she had in days, dressed in jeans and an oversized cowl-necked sweater that went to her fingertips. Her hair was damp and sweet-smelling from the shower. She’d wrapped it up in a bun, and when she turned back toward the room Jesse saw what looked like a blue pen stuck through it. He followed her, perplexed. “Who are—” he began, but she half turned to him and held up a hand.

  “Yes. Yes, I’m still here,” she said into the phone. “Nobody? All right, I must have the wrong information. Thank you.” Ending the call, she collapsed onto the couch, careful to keep her knee free. Scarlett picked up a yellow pad of paper that was tucked into the couch between the arm and the cushion. She pulled the pen out of her bun. “There’s coffee in the kitchen if you want it,” she said through a yawn.

  “I had some on the way. What’s going on?” he asked, still mystified. He perched in the armchair, more so he wouldn’t be looming over her than because he needed to sit.

  She scribbled something on the pad before looking up. “You’re not going to believe this, but I came up with a plan. Well, Runa and I did.”

  For a second he thought he must have misheard her. “My Runa?” Jesse said incredulously.

  Scarlett stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes for a moment. “No, the other bearer of that globally popular name.”

  “Shut up. What . . . why were you talking to Runa?”

  “I figured it was time we had a long talk about your expertise in the bedroom,” Scarlett said gravely. When Jesse’s eyes more or less fell out of his head, she laughed. “Sorry, I’ve had, like, a lot of coffee. Like a lot.”

  Jesse shook his head slightly to clear it. “Okay, let me start all over. Good morning, Scarlett. How was your night?”

  “Good morning, Jesse,” Scarlett said gamely. “My night got a lot better when I invited your ex-girlfriend over for a chat. I needed to talk through this whole thing, and I couldn’t really think of anyone else.” Off Jesse’s look, she rolled her eyes and said, “No, we didn’t talk about you.”

  He must have looked relieved, because she added, “I mean, just your penis size, but that was it.”

  “Scarlett . . .”

  “Okay, okay.” She flapped a hand. “I told Runa most of what’s been happening, and she pointed out that, since we know where the nova is going to be, all we have to do is show up and hunt him down.”

  “Well, yeah, but that park is enormous . . . ,” Jesse began, but she waved him into silence.

  “I know; just listen. We need a way to find a renegade werewolf, and we just happen to have a t
rained werewolf-finder in town.”

  Jesse stared at her. “You’re not suggesting—” he started to say, but stopped when Scarlett bounced a little in her chair.

  “Yes, I am,” she said gleefully. “I’m suggesting we steal the bargest.”

  He eyed her suspiciously. “Wait,” Jesse said. “How much coffee have you had?”

  She pulled a face. “Think about it. If we take the bargest away on the morning of the full moon, the Luparii scout won’t have time to get a replacement or get his pals here to help him. It’ll cut his legs out from under him, and that’s one problem solved. Then we take the bargest to Griffith and use it to find the nova.”

  “That’s . . . huh.” Jesse stood up and began pacing the length of the living room, thinking it over. “There are so many unknowns,” he said, mostly to himself. “For one thing, even if we could pull off finding and stealing the bargest, we have no idea if it will listen to us.”

  “But remember, the thing started out as a dog,” Scarlett contended. “And you and I know dogs. We have as much chance as anyone outside of the Luparii at controlling the thing. What else?”

  He turned to face her, considering the problem. “Well,” he said, “we don’t know the bargest’s range. If Remus isn’t right where we expect, there’s no guarantee that it’ll be able to scent him from one end of the park to the other.”

  “True,” Scarlett allowed, “but the Luparii have spent, like, three hundred years perfecting this creature to hunt wolves. The friggin’ werewolves are afraid of it. I think we should trust that the Luparii wouldn’t be as successful as they are if the bargest wasn’t a complete werewolf-hunting badass.”