Shadow Hunt

by Melissa F. Olson

  I shook my head hard. “Enough,” I said out loud.

  Jesse just looked at me. I gazed into his warm brown eyes, and I felt the fiercest sense of love and protection I’d ever felt in my life. I was having a moment of perfect clarity. It was kind of heady.

  “Enough,” I said again. “We’ve had enough. This has to stop.”

  “What?”

  I turned and walked a few paces away from him. I simultaneously felt perfectly calm and like I really needed to calm down. I shook out my arms for a moment and went back over to Jesse. “Why do the Luparii feel like they can come to LA and fuck with us?”

  He was puzzled. “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Because they think peace is weak,” I said. My voice was perfectly level. “All of them, all the assholes who’ve come to LA in the past five years and tried to tear us apart, they all think the way we share power is weak, and therefore we’re fair game. And I’ve had enough.”

  “I have too,” he said, still studying me. “But what do we do about it?”

  “We make them afraid,” I said matter-of-factly. “Starting with the Luparii. I don’t know what this Wild Hunt is tonight, but I’m going to stop it. And then I’m going to make sure everyone in the entire Old World knows who I am, and that I am not a null with whom to fuck. And the next time someone thinks they can take your brother”—I touched my stomach—“or this baby or anyone else, they will think twice. I swear to you.”

  His gaze was intense, although I couldn’t read it. I didn’t remember moving, but somehow we had drawn toward each other. “You can’t promise that, Scarlett,” he said softly.

  “Watch me.”

  And I went up on my tiptoes and kissed him.

  Chapter 31

  In that moment, I felt immortal and strong, and I wasn’t afraid of anything . . . so I forgot to be afraid of the thing between us. Kissing Jesse wasn’t just the right thing to do; it was the only thing to do.

  That said, it wasn’t much of a kiss, just a quick brush of my lips on his, but it sent currents of heat down my skin and into my abdomen. I pulled back, knowing the look of surprise on his face mirrored my own. I took a step back, suddenly remembering myself. We are in the goddamned hospital, Scarlett. “Jesse . . . I . . .”

  But his hands gripped my hips and whirled me around, pressing my back against the wall next to the door. He paused then, resting his forehead on mine, his eyes asking a question. I lifted my chin, and all the feelings I’d ever had for him broke through a dam.

  “Yes,” I whispered. His mouth met mine, and his fingers tore at the flimsy tie in my hair, threading his fingers through it as it spilled down over my shoulders. He made a noise of pleasure, and suddenly I needed him closer. Which was impossible, but I needed it anyway. I pressed my body to his, and when that wasn’t close enough I peeled his jacket back, but no, that wasn’t close enough either. My mouth never left his as my fingers fumbled at the buttons on his shirt, starting at the bottom so I could slide my hands under his shirt and around his back. He moaned into my mouth, and I felt almost light-headed. Weightless. The tremendous pressure I’d felt only minutes before was replaced by the light warmth of his touch.

  Something in the air shifted, and an understanding passed between us, from my lips to his and vice versa. This wasn’t a fluke or a mistake. It was solid. And it was inevitable.

  People talk about getting lost in a kiss, and for the first time I understood, because my mind lost its grip on anything that wasn’t the taste of him. Then he bent to kiss my neck, his fingers on the button of my jeans, and my eyes opened and saw the stained-glass window.

  I remembered where we were.

  “Jesse, stop,” I gasped, pushing him away from me. Hurt instantly filled his eyes, and I felt like I’d been punched in the ribs. “No! I just mean . . . not like this.” I gestured around at the little chapel. I was having a hard time catching my breath. “Not here. This . . . us . . . we deserve better.” I wasn’t sure how to say it, but he seemed to understand. He nodded and stepped toward me again, resting his hands chastely on my hips.

  “You’re right,” he murmured, kissing my forehead. “Of course you’re right.”

  I hated to do it, but I had to bring us back to reality. “There’s something else,” I said, and he frowned when he saw the look on my face. I took a deep breath. “When I thought you might die, while you were in the twisted slumber, I had Will hang out at the cottage on standby.” It took a moment for comprehension to hit his face, and I rushed to add, “I didn’t know if it would even be possible while you were under the spell, and the odds of a successful change haven’t been great lately, but . . .”

  “Noah,” he said softly.

  I nodded. “I called Sashi, the healing witch I told you about, but I have no idea if she’ll even get the message in time. But we could try changing him. If—if it works, then I could turn him human again. Cure him.”

  He touched my stomach. “You shouldn’t be doing that to your body right now.”

  I shrugged. “Either way . . . he would find out about the Old World. He’d be sucked in for good.” Dashiell was historically not a fan of humans knowing about us, unless they had deep connections, like being the spouse of a werewolf, or a vampire’s human servant. He had been seriously against Jesse finding out about us back when he was a cop, and considered having Jesse killed just to silence him. Jesse knowing had worked out okay in the long run, but it didn’t mean I should run around town changing and then curing people.

  To make matters even more complicated, Will was the only werewolf who could do it—if I was planning to change Noah back. He already knew about my ability to cure supernatural creatures. The rest of the pack couldn’t find out or there would be anarchy. Some of them would camp out at my door begging to be cured, and some of the hard-core werewolves would likely try to kill me to protect the pack. Only Will could know, and Will was really, really busy today. He couldn’t exactly hang around the hospital just in case.

  Jesse knew all this as well as I did, and I could see him running calculations in his head. “Let me see what the doctor says when he gets out of surgery,” he said at last.

  He was taking a risk, one that could hurt him even more. I went on my tiptoes so I could wrap my arms around his neck, breathing in his scent. He hugged me back just as hard, and started pulling the phone out of his pocket. “What happened with Killian and Sabine?” he asked. “I mean, I’m assuming they didn’t get away. Did you send them to Dashiell’s house?”

  I reddened. “No. I messed up.” I told him about Killian shooting Sabine. I was expecting his face to fall, but he just nodded.

  “You don’t want to yell at me?” I asked.

  “Of course not. I wasn’t there, Scar. I’m not going to second-guess you now.” Then a mischievous smile spread across his face. “Besides, I’m pretty sure Dashiell will yell at you enough for everyone.”

  I sighed. “You’re so right about that.” A thought occurred to me. “When we were talking to Owen this morning, before you got the text from Noah’s phone, you said you knew where the Luparii were camped out.”

  He nodded. “I think so. I’m pretty sure he was talking about Sunken City. It’s this development down in San Pedro that basically fell into the ocean in a landslide around 1930. Giant chunks of concrete and piping everywhere. Technically it’s illegal to go there—they have a shitty fence around it—but it’s really popular with hikers and kids and taggers. The city is kind of stuck, because it’s both very cool and very dangerous. If they open it to the public, they open themselves up to lawsuits if people get hurt. And if they don’t open it to the public, they’ve got to deal with trespassers and activists petitioning for access.” He shrugged. “So the local government kind of ignores it. I’ve been there a couple of times just to walk around.”

  “So it’s like an open secret?”

  “Yeah. Hell, I’m pretty sure it’s got a Facebook page.” He pulled out his phone and tapped on the screen for a f
ew minutes. Then he nodded to himself, reading the screen. “The hikers have been posting that the whole area has been closed off for the last three weeks, including the adjoining houses. There’s a rumor going around that another landslide is expected. And another rumor that they’re finally working on opening it as a public park.”

  “Sounds like a humans-go-away spell to me.”

  He pocketed the phone again. “But the Luparii aren’t stupid. They’ll have packed up and moved after Owen got away.”

  “I’m sure they did, but maybe they left something behind.”

  “Yeah, like a big-ass death trap.” He looked skeptical. “Promise you won’t go down there without me.”

  I shifted my weight from side to side. “Jesse . . .”

  “Scarlett . . .” He mimicked my tone. “It’s not safe.”

  “I’ll have Shadow. And I don’t know what else I can do to help. Will’s evacuating the pack, and Kirsten and Owen are about to be neck-high in research. If I go over there and sit down in front of a huge stack of books, I’m going to pass out on it.”

  “Would that be so terrible?” he replied. “You could use the rest.”

  I shook my head. “If the Wild Hunt rides tonight, I need to be doing everything I can to stop them today.”

  Jesse put his hands on my hips, bending his forehead to touch it against mine. “I’ll come with you then,” he said.

  “Your family needs you. What if . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence. What if Noah died and Jesse wasn’t here?

  A look of terrible sorrow filled his beautiful face, and I reached up and kissed his lips again, gently this time. He kissed me back with intensity, but without the fevered lust that had almost carried us away before.

  Then there was a loud buzzing sound from the direction of Jesse’s pocket, and he drew a shuddering breath. “That’s probably my parents, wanting an update. They’re on their way back from a wedding in San Luis Obispo. I should call them back.”

  I nodded. “Right. Yes. Right.” Why couldn’t I stop talking? “That is a thing for doing.”

  A smile flashed across his gorgeous face, and it felt like something exploded in my chest. “Don’t go to Sunken City without me,” Jesse pleaded. “Please. Don’t make me choose.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’ll try my best. I have other stops to make first, anyway . . . How about I promise I will call you before I go down there?”

  He nodded. “Look at us, all compromising and shit. It’s like we’re in a real relationship.”

  As soon as the word relationship left his mouth, a look of panic crossed his face, like he was afraid I was going to take it all back. I fought a smile. “Don’t look now,” I said seriously, “but I think we might be.”

  Chapter 32

  As it turned out, the phone call Jesse had ignored wasn’t from his parents. I waited while he listened to the voice mail, which turned out to be from the police, who had arrived at the hospital to interview Jesse about Noah’s attack. Jesse’s presence was requested back in the emergency waiting room.

  The story he had come up with was pretty simple: Jesse had been planning to meet his brother at Griffith Park to go hiking. He was a little late, and when he arrived, he found that Noah had been attacked, probably for his car, and dumped near the parking lot. He’d decided to leave me out of the story so it wouldn’t impede my movements for the day, which I appreciated.

  I made a quick call to Hayne to make sure the car would, in fact, be stolen by the time the police started investigating, and we started back toward the waiting room.

  “You can duck out the other door,” Jesse said as we approached. We were holding hands. “I know you need to get to Kirsten and the others.”

  “It’s not that,” I said, stopping and turning toward him. “Hayne said Kirsten is making calls to all her witch friends, and they’ll need time to do research. But I need to go talk to Jack and Juliet.” If the Luparii had come after Jesse’s brother, my own brother, his new wife, and their two kids could theoretically be in danger, too. “I do want to stay with you,” I added, laying my hand on his cheek. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to touch him, all the time, until I was suddenly allowed to do it.

  Goddamned baby hormones.

  “I know,” he assured me. He smoothed my hair behind my ears. I remembered him snapping my hair tie and shivered with pleasure. “If Noah stabilizes, I’ll try to get away tonight.” He hesitated. “You don’t think the Luparii will try something here, do you?”

  I considered it. It seemed really unlikely, but I could understand why he was worried. “Tell your folks that Noah’s new girlfriend is going to come to the hospital as soon as she can, probably around seven. You can come meet me then.”

  “Noah doesn’t have a girlfriend,” he said, confused.

  “Sure he does. Molly.” I grinned. “I’ll call her now and leave her a message to come here after sunset to keep an eye on them.”

  A smile spread across his face, but he hesitated. “Don’t you need her?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have anything for her to do that would be as useful as this.”

  He kissed me again, and I pulled him closer, prolonging it. It seemed obscene to have joy bursting in my chest when so many things were going wrong all around us, but I couldn’t help it. When we finally came up for air, I pushed him toward the waiting room. “Go.”

  If Shadow hadn’t been waiting for me in the back of Astrid’s pickup truck, I might never have found it. I was so distracted that I was keeping an eye out for the White Whale.

  She barked lightly when she saw me wandering around, and I remembered what I was driving and my name and stuff.

  Jesse.

  I smiled to myself.

  Shadow could undoubtedly smell him all over me. Her tail wagged madly as I walked up, and I didn’t think I was imagining the playful glint in her eye. She hopped down—not waiting for me to lower the tailgate—and practically pranced over to the driver’s side door so I could let her in. I laughed. “Okay, okay,” I said. “But we’ve got to get it together. People are depending on us.”

  Stop smiling, Scarlett.

  Stop. Smiling.

  My first stop needed to be Jack’s house, and I was brought back to earth when I realized I was going to have to think of a story to tell him. Shit. It wasn’t even ten a.m. yet, and I was operating on very little sleep. I had no idea what to say.

  When I rang the doorbell of Jack’s condo in Sherman Oaks, my brother answered the door in boxer shorts and a white tee shirt, holding what looked like a bowl of Lucky Charms. His red hair was jutting up at odd angles, and his eyes were bleary. And yet the first thing out of his mouth was, “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Good morning, sunshine,” I said, grinning. “Fell down in Griffith Park. And I’m pretty sure I still look better than you do right now.”

  He glared at me. “Don’t be perky. It’s weird when you’re perky.” He stepped aside so Shadow and I could come in.

  As I walked past, I got a good whiff of him. “Holy crap, Jack! Are you . . . hungover?” I’d never known straight-arrow Jack to have more than one beer. The little sister in me was kind of delighted.

  “It’s not my fault,” he groused. “Some buddies from work came over last night to play Magic: the Gathering, and one of them brought this raspberry moonshine . . . it got ahead of me.”

  “You’re such a weird nerd.” Jack led me back into the living room, where he leaned against the arm of the couch and ate more cereal. I looked around at a scary amount of empty chip bags and beer bottles. Yep, it definitely looked like things had gotten ahead of him. “Where are Juliet and the kids?”

  “In San Jose visiting her parents,” he said, yawning. “Until Monday.”

  God bless weekend traveling. “You should probably start cleaning now.”

  “Bite me.” He took another spoonful of cereal. “What’s up? I haven’t seen you in . . .” He blinked, his eyes focusing. “Wait, it’s been li
ke two months. Juliet said you’re not returning her calls.”

  Right. Whoops. “Can we sit down?” I asked.

  He nodded. “You want some cereal?”

  I was about to say no, but the baby felt differently. “Actually, yes.”

  A few minutes later, we were seated at the kitchen table with our bowls of cereal. I was having flashbacks to being eight. “Jack, listen . . . you know how I work for Dashiell.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Yeah.”

  “Well . . .” I pushed the cereal around with my spoon. “I don’t just clean houses for him.”

  Jack finished chewing a bite, swallowed, and said, “I kind of figured.”

  Now it was my turn to look surprised. “What do you think I do?”

  “Honestly, I have no idea. But you’re smart and tough, and you make too much money.” He shrugged. “I figured it was something legally questionable but morally sound, like helping illegals get fake IDs. Or fighting crime at night in a cape. Something along those lines.”

  “That doesn’t . . . bother you?”

  Jack put his spoon down and pushed the bowl away. “Scarbo, when Mom and Dad died, I ditched you. We didn’t have much money, you couldn’t focus on school, and you were just . . . out there in the world. In LA. I’m your big brother, and I let that happen.” He reached across the table and touched my hand. “What right do I have to question the choices you made in order to take care of yourself when I couldn’t?”

  Tears pricked at my eyes. Was it possible that I wouldn’t need to blatantly lie to my human brother? “Listen. You’re right. Dashiell does some iffy stuff, but his heart is in the right place. He takes care of people. And that’s made him some enemies.”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”

  “I haven’t been calling Juliet back because I was afraid there might be blowback on you guys for what I do to help Dashiell.”

  He pulled his hand away and toyed with the spoon, looking unhappy. “I didn’t realize your work was like, dangerous.”