Malediction: An Old World Story (3 page)

“This is sort of an official call,” he said. “I need you and your colleagues to know about a possible … situation.”

“Let’s talk in person,” she said immediately. “My colleagues still get kind of touchy about having these conversations over the phone.”

They arranged to meet at Hair of the Dog when Jesse got off work. It wasn’t his favorite place to hang out, since Scarlett’s boyfriend was the head bartender, But he didn’t
really
have anything against Eli, who was a decent guy once you got past the whole werewolf thing, and the bar was more or less halfway between Jesse’s new place in Studio City and Scarlett’s apartment in Santa Monica.

Besides, Jesse could use a drink. He leaned against the wall for a moment, thinking about Allison Luther again. When they’d met in person back in January, Lex had struck him as a decent person and a good sister. All she’d wanted was to get her family some answers, and it had broken his heart a little to know he was one of the reasons she’d never get them. Jesse thought of Lex’s sister Samantha, and the horrible injuries that she’d suffered. He hadn’t personally tossed her body into the furnace, but he might as well have.

His thoughts were interrupted by the approach of a frantic PA. The PAs, Jesse had discovered, were always frantic. “Cruz! They need you in the writer’s room!”

Jesse sighed and went back to work.

3. Jesse

It was after seven by the time the writers wrapped for the day and he could start the drive down to the West Side. Hair of the Dog was on a nondescript block of Pico, a hole-in-the-wall place with great beer and surprisingly tasty nachos. The majority of the city’s werewolves were there nearly every night, driven by their need to be with the pack, and although the general public were always welcome guests, most of them tended to avoid the place. There was something a little too “clubby” about the regulars.

He took a parking spot a couple of streets east of the bar, once again missing his police parking privileges. As he approached the place, he noticed that Will, the pack alpha and bar owner, had installed a new door for the main entrance. The old one had been heavy glass, but this one was thick, solid wood on cast-iron hinges, tough to pull open and a hell of a lot tougher to break down. Jesse approved.

Inside, there was a square bar in the center of the room, surrounded by a smattering of tables. A hallway in the back led to the owner’s office and a back room with pool tables. The walls were covered floor to ceiling in pictures of canines, but Jesse barely noticed them anymore. And then he saw her.

Scarlett sat at the bar, perched easily on a stool with a soda in front of her. Her long fingers swirled the straw in lazy circles as she chatted with the bartender. To his relief, it wasn’t Eli but a short female werewolf he’d met once or twice—Esmé, he thought. Scarlett threw her head back and laughed at something the other woman had said, and Jesse felt a rush of … something. Wistfulness, maybe. It wasn’t even romantic, exactly, he just … missed her.

Esmé looked over at him, as did a couple of the other werewolves scattered around the room, and Scarlett followed her gaze. “Hey, Jesse,” she called out, grinning. Her bright green eyes sparkled with good humor, and she was wearing her dark hair down, which was rare. She’d gotten it cut, Jesse noticed, so it hung just past her shoulders and had some layering. “How’s tricks?”

“Hi.” Jesse propelled himself over to her. He was two feet away before he caught the slightest hint of movement in the darkness near her feet. “Oh,” he said in surprise. “Hey, Shadow.” He squatted down to pet Scarlett’s “dog”, which was not a dog at all, but a bargest—an ink-black monster of legend that was spell-made to hunt and kill werewolves. Shadow had been a dog once, though: 180 pounds of the ugliest dog Jesse had ever seen in his life. She was some kind of mixed breed that included Peruvian hairless, pit bull, and maybe some wolf. Or, he thought, squinting at her, maybe some jaguar. After giving him a quick, threat-assessment once-over, she thumped her club tail and didn’t bother getting up. He scratched first her furry ear, then her hairless one.

“I didn’t know you were bringing her,” he said to Scarlett.

“Corry’s my usual dog-sitter, but it’s a school night for her. I
could
have left her with Eli,” Scarlett said wryly, “but he’s terrified of being left alone with her, not that he’d ever admit it. I don’t think she’d hurt him without the command, but we’re still working on, um … rehabilitation.”

Jesse bent closer to the bargest so Scarlett wouldn’t see his smirk. Eli was a werewolf, and Shadow had been bred to kill his kind. The year before, a killer witch had brought Shadow to LA with the intention of wiping out all the werewolves in the area. That witch, Petra Corbett, was now in prison for Remus’s murder, but the bargest was too rare and valuable to give away, not to mention nearly impossible to kill. Scarlett’s bosses—
partners
, Jesse corrected himself—had asked her to adopt it.

“And Will doesn’t mind you having her in the bar?”

She snorted. “I think he likes it, actually. She never leaves my side, obviously, but the werewolves are all scared of her. It keeps them on their best behavior when we’re around.”

He scratched the bargest’s mostly hairless back until she craned her head around to give his hand one regal lick of thanks. Finally, he straightened up. “I like the haircut,” he said to Scarlett.

“Oh.” She touched it, a little self-conscious. “Thank you. Will said we can talk in his office where it’s quieter. Do you want a drink first?”

Jesse ordered a beer, then followed Scarlett as she and Shadow threaded through the tables to the back office. Scarlett closed the door behind him and sat down in Will’s office chair. The bargest settled at her feet.

“Your knee’s better, I see,” he commented. She looked good.

“Yeah. Physical therapy was a bitch, but it was worth it. I even started running again last month.” She gestured for him to pull up the visitor chair. Jesse sat. “So what’s up?”

He took a gulp of the beer, set it down on the desk, and said, “Remember that woman who came to see me at the LAPD last year, after the Remus case?”

The smile faded off Scarlett’s face. “Uhhhh…no?”

“Right after we stopped Remus, you came to my office to see me about Lizzy, and one of the victim’s relatives was with me,” he reminded her. “You said something felt weird about her, and she obviously had no idea what you were talking about. I had to pull you out into the hall.”

Scarlett nodded, her eyes going distant as she considered it. “Yeah, I remember now. She felt Old World. A little like a witch, but not quite right, and not quite anything else, either. And her magic was, like”—she waved a hand in the air, looking for a word—“
suppressed
, I guess would be the best way to put it. And dark.” Scarlett shuddered. “I don’t know. She was only in my radius for like, ten seconds.”

“Well, you might get another chance at her,” he said grimly. He told her about Lex’s phone call and her declaration that she would find the answers on her own. “When we met last year, she didn’t seem like she knew anything about the Old World, but she sure as hell does now. And she sort of suggested she’s a witch.”

“Well, fuck,” Scarlett said promptly, and he couldn’t help but grin.

“That’s what I said.”

“Who was the anonymous tip?”

“I can’t figure it out. My best guess is Lizzy.”

Scarlett shook her head emphatically. “Trust me, it’s not possible. Lizzy is … having problems. She’s being watched very carefully.” She took another drink of her soda and thought it over. “If she knows about the Old World, it’s really weird that she went to you.”

“Because I’m not supernatural?”

“Well, duh, but also because if she really is a witch she should have gone through the proper channels: had her clan contact Kirsten and clear everything through her. Although I’m still not convinced she is a witch.”

“Well, what else could she be?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Scarlett was frowning, like she was searching her memory for something. Finally she shrugged. “Witch magic is hereditary. Maybe she’s just got like a drop of witchblood, and she’s unaffiliated with a clan. That means she’s just some random with no pull.” She shrugged, like she was waving off a housefly.

“Yeah.” Jesse drank some more beer. He didn’t really disagree with anything Scarlett was saying, but at the same time, he hated the thought of Lex still not knowing what had happened to her sister. “Couldn’t we just tell her what she wants to know? If she really is a witch, I mean.”

Scarlett shook her head. “I’ll talk to the others, but I have a feeling they’ll say no.”

He understood that “the others” meant Will, Dashiell, and Kirsten, the leaders of the respective supernatural groups in Los Angeles. “Why?”

“They’re really big on ‘need to know basis,’ remember?” She shrugged. “It’s just how they think: the Old World gets pretty territorial, and if they believe this woman poses any kind of threat to how we do things …” She trailed off and let Jesse fill in the blanks. “Besides, it’s just not a great policy to spill secrets to every random who stumbles into town looking for them.”

Jesse, who had seen Lex’s angst over her missing sister up close and personal, thought that was unfair, but this was something they’d been through before: Scarlett wouldn’t let other people’s pain over her job keep her from doing it. He suddenly felt exhausted. “Well, what do you want me to do if she tracks me down?”

“Exactly what you did. She can’t prove anything. I’ll mention it to the others, but for now, we gotta stick with information embargo.”

“Okay, fine.” Jesse stood up and drained the beer. Scarlett gave him a hopeful look.

“Do you want to stick around for a game of pool or something?” she offered. “I haven’t seen you in a while. I’d love to hear about the new job. That actor who plays the FBI agent, does he really—”

“Thanks,” Jesse interrupted, “but I should probably get going.”

He left her sitting there in the office, and somehow managed to not look back.

As he drove north back to Studio City, Jesse couldn’t help but feel like there was some aspect of the cover-up he was forgetting. Will, Kiersten, Dashiell, Dashiell’s vampire wife, Scarlett, Noah …. He shook his head, not getting it.

It nagged at him.

4. Lex

I was ready to leave for LA immediately, but I had a few hoops to jump through first.

If Jesse Cruz wouldn’t talk to me, I knew I’d have to get answers from someone else, and I figured my best chance was Petra Corbett. I wasn’t sure she even knew any details about Sam’s death, but I was betting she knew
something
. Her whole story about self-defense and a fake animal attack was just too weird. If there was something fishy about Sam’s death, the answer was probably with the woman who had the even fishier story. Hopefully she could give me something that I could use as leverage with Cruz.

Of course, there was a voice in the back of my mind that kept asking why I needed to do this: what did it matter? Sam was dead, and nothing would change that. In my dream, Sam had said that I “deserved to know” what really happened, but did I
want
to know? What if I found out that Remus wasn’t really the killer? The evidence against him was overwhelming, and I was absolutely certain that he’d killed most of the other women he’d been accused of murdering, but was it possible that Sam wasn’t among them? What if the real killer had gotten away after blaming the friendly neighborhood serial killer? What if it was someone I knew?

What if it was someone who could get to Charlie?

And that thought was what convinced me that even if I wasn’t sure I
wanted
to know the truth, I definitely
had
to seek it out. If there was any chance that Charlie would be at risk because of information I didn’t have … I couldn’t allow that.

But it turned out that the process for visiting a prisoner at the California Institution for Women was pretty complicated. I had to get Petra’s permission before I could visit her, and there were forms to be passed back and forth to the prison. While I was waiting to hear back from Corbett, I prepared for the trip. I had to arrange for my cousins to look after my animals, and for time off from both of my jobs—my new position assisting Colorado’s head vampire, Maven, and my part-time gig at a local convenience store, which was sort of my cover job. I was expecting a little resistance from Maven, particularly given how new our situation was, but to my surprise, she readily agreed to give me a couple of days off to “get my things in order,” as she put it. I wasn’t about to look the gift horse in the mouth, so I just thanked her.

I didn’t tell my family or even Quinn, the vampire I was sort of planning on dating at some point, where I was going; I just said I’d be visiting some friends in the Los Angeles area for a couple of days. I think all of them assumed that meant I was going to see some army buddies, and I let them. It was a lot easier than saying that I had to go learn more about my sister’s murder.

Finally, I received word Petra Corbett had agreed to see me, for whatever reason—maybe just out of boredom—and a little over a week after my conversation with Sam, I had all my ducks in a row. I wasn’t sure my wheezy Subaru could make the fifteen-hour drive, so I booked a plane ticket and a rental car instead, and found a cheap hotel in the Valley. I gritted my teeth at the expense, which was nearly half my checking account, but it wasn’t like I could put a price on the information.

I landed in Los Angeles on the Saturday afternoon before my appointment to see Corbett. The most obvious use of my extra time was to talk to Lizzy Thompkins, the survivor who’d been with Sam the night she died. We’d never met—she and Sam weren’t close, as I understood it, and she hadn’t come to the memorials, but she would be the person who knew the most about my sister’s last hours.

Unfortunately, when I tried to look her up from Boulder, I couldn’t find any sign of her. Lizzy seemed to have disappeared, at least from the Internet. I’d expanded my search range, messing around for hours on both Facebook and the web page for the organization where Sam, Ruanna, and Lizzy had all volunteered—but no dice. She’d just sort of vanished.