Trail of Dead (10 page)

“You’re holding your breath,” he reminded me, his voice next to my ear.

“Right.” I exhaled and turned my head to face forward.
Eli
, I told myself.
You’re…something with Eli. Involved.
Yes, there’s a good word. Involved. “This is all so
Beverly Hills Cop
,” I said nervously.

“Look, this is what you’re doing,” he said. With my index finger still safely on the outside of the trigger guard, he wrapped his own finger around mine and gave the whole gun a quick tug backward toward my chest. “Jerking. Instead, focus straight ahead, keep your elbows loose but firm, and
squeeze
, like this.” Demonstrating, he squeezed his whole right hand around my whole right hand. “Got it?”

Work, brain,
work
. “Uh, what about the kick?”

“I’ll brace you.”

His arms around me loosened a little, giving me more room without moving away. He seemed so solid behind me, I felt like I could take a head-on collision and not so much as rock backward. “Remember,” he said, “Breathe in, and squeeze on the exhale.”

I managed to wound the diabolical paper target with five of the next six shots. “Good, good!” Jesse said happily. I set the gun down gently on the table and turned my face to his, accidentally grazing his mouth with my cheek. We both froze. I didn’t meet his eyes, but a long moment of silence lingered as we both considered the possibility that lay between us. Well, considered it again.

We had gone on one official date, just one. It was right before I left for New York, and the idea was to do something normal.
Human. He picked me up and took me to the ArcLight in Hollywood for a movie and a nearby sushi restaurant for dinner. We talked about the movie and our favorite actors, and he told me stories about his parents’ mischievous pit bull. For once, there was no talk of vampires or werewolves or witchcraft or anything else Old World. And it was amazing. I felt guilty about Eli, but he and I had had nothing but awkward work conversations for months, and Jesse…he looked at me sometimes like I was just another person, which no one else had done in the last five years. I couldn’t resist it.

At the end of the night, he offered to walk me to Molly’s front door, which was sort of sweet. I’m generally more of a one-night-stand girl than a chivalry girl. But when we got there, he reached out and stopped my hand before I could turn the knob. His eyes were troubled, and when he opened his mouth I was sure, just
convinced
, that it was going to be the start of some big “what are we doing” analytical conversation, and I just felt this great rush of…something. I took a step forward, and I kissed him. He wasn’t as tall as Eli, and in my high-heeled boots I just had to reach up a little bit and he was right there. His mouth was cool and hesitant at first, but when I didn’t resist he took my shoulders and pushed me gently against the door and kissed me
hard
.

It was incredible. It was like I could feel both of us let go of all of it, the Old World and the police and Jared Hess. For just a second there was no weight of history and magic between us. We were just Jesse and Scarlett. I’d never felt like that before.

And then my phone began to play “Bad Moon Rising,” which Molly had recently programmed as Eli’s ringtone.

I figured it had to be business, since that was all Eli and I talked about anymore, so I stepped a few feet away, still breathing hard, and turned my back on Jesse to take the call. I had been right: two female werewolves had managed to get into a drunken fight at the bar, and Eli just wanted to know what would get blood
out of hardwood floors. It was an easy, one-minute conversation, the kind I’ve had with my brother when he desperately needed to know how many teaspoons went into a tablespoon. But when I slid the phone shut and turned back to Jesse, he was shaking his head.

“I can’t do this, Scarlett.”

“Because of my job? It was just a stupid bar fight; everyone is fine.” I tried to keep the hurt out of my voice.

“Tonight everyone is fine. Tonight it isn’t a big deal,” he said, sounding sad. “But I can’t be around you and listen to you discussing crimes and bloodshed like they’re nothing. I’m not…wired like that.”

“Jesse—”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought I could get past it, but I don’t think I can. Every time your phone rings, I’m going to wonder if what you’re doing is even legal, or who might be getting hurt because of it.” He took my hand, squeezed it gently, and took a step back. “I think we should stop here, before we do some real damage.” Then he walked away from me, leaving me standing there with my mouth dropped open.

I went into the house, and for the first time since my parents had died, I cried. And the next time I’d seen Jesse, he was picking me up to take me to Erin’s murder scene.

At the gun range, I broke first, turning to face the table in front of me.

“Uh, thanks for doing this, Jesse,” I said, in the general direction of the gun.

“Yeah. Of course.” He stepped away from me, and I watched him back up to where he’d dropped his duffel bag. “Look, I have an extra gun and holster. I did your paperwork this morning, and I’m pushing it through as fast as I can—”

“Wait. What?” I said incredulously. “Look, I agree that it’s good to know how to do this, but I’m not actually going to
carry
a gun.”

“Come on, Scarlett. It’s a good idea. If you have a gun, and Olivia gets in your…zone, or whatever, you can keep her from taking you down. And even if she’s a vampire, it’ll slow her down a little, right? What’s the problem?”

“I don’t…guns just…” Words completely failed me, and I gestured helplessly. Using one very carefully in a controlled environment with an LAPD cop literally at my back was one thing. Carrying one with me in the real world was another.

Jesse saw my panic and held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, let’s drop this for the moment. Your paperwork’s not done, and I’ll be with you for a while anyway. But I do have something else for you.” He reached in the duffel and pulled out something long and black. I poked it and saw the little Kevlar logo.

“Merry Christmas.” He held it out to me.

“A bulletproof vest?” I said skeptically. “That’s completely pointless, Jess. Nothing Old World uses a gun. It’d be like…carrying a homemade machete to a British fencing match. Tacky.”

“There were plenty of guns last fall when we took down Jared Hess,” he pointed out. “They’re starting to think outside the box. Besides, Olivia is coming after you, specifically. She’s gonna know a gun’s the best way to kill you. It changes things.”

That scared me enough to consent. I slid out of my comfortable canvas jacket and let him pull the thing over my head. When he fastened the straps, though, the vest rode way too big, armholes hanging down to the sides of my breasts. The vest’s shoulders spiked out a couple of inches past the end of my own shoulders, giving me a Joan-Crawford-from-Hell look. “Jesse, I can’t raise my arms. Who does this belong to? Copzilla?”

“Hey,” he protested. “It
is
a woman’s vest.”

“She-Copzilla?” He snorted but let me tug the Velcro straps off. “I can’t wear this. And if we don’t go now, we’re gonna be late.”

He frowned at his watch, as if he could glare it into giving us more time, and finally shrugged. “Fine. But I’m getting you a better one tomorrow.”

“If we live that long.” I put the back of my hand mockingly against my forehead.

He took my tone as intended and gave me a light backhand on the shoulder. “Knock it off.”

The freeway was already crowded when we left the shooting range, which made driving almost
more
dangerous. Instead of an inch-by-inch crawl, the freeway was full of assholes doing that annoying swooping-between-lanes thing. I know, because Jesse was one of them. I didn’t say anything, though, just held on tight to the door handle in Jesse’s little sedan. As my father had pointed out when I was seventeen and wanted to go to the city by myself, LA driving is not for weenies. We managed to arrive at Dashiell’s Pasadena residence at five after six, which counts as on time in LA, where everyone is usually either five minutes early or twenty minutes late.

There is this conception that vampires are loners who live by themselves until they have to go out and seduce a victim to be their dinner, and afterward they come back to their solitary home to…I don’t know, brood sexily. But on the contrary, Dashiell and
his wife
, Beatrice, own a gorgeous Spanish colonial mansion—sort of rectangular, with a huge open courtyard in the middle—where there are always people floating around, both with and without heartbeats. There are vampire bodyguards and servants, and plenty of humans too, since when you have as much money as Dashiell does you can afford to have food delivered. Tonight Dashiell’s parking area was full, thanks to his usual entourage plus my other Old World employers.

The vampire who opened the door was new to Dashiell’s in-house posse. He was on the short side, with that kind of muscular stockiness you see in retired wrestlers, though he’d only been about forty when he was turned. He wasn’t registering much wattage on the Scarlett Bernard Power Scale. We hadn’t met, but by the way he glared at me I was pretty sure he wasn’t a fan of being human again.

“Detective Cruz, Ms. Bernard,” he said to each of us in turn. His voice was low and cold as the grave, so to speak, but he gestured for us to come in.

“Jeeves,” I replied.

He wasn’t amused. “Laurence,” he corrected stiffly.

Jesse opened his mouth and closed it again. I was betting his cop superpowers were telling him to ask for Laurence’s last name, but by now Jesse knew that vampires rarely use them. The older ones have changed their official last names so often that some of them have actually forgotten the original, and the younger ones don’t want to give away how young and inexperienced they are. One of my life dreams is to be in a room with two vampires that have the same name, but somehow it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe they add “of Pasadena” or whatever town they live in, like Robin Hood. Or maybe when they meet they have a fight to the death, Highlander-style.

“Are we out on the patio?” I asked, already half-turned in that direction.

“No, the gathering will be in the recreation room. Mr. Dashiell”—I tried not to chortle at the Mr.; I really did—“was concerned about those of you who still get cold.” He said “get cold” the way you say “wet the bed.” “Right this way,” he finished. He turned on his heel and marched down the hall without glancing back to see if we were following. Jesse shot me a grin and mouthed “the
gathering
,” before turning to follow. I smiled.

I’d never been in the rec room—frankly I was amused at the thought of Dashiell
having
a rec room—but it looked more like the
lobby of one of the classier Holiday Inns than a place where you goofed around and watched television. It even smelled impersonal, like furniture polish and leather. Usually Dashiell has meetings with me out on the patio because the giant oval table is big enough for him to stay out of my radius while technically still sitting with me. Tonight, though, he was throwing caution to the wind and getting inside my personal bubble. I supposed with Olivia running around killing people, we all had bigger things to worry about.

Dashiell was sitting erect in a poufy tan armchair, managing to make the whole thing look dignified as hell. Will and Eli, who was there as the pack’s beta, were on opposite ends of a long matching sofa. They were both leaning back into the couch, attempting to look relaxed, but both of their bodies were tight with tension. You could practically see their hackles up, although they both relaxed a centimeter when I got close enough to put them in my radius. Will shot me an appreciative smile, but Eli’s gaze was thoughtful, traveling back and forth between me and Jesse. I remembered the feeling of sleeping with him the night before, and then the feeling of Jesse’s arms around me at the shooting range, and blushed.

Jesse and I took two of the well-padded upright chairs that had been scattered around the couch set. I waited for a cue from Dashiell or maybe Will, but they were silent, clearly waiting for something. Or for someone. After about two minutes I heard the front door open and close and the sound of high, clunky heels striking the marble hallway floor. Jesse raised his eyebrows at me. “Kirsten,” I said quietly. He nodded.

She came in behind Laurence, looking even paler than usual, if that were possible, and weary. Her eyes were clear, but there was a rigidity to her posture that seemed out of character. She looked reluctant to sit, but finally dropped onto another padded seat near the door.

Dashiell allowed Laurence to offer all of us beverages (which we all declined, because there’s just something creepy about
accepting drinks from the undead), and then waved him away. “Let’s begin,” he announced.

“Beatrice?” I asked.

“My wife is visiting some acquaintances in Seattle,” Dashiell said, and I felt something small and tight release in my chest. One less friend to worry about. At the same time, though, it showed how serious Dashiell was taking Olivia—it’s very expensive and complicated for a vampire to travel without a null along. With all the different things that can go wrong or cause delays, they can’t exactly fly commercial.

“Thank you for coming,” Dashiell continued, courteously implying that any of us had an actual choice when he summoned us. “Recent affairs have now escalated to a point where I thought it important for us to meet. To summarize, based on information gathered by Kirsten and our young police officer, Detective Cruz”—he paused and looked toward Jesse, who did kind of an awkward duck-head-and-wave maneuver—“we now suspect that Olivia has killed, or conspired to kill, at least two witches and two humans in the city in the last week. When I rose this evening I was also informed that she is likely working with a witch.” Now Kirsten nodded, still staring stonily at the table in front of her. “Have you figured out whom?” Dashiell asked her.

“No, I haven’t,” she growled, and Dashiell’s eyebrows rose. “As I told Scarlett and the detective, I know all of the witches that used Olivia’s services, one way or another, but none of them have the…audacity for this kind of thing.” She folded her arms defiantly.