“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow.” Her voice was sarcastic, and Jesse thought of her two kids. It must have been terrifying, worrying that you’d slip and end up losing the people you loved most. “It was one of those urban legend autopsy stories for a few months; then everyone forgot about it.”
“Did you ever hear from Dashiell again?”
“Once or twice a year, he calls, even now, asking me to ‘accidentally’ drop a blood sample on the floor or destroy the log for some piece of evidence. A tooth, once, of all things. He never mentioned Rob and Natalie again, but it’s always there, between us. I haven’t gotten caught yet, but even if I do, it’s still worth it.”
“I’m sorry, Glory.”
“Yeah.” She played with her plastic ID badge, looking unsettled. “Now, what’s this about you and vampires?”
Jesse thought for a second. He’d been told very explicitly not to talk abut the Old World, but Glory already knew at least part of it, and he really needed her help. Besides, she’d told him her story. If she trusted him enough to risk her kids by telling him, then it was the least he could do. As quickly as he could, he sketched out the case so far: meeting Scarlett, learning that another null was involved, tracing the silver handcuffs, Freedner. When he got to the part about Dashiell accusing Scarlett of being involved, the color suddenly drained from Glory’s face. “Oh, God.”
“What? What’s the matter?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I helped him last night; I gave him photos of the victim’s faces. I’m so sorry, Jesse, I had no idea...”
It took Jesse a minute to process it, that she was talking about the same photos Dashiell had shown Scarlett. “Oh, Glory, you couldn’t have known.”
She took a deep breath, trying to settle herself. “You’re right, but I feel terrible, anyway. What I did got you guys in trouble with this...man.”
“I understand, though,” Jesse said, and despite himself, he did understand. He was fond of Rob and Natalie, and really, was what Glory had done any worse than what Scarlett did?
At least Glory has a good reason
, he thought. “Please, don’t worry any more about it. If it wasn’t you, he would have found out some other way.”
She nodded, silently thanking him for the forgiveness. “I’ve never heard of a null. Well, I never heard of anything besides vampires, really, but I guess it makes sense.” She frowned. “It would have been helpful for Dashiell to introduce me to this girl. Maybe we could have worked together.”
“I think Dashiell plays his cards pretty close to the vest.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Glory stood up. “You better get going.”
“Will—”
“Yeah. I’ll cover.” She bit her lip and then added, “But, Jesse? Watch your back. I know you like this girl, but I don’t trust anyone from that world. You shouldn’t, either.”
With time to kill before meeting Cruz, I had pulled away from Eli’s neighborhood and decided to cruise the few miles to the Santa Monica Pier, parking the van in one of the public garages attached to the nearby mall. Three hours of free parking—yippee. I didn’t have a towel or swimsuit or anything, but that was okay. I pulled a battered USC baseball cap out of the net pocket behind my seat, smeared a little sunscreen on my face, and began the hike to the pier.
This particular pier is sort of the dingy, sand-covered Disneyland of the Pacific Highway. It’s a tourist trap, big-time, and most of the locals who visit are showing off their exaggerated sense of irony. I genuinely love it, though. The first time my parents took me to the city, I was six, and we drove down to the Santa Monica Pier and listened to a reggae band perform a free concert. I sat on my dad’s shoulders, giggling and clutching his hair while he danced with my mom. She laughed and twirled in a blue cotton sundress with little pink flowers, her long dark hair swinging along behind her. This one memory has given the pier a free pass from me for life.
I trekked down Colorado Boulevard, onto the pier, and down the metal staircase that lead to the beach itself. It was only in the high sixties, and nobody really sunbathes at Santa Monica anyway, so I had a good stretch of beach to myself. I picked my way past the
seaweed and snail shells that the ocean had spit up and plopped down on the sand about ten feet from the water’s farthest reach. I was wearing jeans and an ancient purple T-shirt that I keep in the back of the van for emergencies. I’d traded my practical sneakers for black flip-flops, and for the first time in days, I felt my body relax. I snuggled my head back into the sand and pulled the bill of my cap over my eyes. Thinking time.
My thoughts returned to Eli, and to males in general. My dating history isn’t what you’d call great. My last real, normal boyfriend had been when I was eighteen. Jacob Riley. Jake had had a crush on me all of senior year and finally got up the courage to ask me out on graduation night. We spent the entire summer together, lost our virginities to each other, and by August, I knew that he and I were real, that it was a relationship that could truly go somewhere. My eighteen-year-old mind was dazzled by this revelation: this could be
the guy
.
Maybe there was an alternate universe somewhere where Jake and Scarlett were married and had babies right now. But in reality, our lives had both taken turns. By September, Jake had decided to scrap his college plans and join the air force. He cried when he kissed me good-bye in front of my car as I was packing it for college. We were going to try the long-distance thing for a while, kind of feel out whether or not we could make it. Two weeks later, though, my parents were dead, and Jake didn’t exactly step up to the plate, boyfriend-wise. I got a sympathy card in the mail:
Warmest Regards, Jacob Riley
. He called once or twice after that, but I never called him back. By then I knew what I was, and the Scarlett who had loved Jake was as dead as her parents.
Since then, there’d been a sporadic string of one-night stands and dates that never numbered past three. Once a guy plumbed the depths of my trust issues, he never came back for more, and I was more than fine with that. That’s what I wanted. But now there was Eli...And, if I were being honest with myself, there was also Jesse.
Yeah, Jesse was growing on me. He was charming and laid-back and had really taken the whole Old World news like a champ. He was great-looking, of course, and kind of bashful about it, which was adorable. And most importantly, something about him was just so genuinely
good
. That’s the difference between him and Eli, or for that matter, him and me. Jesse was still untainted, and that was a little bit irresistible. He made me picture a world in which I was someone’s normal girlfriend, with movie nights and dinner with his parents and spending the holidays together. And I had to admit, that picture was...nice.
Ugh.
I scrubbed my hands over my face, dislodging my hat. What was I thinking? Eli wanted me for my body, so to speak, and I was already more than halfway to getting Cruz killed. I needed to get this whole park massacre thing over with, get the boys out of my head, and get back to my life before I’d met Cruz. Maybe I had just been going through the motions, but at least no one had gotten killed because of me.
At twelve fifteen, I stood up and dusted myself off, doing my best to shake the sand out of my hair and pockets. Then I climbed the stairs to the pier and hiked back up to the van. Time to go to work.
Van Nuys is kind of the gateway to the San Fernando Valley. Most of LA is in a basin—called, creatively, the Los Angeles Basin—which forms a big backward letter
C
, with the ocean as the open part of the letter. Because there are no mountains between LA and the ocean breeze, it stays cooler than most of the surrounding areas. The Valley is just northwest of the LA Basin, a separate, forward-facing letter
C
that touches Los Angeles. Mountains and foothills form the back of the Valley, so the air from the ocean can’t get inside. Which makes it much, much hotter than LA. The people who live in the Valley think of themselves as tougher and hardier
than the Hollywood people, and the Los Angeles residents scoff at the poor people who can only afford to live inside an oven. I guess that’s probably how the haves and the have-nots cope everywhere.
And Van Nuys is where those two attitudes intersect. Although it’s technically a town, it’s really just a town-sized strip mall where it’s always hot. And where, apparently, you can buy werewolf-proof restraints. I took the Van Nuys Boulevard north exit off the 101, following it almost to the northern border with Panorama City. The GPS directed me to a little block with two sub shops, a tire store, and an appliance repair place. The last business, on the west end of the mall, was called Aaron’s Bait Shop and Specialty Metal.
I squinted in the sun, which was blazing down on the Valley with a renewed sense of purpose. Jesse was just getting out of his car as I pulled into the parking spot closest to the road and hopped out of mine.
“You got them?” he asked me, pausing in front of the entrance.
I held up the bag, nodding. “And hello to you, too.”
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m short on time. And sleep.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, hesitant. You may have noticed that feelings aren’t really my thing.
He looked up, a little surprise in his face. “Yeah, Scarlett. Thanks.”
He held the door open, and a blast of air-conditioning welcomed us inside.
I had fished a few times when I was little, but the homemade tackle my dad used had nothing on Aaron’s. The store’s main feature was the wall to the left of the doorway, which was covered, ceiling to floor, in fake flies, fake minnows, and other little contraptions of feathers and rubber. The room itself was well kept and bright, with wide skylights that spread the sun down onto freestanding shelves filled with all manner of fishing gear.
“Wow,” Jesse whispered, still focused on the big wall. “That’s a lot of bait.”
“Can I help you?”
The guy who approached us was younger than I’d imagined, maybe late twenties, and he was carrying twenty extra pounds on a tall frame that otherwise looked pretty strong. A buzz cut accentuated ears that stuck out a little, and his smile was both friendly and distant, the customer-service smile you find everywhere. He was wearing a baggy polo shirt with a little metal name tag that said,
Aaron
.
I glanced at Jesse, willing him to take the lead. He took the hint.
“Are you the owner, sir?” His tone matched Aaron’s for politeness.
“Aaron Sanderson. Yes, I am. Can I help you find something?”
When Jesse reached into his breast pocket for his ID, I caught the little flinch on Aaron’s face. “My name is Officer Jesse Cruz. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.” He looked around the bait shop, which was empty except for us. “Is there somewhere we could speak?”
“Uh, sure. Am I in some kind of trouble?”
“No, sir. We just came across some metal items that may have originated with you. I’d like to talk to you about their owner.”
“Oh, okay.” Relieved, Aaron stepped past us and reached above the doorframe, pulling down a cardboard sign that said,
Gone fishin’. Back in a few
. He hooked it on the door under the open sign and flipped the lock shut. “This way.”
We weaved through the shelves of gear and passed a twelve-foot section of glass coolers filled with live bait. I saw a big aquarium with tiny squid moving around. Aaron took us through a fireproof back door and down a small hallway that led to a modern office with a desk and two sturdy oak chairs.
“Please, have a seat,” he said. He lowered himself down onto a wheeled desk chair. “So, what is this about?”
I pulled the small paper bag out of my giant purse and dumped the two halves of the handcuffs on the desk, feeling like a magician’s assistant.
“Mr. Sanderson, did you make these handcuffs?” Jesse asked.
“Yes, I did.”
Jesse raised his eyebrows. “That’s it? You don’t even have to pick them up and look at them?”
“I know silver when I see it, Officer. It’s not a real practical metal. As far as I know, I’m the only one in Southern California making pure-silver handcuffs.”
“To hold werewolves.” Jesse’s voice had no hint of a question in it, and Aaron Sanderson’s face changed. He looked at us with new interest—especially at me.
“I didn’t catch your name, Miss...?”
“Bernard. Scarlett Bernard.”
“Yes, I thought that was you.”
“You’ve heard of me?” It was my turn to be surprised. This guy hadn’t pinged when I got close, so I knew he was human. It must be because Dashiell was his client. Maybe that would make him want to cooperate with us.
Sanderson turned to Jesse. “And as you’re here with her, I’d expect you know about this Old World business, too?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, good. Now that we’ve got all that out in the open, yes, I do make items out of silver, for use for and against the werewolves. And I sell things here and there to humans who want stuff that looks good—letter openers, stuff like that. As far as I know, it isn’t illegal.”
“
For
the wolves? How can this be for the wolves?” I pushed the cuffs a little closer. It was off point, but the image of Eli writhing with pain wasn’t vacating my head anytime soon.
“Well, you know, some of the alphas in the Southwest know me, keep some things on hand in case the pack gets out of order. Not Will Carling, who I’d expect you know, but there are some who are interested.”
“What about chains?” Jesse leaned forward, trying to get us back on track. “There were silver chains used in a homicide on Pico last night. A werewolf was murdered. Were they yours?”
“Kind of smaller chains, like this one?” He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a foot-long length of small silver chain, with the same hammered oval links as the ones on Ronnie.
“Yes. Do you know who bought them?”
“Nah. The chains are probably my most popular item. People want them for oversized necklaces, ankle bracelets, stuff like that. I get a lot of girls who make their own jewelry wanting a set. There was a lady from a boutique at the Grove here a couple weeks ago, looking at selling them in her store.”