“I know you guys get rid of evidence, but she wouldn’t have taken a little girl’s
body
, right?”
I flinched. “Yeah, she would have,” I said soberly. “If a vampire really killed Emily Hess, and it looked obvious enough, Olivia would have taken the body to an incinerator and had it destroyed. The family would never have found out what had happened.” Plenty of bones had gone into Artie’s furnace over the years, and not all of them were from adults.
Jesse searched my face. “But you’ve never done that, right?” His voice sounded just like Corry’s had when she asked me if vampires and werewolves were evil. Like he was begging me to tell him it wasn’t true.
But I couldn’t. Oh, I could have lied, I suppose, but there was a part of me that had been eaten up by this, and that part thought I deserved what was coming to me. “Once. A teenage boy, maybe fourteen.” I cringed at the memory. The vampire hadn’t actually drained the kid’s blood, though just drinking from him was bad enough. Instead, though, the vamp had pushed too hard while he was feeding and broken the fourteen-year-old’s neck. Necks are delicate when you have enhanced strength; that’s part of why vampires don’t usually feed from them anymore.
The puncture marks were enough for Dashiell to call me in for body disposal. Then he had promised me that the vampire would die, too. I’d had nightmares about that one for months.
Jesse was leaning back in his seat, wincing as if I’d just slapped him. “Every time I think I’m getting to know you, it turns out I’m wrong,” he said, with quiet, exacting anger laced through his voice. “I’ve worked cases like that, where a child’s body was never found, and it’s excruciating.” He shook his head. “I just...I never would have thought you’d be capable of something like that.”
I said nothing, staring miserably into my tea.
He nodded to himself, as though that were an answer, and stood up, dropping money on the table. “I know we’re on a deadline, but I need...I need to take a walk. I’ll call you in a little while.”
“Jesse, wait—” I said feebly.
He turned and stiffly walked out. I sat there for a full minute without moving. And then I remembered that I hadn’t told him about the meeting with Jay.
Shit
.
Ignoring the huffy blonde, who was still glaring in my general direction, I pulled out my phone and hit Jesse’s number, but the call didn’t even go through to voice mail, which meant he was actively avoiding me. Great. Now what the hell was I supposed to do?
My phone rang in my hand, making me jump, but when I glanced at the caller ID, it wasn’t Jesse’s name that came up. It was my brother’s. Oh,
great
. My thumb automatically slid toward the
Ignore
button, but then stopped. Honestly, what did I have to lose at this point? Without Jesse, there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could do, anyway, and if this ended up being my last night on earth...I should probably talk to my brother. I flipped the phone open.
“Scarbo?”
The pet name twisted in my stomach. “Hi, Jack. What’s up?” I said with false cheer.
He coughed nervously, and I smiled despite myself, picturing him scrubbing his hand over his hair. “Uh...Wow, I guess I didn’t really expect you to answer. It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, I know. Um, is everything okay?”
His voice perked up. “Oh, yeah, everything’s great. Sorry if I, you know, worried you or anything.”
There was another awkward pause, and suddenly, I felt ridiculous. Were we really having this conversation? We sounded like strangers, for crying out loud. This was my brother, who’d driven
across Esperanza at three in the morning to pick me up from my first drinking party, who’d punched the first boy who’d broken my heart. This was
Jack
.
Do better
, I told myself sternly.
Be better at this
. “How are things with you, Jack?”
He laughed nervously. “Good, actually. Really good. That’s kind of why I’m calling. I got a job in the city. I’m moving to LA.”
For a second there, my heart stopped beating. Jack, coming here? Having an entry point into my life, and therefore my world?
Not. Good.
“That’s really great, Jack,” I said lamely. “Um...What kind of work is it?”
“Pretty much the same thing I’m doing now, but there’s a whole research aspect, too. It’s a private company that makes medical equipment, and they want some professional lab techs to put new designs through the specs, try it out with all kinds of testing. But here’s the best part,” he continued, and his voice was suddenly bursting with excitement, “they’re going to help me pay for med school. They want me to get my MD, you know, and then keep working for them. They have a whole bunch of education incentives....” He gushed for a while about 401K benefits and med school, but I wasn’t listening anymore. This was terrible.
Unless, of course, I didn’t live through the night, in which case it was fine.
“Sorry, Scarbo, I know I’m going on and on. I’m just really excited, you know, and I was hoping maybe you and I could get together soon. It’s been too long.” I actually heard him swallow. “I know that I wasn’t the best big brother or anything after the accident—”
“Jack, you don’t—”
“No, hang on, I mean it. I should have done a better job, I know. It was my responsibility to look out for you, and I blew it. And I don’t know much about how things are for you now, but...I’d
like to. I’m gonna be in the city next week, apartment hunting. Do you think we could get together for coffee?”
Guilt, guilt, guilt. I didn’t want Jack to be sorry. I wanted him to ignore me, to be the world’s shittiest sibling, because it helped balance out the fact that I’d gotten our parents killed. “I’ve kind of got a lot going on right now, Jack,” I hedged.
“Oh, okay,” he said amiably. “Well, listen, you’ve got my number. You should call me so we can get together. If I don’t hear from you in a couple weeks, I’ll try again.” He sounded so confident and relaxed, and I realized how much I’d missed him. And then, immediately after, that I might be dead really soon.
“Jackie...I love you, you know? And you didn’t do anything wrong, after Mom and Dad. I never, ever thought you did. Don’t carry that around, okay?”
“Okay, Scarb,” he said, surprise in his voice. “Thanks. I’ll, um...I’ll talk to you soon.”
We said good-bye, and I set my phone down on the little table—right next to the pictures of the Hess children, which Jesse had left behind when he’d stormed out.
And suddenly, I knew what to do. I looked at my watch: 8:45. Time to move. I hesitated for a second, considering whether I should run home for my Taser. I like carrying it when I go to big vampire events, but it would add at least forty minutes to my trip, and that was time I just didn’t have. Sighing, I headed for the van.
It was quite dark by the time I arrived at Dashiell’s house in Pasadena. I got myself buzzed in, parked the van, and performed my quick ding-dong-ditch modification before Beatrice opened the door. She was wearing a midnight-blue cocktail dress with some sort of elaborate weaving on the bodice, reminding me of medieval gowns, even as it clung to her curves. She was stunning, but seemed nervous and agitated when she ushered me in. More than anything, though, Beatrice looked worried.
“Scarlett—”
Without waiting for an invitation, I immediately headed in the direction of Dashiell’s office, with Beatrice a step behind me. She was tall, but she was also trotting along in four-inch heels without her usual vampire grace.
“I need to see him, Beatrice.”
“I am not sure this is the best time. He has had much trouble with the other vampires; they are so angry about Abraham and the others—” she rushed out, following me closely.
“That’s why I’m here, Bea. If I can find the person responsible, everything goes back to normal, right?”
She was silent for a beat too long, and I paused, skidding to a halt on the black-and-white-tiled hallway. I looked back at her. “Right?”
Beatrice shook her head. “I do not know, Scarlett. Yesterday, probably yes, but the situation is quickly growing worse. The powerful vampires in town are saying that Dashiell does not have the strength to hold the city, considering he can’t even protect his right hand. Our people say that they have been arguing among themselves about who should challenge Dashiell.” Her pale face looked even whiter in the bright hall light. “Scarlett, I know you do not always agree with Dashiell, but there are much, much worse vampires in California. Ariadne is among them.”
“She’s leading the revolution?”
“Yes.”
“And what happens to you if Dash is...overthrown?”
Her jaw tensed as she spoke. “If Ariadne takes control”—she shook her head—“my death will be bad.”
I don’t know which one of us was more surprised when I threw my arms around Beatrice, hugging her fiercely. “Don’t worry,” I said quietly.
She leaned back from me, looking shocked, and I stepped back, afraid I had hurt her. But then her hand reached slowly up to
her eye, and when it came away, it shone with wetness. She stared in amazement. “I had forgotten.”
“Beatrice, listen. I have to help someone tonight, but when I’m done, I’ll come back here, and I’ll stay with Dashiell, okay? With both of you. I won’t let anyone get close enough to challenge. I know that’s not a long-term solution, but...” I trailed off. She had the oddest expression on her face. “What?”
“You know that he is ready to kill you for all of this, whether or not you were involved?”
“Yeah. I know.”
Her eyes searched mine for a long moment, and then she smiled faintly. “He underestimates you.”
Before I could deal with that, steps echoed down the hall in front of us, and I felt Dashiell even before I could see him. He wore the same smooth black suit as always, but with no tie and the top button undone. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of something shiny at his hip, behind the suit jacket. A gun. Dashiell was carrying a gun.
Oh, God. We were all gonna die.
“You,” he said, taking that first gasping human breath. “What are you doing here? Have you come to confess? To throw yourself at my mercy?” He raised an amused eyebrow, but his all-too-human voice sounded dead serious. Emphasis on dead.
“Not just yet. But I would like to ask you some questions, if I could.” I nodded to his office door. “May I?”
He frowned at me, unmoving.
“Come on, Dashiell. You said I had a few more hours. I’m trying to use them wisely. And I have a lead.”
Dashiell glanced at his watch. “Five minutes.”
Beatrice squeezed my hand and turned away, walking back toward the front of the house. I was on my own.
I straightened my spine and followed Dash into his colossal office, which didn’t match the rest of the house at all. The mansion
reflected Beatrice’s tastes, which ran toward her native Spain and the Mediterranean. This office, however, was all medieval library—huge ornately carved oak desk, antique everything, oil lamps instead of electric. There was even a pair of white gloves lying out, presumably for the reading of extremely old books. For a moment, I wondered if Dash had seen the Renaissance. He couldn’t be
that
old, right? I felt very small, and wished that Jesse were there with me. Or even Eli, as complicated as that was.
Focus, Scarlett.
Dashiell pointed me to the chair opposite his desk, and we both sat down.
It was my turn to open a file of photos in front of him. I took a deep breath and passed over the two shots of the Hess children. “Emily and Jared Hess,” I told him, tapping their faces, just as he’d tapped the photos of the dead vampires. “Ten years ago tonight, Emily disappeared from La Brea Park, where she’d been playing with her brother after dark. Jared told the police he saw monsters drinking her blood, but they ignored him—or were paid to ignore him.”
Dashiell picked up the photo of Jared and studied it with renewed interest.
“Jared was very angry.”
“Go on.”
“All this time, we’ve been focusing on Abraham, figuring that he was the main victim and the other two a distraction. But Gregory told me that Joanna liked to feed from children.” I looked up, meeting his eyes. “Someone had to have called Olivia to clean up this scene at the park. Am I getting warm?”
Dashiell leaned back in his chair, looking thoughtful rather than simply angry. I hoped that was a good thing. “I remember this now. You are correct, Scarlett. Joanna went too far, and I sent Olivia in for the cleanup. We didn’t know that there was another child on the scene that night. When it made the newspapers, it
seemed so perfect—crazy teenage boy kills little sister, hides the body. Joanna was punished—by Abraham, who took care of those things for me.” He stared at the ceiling, as if reading text from the tiles. “I believe he had her starved.”
I shuddered. Olivia had told me once that Dashiell’s punishment for the vampires was to lock them in a basement cell with no access to blood. They would never die, but they could sometimes go insane. Or in Joanna’s case, probably more insane. “And you’re just telling me this now?” I tried to keep my voice level.
“Scarlett, Joanna has had a handful of these incidents in her centuries of life. She was starved for five years then released, and she hadn’t made any trouble since. I had forgotten all about it.”
Steady, Scarlett, steady. “You
forgot
about your crazy pet child killer?”
He sighed impatiently, as if that were a foolish question. “Of course, it would have been simpler to just destroy Joanna, but she happened to have powerful friends, Ariadne among them. We don’t kill our own lightly, Scarlett. To have her destroyed for harming a few human children would have created certain...tensions.”
Created tensions. I clenched my hands together, my fingernails whitening, so I wouldn’t punch him. He could easily decide to just shoot me right there and be done with it.
“With respect, Dashiell, I think that might have been a mistake,” I said very carefully. “Because Jared Hess is still out there, and I don’t think he’s done mourning his sister. He killed Joanna and Abraham, he killed the only witness, and since he couldn’t kill Olivia, he tried to set up her protégée.” I explained the weird timing of the last two murders, how by all odds I should have arrived on scene just in time to get caught. “He’s going after everyone involved, Dashiell, and
you
made the call to Olivia. He’s gotten information from somewhere; he’s going to know that you ordered the setup. If he’s cleaning up loose ends...You’ve gotta be on his list.”