Involuntary tears pooled in my eyes.
“What do you say, little girl?” he whispered, flicking my earlobe with his tongue.
It took everything I had not to shudder away, but I had no room to move, anyway.
Without letting go of my hair, he leaned his weight on my legs and pulled out a tiny key ring, reaching for the cuffs. “You want to celebrate with me?” He was like a little kid, hyper and trying to make everyone else get worked up, too. I knew he just wanted to get a rise out of me, so I stared stubbornly at the floor.
I was in the middle of reevaluating my no-face-kicking decision when the sky fell down.
Okay, it wasn’t the actual sky, but it was a damned big piece of the floor above us. With a sudden crash, a six-foot-square chunk of linoleum landed about eight feet to the right of us, with two people riding it down. I squinted past the cloud of dust and made out Kirsten and Eli. Jared yelped and released me, darting to the other side of the room to take cover behind the tool bench. Kirsten, whose powers had vanished the second they dropped through the floor, hopped off the shattered floor section and wisely crouched down behind one of the basement’s wooden support columns, keeping it between herself and Jared.
“Hope you have insurance,” she yelled toward the tool bench. She was wearing a pretty floral shirt over a simple blue cocktail dress and looked like an angel when she smiled my way. “Hey, Scarlett.”
Eli had run straight for me, and I was so glad to see him I choked on my first three attempts at speech. “He’s...you...You came,” I stammered.
He smiled a sweet, joyful smile that I knew I would remember until my death. “Of course I came. Why wouldn’t I come?”
The first bullet hit the wall six inches from my head, and I hissed with surprise. “Keys, keys, keys,” I chanted frantically, pointing to where they’d fallen when Jared had bolted. I ducked down, making myself small, and the second shot hit right where my head had been. Jared wasn’t just shooting wildly; he was taking the time to aim, which did not bode well for Team Scarlett. Eli scrambled for the keys and then crawled back to me. I was trembling with adrenaline, and my shaking slowed down his attempt to get the key in the lock. I fought to keep still.
All the while, he ducked as silver bullets flew past us to drill into the wall. “Got it,” he said breathlessly, and I started to stand, but Eli pushed me back down just in time for the next bullet to bury itself in his back instead of my chest.
“Eli!” I screamed. I looked around frantically for a weapon. I needed to stop Jared Hess and get that bullet out, but if I moved too far from Eli, the silver poisoning would begin. All I had on my side of the basement was a ring of keys, a giant silver cage, and a bunch of stuff that was bolted into the floor. I had nothing.
And then I realized that wasn’t true.
Eli tried to push me toward Kirsten and the exit, but I shook him off easily. I gauged the distance and tugged him the other way, to the wooden column opposite her. As the two of us half crawled, half stumbled behind it, I felt the quick slide of power as the witch in the corner came free of my radius.
“Kirsten,” I yelled, “you’re up!” Then I tried to breathe calmly. The last thing we needed was for me to get all emotional and have my radius expand.
I’d never seen Kirsten work before, so I stared, awestruck, as her hair began to crackle with power and energy. She chanted in something like Latin, and suddenly, the section of ceiling above the tool bench began to rattle and shake, bits of dust and ceiling tile salting the air around where Jared was hiding. He screamed in alarm and bolted away just as a perfect four-foot square of ceiling came crashing down where he’d been crouched. He raced toward Eli and me, pulling out a new gun, but suddenly, he was cut short, bouncing backward as though he’d been swatted. I looked over at Kirsten, who was still chanting. I tried to swallow my shock. I had known that Kirsten was good, but not this good.
Hess screamed with frustration and spun on his heel, cutting his losses. He ran up the stairs, vanishing onto the first floor. As quickly as it had begun, the fight was over.
I barely noticed. Eli had collapsed on the ground, and blood poured freely from the bullet hole in his upper back. There was so much that I could hardly see the entry wound.
“You stupid man,” I scolded, trying not to cry into the wound.
I was trying to tear a strip of my shirt to put over the bullet hole. In the movies, they always rip bandages like nobody’s business, but with shaking hands, I couldn’t even get a tear started.
“Here,” Kirsten said, unbuttoning the floral shirt, “take this.”
I thanked her and pushed it down hard onto the bullet hole, leaning into it.
“Ow,” he protested weakly.
“Shut up,” I said. “What were you thinking, charging in here with no weapon? You could have been killed!”
“I brought a weapon,” he argued, looking pointedly at Kirsten. “She kicked ass, too.”
“Thank you, Eli,” Kirsten said, smiling. She looked pale and tired. “I’m not usually a combat kind of witch, so I appreciate it.”
“And how did you get here?” I asked her. “I thought you were going to Santa Barbara tonight. Or did he make that up?”
“No, I was there. But Eli knows one of the witches, who knew someone with Paul’s cell phone number, and we left the reception. Then it was just a matter of the tracking spell.”
“What’d you use?” I asked, my attention still focused on Eli’s back. I almost missed the glance the two of them exchanged before Eli answered.
“I had a T-shirt you left at my place once.”
I didn’t remember doing that, but I didn’t care, either. I gently eased Eli onto his side so I could check his chest. “Okay, I’m not a doctor, but I know it didn’t go through, which means the bullet is still in there. And it’s silver. I can’t go after him until we get it out.”
“You shouldn’t go after him at all—” Eli began.
“Shut up. Concentrate on your bleeding,” I told him firmly. I looked at Kirsten. “We have to get the bullet out. Once it’s gone, I can move away, and he’ll heal fast, but it has to come out first, or the silver will poison him.”
“We can try to get it out the old-fashioned way. Hang on.” She scuttled over to Jared Hess’s workbench, and I heard tools rattling
around. When she came back, she had what looked like an enormous pair of iron tweezers. “Do you want to do it?” she asked me.
I shook my head, suddenly afraid.
“Okay. Eli, this is gonna be messy and hurt like hell, but it should get the job done. Ready?”
He looked at me and reached toward me with his good arm. Seeing what he wanted, I dropped down to my side and scooted against him, chest to chest. I wrapped one arm carefully around his back above the bullet hole to hold him still.
“I’m ready,” he said to Kirsten, but his eyes never left mine.
The next few minutes were some of the worst of my life, much less Eli’s. Apologizing like crazy, Kirsten dug in with the forceps, while Eli made very human whimpering noises right beside me.
“Should we be worrying about infection?” she muttered to me.
I bit my lip. “I don’t think so. The wolves never get sick; I don’t think they can get infected. I think, when I move away, he should be fine.”
Eli snarled at a particularly painful dig, burying his face in my neck, and a second later, Kirsten pulled back the forceps with a little smushed bullet pinioned in between them.
“I got it,” she said shakily, then stood up. “Excuse me a minute.” She sprinted over to the bottom of the stairs, where I heard her start to retch.
As soon as she moved, I started to get up myself, intending to get as far away as possible so Eli could heal. But he lifted a weak hand to snag my arm before I could fully stand. “Wait,” he said, and I crouched back down. “I want to go with you,” he said soberly. “You can’t face that guy and Dashiell alone. Just give me a minute to heal and—”
“No fucking way,” I told him, tears in my throat. “You got
shot
, Eli. With silver. And he’s got a ton more silver ammo. I can’t let you come.”
“But—”
“No,” I said, my voice rising. “I can’t do it.”
He paused and looked at me. “Can’t do what?”
“I can’t...I can’t be responsible for anyone else getting hurt. Not today.” In an attempt to ward off tears, I smiled. “And right now, I think I can even outrun you.”
He opened his mouth to protest again, but I leaned down and kissed him, not very gently. His good arm rose to touch my face, and when I finally broke the kiss, he was smiling at me.
“I’ll accept that as your surrender,” I told him.
I let go of his hand and stood up, brushing off my jeans. “Where are we?” I asked Kirsten, who was sitting on the stairs now.
“A little ranch house in Burbank, just off the 101.”
“Did you guys drive separately?”
She nodded, and I squatted back down to dig Eli’s keys out of his pants pocket.
“Hey!” he said.
“I’m taking your phone, too. I’ll bring it back later,” I told him. I headed for the stairs before he could answer, feeling the tug as he slid out of my radius. The second he was out, he gave a surprised gasp, and I looked back to see color already returning to his face. Good. I went over to Kirsten and crouched to hug her. “Thank you,” I said sincerely.
She gave a shaky laugh. “For the magic, anytime. But no more surgery, please.”
“Deal.” I ran up the stairs.
Corry.
By the time I got to Eli’s truck, I realized I had no idea where to go. Corry and her family were staying at a Holiday Inn, but I didn’t know which one. And Hess had a head start, too. I called Will, updated him on Eli, and asked for Corry’s phone number, which was still in my cell phone back at Kirsten’s. Then I called Corry’s cell, which at least rang this time. When it went to voice mail, I
punched
End
and immediately redialed. This time she answered on the fourth ring.
“Hello?” Her voice was cautious and hushed, probably trying not to wake her family.
“It’s Scarlett. Where are you?” I said abruptly.
“Hi! Um, I thought I wasn’t supposed to tell you where—”
“Corry, he got away. I tried to stop him, but he figured out what was going on, and he’s coming for you. He knows where you are, do you understand? Tell me and I’ll come get you.”
“Oh God. It’s the Holiday Inn in Burbank, off Colorado Boulevard.”
I cursed and started the truck’s engine, pulling away from the little house. Dumb fucking luck. If I was in Glendale, that was five minutes away. How long had it taken Kirsten to get the bullet out of Eli’s shoulder?
More than five minutes.
“Corry, listen to me. He’s gonna be there any second. Get your family up and take them to the lobby, somewhere with a lot of people, okay? Go
now
.”
Before she could answer me, I heard a pounding on her end of the phone, and she gave a surprised little yelp. “Scarlett, he’s here. He’s trying to get in. Oh, God help us—”
“Corry? Corry!” I yelled into the phone, feeling helpless. Then the sounds stopped, and I checked the screen. Disconnected. I called 911 and directed the operator to the Holiday Inn, hanging up when she tried to ask questions. The police would be too late. And Corry and her family would be no match for Jared Hess when he was loaded for bear like that.
I picked a direction and stayed with it until I hit a major street. At a stoplight, I closed my eyes and conjured up my mental map of Los Angeles. I found the freeway and took the east exit toward Pasadena.
Then I called Jesse.
After about four seconds, Jesse had realized that it wasn’t as simple as storming over to Sanderson’s bait shop and arresting him. First, he didn’t even know whether Sanderson—Hess, he corrected—actually had Scarlett or whether he’d be in a position to kill her if Jesse sent in the cavalry. He’d already asked a police cruiser that had been in the area to drive past the bait shop, and they’d reported that the lights were all out and there were no parked cars in the lot or on the street in front of the building. It was likely that Hess was working from somewhere else, anyway. Jesse knew he had to slow down and think it through, that this was the moment when cops who were emotionally invested made serious mistakes, but he couldn’t help the panic.
Think like a cop, he told himself. Even if he did get Hess, what then? Jesse didn’t have a speck of evidence linking him to the La Brea Park case. If he really did have Scarlett, then Jesse might be able to get him on kidnapping charges, but that was assuming he could find them. He needed to bring the bad guy to the cops, and he needed Dashiell to know they had the right man in custody.
At eleven, he got sick of waiting and hopped in his car, heading toward the bait shop. On the way, he stopped at an all-night drugstore and bought a new car charger for the cell phone. When the phone booted up, he looked for messages, but there was nothing. He called Scarlett’s phone again, but it was still turned off.
The cruiser had been right about the cars—not only was the strip mall’s small lot empty, but the street on either side of it as well. Jesse parked in front of the bait shop—screw subtlety—and went right up and knocked on the door. He cupped his hands around his eyes to peer into the shop. Darkness. In the red glow of the emergency exit light, he could barely make out the different stands of merchandise, but that was about it. No lights under closed doors, no signs of life at all. Jesse thought back to his and Scarlett’s visit to the shop. There had been only one back door, which led through the fireproof door to the little hallway. The office had been the only other door on the hallway, and then it had led straight to an exit. Jesse got into his car and circled around the building. He found the emergency exit door and checked for lights underneath. Nothing.
Jesse had just gotten back into his car when the phone rang, still plugged into the car charger. He grabbed too fast, fumbled it, and had to rescue it from the floor of the car.
“Cruz,” he barked, breathless.
“Jesse, it’s me.”
He sighed in relief. “Oh, thank God. Where the hell have you been? Listen, I know who did it. Jared Hess became—”