We were silent for a moment, thinking about that.
Then I said softly, “Have you told them about your teacher?”
“No.”
I nodded. “Look, Corry, I’m not exactly the poster child for mental health, but you really should tell someone. A counselor, a therapist, your mom. You need to be able to talk about it.”
She didn’t answer me, and I didn’t push. We were silent for a long moment, and then she reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a black Magic Marker. “Um, do you want to sign my cast?”
She held out the marker, and her eyes were full of something—hope. I took the marker, uncapped it, and turned the cast over very gently with my free hand. She already had signatures and little notes from her parents, her brother, a couple of friends, even a teacher. I paused. Then, with guilt and sorrow roiling in my stomach, I put the cap back on the marker.
She looked puzzled. “What?”
“Corry...I don’t think you and I should spend time together.”
Her face changed immediately, beginning to shut down, and I held up a hand.
“Wait, wait, hear me out. The things that we can do, Corry, they’re really valuable to some people. I’m ‘out of the closet,’ or whatever, but nobody knows what you can do except for a very few people, who I trust not to say anything.” At least for now. And I hadn’t forgotten that someone had given Corry away to Jared Hess, but there wasn’t much I could do about that now. “You can still walk away, and I think you should.”
“Why?” she cried, hurt in her eyes. “Why should I bother trying to hide?”
“Because it’s safer, honey,” I said gently. “You were right, what you told your parents. You can do something that some very bad people would love to have at their disposal.” That was a lesson that we’d all learned the hard way. “And as long as you’re spending time with me, those people won’t have to look very hard to find you.”
“But you do it! Everyone knows what you can do, and you’re fine!”
I gestured to the bed. “Look at me. Do I look fine? My situation is complicated, Corry. And you deserve a chance to finish growing up before you choose how complicated you want your life to be.”
“That’s not fair!” she cried. “You’re the only one who...who knows...”
“I’m sorry, Corry. I swear I am.”
Without another word, she stood up, her back perfectly straight, and marched out of the room. I bit my lip hard enough to leave marks. Had I just done the right thing? Or was leaving her out of Dashiell’s protection even worse than having her free? I wished there were someone who would tell me the right thing to do.
That same afternoon, Kirsten came by with a big basket of organic fruit and a plate of cookies. She seemed completely recovered from
the whole rescue/surgery trauma and wore a sunny smile on top of her pretty sundress and Grecian sandals. Since I hadn’t had a shower in about five days, this was not healthy for my self-esteem. I nodded at Eli, who kissed my forehead and told me he’d run out for some food. He gave Kirsten a peck on the cheek as he passed her, and she smiled in return. Battling Hess together had definitely built up some trust between the two of them.
I gestured for Kirsten to sit, and she perched in the rocking chair. “They’re chocolate chip,” she said, handing me the cookies.
I took a cookie and bit into it. “Thank you, it’s delicious.”
“You’re welcome,” Kirsten said.
When I had swallowed the bite, I asked, “Did you...Are you okay, after everything that happened?”
Her face turned serious. “I am. I’ve been getting more calls from Dashiell lately. I think he’s starting to see me as a...a player, I suppose. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
“Neither am I.”
“Listen,” Kirsten said, “there’s a meeting that I need to get to, unfortunately, but I wanted to stop by to tell you something.”
“Oh?” I said, munching.
“The tracking spell? The one I used to find you in that basement? Eli didn’t really have one of your T-shirts.”
I stilled, my mouth full of cookie. I’d completely forgotten. Had I left something more embarrassing at Eli’s? A bra? Panties? Wouldn’t I remember not having panties? “What did you use?”
She looked uncomfortable. “This is awkward...I still thought you should know. We couldn’t find anything and were in such a hurry...So I used Eli. Himself.”
“For a tracking spell? I thought you needed a belonging.”
“I do,” she said quietly, then looked at me as if I were missing something obvious.
“Wait...I’m sorry, are you saying that Eli
belongs
to me?”
“Sort of.” Her fingers twined in the air as she struggled for an explanation. “It’s more like...his heart does. He considers himself yours, and so in the eyes of the spell, so to speak, he is.” She winced. “Was I right to tell you?”
“Yeah, no...I mean, yes, it’s good to know. Thank you,” I managed.
She nodded and squeezed my hand, rising to leave.
Eli belonged to me?
I had a few other visitors in the hospital. Caroline brought me a huge stack of trashy magazines and romance novels. Will came by with an apologetic smile and a beaten-up checkers board. We didn’t talk about how close I’d come to dying, but he made a point to tell me that I was welcome in his bar anytime I wanted, null or not. He ruffled my hair when he left, and I knew things were okay between us.
Since she couldn’t come out during visiting hours—and apparently didn’t want to sneak in, like Dashiell—Molly called to check on me every night. Beatrice and I had a long phone conversation, too, during which she thanked me profusely and I managed to cajole her into sharing some stories about famous people she’d known. She didn’t mention the story that Dashiell had told me, so I didn’t, either. Dashiell stopped by one last time to tell me that they had finally figured out how Jared Hess had gotten the three vampires into the clearing. Hess had approached Joanna and Demetri through his silver business contacts and gotten the couple interested in buying some silver chains for use against the werewolves. They had arranged for him to meet with Abraham, the money guy, to talk about the specifics of the deal. Dashiell still didn’t know about how they all got to the park that night, but it looked like we might never find out. That was fine with me.
During the day, Eli and I played cards and watched TV in between my naps. At night, Jesse would arrive, kiss my head, and
collapse in the armchair. The two of them were never together very long, and there was a wariness between them that I found a little amusing. But they were always polite and cordial, at least in front of me.
Jesse was pissed that Dashiell had pressed his mind, and was determined not to miss anything else. He scooted the armchair to within four inches of the bed and woke up every time the nurses came to check on me, though he wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone but me. He seemed exhausted all the time, and on my last night in the hospital, I finally asked him how things were at work.
“Um, okay,” he said cautiously. “I got a lot of credit for the Hess thing, and since none of the La Brea Park victims had families to put up a big fuss, we were able to close the whole case pretty quickly. It ended well, public relations–wise. And”—he smiled shyly and pulled a new-looking leather wallet out of his pocket, flipping it open—“I got promoted.”
I looked at the shiny new detective badge. “Oh, Jesse, that’s awesome.”
“Thanks. Not how I wanted to get it, but...”
“But you still deserve it.”
We were quiet for a moment, and I watched him fidgeting.
“There’s something you’re still not telling me, isn’t there?”
He sighed, leaning back in the chair. “My boss has been looking at me funny,” he admitted. “She wasn’t all that impressed with my performance during the investigation, and then I get this miraculous tip and solve the whole thing...I think she’s not even sure what she suspects me of doing, but she’s definitely suspicious. I’ve been busting my ass to appear competent so she’ll relax.”
“Is it working?”
“I don’t know.”
He was quiet after that, and we played falling-asleep chicken for a minute. Then he leaned forward and looked at me very seriously. My hands were folded on my stomach, and for a moment, he
reached over and pressed his fingers against mine. “Scarlett, about that day at the bait shop, when we were in the parking lot—”
I shook my head, withdrawing my fingers gently. “Jesse, I can’t. I just can’t even think about...um...relationship stuff right now.” Especially since I apparently owned another man.
“I understand, and I’m not pushing you,” he said quietly. “But we almost kissed, Scarlett. And I wanted to let you know that if you ever wanted to almost kiss again, or even actually kiss...Well, I wanted to throw my hat in the ring.”
I blinked, surprised. “I thought after you found out what I did...”
He gave a little nod, conceding a point I hadn’t been able to make. “I still have...strong feelings about your job. But I almost lost you, and that definitely made an impression.”
Happily, before I had to respond, a nurse—and my new favorite person in the world—bustled in to get my blood pressure, and when she left, we started talking about something else.
Dammit
, I thought a little while later, when Jesse had fallen asleep again. I had pretty much written off Jesse as a romantic option, and then he goes and says something like that. No matter how things turned out later, he and Eli had both been incredible to me in the hospital. Better than I deserved. What I’d said was true, though—now that Jack was under Dashiell’s thumb and I apparently had this crazy new ability, my thoughts had to be elsewhere. I hadn’t told anyone about what I’d done to Ariadne, and I didn’t plan to. The fewer people who knew about that, the better. And, if I were being honest with myself, I particularly didn’t want Eli to know. Eli did not like being a were, and I was very afraid he’d ask me to change him back. Until I knew more about what I could do, I didn’t want that between us.
By Friday afternoon, I was ready to check out of the hospital. My body was recovering nicely—I could stay awake for the whole
day again—and although it was very weak, my radius was defined again. I could tell Eli was inside it, but it wasn’t changing him back into a human, which was okay for the time being. I was just relieved that it was coming back. It’s scary being vulnerable.
It took hours to get through the last-minute exams and paperwork—I was starting to think one nurse in particular was dragging everything out—and it was getting dark by the time everything was done. I was practically bouncing in the wheelchair as the nurse drove it down to the emergency room entrance. I was sick of hospital food and bad cable, and to my own surprise, I missed running and work and the rest of my life. I even missed watching romantic comedies with Molly, who had told me she was planning a Brat Pack marathon for when I got back.
When we got down to the lobby, Eli went ahead to bring his car around. The nurse who had driven the wheelchair was looking nervous and fidgety, so I finally told her I could wait on the bench outside the hospital entrance by myself. As soon as I was settled down, she hustled back for the door. My thoughts were elsewhere, thinking about how I could get time off work to go learn about being a null—not to mention Eli and Jesse.
It’s right when you’re distracted by boys that the powers of evil will come for you.
I idly watched a little boy with a blue balloon walk into the hospital, and when I turned my head back toward the street, a vampire sat on the bench next to me, looking smug and dangerous in a tailored red dress. She grabbed my arm, digging her fingernails in, and tossed back waves of chestnut hair to smirk at me.
And the bottom dropped out of the world.
“Hello, Scar-bear. Did you get my flowers?”
“No,” I breathed. “That’s not possible.” I shook my head frantically. “It’s not possible!”
“Oh, but it is possible,” Olivia cooed at me. I tried to pull away, but she just dug her nails in deeper. “No, honey, you’re not
going anywhere. You and I just have so much to talk about.” Blood began to drip from my arm where her nails had pierced it, and she licked her lips. “I came to the hospital to see you, even though you stopped coming for me. And why was that? Did you find out something you shouldn’t?” Her voice was syrupy sweet, and silent tears began to run down my cheeks. “Why
did
you have to go digging up the past, Scar-bear?”
I heard the squeal of tires and saw Eli’s truck careen out of the parking garage, bearing down on us.
“Oh, darn, looks like your ride is here already. To be continued, honey.” She released my arm and licked blood off her fingers, giving me her old, serene look. Then she was gone.
I began to scream.
Like Scarlett’s, my life once took a surprising sudden turn away from the path I had planned for myself. Unlike Scarlett, however, I had quite the heavy-duty support system to help me adjust, and this book happened because of them. A huge thank-you to everyone who had my back as I started writing, especially my aunts and uncles, and my laid-back husband, who was always willing to help by brainstorming or taking over parenting duties, and who read the first draft and delivered (still) the best compliment I’ve gotten: “I kept forgetting it was you.”
Thank you to my crack team of beta readers—Nicole Rosario, Kay Basler, Jason Martell, Brieta Bejin, Stephanie Olson, Megan Lane, Linda Crossett, Lisa Mysker, Tracy Tong, and Elizabeth Kraft—and to Carrie Welch, who was gracious enough to watch my daughter so I could work on
Dead Spots
. This book wouldn’t have been what it is without all of you. I also want to thank Scarlett’s namesake, Scarlett Welch, still the most terrifying toddler I have ever encountered. Please don’t read this book until you’re much older.
Much gratitude also goes to my mentor-heroes, author Alex Bledsoe and my graduate advisor Liam Callanan. You guys were always willing to entertain mundane questions about publishing and plotting, far beyond the call of friendship or duty.
Thank you, of course, to the “official” team: my agent, Jacquie Flynn; my wonderful development editor, Jeff VanderMeer; and Alex Carr, who saw
Dead Spots
the way I had hoped someone would. If I’m forgetting anyone, please forgive me. I’m new at this.