Dead Spots (8 page)

“That is one theory,” he’d allowed. “But there’s another.”

“What is that?”

“That nulls will help us hide from human detection. That your kind will protect us.”

And the way that he’d looked at me, in that exact moment...Well, it taught me to be afraid of him.

“You’re thinking like a cop,” I told Jesse, emerging from my reverie and taking a sip of my soda. “All law and order, but that’s not how the Old World works. Self-preservation is everything to these people. If they were discovered, they would either try to take control of humans or be hunted to extinction. Probably both.”

“So they should just get away with killing people?” he protested.

“No, just...Look, right now, the only thing that unites the entire Old World is the fear of being exposed. It kind of works as its own justice system right there.”

Cruz thought that over for a moment, but then shook his head. “Okay, look, I need to think about that a little more. I’m still not sure that I shouldn’t just arrest you right now.”

“Good luck with
that
trial.” I checked my watch. “It’s getting late. Let’s go talk to Will.”

I grabbed his hand without thinking. It was warm and dry, and I dropped it almost immediately. What was
wrong
with me tonight? He followed me past the tables and through the
EMPLOYEES ONLY
door, where the bar’s din dropped down to a much more manageable level. Will was waiting for us in the hall outside the office that he shared with Caroline. I introduced the two of them, a little awkwardly.

“Will, this is Officer Jesse Cruz, and Cruz, this is Will Carling. He, um, owns this bar.”

The two men shook hands, and then Will said, “Come on in. I’ll show you those pictures.”

We followed him into the office, and he went behind his big oak desk and took out an oversized envelope full of photos, handing it to Cruz. I sat in one of the visitor chairs and looked at the walls, trying not to fidget. For someone who is technically a creature of the night, Will’s life often seems more normal than mine. The walls in his office were lined with pictures of the Little League team Will coached, a huge fish he’d caught, his mom and siblings. I wondered if his family knew what he was, if it bothered them. I felt a brief flare of jealousy, missing my own past as a normal person.

“Him,” Cruz said, and I jerked back to attention. He was holding up a photo of Will with Caroline and some of the other wolves, pointing to a slender, wispy man in the back. “This is him.”

Will took the picture and looked closely. “That’s Ronnie. He’s new to the pack, transferred last year from...Phoenix, I think.” He
looked up and shrugged at us. “I don’t actually know him all that well, but he works at a comic book shop not too far from here, a mile or so east on Pico.”

“Last name?” Cruz said, suddenly all business. He’d gotten out a little pen and pad. They looked brand-new.

“Pocoa, I think. Something close to that. But Scarlett said you weren’t arresting him.” He looked pointedly back and forth from me to Cruz, who nodded.

“This part of the investigation is out of the public record. It’s just me. We’ll ask Ronnie if he knows anything, and if he can help, great, if not, that’ll be it,” Cruz said, then added firmly, “Of course, if he’s involved somehow, I’ll have to pursue it.” I had to admire Cruz a little bit for that one. Of course, he’d never seen Will turn into a wolf and snarl at an underling.

Will stood up. “Sounds reasonable to me.” He reached over and shook Cruz’s hand, indicating that the meeting was over. Good. I was tired.

I drove us back to my parking garage. Cruz was quiet beside me, and I wondered for a second if he’d fallen asleep. Then he spoke.

“My mom worked on a vampire movie once.”

“Your mom works in the movies?”

“My whole family does. My dad’s a composer; my mom’s a script supervisor. My older brother Noah is a stuntman.”

“Noah Cruz?”

He grinned. “It was part of the deal. My mom’s Mexican, and my dad’s Caucasian, but she really, really wanted to pass on her family’s surname, and he didn’t care. So their deal was that she’d keep her last name and give it to us, and he got to pick Anglo first names. So, Noah and Jesse.” He looked over. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Why the name Scarlett?”

Oh. I was a little thrown, having not realized we were on an adorable-family-story basis. “Uh, I was named after Scarlett O’Hara, but my mom always told everyone it was the book, not the film. She corrected everybody, and it was kind of a family joke after a while. I’ve never even seen the movie.”

“Do your parents know about, you know, what you can do? All of this?”

“They died,” I said matter-of-factly, “before I knew myself.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly. “Um...Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

I hesitated. I’ve always kept Jack’s existence far away from my work, but Cruz wasn’t really a part of my work, and he could probably find it in some police database anyway. “A brother, Jack. He’s older. He doesn’t know.”

“Do you see him much?”

I shrugged an
I don’t want to talk about it
kind of shrug, and we were quiet for the rest of the drive, which was just fine with me. I pulled into the parking garage at two forty-five, feeling gritty with tiredness. “So, tomorrow,” he said, one hand on the door latch, “will you come with me to check out this Ronnie guy?”

I leaned back in the seat, feeling even more tired than a moment ago. “Do I have to? Can’t you just go without me?”

“I’m guessing werewolves aren’t just strong and fast when they’re in wolf form, am I right?”

“Yes,” I said reluctantly.

“Then I’d like you to come with me. For protection.”

His smile was so warm and charming that I couldn’t help but smile back. Dammit. Stupid powers of hotness.

“Fine. Pick me up at one.”

“That late?” He sounded disappointed.

“I need sleep, Cruz. You can work your own end of the case without me.”

He shrugged, unbuckling, and made a move to open the van door.

“Wait,” I said, and reached out to snag his wrist.

He turned back, eyebrows raised, and I blushed and let go. Was I really this out of practice with dealing with attractive young men while sober?
Get it together, Scarlett
.

“Look,” I began, “I know we talked about this, and I know you already made it a whole day without telling anyone about the Old World—”

“How do you know that?” Cruz interrupted.

Because you’re still alive
, I thought, but I didn’t think a cop would appreciate that particular wording. “Because,” I said carefully, “if you’d run around telling people, I can guarantee it would have gotten back to Dashiell by now.” While he was still thinking that over, I added, “But do I need to be worried about you going back on our deal? You can’t tell
anyone
, you know, not family or your best friend or your dentist...”

Cruz rolled his eyes and held up a hand. “I’m not a child, Scarlett. I understand the stakes here.” I must not have looked very convinced, because he met my gaze and held it, giving me a small nod. “Really.”

I let out a breath. “Okay. Good night.”

Jesse Cruz couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this tired. There had been no point in trying to sleep after Scarlett had dropped him off, since he was working the day shift on Wednesday and only had two hours before he needed to be at work. So Jesse decided to go have breakfast at his parents’ house. He reasoned that free food and his mother’s customary interrogation would go a long way toward helping him stay awake and thinking.

Overall, he thought he was handling the Old World thing pretty well, although maybe that was partly just shock and exhaustion. Part of him felt as if he were in a movie, and any minute the credits would roll and he’d go back to his normal, supernatural-free life. Films were filled with all manner of supernatural, and though he was a cop now, Jesse had been a child of the cinema. It was hard not to be, growing up in Hollywood with film-production parents. When Jesse was seven, he had seen the original
Dracula
at a friend’s Halloween party and became instantly terrified of vampires. He’d hidden garlic cloves in the pockets of most of his clothes, and started sneaking his parents’ empty wine bottles out of the recycling bin and setting them up around his room, figuring that since Dracula didn’t drink wine, he probably wouldn’t like seeing the bottles everywhere. They also served as a nice early-warning system, creating a terrible racket every time someone entered his room and knocked down the stack behind the door.

After about a week of that, his mother had gotten fed up and taken Jesse on a visit to the set of a vampire movie, the third in a popular series. She’d shown him all the different tools that the crew used to make regular actors look like vampires, and the makeup artist had even given Jesse a set of old fangs to keep. He still had them somewhere. After that, young Jesse’s fears about vampires had dissolved, but he still remembered that feeling of wonder and terror, knowing there was something out in the night that wanted to get you. And now...He kept waiting for the makeup person to come out and show him the fake fangs, but it hadn’t happened yet.
And there was something sort of...exciting about that
, he thought. The world had gotten a lot scarier, but it had gotten a lot more interesting, too.

Jesse’s parents’ home in Los Feliz was big and sprawling. His mom and dad had taken a basic ranch house and built on to it every ten years or so until it reminded Jesse of a hospital—new additions and corridors that made it hard to find anything. The house was hardly sterile, though—his mother had overdecorated it to the point of suffocation, which Jesse, his father, and his older brother tended to smile about.

When he pulled into the driveway, Carmen Cruz was outside the house watering the mums and dahlias that crowded the porch. Max, his parents’ pit bull mix, was prancing—there was no other word for it—in circles around her, trying to catch the falling water in his mouth. As Jesse pulled up, Max went on high alert, immediately charging the newcomer with affection that bordered on assault.

“Hey, buddy,” Jesse said happily, crouching down to let Max lick his face. “Long time no see.”

“
Hijo
, you were here last weekend,” Carmen said, coming up for a kiss. She was short and stocky, with good looks that hadn’t faded with age. Last year, she’d finally cut off all her long hair, and Jesse still missed seeing it when he looked at her.

“True, but in dog time, that’s like years and years.” He kissed her cheek.

“Ah, I see. Am I to assume that this unannounced visit will involve me cooking you breakfast?”

“Only if you want to. I can always hit the McDonald’s drive-through,” he said mischievously, happy to be in the familiar rhythm of teasing her. It was about as far as he could get from werewolves and dead bodies in the dark.

“God forbid! All right, follow me. Max, come.” She slapped her leg at Max, who was eyeing the flowers as though he might lick the moisture right off them. “There’s water in the house, silly dog.”

In the kitchen, his mother stirred up some
híjoles caramba
, Mexican omelet, while Jesse sat at the counter and drank coffee. He hated the taste of all coffee, but he’d been pretending to enjoy his mother’s for years and had no good reason to give up the charade.

For a moment, he wanted to blurt out the story of the last few days—the werewolves, the girl, the whole thing—but he swallowed it. It was exciting to know that vampires were out there, but he still didn’t want to piss them off or involve his mother. Instead, he asked, “Is Dad working this morning?” trying not to wince at each sip of his coffee. While her back was turned, he dumped in a few more spoonfuls of sugar.

“Yes, he had an early meeting, but my call time isn’t until ten-thirty today, which is why I am here puttering around,” Carmen replied, “accidentally” dropping a piece of sausage in front of Max.

“
Mamá
, you know if you feed him like that, he’s going to expect to get scraps all the time.”

“That’s why I make it look like an accident,” she said, as though Jesse might be a little dim-witted. He smiled. Her face became very serious. “I saw on the news about the murders in La Brea Park. That is in your district, yes?”

“Yes. I’m assigned to the case. Just a grunt, though.”

Carmen made her guilt-inducing clucking sound. “Oh,
hijo
, why you must do this work I will never understand. Your brother said the television show he is working on is looking for a new police consultant. Maybe—”

“Mom,” Jesse cut in, “I don’t want to have this discussion again. I’m a cop. It’s what I do.” She sighed theatrically, sliding the finished omelet across the counter toward him and grabbing a fork out of the drawer to accompany it. “I know, I know. It’s just that your father and I worry so much. We should never have let you watch so much
Matlock
.”

Ordinarily, Jesse would have laughed and reassured her by emphasizing his low status on any case, but he was suddenly playing on a different level, and there were more risks. The thought was sobering.

His mother cleaned up the kitchen and played with Max while Jesse finished eating. He looked around the sunny room, with its Mexican paintings and vases of flowers, and felt a great swell of gratitude for his family. He thought about Scarlett Bernard, who had such a sadness about her.

“
Hijo
, you have a dreamy look on your face,” Carmen said, with mock reproach. Then her eyes lit up. “Is there, perhaps, a girl?”

He rolled his eyes. “Jeez,
Mamá
, you’re terrible.”

“That is a yes!” she crowed, raising her hands triumphantly.

He couldn’t help but smile at her. “It’s not like that. I did meet a girl yesterday, a witness, but there isn’t anything between us.”

His mother waited, raising her dark eyebrows.

“Okay, there is something about her,” he admitted. “I’ve met a lot of women in LA, and she’s...different.”

“I see,” she said, her voice mischievous.