Trail of Dead (25 page)

As they came and left the sunroom, I stayed where I was. As long as nobody tried to use their magic, I was pretty much invisible. A few people sat down on my couch and made small talk for a few minutes, but it was obvious that everyone there knew everyone else, and after a few minutes the small talker always wandered off to find someone more interesting. Kirsten popped in to hand me a plate of hors d’oeuvres and a soda at some point, and I took my time working through the snacks, watching the witches talk and
laugh. A few of them seemed troubled rather than celebratory, and I figured they were probably talking about Erin and Denise.

In two hours, I only got caught twice: once when a young redhead in green Elspeth makeup tried to demonstrate a levitation spell, and once when a middle-aged witch in a perfect Grandma Nut costume tried to clean up a spilled glass of wine with magic instead of paper towels. Both times the witch looked around, confused, and spotted me curled up on my couch. I met her eyes, challenging, and got a glare before the other woman looked away. If I was here, Kirsten knew I was here, and that meant I was invited. None of the witches in Kirsten’s society were going to question her in front of everyone.

By 9:00, no more new people seemed to be arriving, and I was getting bored and restless. Jack had texted to say he was waiting at the gate, so at least that was one less person to worry about. But tonight’s mission was tanking: there was nobody at Kirsten’s who was anywhere near powerful enough to challenge her, much less muck around with animation spells. We were wasting time that we didn’t have. I kept checking my phone for texts, figuring Jesse must be getting even more impatient out in the car. At 9:15 I stood up, stretched, and headed for the sunroom doors. It was time to find Kirsten and figure out a plan B. Maybe she knew of some witches who hadn’t shown up at the party, and Jesse and I could go track them down. That seemed even thinner than this plan, but at least we’d be doing something.

I never made it back to the dining room, though. On my way up the stairs from the sunroom I ran smack into a pretty young witch with white-blonde pigtails. She was wearing an intimidating-looking camera on a strap around her neck, and when we collided it hit me in the chest. The blow was softened by my bulletproof vest, so we were both looking at the camera first, checking for damage, before we met each others’ eyes and I realized who I had just run down. We were frozen for a long moment as I put some
puzzle pieces together, and her gorgeous blue eyes widened with apprehension. Almost without my knowing, my hand darted out and grabbed her upper arm. “You and I need to talk,” I snapped.

“I’m sorry, have we met?” she asked nervously.

“Knock it off, Runa.” This was not what I needed right now, but I couldn’t just ignore it, either. “Are we talking right here in front of everyone, or do you want to step outside?”

The blonde witch looked around for help, but I’d managed to keep my voice low, and no one had noticed us. Finally she nodded, resigned, and pointed toward the sliding door in the sunroom. “Let’s go out back.”

I followed her through the glass doors and down a little hill to Kirsten’s wide backyard. I hadn’t actually been back there before, but even in the dark I could tell it was just as landscaped as the front. Runa sat down on a little bench next to a birdbath. I grudgingly perched myself on the other side.

“How did you know who I was?” she asked.

“I saw a picture on Jesse’s phone,” I said, fury in my voice. “I’m guessing he doesn’t know you’re a witch.”

Her voice was low and miserable. “No.”

Anger was making my head swim. I took a deep breath of the cool night air before I continued. “Please tell me you’re not dating him just because Kirsten ordered you to. Tell me you’re not part of some half-assed undercover thing to keep an eye on Jesse Cruz.”

Her shoulders hunched down, but she looked up to meet my eyes. “I wish I could. But that’s how it started. Then I—”

I held up a hand. “Stop. Spare me the then I fell in love with him crap. Of course you did, because he’s a good and honest man. And you’ve been lying to him
this whole time
.” Okay, I admit it. Part of me was rejoicing inside, because this meant Jesse wasn’t taken after all.
He can be with me now
, the voice said. But this wasn’t how I wanted to win him over. And I’d seen the goofy look on his face whenever he talked to this girl. I suddenly wanted very
much to hurt her. “You know, you’re just proving everything he hates about the Old World,” I spat out. I was working hard to stay away from name-calling. “He doesn’t
do
this political crap, with the secrets and the backstabbing. He’s better than all of…this.” I’d almost said
all of us
.

“You don’t understand,” she burst out, her face hardening with passion. “Kirsten, she’s my cousin. She brought me to LA, let me live here for months while I figured things out. I owe her everything. I couldn’t just say no! And she was so worried, after you brought him into our affairs—”

“Wait, stop,” I interrupted. “She called you because of me? Because I brought him into the Old World?” I really, really wanted to be yelling at Kirsten. I’d known she was powerful, and I’d known she was capable of playing politics with Dashiell and Will. But I hadn’t expected something so underhanded. Not from her.

Then I thought of her and Jesse going off to San Diego that morning, and how her attitude seemed to have changed. “Wait,” I said. “What happened yesterday? Why did Kirsten suddenly want to work with him?”

“He passed a test,” Runa answered, her voice almost a whisper. “He erased my crime-scene photos from the car accident. Then we—then Kirsten knew he was for real.”

Of course he was for real. Kirsten just hadn’t been willing to take my word for it. I thought of how she’d guilt-tripped me into partnering up with Jesse for the investigation and felt my hands clenching together. I took a deep breath and tried to relax them.

“Why you?” I said. “You’re not powerful, so what’s your specialty? Seduction?” Believe it or not, that was the more polite version of that question.

Her lovely face soured. “Locator spells. I’m great with finding people or things. If I know the person or I’ve handled the object, I can even do it without a focus.” She straightened herself with pride. “Not even Kirsten can do that.”

“I get it. You’re human LoJack, which—wait, can you find Olivia?” I asked, momentarily distracted.

She shook her head. “Kirsten had me try months ago, when Olivia attacked you. But I’d never met her, so I needed a focus, and everything we could find of hers was from when she was human. The magic…stalled out at finding her as a vampire.”

I sighed. Of course it couldn’t just be that easy. “But you knew Jesse, so you could keep track of him. Which made you a great spy. Did you give any thought to how this might affect him?”

“More and more every day,” she said softly. Tears slipped down her cheeks, and all of a sudden the fight went out of me, and I couldn’t hate her anymore. I just felt tired. Dammit.

She bit her lip, and then asked, “You’re not going to tell him, are you?”

I smiled grimly. “Nope. But you are. Right now.” I stood up. “He’s parked in front of the house.”

‘I can’t!” she cried, wringing her hands. “I’m not ready.”

I sighed. That was the ironclad argument of every single person who’d ever done something bad and kept it a secret.
I’m not ready.
“When do you see yourself being ready, Runa? When he asks you to move in with him? When he proposes?”

The witch hung her head, suddenly silent. Dammit, Scarlett!
Stop feeling sorry for this person
, I thought. I couldn’t help it, though. I’m such a softie. I dropped back down onto the bench. “Could you…I don’t know, choose him somehow?” I asked gently. “Tell Kirsten you want to be with him?”

“If I went against Kirsten, I’d have to leave the society,” she said mournfully. “They’re, like, my home. Nobody leaves, once you’re in.”

I rolled my eyes at that particular
Godfather
esque comment, but something about it made a little spark in my brain. Runa began to say something else, but I held up both hands like a traffic cop. “Wait. I may be having some kind of thought here.”
Once you’re
in…
“I need to go,” I said suddenly. “I need to talk to your cousin.” I gritted my teeth. “About a couple of things.”

Before I could even step forward, my cell phone rang, the ordinary
ring-ring
sound again. I dug it out of my pocket, but it was already silent. Who calls and only lets it ring once? I checked the display.

Kevin.

“Oh,
shit
.” I broke into a sprint, Runa yelling a question behind me, but I hadn’t even made it around the corner of the house before I heard the screams.

I had made it about six steps around the house when I pulled up short.
Think it through, Scarlett.
Jesse was out front; he would have heard the screaming. He was probably approaching the front of the house right now, gun in hand. If I burst into view, I was going to distract him, and if I wasn’t close enough to cancel out the witch’s magic right away, she’d have the perfect opportunity to hurt him. If she hadn’t done so already. Choking on my frustration, I reversed direction and raced back toward the sunroom door. If I could come up behind the witch, I could neutralize her, and Jesse could cover her with the gun. Simple.

As I raced toward the sunroom doors, witches were pouring out, and I had to shoulder them aside to push my way into the house. It wasn’t like the mob stampedes you see in the movies: some of the witches weren’t running with the others; they milled around asking questions, halfheartedly letting themselves be pulled toward the doors. Nervous laughter mixed in with shouts and screams. “What happened, though?” someone hollered. “Where are we all going?” It felt like I was pushing against water out of a fire hose. And then I heard another witch yell, “Vampire! It’s a vampire!”

Olivia
. She was here.

Of course, there was the possibility that the whole supervillain team had shown up: Olivia, the witch, and the golem. That didn’t feel right, though. They’d worked separately this whole time, with
Olivia doing most of the legwork, and if they really didn’t know I was here, this wasn’t their big endgame. No, it had to be Olivia alone. I knocked over one of the Narnia witches but didn’t slow down to apologize. I headed straight for the front of the house, desperately wishing I knew where Jesse was. The little fireplace room had emptied, as had the kitchen and the entryway—but the front door stood open, and a man lay sprawled half in, half out of the house. There. I skidded to a stop as I recognized Kevin, the bouncer witch—and saw the spreading pool of blood below him. I crouched to check his pulse, but I wasn’t very surprised when I felt none. His eyes already stared upward, his face completely blank.
Too late, too late.
I heard a crunch as I shifted my weight, and I looked down and saw bits of his cell phone under my boot. She had crushed it.

Instinctively, I rose and threw myself against the wall next to the front door, panting. I could hear shouts outside, but I couldn’t make out the words or voices—there was music playing somewhere in the house, and still plenty of screaming. I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and concentrated on my radius. This was it, my first real test. I felt for the edges of my circle. It took longer than it had before, but eventually I was able to hold it all in my mind. I breathed in, breathed out, and thought
expand
.

And then all hell broke loose, because the first thing my circle found on the porch was Kirsten.

The second I felt her, I opened my eyes and dropped the expansion, but it was too late. I stepped awkwardly over Kevin’s body and burst onto the porch just as Jesse began firing at Olivia.

I took it all in in an instant. I’d made the wrong call. Olivia must have been on the porch when Kirsten came running out. The witch had managed to hold Olivia in place with a spell while Jesse advanced on her from the street, presumably to try to put handcuffs on her until I arrived. When I’d expanded my radius, I had killed Kirsten’s magic and cut the cord holding Olivia still. And the first
thing the vampire had done was race farther away from me—and straight toward Jesse.

“The heart,” I screamed. “Shoot the heart!” Jesse’s face was frozen in concentration as he emptied his gun at the vampire—but she was too fast. She veered away from her direct course toward Jesse, and I saw bits of skin explode on her arms, her abdomen, her thigh. She had reached the line of cars when his gun clicked empty, and Olivia paused, a wicked smirk spreading across her face. Why was she pausing? Jesse moved to reload, and Kirsten started toward Olivia, probably trying to get far enough away from me to freeze Olivia again. I tensed to throw myself backward to get Kirsten out of my radius faster, but Olivia’s face changed again, and her hand moved into the nylon jacket she was wearing.

And I just…knew what she would do. Somehow.

“No!” I screamed, and lurched forward again. And as fast as everything had happened up until then, it sped up even more. I took the two steps it took to close the gap between Kirsten and me, and I grabbed at her roughly, getting a handful of her hair and one shoulder. I pulled her backward with everything I had, moving around her left side to cover her just as Olivia began firing the gun she’d pulled from the jacket. I heard two bursts, and in the same instant my back seemed to explode, and I was on the ground with Kirsten under me.

“Scarlett!” Jesse screamed, and everything went spacey for a moment. I hadn’t had the wind knocked out of me since I was a little kid on the playground, but I recognized the sickly frozen feeling as though it had been yesterday. Seconds passed, or maybe minutes. I heard the police sirens wailing toward us, and then Jesse was rolling me over, off of Kirsten. I was gulping for air, unable to do too much to help him move me—but as I finally flopped onto the ground I could feel the horrible lifelessness of Kirsten’s body.

“Olivia’s gone?” I gasped. My back ached with an agonizing, rippling pain that made it hard to think. I stayed where I was,
with it pressed into the cool ground. Jesse nodded. “And Kirsten?” Jesse was frantically pushing loose strands of hair away from my eyes so he could search my face. As though there might be pieces missing. “I’m fine, check her,” I managed to say to Jesse. He ignored me until I added. “It hit the vest.” I wiggled a little so my back wasn’t against the ground. I’d never been shot before, but it felt like a major-league pitcher had fired a baseball into the muscles next to my spine.