“Hey, yourself,” I said back. It was too quiet for humans to hear, but he wasn’t human—yet.
He started up the stairs with an easy loping grace that only slowed down as he hit my radius. I’d never really noticed Eli’s natural, non-lycanthropic athleticism, which is a shame, since I am the only one who really could.
He climbed the last few stairs and grinned at me, seawater still dripping from his damp hair. “What’s the occasion?” he said lightly. “Just here for another quickie?” His voice was teasing, but there was a flicker of hurt on his face, and I felt ashamed again.
Dammit. Eli was the worst three-night stand ever.
“Actually, I’m wondering if I can borrow those handcuffs, the silver ones. They could be helpful for this case.”
He frowned at me. “Come in and tell me about it.”
I followed him into the small apartment, plopping down on his ancient threadbare sofa and curling my legs up around me. I’d never been there in the daytime—unless you count sneaking out with a hangover in the morning—and I’d never really paid much attention to Eli’s habitat. It was kind of messy, which was no surprise, but it was kind of nice, too. There was a lot of ocean stuff on the walls, shells and sand dollars and twists of driftwood. In one corner, a little card table was set up with some carving tools and a big chunk of driftwood. I stood up and wandered over. There was the beginning of a boat carved onto one side of the wood, and it made the wood itself look exactly like waves of the ocean.
“You did this?” I asked.
“Don’t sound so surprised, Scarlett,” he said wryly. “I can do more than pour drinks.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said lamely. I put the driftwood down.
“Okay, so explain to me why you want the handcuffs.”
I started to tell him about Ronnie and the silver chains. While I talked, Eli stowed his surfboard in the front closet and dried his hair with a towel.
“Ronnie?” he said incredulously, when I had finished. “That’s so crazy. Who would do something like that?” He unzipped the back of his wetsuit, pulling it down around his waist.
I tried not to stare. Jesse is prettier, but Eli is no slump, werewolf or not. Muscled chest, just enough hair to not be too much, strong back—
“Uh, Scarlett?”
My eyes flew back to his face, and I blushed like a teenager.
“I’m up here.” He touched his right eye, mockingly. “Besides, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”
“But now I’m sober,” I said without thinking. Then I shook my head to clear it. Jeez, Scarlett. Focus. “Anyway, I’m gonna have Kirsten do a tracking spell with the cuffs, if you just let me borrow them.”
“Sure,” he said easily, tossing the towel over his shoulder. “But I’m going with you.”
My irritation overpowered my fleeting lust, and I scowled up at him.
He just shrugged. “I know you think Kirsten’s trustworthy, but there is someone out there who wants to get to you, and what kind of assistant would I be if I let that happen?” I opened my mouth to argue with him, but he shook his head, suddenly serious. “I mean it, Scarlett. I’m coming, or you can’t have the handcuffs. Forget...whatever this thing is between you and me. Will would kill me if I let you get hurt.”
We stared at each other for a moment while I weighed my options, but it didn’t seem as if I had any. Finally, I sighed and nodded.
“Good. So I’m gonna jump in the shower quick, and then we can go,” he said, starting toward the bathroom. Then he stopped and looked back at me. Huge grin. “Unless you’d care to join me?”
Oops. My eyes may have wandered again. I turned red again and shook my head.
While Eli was showering, I did a quick search of the living room and kitchen, trying to find the damn cuffs so I could just go. When that didn’t work, I plopped back down on the couch and called Kirsten.
If Will is an alpha and Dashiell a king, Kirsten is more like a publicist. The witches used to be completely disorganized, for the simple reason that they’re all very different. As I’d told Jesse, witches, vampires, and werewolves are all descended from the same human conduits, but the witches are from a branch that used as little magic as possible, which varied from witch to witch. So some of them have just a little specific magic, and some, like Kirsten, are actually really powerful. With such different talents and personalities, I can guarantee that if you got every single witch in Los Angeles into one huge room, they would not be able to agree on anything, even something as basic as whether magic is good or evil. Of course, the biggest conflict between them is almost always the question of offensive magics. Olivia explained it to me like this: After the vampires, the werewolves, and the witches split off from the same line, they were scattered peacefully across the globe for centuries, each mostly disregarding the others. But in the Middle Ages, the witches, who by nature did the most interacting with normal humans, began to be discovered. And then persecuted, and tortured, and murdered.
Their leaders went to the vampires and the wolves and begged for help, but both groups turned away, the vampires from apathy and the wolves from fear of meeting the same fate. Wolves are pack animals, and look after their pack before anything else. So the witches did the only thing they could: they looked to strengthen their magic. They didn’t know about evolution and magical lines back then, but during their research, the witches managed to stumble upon a group of plants that magic had bonded itself to, just like the human conduits. They were known as nightshades: belladonna, mandragora, Lycium barbarum (which also became known as wolfberry), tomatillo, cape gooseberry flower, capsicum, and solanum. The entire subspecies was rife with magic. The latter four plants could be used in hundreds of charms and potions, many of which helped the witches to deter the human persecutors. But the former three plants were unique; they interacted with the remaining magical beings in mystifying ways. Belladonna was poisonous to vampires—it took unbelievable amounts to actually kill them, but even a sprinkle of the plant would work as a paralytic. Proximity to wolfberry caused the shifters to lose control, painfully unable to stop from changing, again and again, which was very dangerous to anyone nearby. And mandragora, also called mandrake, was the key ingredient in a spell that could grant a very powerful witch the ability to communicate between living and dead. Which is how I ended up disposing of that naked guy’s body in Culver City, all those years ago.