Dead Spots

He looked away. “Four days.”

“Your parents?”

He shook his head. “Gone.”

I struggled for something to say and came up with “You don’t look old enough to have been a paramedic that long ago.” He looked maybe twenty-eight.

He gave me a little smile. “I was twenty-three then. But you know we age slower than humans.”

“Yeah. Are you...” I began, then stopped. This was none of my business.

“Am I what?” he asked. “Am I sorry she bit me?”

I nodded. “I mean, I know you don’t like being a werewolf.” Werewolves age more slowly than humans—average lifetime is something like one hundred fifty years. He would be stuck this way for a long time.

He looked tired. “I don’t. But I’m not sorry to be alive, even if it’s like this. Even if it hurts.”

We were quiet for a while after that.

By the time Kirsten popped open the front door, I had nodded off on Eli’s shoulder, and a little line of drool was making its way down my chin.

“Come on in, guys,” Kirsten sang, cheerful. “I’ve got an address for you.” She turned back into the house, leaving the door open behind her.

I stood up unsteadily, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and blushing like crazy. Eli stretched his arms behind his head, smirking at me. “You’re so cute when you sleep. All innocent-like.”

“Shut up.”

He held up his hand, waving it at me, and I rolled my eyes and reached down to pull him up. He stood up inside my personal space, on purpose, to make me blush even more. God help me, it worked. I met his eyes, only four inches from my own, and he didn’t back down one bit. He looked at me, a long, searching look, until I lost my nerve and darted toward the front door.

No witch’s supply cabinet is complete without herbs, a cauldron, and...a Thomas guide. Back in her kitchen, Kirsten pulled out the book of Los Angeles street maps and opened it to a section in Van Nuys. “Okay, so the locator spell took me back to where these handcuffs were made—cast? Would we say they were cast?”

Eli and I looked up and shrugged. Not so much with the grammar.

“Okay, well, anyway, they were made here”—she pointed to a tiny pen mark—“in this little block. I copied out the address.” She passed over a perfectly formatted Post-it note.

“One more thing,” I began, “Olivia mentioned...Well, is it possible that the vampires in La Brea Park were under a spell? Is there a spell that has the same result as being around a null?”

I hadn’t realized until that moment how much I hoped she would say yes. If this were all due to some psychotic witch...But Kirsten shook her head, smiling in a patient way that I interpreted as No hard feelings about accusing my witches of murder.

“We can’t take away magic, Scarlett. We can move it around, funnel it into doing things, but we can’t actually take it away.”

Couldn’t argue with that.

Chapter 20

Jesse was torn. Should he keep his nose down and dig into the grunt work that the scene reconstruction guys had given him, or go pursue leads that he knew were valid and important? Jerry Lexington, the detective in charge of recreating the scene, had given him a stack of files relating to La Brea Park: all previous complaints or crimes committed in the area, the history of the park, the history of the land before it became a park, the biography of the guy who had donated the land, and so on. The stack was three inches of printouts and photos, and Jesse was frustrated and bored just looking at it. Chewing on his lip, he flipped to the middle of the folder on top, smudging the papers around on his desk.

An hour later, Jesse knew he was in trouble the moment he heard his name. Of course, it didn’t help that when Miranda called for him, he was half-asleep, his head propped up on his hand. Not a great way to prove that he was working hard.

He took a big chug of the Mountain Dew on his desk, then stood up and trudged toward Miranda’s office, wondering how bad this was going to be.

“Sit down, Jesse,” she said briskly, waving toward the chair across from her desk.

Miranda’s iron-gray hair was a little disheveled, and tiredness and stress had seeped into her face. Jesse sat carefully on the edge of the chair, noting the folded-up LA Times on her desk. The headline screamed, Park Massacre Baffles LAPD. He winced.

“We need to have a conversation about your work performance,” Miranda said sternly. “You know that this investigation is critical, and the pressure from the media is building every day.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He did his best to look contrite, but couldn’t help feeling a little crushed. He was actually working his ass off on this case, coming up with leads nobody else would dream of, and to everyone on the force, he looked like a slacker. Jesse considered himself a good team player, not at all a glory hound, but come on. If he got demoted over this case, he wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Miranda was just getting started. “We’re all here on a Sunday, I’ve got everyone working overtime, we’re chasing down every stray thought any one of us even has, and even though there’s plenty of exhaustion, everyone seems on top of their game—except you. You’re distracted and secretive, and the duty officer said she had trouble finding you yesterday. And is it true that you fell asleep during the briefing this morning?”

Jesse flinched with guilt. The department was doing twice-daily briefings on the case, and though he’d tried to pay attention, it was just hard to be all that interested when he knew that every lead the police were pursuing was a dead end. There was a mountain of forensics paperwork piling up, all of it saying nothing at all, and theory after theory was being methodically shot down. The department had spent the last two days considering the possibility of gang violence, a serial killer, a crime of passion, everything. They’d been running in circles trying to at least identify the victims and making no progress at all. Jesse, on the other hand, knew all three victims’ identities but wasn’t able to speak up. It was so frustrating.