Hunter's Trail

“I think he’s going to keep leaving the women at Will’s,” Jesse contended. “It’s too good of a ‘fuck you’ to the werewolf pack. And you—I mean, we,” he amended, “keep helpfully disposing of the dead bodies for him.”

“Still,” I said, unconvinced.

“Do you have something better to do?” Jesse asked, innocently raising his eyebrows. I glared at him, not speaking. We both knew I have essentially no life. “I’ll buy you a great big bag of ice,” he wheedled.

“You can get ice free at any fast food place.”

Jesse held up two fingers. “Then I’ll buy you two bags of ice,” he said playfully.

I rolled my eyes and reached for another chip to throw, but he pulled the little paper carton out of my reach. “Is that a yes?” he persisted.

“No, that’s a ‘fine, I give up.’ Totally different thing.”

We split up for a couple of hours. Jesse wanted to stop at his place to shower and change, and I wanted to restock my cleaning supplies from my big stash at Molly’s, just in case. At six, we met up on Temescal Canyon Road, which was completely deserted. I left my van on a side street and rode with Jesse in his sedan the rest of the way. On Will’s street we parked as far away from Will’s house as we could while still keeping it in view. I wanted to keep the White Whale close by so we could get to it easily if the nova showed up, but we also wanted it to look like there was nobody around, so the nova would feel like he could get away with dumping another body. And if he’d done any research about the LA Old World, he might know my van.

We were settled into our stakeout by six thirty. I was sitting in the passenger seat with the promised ice packs above and below my bad knee. They were wrapped in place with an old flannel scarf I’d brought from my van. Jesse had stopped for snacks at a 7-Eleven on his way over, and he was subjecting me to a lesson in the art of the stakeout food.

“It has to be able to stay in the car for hours,” he explained very seriously, “but not go bad. And it can’t make you have to . . . you know, go to the bathroom right away. So salt is good, because it helps you retain water.” He handed me a small package of pretzels.

“I thought for sure there would be doughnuts,” I complained. I could not get a friggin’ doughnut on this case.

“Doughnuts are bad for you,” Jesse said around a mouthful of pretzel shards. “These are naturally fat free.” He swallowed and dug through the plastic grocery bag between us. “But I’ve also got apples, granola bars, let’s see . . . peanuts, Naked Juice, and Diet Coke.” He looked up at me expectantly.

“Naked Juice? Do the other cops know you’re a closet health nut?” I grumbled.

“Plenty of cops eat like this,” Jesse said, with great dignity. “You’re just prejudiced. Against the fuzz.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that.

Time passed slowly. We got on the topic of car games—as it turned out, both of our families had taken us on road trips as kids—and for a while we played Twenty Questions and My Mother Owns a Grocery Store, which turned out to be basically the same game. After a couple of hours, though, I started to fidget, flipping the compartment between our seats open and closed. I peeked inside—nothing there but CDs. “Do you have any gum?” I asked, and without waiting for an answer I opened the glove compartment. When the little interior light turned on, I saw a glossy black pistol resting in a specially contoured piece of foam. “Whoa. How many guns do you need?”

“That should have been locked,” Jesse grumbled. He reached over my lap to close the glove compartment, locking it with the ignition key. “And no, no gum. But I’ll put it on your stakeout wish list for next time.” He put the keys back in the ignition, eyeing my face. “You look cold,” Jesse commented.

I nodded. It was chilly in the car, and though rotating the ice packs on and off my knee felt great, the ice wasn’t doing me any favors when it came to body heat. I put the ice packs on the floor of the car, and Jesse twisted around to dig in the backseat. He handed me a fleece pullover that smelled like oranges and Armani cologne. I thanked him and spread it over my lap.

“So did you have any plans for New Year’s Eve?” he asked.

“Nah,” I admitted. “I was just going to stay up and watch TV or something.”

“With Molly?”

“No, she usually . . . goes out.” Party holidays like New Year’s and St. Patrick’s Day are big feeding opportunities for the vampires, especially the ones like Molly who can pass for young people.

It’s not that I don’t know anyone else in Los Angeles. I know a few people from my hometown who’ve ended up here too, and one of Jack’s ex-girlfriends—not to mention Jack himself, who lives in the city and works at a blood lab owned by Dashiell. But, even aside from the fact that knowing me can be hazardous for one’s health, for the most part I don’t trust myself around humans anymore. It’s too easy to start talking about my day and accidentally let something slip about the . . . people . . . I spend my time with. Then I’d have to go begging Dashiell or Molly to press someone’s mind for me, which would put that person on the Old World’s radar. So I just keep to myself, mostly. It’s not that hard, in a city this big.

“What about you?” I asked Jesse. “Are you missing any big New Year’s plans right now?”