“I—I realized that he was nuts,” she admitted. “That was the day the guy overheard us. I went to find Corbin, to tell him the guy might be nuts, because Corbin had missed his speech. By the time I got Corbin out of the bathroom and we came back, they were long gone.”
“Did you tell anyone else about this?” Jesse demanded.
“Just my friend Ana,” she insisted.
Jackpot.
Jesse asked Esmé a few more questions, but she didn’t seem to know anything else about Remus, especially not where he might hide. By the time he was finished talking to her, Jesse was exhausted, having fueled the last few days on too much coffee and not enough sleep. He texted Scarlett to let her know about Esmé, then went and laid down on the bed in his little studio apartment. Jesse’s thoughts were just spinning, stuck on finding the nova wolf. They knew how the nova had been made, but that didn’t actually get them anywhere.
Despite his churning mind, Jesse’s exhaustion tugged at him. After a few minutes, he gave up and set his alarm for seven, before giving in to it.
He awoke feeling just as stuck, but at least a little more capable of rational thought. He showered and dressed quickly before leaving for Scarlett’s. The LA morning was cool and overcast, with a heavy gray sky that seemed to be drifting slowly downward to cover the ground in haze. Jesse had to shake a sudden impulse to stomp on the gas, to see if he could outrun the weather. It was the weekend, and this early in the morning the streets were practically empty. He made it to Scarlett’s in record time.
To Jesse’s surprise, Scarlett answered her door quickly, with a phone to her ear and her cane tucked under the same arm. She was half hunched over to keep the phone from falling. “I’m on hold,” Scarlett said briefly, and gestured with a shoulder for him to come inside. “Come on in.”
Without another word she took hold of her cane and hobbled back to the couch. She looked better than she had in days, dressed in jeans and an oversized cowl-necked sweater that went to her fingertips. Her hair was damp and sweet-smelling from the shower. She’d wrapped it up in a bun, and when she turned back toward the room Jesse saw what looked like a blue pen stuck through it. He followed her, perplexed. “Who are—” he began, but she half turned to him and held up a hand.
“Yes. Yes, I’m still here,” she said into the phone. “Nobody? All right, I must have the wrong information. Thank you.” Ending the call, she collapsed onto the couch, careful to keep her knee free. Scarlett picked up a yellow pad of paper that was tucked into the couch between the arm and the cushion. She pulled the pen out of her bun. “There’s coffee in the kitchen if you want it,” she said through a yawn.
“I had some on the way. What’s going on?” he asked, still mystified. He perched in the armchair, more so he wouldn’t be looming over her than because he needed to sit.
She scribbled something on the pad before looking up. “You’re not going to believe this, but I came up with a plan. Well, Runa and I did.”
For a second he thought he must have misheard her. “My Runa?” Jesse said incredulously.
Scarlett stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes for a moment. “No, the other bearer of that globally popular name.”
“Shut up. What . . . why were you talking to Runa?”
“I figured it was time we had a long talk about your expertise in the bedroom,” Scarlett said gravely. When Jesse’s eyes more or less fell out of his head, she laughed. “Sorry, I’ve had, like, a lot of coffee. Like a lot.”
Jesse shook his head slightly to clear it. “Okay, let me start all over. Good morning, Scarlett. How was your night?”
“Good morning, Jesse,” Scarlett said gamely. “My night got a lot better when I invited your ex-girlfriend over for a chat. I needed to talk through this whole thing, and I couldn’t really think of anyone else.” Off Jesse’s look, she rolled her eyes and said, “No, we didn’t talk about you.”
He must have looked relieved, because she added, “I mean, just your penis size, but that was it.”
“Scarlett . . .”
“Okay, okay.” She flapped a hand. “I told Runa most of what’s been happening, and she pointed out that, since we know where the nova is going to be, all we have to do is show up and hunt him down.”
“Well, yeah, but that park is enormous . . . ,” Jesse began, but she waved him into silence.
“I know; just listen. We need a way to find a renegade werewolf, and we just happen to have a trained werewolf-finder in town.”
Jesse stared at her. “You’re not suggesting—” he started to say, but stopped when Scarlett bounced a little in her chair.
“Yes, I am,” she said gleefully. “I’m suggesting we steal the bargest.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “Wait,” Jesse said. “How much coffee have you had?”
She pulled a face. “Think about it. If we take the bargest away on the morning of the full moon, the Luparii scout won’t have time to get a replacement or get his pals here to help him. It’ll cut his legs out from under him, and that’s one problem solved. Then we take the bargest to Griffith and use it to find the nova.”
“That’s . . . huh.” Jesse stood up and began pacing the length of the living room, thinking it over. “There are so many unknowns,” he said, mostly to himself. “For one thing, even if we could pull off finding and stealing the bargest, we have no idea if it will listen to us.”