Hunter's Trail

But then again, we were taking a gamble no matter which way we turned. And there was one thing I was sure of: if the bad guy has a weapon, you have to take it away. Even if we couldn’t use the bargest, at least keeping it away from the Luparii scout meant that he couldn’t go after Will’s people tonight.

“This is it,” Jesse said finally. We had arrived at the condo building, a three-story, white and pale blue affair with archways everywhere. Like, everywhere. I don’t know anything about architecture, but I do know when a building looks like someone drew wavy lines on it with crayon. Its ornateness wasn’t feminine, exactly, but it was too elegant for the neighborhood by half.

“It looks like it belongs on top of a cake,” Jesse observed, leaning over the steering wheel so he could stare at it better.

“It looks like it is the top of the cake,” I countered.

He drove past the building to the next block and pulled over to the curb. “Okay. I’m gonna change,” Jesse said. He wasn’t using his “official police business” voice, but he did sound like a cop: in control, serious, trustworthy. The effect was kind of ruined when he added, “No peeking while I’m naked.”

I snorted as he crawled into the back of the van, grabbing the hanger with his old uniform. “I’m a professional,” I said loftily. “Professionals do not peek.” He hadn’t wanted to drive around the city in LAPD garb, for some reason. I debated turning my head just a little to peek despite my words, but I figured that would be taken for flirting, and I wasn’t ready for that, exactly.

He ducked back between the two front seats. “Okay,” Jesse said, tension thickening his voice. “Are you ready?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “But let’s do it anyway.” I pulled on my old USC baseball cap. We’d loaded the dog supplies and Jesse’s street clothes into an old backpack, and I put that on as well.

To my surprise, he leaned just a little farther and planted a swift, gentle kiss on my lips, tweaking the brim of my hat as he pulled back. “Good luck,” he told me.

“Uh . . . right. Yes. And you as well,” I sputtered, and opened the door.

I began walking back toward the condo. There was no security team or anything, and I didn’t spot any obvious cameras, although it was hard to really look and keep my head down at the same time. It would make sense for the Luparii scout to want to stay somewhere that valued privacy over ostentatious security, though.

The building was shaped like a long rectangle, split length-wise by a pretty open-air courtyard that ran the whole length of the building. There was a tasteful fountain burbling dead center in the courtyard, between a modest swimming pool on one side and several sets of café tables and chairs on the other. No one was using either area, and I breathed a sigh a relief—we wouldn’t have to try to do this with witnesses.

A narrow cobblestone path framed the courtyard and provided little walkways to each of the ten or twelve doors that framed the long sides of the rectangle. I started down the path, figuring number 144 was probably on the ground level. Each condo had picture windows on either side of an ornate, Spanish-style wood-and-iron door, but almost every single window had closed blinds. It was a shame—all that fancy landscaping for the courtyard, and nobody was willing to sacrifice their privacy to look at it.

The landscaping suited my purposes, though. There was a waist-high hedge that ran between the cobblestone pathways for each condo, underneath the windows. That would make it a lot easier to sneak up on the Luparii scout. I didn’t want to give him time to see me coming. If he got skittish and tried a spell, he might figure out what I was. And although he couldn’t hex me, he could still send the bargest to eat me. And I had no idea how the Taser would work against a magical dog-monster.

I spotted the iron placard for number 144 and kept right on going. The barking began when I was still a good twenty feet away, a low sound that seemed to come from a very deep chest. Damn. The thing really did have strong senses. A female voice shouted inside the building, a guttural blur of a word that had to be French, and the barking ceased abruptly. It was well trained, if nothing else. I saw the white blinds shift in one of the condo’s windows as fingers with red nails made a vertical hole between them. I made a special effort to look purposeful and confident, feeling the comforting bump of the Taser in my pocket. I never so much as glanced at the window for 144, and after a few seconds I saw the blinds snap closed again out of the corner of my eye. I kept going, making my slow way to the next footpath.

My thoughts spun. A woman. The Luparii scout was a woman. I felt like an idiot. Of course she was a woman; the vast majority of witches were. Why had we assumed that she’d be male? Because she was evil?

Stupid Scarlett. Ladies can be bad guys too.

I walked right up to the door of number 112, listening closely. If there were people at home, they were being quiet about it. I glanced around—still no people—and dropped down to all fours. The space between the building and the hedge was just wide enough for me to crawl through without brushing against the shrubbery, and almost tall enough to hide me completely. I lifted my cane and set it very gently a few feet in front of me, without making noise. Then I crawled after it on my hands and one knee and repeated the process, making my way under the condo’s picture window and toward number 144. I was agonizingly slow, which I hoped would work in my favor. Who would expect an injured burglar with a cane, who attacked in broad daylight? Hopefully no one, although if any city was going to have a handicapped, crawling daytime burglar, it’d probably be LA.