Midnight Curse

He paused, and when he turned, I could see how much he wanted to scream at me. He stalked back over, Molly’s arm still trapped in his punishing grip. When he reached me, he was technically human, but his eyes were cold as dry ice. “She didn’t blood-gorge in my territory?” he said sarcastically. “She didn’t kill a bunch of rich white girls in the middle of the city’s most high-profile university?” Molly flinched away from him, equal parts ashamed and defiant.

I could have made a case for UCLA being more high-profile, but occasionally even I can make a smart decision. “Someone forced her,” I insisted, my voice sounding weak even to me.

He blanched for a moment, then shook his head. “Impossible.”

“How do you know?”

He gave me an irritated look. “There are two vampires who could force her to do something. The one who made her was beheaded twenty years ago, by her.” He didn’t actually say “you idiot,” but the implication was there. “Then there’s the vampire who holds her troth,” he continued, “and that is me. Are you suggesting I am responsible for this?” His eyes flashed dangerously.

Troth was an oath of service, made to a cardinal vampire. It was almost impossible to break. “No, but—”

He pulled his trump card. I should have expected him to have one. “And did you know that one of those girls was a Friend of the Witches?”

Whatever I was about to yell died before it reached my lips. Molly’s face was as shocked as I felt. Witches are the only Old World species who are allowed to talk a little bit about what they are. Friends of the Witches are human families who have helped the witch community at some point and earned a sort of protected status. They’re like an endangered species in a game park.

“I didn’t know,” Molly wailed. “She never wore an anti-vampire charm!”

“Maybe she didn’t think she had to,” Dashiell said coldly. “And now, if I don’t come down hard on Molly, Kirsten will be irate, as she should be. That family was supposed to have protection.” He rounded on me, his hand never leaving Molly’s arm. “And you are never supposed to take the bargest out of LA County. Do you have any idea how much trouble you’d be in if the Luparii found out what you’ve done tonight?”

Before I could answer, Molly swung her body around to face him. “Please,” she begged, tears running down her cheeks. “Please, let me say goodbye. I’ll go without a fight. Just let me give her a hug.” Her voice broke, and something about her actually made Dashiell pause for a moment. He wasn’t used to human emotions, which meant he wasn’t entirely immune to a crying young girl.

Molly saw his hesitation and took advantage, taking one careful step to close the gap between us. Dashiell let her slip her arm out of his grasp, but hovered a foot away.

Molly threw her arms around my waist, her head turned so her mouth was near my ear. “I love you,” she said simply. Tears stung my eyes, but in my peripheral vision I could still see Dashiell relax just a bit, allowing this. “You gotta be understanding to Eli,” Molly added, in a voice so quiet that I wasn’t sure he would hear her. Then I felt her shove something small into my back pocket. “And one of these days, you should really dig Jesse out of that hole you left him in.”

I flinched. “That’s enough,” Dashiell snapped. He grabbed Molly’s upper arm again.

“I made Scarlett help me,” she blurted, startling all three of us. Dashiell and I both stared at her. “I threatened her protégé. Corry,” Molly said, her voice gaining strength. “I said I’d kill the girl if Scarlett didn’t drive me here.”

Dashiell raised a skeptical eyebrow and turned to me. “Is this true?”

I stood there with my mouth open, completely trapped. I didn’t want to dig Molly’s grave any deeper, nor did I want to expose her for lying. “What are you going to do to her?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.

“Put her on trial,” he said over his shoulder as he dragged Molly off into the night, tugging her out of my radius. His voice floated back through the door as it swung closed. “You’re lucky I don’t do the same to you.”

I darted forward, but by the time I made it through the door there was no sign of them. Vampire speed. I looked over my shoulder for Frederic, but he’d completely disappeared. Typical.

I knew better than to check my pocket immediately. Instead, I walked back out to the van as calmly as I could, noting that there were still no other vehicles in the lot. Had Dashiell parked around back? A few blocks away? Or had he simply run here from Pasadena? It seemed far-fetched, but then again, I didn’t know that much about actual vampire powers. Dashiell kept me in the dark on purpose, although I tried not to take it personally. I was fairly certain that vampires had invented the concept of “need to know basis” long before the military had gotten a hold of it.

Back in my van, I had to spend a few minutes reassuring the freaked-out bargest, who had seen my exchange with Dashiell from the window. Shadow was extraordinarily protective of me, and there were fresh scratches on the dashboard and the armrests, which meant she’d come close to bursting through the window again. I sighed at the damage, but it was really the least of my concerns.

Eventually Shadow settled down in the passenger seat, and I leaned back for a moment, thinking. It was oddly reassuring that Dashiell planned to go ahead with a trial. When he’d first walked through the door and hit my radius, I had been sure he was going to kill her on the spot for trying to skip town. Still, that only gave me about twenty hours to figure out who had set Molly up and how.

It seemed impossible.

I felt something small and poky in my back pocket and remembered Molly’s hug. Shifting, I reached into the pocket and pulled out the small safety deposit box key that Molly had been about to use. I frowned at it. Was she telling me I should take her stash and leave town? Or was there something in there that would point toward the bad guy? I looked back up at the building, but the front desk stood empty. Frederic probably had a second monitoring system, and was hiding until I drove away with my dog-monster. Smart man. Just to cover my bases, I got out of the van and went up to the door, rattling it in the frame. The electronic lock had been engaged.

That seemed excessive, and for the first time I wondered if Frederic was the one who’d called Dashiell and warned him Molly and I were going to the storage facility. No, wait. How would he have known? I hadn’t even known we were coming until we were on our way. My van could be GPS-tracked, but it wasn’t like Dashiell or anyone on his team to sit staring at a little blipping screen every night, watching my movements. They had better things to do, and even Dashiell trusted me more than that.

But somehow he had been informed that I was doing something off-book. How?

When I figured it out, I slammed my head backward against the headrest, causing Shadow to rise in alarm. Molly had gotten there before me. “Be understanding to Eli,” I said out loud. Of course. My own boyfriend had called Will, who would have immediately called Dashiell. Dashiell would have taken one look at our progress on the freeway and figured out where we were going.

I automatically reached for my phone so I could yell at Eli, but I stopped myself. He had been worried about his girlfriend’s safety, so he’d done what any wolf would do: checked with the alpha. I couldn’t be mad at him for that. Well, I could, but privately, at least for now.

What was the other thing Molly had said to me? I looked down at the key in my hand, then up at the empty reception area. And I groaned.

“Dammit, Molls,” I said out loud.

Chapter 7

Jesse leaned heavily on the grocery store cart, tapping out a rhythm on the handle with impatient fingers. The grocery store was surprisingly busy for 9:45 p.m., and of course there were only three checkout aisles open. As the twenty-something girl in front of him loaded bottle after bottle of diet soda on to the conveyer belt, talking on her cell phone the whole time, he was tempted to ram his cart into a display and stomp out of there. To make it even worse, she kept tossing her hair and giving him coquettish eyes over her shoulder. He was too annoyed to admire her multitasking.