Midnight Curse

“Dashiell!” Kirsten’s voice was more shocked than admonishing, which is probably why she got away with the reprimand. “Scarlett wouldn’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t she?” Dashiell’s hooded eyes never left me. “Did she tell you she took Shadow out of the county?”

Tattletale, I thought, but didn’t have the nerve to say. “The fastest way to do this is if you let me tell you everything I know from tonight, and then you can yell at me afterward,” I told them.

“That sounds fair,” Will said, to break the tension.

I walked them through the whole night, starting with the girl showing up at Eli’s art fair. I may have glossed over the part where I lied to Eli, and I left the question of whether or not Molly had forced me to drive her to Thousand Oaks open to interpretation, but I didn’t leave out any other details.

They all listened without interrupting, even Dashiell, until I got to the part about seeing the news at the hospital. “And that’s when I called,” I finished.

Will was looking at Dashiell. “You should tell them,” he said, his voice calm.

Jesse, Kirsten, and I all turned to the vampire. “I received a text message,” he said, sounding a little begrudging. “From Molly. Asking me to come to the house.”

“What time?” I asked.

He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his messages. “Five thirty-eight,” he said after a moment.

I thought fast. “That was before I arrived at the house,” I said slowly. “But Molly didn’t have her phone. She’d lost it, she said.” I looked back at Dashiell. “Did you come?”

He gave me a tight nod. “But I was delayed. By the time I arrived, the fire department was pulling up. I took a quick look in the windows and saw eight corpses, still burning.” He gave an artful shrug. “Then Will called me to say Scarlett wasn’t answering her phone. I put two and two together.”

Well, that explained how Dashiell had gotten to the storage facility so quickly. But it didn’t explain the missing bodies. “I checked every one of those girls’ pulses myself,” I insisted. “There were twelve, no question.”

“We believe you, Scarlett,” Will said, and Kirsten nodded. I didn’t dare look at Dashiell.

Jesse spoke, keeping his voice soft. “So someone wanted Dashiell to walk in on Molly with eight dead bodies. Why?”

“Because she was supposed to be even more out of it than she was when I got there,” I guessed. “Whoever did this wanted you”—I looked at Dashiell—“to arrive at the house and find Molly covered in blood, with eight dead girls. You would have hauled her out of there and called me from the car to come clean up the mess.”

Dashiell gave this a grudging nod. It was exactly what he would have done. I went on. “No one would have ever guessed the other four girls were there. Molly wasn’t supposed to remember that part, just like she wasn’t supposed to figure out a way to contact me without her phone. But I was there, and it screwed things up.”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Will interrupted. His eyes were focused intently on me. “You’re saying that Molly did kill these girls?”

“Yes. But she was pressed.”

I was expecting a big reaction, and they didn’t disappoint. Dashiell’s eyes bulged with surprise, and Will actually let out sort of a masculine gasp. Only Kirsten seemed to take this in stride, nodding as if it made perfect sense. I turned toward her. “I take it you’ve seen that before?”

“I’ve met boundary witches before,” she corrected, “including Allison Luther, a few years back. I’ve never actually seen a vampire get pressed, but I’m aware of the possibility.”

I glanced toward Dashiell, raising my eyebrows a little. “I’ve . . . heard of it too,” he admitted. For the first time he looked more pensive than angry. I’d thrown a wrench into his righteous fury. “A very long time ago. But the only boundary witches I’ve met in my life were too weak to truly affect vampires.”

Will was shaking his head. “This is all new to me,” he said frankly. “What exactly is a boundary witch?”

I expected Kirsten to answer, but Jesse was the one who spoke. “A witch who specializes in the boundary between life and death,” he said. “Death magic. They have a sort of connection to vampires, which allows the stronger witches to actually press a vampire.”

“A less powerful vampire,” Dashiell interjected.

I sipped my coffee, giving them all a minute to absorb it. Finally Dashiell nodded to me, looking sobered. “Go on with your theory,” he said. For the first time, I felt like he was really listening.

“Thank you. Here’s what I think happened. The boundary witch’s press was starting to wear off, or Molly was able to fight it, just a little. She grabbed a kid off the street, Britt, and sent her to get me.” This meant that Molly had been keeping tabs on me, which was sort of sweet. “The bad guy must have been close enough to see her do it, but for some reason he didn’t stop Britt from leaving. Maybe there were too many people around.”

“Britt said she was going to a party, right?” Jesse interjected. “If there were a bunch of college kids in the street when Molly grabbed her . . .”

“Right. Anyway, they couldn’t have known what was in the note Molly sent. So instead of taking the girls right then, they made the decision to wait until either Dashiell or I arrived.”

“But they didn’t hurt you,” Kirsten said, a question in her voice.

“No, they didn’t,” I assured her.

Jesse picked up the story. “My guess is that once Scarlett got there, they figured out who she is—or, more to the point, what she is. Is it pretty common knowledge that Scarlett is a null, and she works with you guys?” We all nodded. Anyone in the LA Old World would know about me. Jesse continued, “Maybe they didn’t want to fight her just then. My guess is that they didn’t have guns with them at the time.” Most people in the Old World don’t bother with firearms, which Jesse knew.

“But how did they get four girls out of there without you seeing?” Will asked.

“Two possibilities.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “If they waited right by the back door for us to leave, they could have snuck them out the back before the fire spread. Or, they might have put the fire out—there was an extinguisher in the kitchen—taken the girls, and restarted the fire. That seems less likely.”

“Either way, Scarlett knew how many bodies she’d seen,” Jesse said, jumping in again. “So they had to come after her again. They followed her to me, and saw an opportunity to take a shot at Scarlett before she could tell anyone about the number of girls.”

“Without Scarlett, Molly looks responsible for all of it,” Dashiell said thoughtfully.

“Exactly,” Jesse said. “Scar is the only person who can blow the official story.”

“Look,” I began again. “If I’m right, you have a boundary witch running around LA right now, one who’s strong enough to press vampires. But she can’t be working alone. Setting aside the fact that she would have to move four adult bodies in a few seconds, I can only think of one reason for her to have stolen those women.”

Kirsten paled, and Will went quiet. Dashiell said, “Because they’re being turned into vampires.”

Chapter 12

It was strange seeing the Old World leaders again, especially in a cheap hotel lobby. Jesse had sort of built them up in his head as the shapers of his destiny, but really, they were just tired-looking people struggling to represent their respective tribes. Even Dashiell didn’t look as scary as Jesse remembered, although he supposed it helped that the three of them were all in Scarlett’s presence at the moment.

Dashiell’s declaration that the missing girls were likely being turned into vampires had silenced the group for a moment. Will and Dashiell had nearly identical thoughtful expressions, as they both worked through the implications. Kirsten just looked unnerved. Scarlett waited patiently, giving them time to absorb it. That surprised Jesse a little, but it was a smart move.