Midnight Curse

Jesse couldn’t see any of the men at this distance. Everything was alarmingly silent for about four heartbeats, and then all the lights in the house went off at once. Almost immediately, there was the loud pop and the lightning flash of gunfire, followed by indistinct yelling. Jesse started for the house, but the back door banged open with surprising violence. He dropped to the ground and army-crawled back to the cover of the trees.

When he turned back to face the scene, there were six flashlight beams headed his way from the porch. Jesse pulled back further, staying low to the ground. He heard laughter, and the sort of tone that signifies men teasing each other.

“—should have seen the look on Raggers’s face!”

“Me! I thought you were gonna piss yourself when the big bastard brought his gun up!”

“How do you think he knew we were there?” wondered a third voice. “We was quiet, yeah?”

The other voices murmured in agreement. Now they were close enough for Jesse to see that four of the six were carrying something enormous between them. Something rectangular—each of them held a corner—and it seemed heavy, judging by their grunts.

“You see some of the shit in that place?” said one of the voices. “Kevlar, shotguns, holsters ’n shit. The fuck does this Negro do?”

“Not much, by the time Lee’s buddy gets through with him,” said another.

Jesse put it together in an instant. The long black object was a body bag, and it held a large black man who kept weapons in his home.

Hayne.

Their progress through the wooded area was slow, but Jesse still only had a second to think. He couldn’t face this many armed men by himself, and he would never be able to make it back to his own car in time to follow them. But he had to try. He whirled around and ran as fast as he could back the way he had come. Despite his best efforts, he made a little bit of noise, but the bikers didn’t notice. They had completed their mission, and now they were bragging and laughing, cocky.

Jesse made it about forty yards past the SUV, in the direction of his own car, before the bikers broke from the woods. He dove behind a fat clump of wild rye, ducking down just in time to avoid being hit by the men’s powerful flashlights. He was breathing hard—not enough exercise lately—and had to work to control the sound.

When the lights stopped flashing he peered through the fronds of the giant rye, and saw that the body bag being carried across the road to the SUV had started to squirm. Jesse sighed with relief. Hayne was still alive. A couple of the bikers punched the middle of the bag, and Hayne got the message and went still. Jesse ducked his head back down so the headlights wouldn’t catch him. There was nothing to do now but wait until the SUV drove off and then sprint for his car.

For the first time since he’d arrive at this location, he tried to think through what was happening. The vampire in charge hadn’t attacked the Trials, not without his boundary witch. Instead, he had sent his human muscle to kidnap one of Dashiell’s assets. Was he hoping Dashiell would make a trade? Jesse doubted it. The invading vampire had to know that Dashiell would never trade even a loyal human for a valuable commodity like a boundary witch. A null, maybe, but Scarlett was safe at the Theatre; she’d left him a message saying she’d made it. So what would kidnapping Hayne accomplish?

The SUV rolled past his hiding spot. Jesse counted to twenty and broke cover, running toward his car. By the time he reached the sedan, the SUV’s taillights had long since disappeared around the corner. There was no way he’d be able to follow them in his car.

Jesse sagged against the driver’s door, cursing. He dug out his phone and noticed a voice mail message from Scarlett. She was calling to let him know there was no cell service in the Los Angeles Theatre, which meant he couldn’t tell Dashiell or the others about Hayne. Shit. Scarlett had said there would be humans-go-away wards around the whole building, which meant he wouldn’t even be able to get close. What a clusterfuck.

He started to open the car door, but stopped with the door about two inches from the frame. Hadn’t Scarlett said that Hayne wore those little witch bags that protected him from vampires?

Instead of doubling back, Jesse got into the car and pulled onto Hayne’s actual street. He parked so his headlights illuminated the door, which had been kicked in with a heavy boot—there were tread marks next to the doorframe. The light switch didn’t work, so Jesse used a small penlight on his keychain.

The house was quite small, and had probably been very neat and sparsely furnished—before the MC guys had trashed it. The bikers hadn’t been in there long enough to do serious damage, but they’d done some cursory dumping of drawers and throwing of cushions, probably trying to make it look like a robbery. Just inside the door, Jesse’s foot crunched on something, and he moved the light to illuminate the crumpled shape of a plastic baby toy. Jesse frowned. Hayne had a kid? Man, he really was out of touch. But there wasn’t much baby paraphernalia, so maybe the kid only lived here part-time. Or maybe it was a niece or nephew who visited often. Whoever it was, at least the kid hadn’t been here when the MC showed up.

Jesse stepped through the junk in the living room and moved down a short hallway to the only bedroom. A Pack ’n Play had been overturned and half-collapsed. The bikers had flipped the mattress and box springs off the wood-framed bed. Next to it was a small fireproof safe, the kind you could buy at an office supply store. They’d thrown it down against the stone tiles until the tiles had cracked and the hinges had popped off the safe. Jesse squatted in the mess. No cash—if Hayne had any, the bikers would have taken it as part of their cover. All that remained was a passport for Theodore Hayne, a few official documents—and a gallon-size ziplock bag full of miniature burlap sacks, each about the size of a marshmallow. Jesse grinned. The bikers had left behind the real treasure.

He opened the ziplock and upended it, dumping witch bags all over the floor. As he’d been hoping, Hayne had been prepared for more than just a vampire press: the bags were marked with a simple “V,” “W,” or “Ww” in black marker. Jesse looped one of each around his neck, just in case. Then he ran for the car.

Chapter 30

I went up the stairs with the rest of the crowd, but broke away when they began filing into the auditorium. A series of small corridors led back to the wings, and through them to the stage itself. The exterior curtain was closed, but the two interior curtains were drawn, creating a large open space. The stage had been set up that afternoon: on one side, three ornate chairs that couldn’t quite qualify as thrones, and on the other, a long table with three simple straight-backed chairs—the seating for me, the defendant, and the accuser. Lucky me, I’d be sandwiched in the middle of them. Will was already sitting in one of the ornate chairs, and Kirsten was gathering her skirts to sit down in the opposite chair, leaving the middle seat for Dashiell.

I swallowed hard, feeling butterflies in my stomach for the first time. It was all so big. I’d been to the theater before, when we were making arrangements, but all of a sudden it felt very, very real. I wished Eli were here. Things were a little rocky between us, but I felt unmoored without him, like a kite without a string. More than anything, I wanted him to be standing with me, squeezing my hand.

I caught Kirsten’s eye, and she gave me an encouraging smile and a wave. Right. Move your feet, Scarlett. I pushed out a breath and went to my seat at the other table. Just as we’d planned, the distance between me and the other leaders was too great for them to be in my radius. Dashiell, Will, and Kirsten would retain all their powers during the proceedings.

Dashiell was standing center stage, his back to the curtain. He looked sophisticated and confident in his tuxedo, much more James Bond than concert pianist. As soon as I took my seat, he turned toward us and raised his eyebrows in a simple look: ready? The fudge popcorn had solidified to a slimy lump in my stomach, but I forced myself to put on my game face. We all nodded, and Dashiell pointed offstage, cuing whoever was in charge of the curtains. The red fabric began to draw to either side, slowly revealing us. The light onstage was still fairly dim, but a bright spotlight clicked on, pointing right at Dashiell.

“Good evening,” he announced. I risked a glance at the crowd, trying to peer past the stage lights. I’d figured we would only need a fraction of the available space, given the Theatre’s size. To my surprise, nearly every one of the two thousand seats was filled. Had our intel on the number of people in the Old World been faulty, or had people from outside Los Angeles snuck in to see how we did things? Or was it both? We’d taken so many security precautions, but it hadn’t occurred to me to make sure that all the Old World attendees were actually part of the Los Angeles Old World.