I grinned at that. “I’ve been called worse.”
We talked a little longer, mostly her asking me questions about Lex and me doing my best to answer them tactfully. I did ask Katia a few things about boundary magic. We didn’t have any boundary witches in Los Angeles, though I had cleaned up more than one scene where some trades witches had decided to dick around with death magic. It usually involved at least one dead trades witch.
Katia told me she was okay at pressing weaker vampires—someone like Dashiell would be well beyond her abilities—but she could not, she said, do the big scary move that boundary witches were best known for: sucking the life out of humans and using their life force to do trades magic. “If I had the right supplies, performed the right rituals, I could take the life of chickens or goats,” she said gravely. “I have done this a few times, when Oskar demanded it. I do not like to do it, though. It feels . . . too good. I have never done hard drugs, but I imagine it’s like that.”
I felt her magic flex just a tiny bit within my radius, but I’d been around witches enough to know she wasn’t trying to perform an active spell. It was more like she was remembering one, the way your hand automatically rises to your ear when you talk about being on the phone.
When her voice started to drift again, I shut up, letting her get some rest. The woman had been dead only two hours earlier; she deserved some sleep.
After nearly half an hour, Jesse came back into the room. He looked . . . well, nearly as tired as Katia. But it was the bone-deep, my-soul-hurts kind of tired. “We’re on,” he said. “I know where the girls are.”
Chapter 38
When you live in Los Angeles, you eventually acclimate to living alongside and within the film industry. In LA, big movie theater complexes often host way-in-advance screenings, complete with security and celebrities. Actors are everywhere, and screenwriters fill every coffee shop and diner in the county. It’s perfectly ordinary to have streets or businesses closed for filming, and now and then you’ll see cryptic signs with vague code names directing crew members to shoots.
This is our thing, and to residents it becomes part of the landscape, like the skyways that connect buildings in downtown Minneapolis so residents don’t have to go outside in subfreezing temperatures, or the gas stations overflowing with Disney merchandise in Orlando. But every now and then, something reminds me that I live in a movie industry town, and it suddenly seems surreal all over again.
Case in point? Forty-five minutes away from where we sat, there was a McDonald’s that didn’t serve food. Did not, in fact, serve anything at all.
“So it looks like a fast-food restaurant, but it exists just for filming?” I said skeptically.
“No, it looks like a McDonald’s, complete with the big golden arches out front,” Jesse corrected. “Everything’s just like a regular restaurant, but it sits empty until the McDonald’s corporation needs to film new commercials. It can, however, be rented out to other companies for filming. Which is what Oskar did.”
“That is just so LA,” I said, shaking my head. “And your new CI buddy told you this?”
He nodded. “That’s where they drove Molly. Oskar has no reason to suspect we’ve got an informant within the MC, so he also has no reason not to trust them. I’m guessing he’s pressing their leader, Lee, into giving these orders, and the rest of the gang follows them.” Jesse seemed troubled. “My guy wasn’t actually there, but he called one of his friends and got the location out of him.”
Ah. I didn’t know how much Jesse had to blackmail or bully the guy to make him do that, but I’d seen enough movies to know that if we went in there with guns—or knives, in my case—blazing, and the rest of the MC figured out how we found them, the CI wouldn’t have much of a life expectancy. We needed to do everything we could to prevent that.
“What a weird fucking place to have your hideout,” I said.
Jesse shrugged. “I checked a map on my phone. It’s a good location for vampires—an office park where most businesses are only open nine to five. I’m guessing the security is pretty good, and if they need to film at night sometimes, there must be pretty high-quality blackout shades.”
I checked my watch. It was a little after three in the morning. “If he’s as smart as everyone says he is, he’s going to kill Molly at dawn,” I guessed. “Or kill her with the dawn. That’s a little less than four hours from now. How many of the MC guys stayed at Mock-Donald’s?”
That got a little smile out of him. “Four. Plus Oskar, and God knows who else.”
I laid a hand gently on Katia’s shoulder. “Katia! Can you wake up for just a minute?”
Her eyes opened again. “Is Lex here?” she croaked.
“Not yet. But there’s something we really need to know. Are you with me?”
She didn’t exactly sit up, but she shifted a little on the cot. “Yes. What is the question?”
“We know that Frederic was working with you guys. Is there anyone else in the LA Old World who works for Oskar?”
She chewed on her lip. “Yes. There are two other vampires who have been spying for Oskar, and not because I pressed them. They knew Oskar the last time he was in Los Angeles, before I met him. There is a werewolf as well, although I don’t know his name.”
Jesse and I exchanged a troubled look. “Do you know the vampires’ names?” I asked.
Katia shook her head. “I did not need to press them, so Oskar kept their identities secret. As I told you, he never fully trusted me.”
“Shit. Will they be with him?”
“No. They are to go to the Trials as they normally would. They were to be part of the later plan to overtake Dashiell.”
Well, that was one thing, at least. “Okay, you can go back to sleep,” I told her. “We’ll give Lex this address and tell her to come straight here.”
She nodded and slipped back into unconsciousness.
“So six of them, against only two of us,” I said, thinking out loud. “Even if I neutralize the supernaturals, that’s six men with probably at least four guns.”
“Not to state the obvious,” Jesse said, “but we could really use some backup on this.”
“Yeah, no shit. But who? Three more traitors isn’t as bad as I feared, but it’s enough that we can really only trust Dashiell and Will. And Beatrice,” I added, “but she’s not a fighter.”
“Kirsten?”
“Yes, we trust her, but she’s a little too messed up tonight to be playing with combat magic.”
He winced. “Okay, I can see that.”
“And as far as I know, she’s the only witch in LA with experience using magic to blow things up. So . . . we’re kind of fucked here.”
“We could wait for Will and Dashiell,” he offered. “Do you think they’d fight?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Will, almost certainly. But Dashiell rarely wades into physical confrontation, especially with me around. It’s not a cowardice thing; it’s more like . . . you wouldn’t send the president to the front lines. Too big of a risk.”
“On the other hand, Oskar’s gunning for his city,” Jesse said. “And Dashiell could squash him like a bug.”
I pointed to myself. “I’m a mobile even playing field, remember? If you want Dashiell to vamp-kill all the humans and overpower Oskar, I’d have to stay home and watch from the cheap seats. Ordinarily that would sound fantastic, but if we send Dashiell in there alone, he could decide a dead Molls is a better political move than a live Molls.”
“Yeah.” Jesse rubbed his face, looking as overwhelmed as I felt. “What time do the Trials end?”
“They had a thirty-minute break at ten thirty, then another two-and-a-half hour session, and repeat,” I explained. “They’re done at four, and then it’s social time.”
Jesse leaned back on the couch. “It’s too bad Lex isn’t here already,” he commented. “It would be pretty frickin’ awesome to have her on our team.”