Malediction: An Old World Story Read online

  I had some distance now, though, and I managed to force myself through most of the articles, which turned out to be a lot of material. Since the bodies were never found and Petra Corbett had accepted a plea deal rather than going through a big public trial, I hadn’t expected to find many articles. But the LA Times had run a whole series on the case, complete with an editorial speculating on what Remus might have done with the bodies—I was happy to ignore that one—and a long profile of Jesse Cruz, hero cop.

  I skimmed the profile, which revealed that my sister’s murder wasn’t the only high-profile case Jesse had caught. The year before, he’d been involved in catching the guy who’d killed those people at La Brea Park, a major case that Sam and I had actually discussed on the phone a couple of times. Was that why Cruz had left the force? Because he’d seen too many awful murders? At the same time, the LAPD was enormous. Wasn’t it kind of strange that one cop solved both those cases?

  Unless it was an Old World connection? Sam’s suggestion that Cruz knew more than he was letting on seemed to support that, but if there was a connection, what could it be? He wasn’t a vampire; I’d seen him during the day. Male witches were rare, but possible. Or I supposed he could be a werewolf, though I knew very little about them.

  All of a sudden I felt silly. A werewolf cop? That sounded ridiculous. Maybe I was completely wrong about Cruz being part of the Old World. What evidence did I even have, aside from an offhand comment his friend made about me and Sam’s cryptic message?

  As if on cue, my phone rang. I didn’t know the number, but it had a Los Angeles area code. “This is Lex.”

  “Hi, Ms. Luther. It’s Jesse Cruz.” He sounded guarded. I couldn’t really blame him. “I understand you were looking for me.”

  I sat back in the chair, suddenly unsure of where to start. Humans were not allowed to know about the supernatural, so if Cruz wasn’t part of the Old World, I would be putting him at risk if I revealed anything about it. But how the hell was I supposed to get a straight answer if I couldn’t explain my reason for asking the question? “Hi, Detective,” I said, intentionally using his old honorific. “Please call me Lex. And thanks for calling me back.”

  “I’m not a detective anymore, actually. But you knew that.”

  “I was kind of surprised to hear the news. Would you mind if I asked what you’re doing instead?”

  There was a long pause, and I suspected he was trying to think of a nice way to blow me off. Instead, he just asked, “Is there something I can do for you, Lex?”

  Oh, fuck it. Frontal assault. “You could tell me how my sister really died.”

  2. Jesse

  Jesse Cruz was already having a crappy day.

  The studio was shooting overnight in Vancouver and they kept calling him with the most inane little questions. Would a punk kid still hold a weapon sideways like a 90s gangster, or was that trend over now? What about an older gangster, one who might have been raising hell in the 90s? What kind of automatic weapon would a retired cop on a pension have on hand to combat a home invasion?

  And so on. Jesse had to come up with an answer for every single inquiry. He’d gotten smarter about that, though: during his first month as a police consultant, he’d given careful consideration to every request, asking any number of follow-up questions. Does the weapon have to be automatic? Is he right-handed or left-handed? Does he have access to illegal stuff? Does it have to be American-made? But that tactic seemed to just confuse and irritate the producers, and by the second month, Jesse had finally realized that they didn’t actually care if the answer was right, or even all that plausible. They just wanted to be able to say, “Oh, we asked the consultant, and this is what he approved.” Then if the fan message boards complained about authenticity, some PA could go on and write, “The hero cop of Los Angeles signed off on this, so pipe down and go back to jacking off in your mom’s basement. Oh, and please keep watching the show!”

  Now he just gave them his best guess, and they ran with it like it was scripture.

  Jesse arrived at the studio at 9:30 feeling tired and irritable, not to mention frustrated by the way his cell phone wouldn’t stop ringing. If it wasn’t the producers on the Vancouver team, it was yet another junior agent asking for a lunch meeting. Right after the Henry Remus case, Jesse had gotten calls from all the heavy-hitters, wanting to buy the rights to the life story of the young cop who’d caught two serial killers in less than two years. The big fish finally petered off after six months of no’s, but the baby agents were still circling him like hyperactive puppies. He’d changed his cell phone number twice, but somehow they kept finding it.

  When he’d seen Miranda’s name on the caller ID, Jesse had been relieved: here at last was someone he enjoyed talking to, and who wouldn’t want anything from him. Except as it turned out, she did sort of want something from him, and now all of Jesse’s best efforts to avoid talking about the Henry Remus case were blowing up in his face.

  Tell me how my sister really died. If Allison Luther only knew how impossible that was. While he groped for an answer, Jesse closed his eyes, trying to picture her face: youthful, sort of innocent-looking, but with a hardness born of experience. She could play an angel in a movie, if not for her nose, which had been broken at least once. The nose, along with her broad shoulders and tightly muscled limbs, gave the impression of serious strength. He’d only met her briefly, but her features were seared into his memory: the cleft chin, the little widow’s peak on her forehead. Those bright blue eyes. He had nightmares about those eyes, only in the dreams they were open and staring, covered in a white film. Lex wasn’t an exact copy of her fraternal twin sister—the woman whose body Jesse had disposed of—but their eyes were the same.

  The images unnerved him, and he opened his own eyes and said carefully, “Ma’am—sorry, Lex—do you have some reason to believe there’s new information about your sister’s murder?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “May I ask what that is?”

  There was a brief pause. “Let’s call it an anonymous tip.”

  Her voice was certain, confident, and it puzzled Jesse. What the hell could that mean? Someone had called her and told her there was more to Samantha Wheaton’s death? Jesse quickly ran through the short list of the people who knew about the cover up. He trusted his brother, of course, and Scarlett. Dashiell and Will would sooner kill the entire LAPD than release secrets about Old World crimes. Who else was there? Lizzy Thompkins? Last time he’d talked to Scarlett, she’d said Lizzy was guarded by other werewolves around the clock, but maybe it was possible.

  Still, it wasn’t like he could talk about it. “I’m sorry, Lex, but I can assure you that we got the right man. And the right woman.”

  “Maybe you did,” she said, her voice cooling. “But I didn’t get the full story. And I think I deserve it.”

  Did she? He thought of all his nightmares, and decided that even if he had been allowed to say anything about the Old World, it was better for Lex’s mental health not to hear it. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said finally.

  “Why don’t you start by telling me about your friend? The one who knew I wasn’t human.”

  Who knew I wasn’t human. Jesse considered that for a second. “Back up. Let’s say for the sake of argument that I believe you’re not human. That you are, in fact, a witch.”

  “Okay, let’s.” She sounded unsurprised.

  “I’m still human. If you are what I think you are, you’ll understand why I can’t just jump in and answer all your questions.”

  “If you can’t answer them,” she said slowly, “that means my sister’s death was supernatural.”

  Oh, goddammit. He’d walked right into that. “Look,” he tried, “I’ve told you everything I can about Samantha’s murder. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, fine.” It sounded like her teeth were gritted with irritation. “If you won’t give me answers, I’ll come out there and find someone who will.” The line went dead.


  Jesse looked at his phone with alarm. “Well, fuck.”

  He glanced around the production office, but no one was trying to get his attention at the moment, so he dialed his sometimes partner Scarlett Bernard. They hadn’t seen much of each other over the last ten months. Which is pretty much what happens, Jesse thought wryly, when you get dumped for some other guy. Scarlett had a new life now. She was getting more respect in the Old World, starting to call some of her own shots, plus she had her boyfriend Eli and her teenage assistant Corry. Jesse, on the other hand, wasn’t even a cop anymore. She had no reason to contact him.

  And it was probably better that way. He’d gotten any number of invitations to lunch or coffee from actresses and assistants since starting this job, but he’d turned them all down. He wasn’t ready—not just because of Scarlett, but because of … well, everything. The Remus case. The things he’d done to try to stop the killer were nearly as bad as the murders themselves. At least Remus had an excuse for his insane behavior.

  Scarlett answered on the second ring. “Bernard.”

  Right, she didn’t have his new phone number. Stupid of him to forget to give it to her. “Hey, it’s me,” he said.

  There was a pause, and for a second Jesse thought she didn’t recognize his voice. That would hurt. But then she said, “Hey, Jesse. Long time no see. What’s going on?”

  “This is sort of an official call,” he said. “I need you and your colleagues to know about a possible … situation.”

  “Let’s talk in person,” she said immediately. “My colleagues still get kind of touchy about having these conversations over the phone.”

  They arranged to meet at Hair of the Dog when Jesse got off work. It wasn’t his favorite place to hang out, since Scarlett’s boyfriend was the head bartender, But he didn’t really have anything against Eli, who was a decent guy once you got past the whole werewolf thing, and the bar was more or less halfway between Jesse’s new place in Studio City and Scarlett’s apartment in Santa Monica.

  Besides, Jesse could use a drink. He leaned against the wall for a moment, thinking about Allison Luther again. When they’d met in person back in January, Lex had struck him as a decent person and a good sister. All she’d wanted was to get her family some answers, and it had broken his heart a little to know he was one of the reasons she’d never get them. Jesse thought of Lex’s sister Samantha, and the horrible injuries that she’d suffered. He hadn’t personally tossed her body into the furnace, but he might as well have.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the approach of a frantic PA. The PAs, Jesse had discovered, were always frantic. “Cruz! They need you in the writer’s room!”

  Jesse sighed and went back to work.

  3. Jesse

  It was after seven by the time the writers wrapped for the day and he could start the drive down to the West Side. Hair of the Dog was on a nondescript block of Pico, a hole-in-the-wall place with great beer and surprisingly tasty nachos. The majority of the city’s werewolves were there nearly every night, driven by their need to be with the pack, and although the general public were always welcome guests, most of them tended to avoid the place. There was something a little too “clubby” about the regulars.

  He took a parking spot a couple of streets east of the bar, once again missing his police parking privileges. As he approached the place, he noticed that Will, the pack alpha and bar owner, had installed a new door for the main entrance. The old one had been heavy glass, but this one was thick, solid wood on cast-iron hinges, tough to pull open and a hell of a lot tougher to break down. Jesse approved.

  Inside, there was a square bar in the center of the room, surrounded by a smattering of tables. A hallway in the back led to the owner’s office and a back room with pool tables. The walls were covered floor to ceiling in pictures of canines, but Jesse barely noticed them anymore. And then he saw her.

  Scarlett sat at the bar, perched easily on a stool with a soda in front of her. Her long fingers swirled the straw in lazy circles as she chatted with the bartender. To his relief, it wasn’t Eli but a short female werewolf he’d met once or twice—Esmé, he thought. Scarlett threw her head back and laughed at something the other woman had said, and Jesse felt a rush of … something. Wistfulness, maybe. It wasn’t even romantic, exactly, he just … missed her.

  Esmé looked over at him, as did a couple of the other werewolves scattered around the room, and Scarlett followed her gaze. “Hey, Jesse,” she called out, grinning. Her bright green eyes sparkled with good humor, and she was wearing her dark hair down, which was rare. She’d gotten it cut, Jesse noticed, so it hung just past her shoulders and had some layering. “How’s tricks?”

  “Hi.” Jesse propelled himself over to her. He was two feet away before he caught the slightest hint of movement in the darkness near her feet. “Oh,” he said in surprise. “Hey, Shadow.” He squatted down to pet Scarlett’s “dog”, which was not a dog at all, but a bargest—an ink-black monster of legend that was spell-made to hunt and kill werewolves. Shadow had been a dog once, though: 180 pounds of the ugliest dog Jesse had ever seen in his life. She was some kind of mixed breed that included Peruvian hairless, pit bull, and maybe some wolf. Or, he thought, squinting at her, maybe some jaguar. After giving him a quick, threat-assessment once-over, she thumped her club tail and didn’t bother getting up. He scratched first her furry ear, then her hairless one.

  “I didn’t know you were bringing her,” he said to Scarlett.

  “Corry’s my usual dog-sitter, but it’s a school night for her. I could have left her with Eli,” Scarlett said wryly, “but he’s terrified of being left alone with her, not that he’d ever admit it. I don’t think she’d hurt him without the command, but we’re still working on, um … rehabilitation.”

  Jesse bent closer to the bargest so Scarlett wouldn’t see his smirk. Eli was a werewolf, and Shadow had been bred to kill his kind. The year before, a killer witch had brought Shadow to LA with the intention of wiping out all the werewolves in the area. That witch, Petra Corbett, was now in prison for Remus’s murder, but the bargest was too rare and valuable to give away, not to mention nearly impossible to kill. Scarlett’s bosses—partners, Jesse corrected himself—had asked her to adopt it.

  “And Will doesn’t mind you having her in the bar?”

  She snorted. “I think he likes it, actually. She never leaves my side, obviously, but the werewolves are all scared of her. It keeps them on their best behavior when we’re around.”

  He scratched the bargest’s mostly hairless back until she craned her head around to give his hand one regal lick of thanks. Finally, he straightened up. “I like the haircut,” he said to Scarlett.

  “Oh.” She touched it, a little self-conscious. “Thank you. Will said we can talk in his office where it’s quieter. Do you want a drink first?”

  Jesse ordered a beer, then followed Scarlett as she and Shadow threaded through the tables to the back office. Scarlett closed the door behind him and sat down in Will’s office chair. The bargest settled at her feet.

  “Your knee’s better, I see,” he commented. She looked good.

  “Yeah. Physical therapy was a bitch, but it was worth it. I even started running again last month.” She gestured for him to pull up the visitor chair. Jesse sat. “So what’s up?”

  He took a gulp of the beer, set it down on the desk, and said, “Remember that woman who came to see me at the LAPD last year, after the Remus case?”

  The smile faded off Scarlett’s face. “Uhhhh…no?”

  “Right after we stopped Remus, you came to my office to see me about Lizzy, and one of the victim’s relatives was with me,” he reminded her. “You said something felt weird about her, and she obviously had no idea what you were talking about. I had to pull you out into the hall.”

  Scarlett nodded, her eyes going distant as she considered it. “Yeah, I remember now. She felt Old World. A little like a witch, but not quite right, and not quite anything else, either. And her ma
gic was, like”—she waved a hand in the air, looking for a word—“suppressed, I guess would be the best way to put it. And dark.” Scarlett shuddered. “I don’t know. She was only in my radius for like, ten seconds.”

  “Well, you might get another chance at her,” he said grimly. He told her about Lex’s phone call and her declaration that she would find the answers on her own. “When we met last year, she didn’t seem like she knew anything about the Old World, but she sure as hell does now. And she sort of suggested she’s a witch.”

  “Well, fuck,” Scarlett said promptly, and he couldn’t help but grin.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Who was the anonymous tip?”

  “I can’t figure it out. My best guess is Lizzy.”

  Scarlett shook her head emphatically. “Trust me, it’s not possible. Lizzy is … having problems. She’s being watched very carefully.” She took another drink of her soda and thought it over. “If she knows about the Old World, it’s really weird that she went to you.”

  “Because I’m not supernatural?”

  “Well, duh, but also because if she really is a witch she should have gone through the proper channels: had her clan contact Kirsten and clear everything through her. Although I’m still not convinced she is a witch.”

  “Well, what else could she be?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Scarlett was frowning, like she was searching her memory for something. Finally she shrugged. “Witch magic is hereditary. Maybe she’s just got like a drop of witchblood, and she’s unaffiliated with a clan. That means she’s just some random with no pull.” She shrugged, like she was waving off a housefly.

  “Yeah.” Jesse drank some more beer. He didn’t really disagree with anything Scarlett was saying, but at the same time, he hated the thought of Lex still not knowing what had happened to her sister. “Couldn’t we just tell her what she wants to know? If she really is a witch, I mean.”