Midnight Curse (Disrupted Magic Book 1) Read online

  “Everyone was ready to kill the nova wolf,” Jesse pointed out.

  “Because Remus was never part of Will’s pack. It was also very likely that the only way to stop Remus was to kill him—it’s very hard to take a werewolf alive, unless I’m right there. But even in that case, Will consulted Dashiell and Kirsten before deciding.”

  Jesse nodded, acquiescing. He rubbed the stubble on one side of his face, considering the situation. “The timing is still weird. What would have happened if the Trials weren’t coming up? If this thing with Molly had just happened on some random Thursday?”

  It was a good question. No vampire had blood-gorged in LA as long as I’d been the only crime scene cleaner, but it had happened once under Olivia. “In that case, I think they would have held a sort of miniature version of the Trials, with just Dashiell, Kirsten, and Will.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What?”

  “Say I’m the one who set her up,” Jesse began. “What do I gain by doing it tonight instead of two months from now? If the trial happens either way . . .”

  Another good question, and one I should have considered earlier. “Publicity,” I said finally, thinking it through. “By the end of the night every vampire in LA is going to know what Molly did, and it’ll start trickling into the other communities, if it hasn’t already. There’s no way this can be hushed up or glossed over. And that means Dashiell is going to have to make an example of Molly, especially since one of those girls was a Friend of the Witches. Since it’s the Trials, he’ll have to do it publicly.” I wasn’t sure if whoever had orchestrated the massacre had known one of the girls was a Friend of the Witches, but it seemed likely. That particular element made the whole thing political—and potentially explosive.

  “Plus, now you have no time to figure out who the real bad guy is,” Jesse pointed out. “You’re right; even if I’d never met Molly, I would think the timing was sketchy. Especially since the blood-gorging thing doesn’t happen very often?” He’d made it into a question, his eyebrows raised.

  “Definitely not,” I said. “I’ve never even heard of a vampire drinking down that many people in one . . . sitting. With the vomiting and all. There’s just no point to it.”

  Jesse nodded, but mostly to himself. I could see the wheels turning in his head. “Does this mean you’ll help me figure out who did this?” I asked, unable to keep the hope out of my voice. “I’ve only got a day, and Molly’s life is on the line.”

  Jesse hesitated, his eyes darting around the room for a moment. “I can’t, Scar,” he said finally. “I can help you brainstorm over the phone, maybe, but I just can’t be a part of this again.”

  A knot of disappointment and sadness tightened in my chest. It wasn’t so long ago that Jesse had promised me he’d be my partner. How had so much changed between us? “Why not?” I whispered.

  “I’m not going to be any help, for one thing.” His face shifted into something . . . broken. “I don’t think I have anything left, Scarlett. I’m pretty much just a void at this point.”

  “Sounds like a sitcom,” I offered. “Null and Void: crime solvers who need therapy.”

  He didn’t laugh, so I tried again. “Jesse, you’ve already helped, just by talking through it with me.” And I’m scared, and this is really big, and I need someone I can trust. Once, I might have said that out loud, but not anymore.

  He gestured around the room. “There’s also the thing where every time I get involved in one of your cases, my life goes to shit.”

  Whoa. “Excuse me? I didn’t make you get married, or divorced, or write that book.”

  “Yeah, but all those things happened because I quit the LAPD.”

  Anger built in my chest. “I didn’t make you do that, either!”

  “Didn’t you?” he countered, his voice icy-quiet. It unnerved me. Jesse and I had gone toe-to-toe plenty of times, but I’d never seen him so resigned. Like nothing I said would pull him out of his own personal black hole, so why did this fight matter?

  Molly’s voice rang in my head. The hole you left him in.

  “No,” I said firmly, both to her and to Jesse. I wasn’t taking this on too. “You made your own choices, Cruz, just like everyone else. It’s not my fault you can’t live with them.”

  Shadow, who was on her feet watching this exchange, now moved to stand solidly between us, her teeth pointed toward Jesse. He gave her a hurt look. To me, he just said, “I think it’s time for you to go.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I said through my teeth.

  As I walked—okay, stomped—into the elevator with Shadow, the conversation ran on a loop in my head. Despite what I’d said, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit responsible for Jesse’s situation. Three years ago, I had pushed him into breaking his moral code, which had kicked off this whole downward spiral.

  Or maybe I just felt guilty that I hadn’t tried to stop his descent. During the years I’d been happy with Eli, I hadn’t bothered to do anything about this other person I’d affected deeply. I had known Jesse was flailing, but I’d told myself that calling would only make things worse for him. I’d been a coward.

  And now Molly would pay the price. He wasn’t going to help me, and I’d just wasted a very precious hour and a half learning that.

  I slammed open the building’s front door, which ended up being very dissatisfying because it was on those air-compressed hinges that refuse to slam. Shadow had to trot by my side as I stormed down the street toward my van. What the hell was I going to do now? I needed to get back to that storage unit, but I had to wait for daylight, when Frederic wouldn’t be there. That left me with hours to kill—and no idea how I could use them to help Molly.

  I was so busy fuming, my eyes fixed on the sidewalk in front of me, that I never saw the SUV creeping up the street behind me. I didn’t even register it until it was nearly alongside me, and even then I didn’t bother glancing over. If I had, I probably would have seen the window go down and the rifle barrel appear. But I didn’t notice the car.

  Not until the first shot hit me.

  Chapter 9

  As Scarlett stomped down the hall, Jesse was practically tingling with indignation. He wasn’t happy about Molly’s predicament, of course, but his first instinct about Scarlett had basically been correct: she’d thought he would come running again the second she batted her eyes.

  Not this time, he thought, feeling self-righteous.

  Jesse went over to his couch and dropped down. His eyes landed on the ground in front of the apartment entrance, and he noticed a folded piece of paper just inside the doorway. He frowned. A note from one of the neighbors?

  Sighing, he heaved himself to his feet and went to retrieve it. It was a flyer for guitar lessons, complete with the little tear-off tabs on the bottom. On the back side, however, he recognized Scarlett’s scribbled handwriting. She’d written it when she’d thought he wasn’t home. He hadn’t spotted it when they walked in.

  Jesse—I don’t have your current cell phone number, but I’m taking a chance that you still keep this place. I need your help, as quick as possible. Please call me. She’d underlined “please” several times. I know a lot has happened between us, and most of it’s my fault. But I find myself in need of a partner again, and you’re the only one I trust. I’ll think about how sad that is later. –Scarlett

  Jesse found himself smiling faintly. He had resented Scarlett and the Old World for manipulating him into those cases, and he’d hated himself for getting sucked into the excitement and the danger. He still had nightmares about destroying the bodies of Henry Remus’s victims, denying their families the closure that came with burying the dead. Jesse had violated so many laws that it had felt like too much of a betrayal to put on his badge again. And yes, he did sort of blame Scarlett for that. How could he not? She had broken his heart in so many ways.

  He moved his finger, and saw a small postscript near the bottom of the sheet, just above the tabs. P.S.: I understand if you don’t
want to get sucked back in. You’re free now. But why did we go through all that if not to do some good?

  Jesse looked up, around the pathetic living room, and experienced a strange sense of vertigo—followed by an epiphany.

  She was so right.

  A million years ago, he had become a cop so he could help people. Then Dashiell and the others had taken his feelings for Scarlett and his desire to minimize collateral damage to the public, and they’d twisted him into breaking laws. But he wasn’t a cop anymore. And he wasn’t in love with Scarlett. There was nothing left for them to manipulate him with, no career left to compromise. He was free. And what was the point of all that turmoil if he wasn’t going to do anything with his freedom? Scarlett was offering him a chance to save a life again, and she wasn’t threatening or extorting him to do it. So why not choose to help her save Molly?

  What the hell else was he doing?

  He felt like he’d just woken up from a restless sleep. Jesse dropped the paper and started running.

  He went straight for the stairs, which were generally a lot faster than taking the old elevator, and bounded through the exterior door only a few seconds after Scarlett. She was up the street, her head down, the bargest glued to her side.

  Then he saw the SUV. Jesse’s guts twisted with fear as the back window slowly lowered. “Scarlett!” he shouted.

  She turned, looking surprised, and the first bullet exploded the sleeve of her jacket, causing her to cry out.

  By then Shadow was on her, moving so fast that Jesse couldn’t see what was happening. He thought Shadow had knocked her to the ground, but a metal trash can was blocking his line of vision. In nearly the same moment, there were two more rifle shots, and Jesse bolted forward, his hand on his hip—and then he remembered he wasn’t carrying. His personal weapon was locked in a safe in his bedroom, probably gathering dust.

  To his surprise, the SUV driver began to back up quickly, and Jesse realized too late that they were coming for him too. He dropped down as a round whistled over his head. It impacted the glass door and kept going, embedding itself into the wall of mailboxes in the lobby. A second shot ricocheted off the steps above him, and Jesse felt a sudden sting on his face as a tiny piece of shrapnel embedded in his cheek.

  He heard tires squeal as the SUV tore down the street. Jesse stumbled to his feet and raced the twenty yards to Scarlett, who was lying on the sidewalk with blood on one side, groaning quietly. The bargest was lying beside her, panting shallowly.

  He dropped to his knees next to Scarlett. “How bad? How bad?” he blurted, his hands running over her, searching for the source of the bleeding. “Scarlett?” He touched her cheek, drawing her head toward him. Her eyes were unfocused. “Scar, where are you hit?”

  “Arm,” she mumbled. She tried to roll herself over, but hissed with pain. “Just my arm. Bonked my head though. Shadow . . .”

  “She’s alive. I have to roll you, okay?”

  She nodded, her jaw clenched, and he carefully eased her body over. Despite that, she gasped, her face going another shade whiter. When he had her settled on her back, Jesse flipped back the side of her jacket, exposing her chest. There was a second, faint bloodstain right above her heart. He bit down on a curse, not wanting to scare her. He needed to get the jacket off, but it didn’t give when he pulled at it. “I need to cut this off. Do you have something in the van?” It was only fifteen feet away.

  “Jacket pocket,” she said through clenched teeth. He thought she meant her keys, but when he reached into the pocket he found a sharp knife, nearly six inches long. It was balanced for throwing. That surprised him, but it wasn’t the right moment to ask. He pulled it out and cut back the tight denim.

  Jesse sighed with relief. The second wound was just a thin cut from a shard of her phone. “I think the bullet grazed your phone as you were turning, which slowed it down some,” he reported. Carefully, he ran the knife down the sleeve of the jacket, causing her to groan again. “Sorry . . . okay. This isn’t too bad. It’s bleeding a lot, though. You need some stitches.” He expected her to protest, but she nodded, her face still dazed. “Do you have a concussion?”

  “Don’t think so. Check Shadow.”

  He ignored this, first cutting a slice of the denim to cinch around her arm. She screamed when he pulled it tight, involuntary tears running down her grit-smeared cheeks. “Shadow,” she insisted, panting.

  Jesse finally turned toward the bargest, noticing that there was absolutely no blood near her. She was lying on her side, her enormous chest heaving. He began to touch her, but stopped as he saw the two small bald patches to the right of her spine, where her fur had been blown off. “Oh, wow,” he said softly.

  “How is she?”

  “I think her ribs are cracked,” he said in an awed voice. Getting shot at such close range should have turned her into meat rain. He had known in theory that she was tough, but seeing it in action was surreal.

  “She’ll—” Scarlett began, but she was interrupted by the first scream of sirens, still a distance away. One of the neighbors must have called the police. Scarlett started to struggle to her feet. “We’ve got to go.”

  “No!” he rested his hands on her shoulders, and that light contact alone was enough to force her back down. “You need an ambulance. That arm needs stitches.”

  “Jesse, we’ll lose hours—”

  “I mean it,” he said firmly. “You want my help, you’ve got it. But that’s my condition.”

  She met his eyes for an endless second before nodding. “Fine.” She propped herself on her good elbow, looking around like she was mentally calculating the evidence dispersal. “You’ve got to get Shadow out of here, though. They can’t find her.”

  “What will you tell the police?”

  “That I came to see you, but you weren’t home. Someone tried to shoot me as I left.”

  The sirens were getting close now. “They might check your van. Are they gonna find anything incriminating?”

  She had to be in a lot of pain, but she gave him a skeptical look. “Not without a blowtorch. Shadow, come!”

  Hearing her mistress’s voice, the bargest struggled to her feet. “Go with Jesse,” Scarlett instructed. “He’ll bring you to me in just a little while.”

  The bargest gave her a mournful look, but began to trot gingerly toward Jesse. Already she was shaking off the effects of the gunshot.

  “Take the key out of my back pocket,” Scarlett said to Jesse. “I don’t want anything to happen to it.” She leaned onto one side, wincing, and Jesse awkwardly dipped in her pocket for the little safety deposit key.

  “I’ll find you at the hospital,” he promised, climbing to his feet. She just nodded weakly, then let her head rest on the ground.

  At the corner, Jesse herded Shadow next to the building, peeking around to keep an eye on Scarlett until the ambulance came. When she was loaded into the back and the doors closed behind her, Jesse finally relaxed and turned toward the bargest, who sat watching him expectantly. “She’s going to be fine,” he promised. Jesse didn’t really know how much of human language Shadow understood, but it was definitely more than the average dog. “They’ll bandage her arm,” he added, touching his own sleeve, “and then we’ll meet up with her. Okay?”

  Shadow thumped her clubbed tail, and Jesse nodded to himself. “Okay. Good.”

  He led Shadow back up to the apartment so he could retrieve his personal handgun, his cell phone, and his jacket. He found an old leash in the back of a closet, left over from walking his parents’ dog, Max. Shadow accepted the leash graciously, though she didn’t look thrilled about it. Now that they were away from Scarlett’s radius, Shadow’s healing had sped up, and even the bald patches in her fur filled in.

  Then they were in Jesse’s car, pulling out into traffic—and Jesse realized he had no idea where to go. He needed to get away from the apartment in case the police stopped by, but he probably had at least a couple of hours to kill before Scarlett was released f
rom the hospital. He didn’t know what he could do that might help prove Molly’s innocence.

  Or did he? Jesse had one impartial contact in the Old World. And she happened to owe him a favor.

  Jesse pulled over at a 7-Eleven and checked the dashboard clock. It was well after midnight in Colorado now, but he was betting she’d still be up. Allison Luther hadn’t seemed like the kind of person who slept much, anyway. Jesse had known a lot of ex-soldiers like that.

  Lex, as she preferred to be called, was an Army veteran who had lost her sister Sam to a serial killer—or at least, that was the official story. Although Lex and her family were originally from Boulder, Sam had been killed in Los Angeles, by the nova wolf, Henry Remus. Jesse had been assigned to the case, and met Lex when she came to look for Sam’s killer. It was only later that Lex learned that she had witchblood, and her family line came with a particular specialty: power over the boundary between life and death. Lex was powerful, and Jesse knew she could contact her dead sister, among other abilities. Jesse had heard rumors, but it was time to confirm them.

  Sure enough, she picked up on the second ring. “Cruz?” she said warily. “What happened?”

  “Hello to you too,” he said, a little amused. “But you’re right, I’ve got a problem. Well, a question.”

  There was just the slightest pause, and then she said, “I haven’t forgotten what you did when I had my own ‘problem.’ How can I help?”

  “Scarlett told me once that boundary witches can press vampires,” he began. “Is it true?”

  “Yes,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Could you press them into killing someone else? A human?”

  Another hesitation. “What’s going on, Cruz?”

  “I’ll tell you, but please answer the question first.”

  “Okay . . . well, you’ve probably heard that vampires can’t press people to do anything too far outside their comfort zone,” she said. “A vampire could press someone to make out with a stranger, but they couldn’t make you, say, fall permanently in love, or ax-murder your parents or anything like that. But that’s because those things are outside of your basic nature.”