“Would you please start the IV?” I asked. “I’m supposed to stay away so her boundary magic can bring her back from death. Or whatever.”

Eli paused, probably fearing if he let me out of his sight I was gonna ninja-sneak out to get hurt again. “I’m headed straight for the fridge,” I told him reassuringly. “I’m starving.”

While Eli was getting Katia—or rather, Katia’s lifeless body—set up with a transfusion, I sent Kirsten a quick text explaining that we would probably need to allow Allison Luther access to LA for a couple of days. She returned the text immediately, to my surprise, saying that was fine and promising to make sure Dashiell and Will were on board. That surprised me a little, but if Kirsten had met Lex before, she probably trusted her. Lex might be really intense, but she was also sort of reassuring. If she was there to help, things would be better.

That done, I took Shadow out back and used the hose to rinse off the worst of the blood. She hated this process, but I promised her a fresh steak from the fridge, so she bore it with only minimal resentment. Which involved her waiting until I turned off the hose and then shaking her body a foot away from me. “Jerk,” I said, wiping a line of water off my face. She opened her mouth in a giant doggy grin.

Afterward we went into the kitchen, where I delivered the promised steak. As Shadow inhaled her meat reward, I washed my hands and began slapping together sandwiches. It was half past two, and Jesse and I hadn’t eaten anything since our donut breakfast. We hadn’t wanted to hit a drive-thru while we had a bargest and a dead body in the backseat. For some reason.

Jesse found me a moment later and pulled a chair up to the counter, leaning over to watch me. “No mayo on mine,” he said.

“I remember.” I pointed the butter knife at him. “You were gonna tell me your idea about where those guys came from.”

“Where I suspect they’re from,” he corrected, reaching out to snake the first finished sandwich. At my feet, Shadow made a longing noise, so I tossed her some roast beef, which she caught out of the air with a snap that made Jesse’s eyes widen.

I grinned. She wasn’t even hungry at the moment. “You were saying?” I said.

“Right. The guy in the garage had a tattoo, here”—he touched his breastbone above his heart—“I saw it when his shirt got twisted after he fell. It was sort of a stylized D. It looked like MC ink.”

I raised my eyebrows, swallowing a bite of my sandwich. “Master and Commander? Mortal Combat? Mitochloridian Carnage?”

He made a face at me. “What the—no. A motorcycle club tattoo. Biker gang. I just can’t remember which one.”

I snorted, not bothering to keep the skepticism out of my voice. “You think bikers are behind this?”

“No,” he said with great patience, “I think whoever’s behind this is paying the MC for muscle. And if Shadow hadn’t been with us, it probably would have worked out for them.”

Well, I couldn’t argue with that—Shadow had definitely saved our lives.

I considered his theory while we finished the first sandwiches and started making more. My life is so focused on supernatural crime scenes that sometimes I forget there are so many classes of human criminals out there. I didn’t know much about bikers, other than what you see on TV shows. And that was just it, I realized—“biker gang” felt like something you saw on television, not actual, flesh-and-blood people you might encounter. Then again, I worked for vampires and werewolves, so who was I to talk about plausibility?

Meanwhile, voluntarily bringing humans into an Old World matter seemed ludicrous to me, but maybe that was exactly why Katia and her vampire buddy had done it. It was a move I hadn’t seen coming, and one I had no defense against. I have no special healing skills, and I’m not a soldier like Lex. Even when I use knives and the Taser, I’m pretty much counting on the idea that my opponent isn’t used to being human, and will be a little disoriented.

“Okay, so, if the MC really is trying to kill me,” I said slowly, “do you think we’re safe here?” I gestured around the house.

Unfortunately, Eli chose that moment to walk into the kitchen. “Say what now?” he demanded, looking alarmed. “Did you just say a biker gang wants to kill you?”

“See?” Jesse said to me. “He knows what MC means.” I tossed a slice of bread at him. Jesse ducked, and Shadow pounced on it like a cat.

“To answer your question,” Jesse said loftily, “who else knows you live here?”

“Only the other Old World leaders and Abigail,” I said, glancing at Eli. He nodded, confirming it. His lips were pressed in a tight line. Uh-oh.

“Then I think this place is as safe as any,” Jesse finished.

“Scarlett, can we talk?” Eli broke in, giving me a relationship look.

“Yeah. Of course.” I put down my sandwich. Shadow licked her lips, hoping I was about to make a donation. “Jesse . . .”

He nodded and picked up his paper plate. “I’m going to step outside and call one of my contacts about the MC. Katia’s secure, right?”

“Yeah,” Eli said. “She’s got the IV going, and there’s no handle on the inside of that door.”

“Okay, thanks.” Jesse gave me a look that said good luck and left the room.

Eli turned to me, and I could see him practically shaking with the effort not to run over and grab me. Werewolves rely on touch a lot, and it had become such a habit for Eli that even though he was currently human, he needed to hold me to know I was okay. At the same time, we’d had a few conversations about how I am not a touchy-feely person, and he was trying to respect my space.

It was sweet. I went around the counter and threw my arms around him, hugging him tight. It hurt both of my injuries to raise my arms like that, but he needed to see that I was okay. “I’m fine, really,” I told him. “Sit down, and I’ll tell you everything.”

And I did.

Chapter 22

Okay, I soft-pedaled the part where I got shot, and I conveniently left out throwing a knife to scare Jesse’s brother and most of the gunfight at Frederic’s. Without outright lying, I may have made it sound like the bikers had been armed with fists and harsh language.

“The cops were coming, so Jesse shot the boundary witch, figuring she might come back from the dead like the one he knows in Colorado,” I finished. “And we brought her here because we needed a place to contain her where the bad guys wouldn’t find us. Bad guy,” I corrected myself. “Hopefully there’s only one archvillain left. If you don’t count the bikers, who are probably just hired muscle.”

“Just hired muscle,” he repeated, staring at me. For a long moment I couldn’t tell if he was mad or just processing. I let him think it through while I finished eating and started putting away sandwich supplies. I got a Diet Coke and a regular Coke out of the fridge, went back to the counter, and set the regular soda in front of Eli.

“We’re going to come back to the part where you and Cruz keep putting your life in danger,” he said tightly. “But let me see if I’m getting this. A vampire and a boundary witch came to town to frame Molly. You killed and . . . body-snatched the witch, the vampire’s holed up somewhere making new baby vampires, and Molly’s still going on trial tomorrow night because you can’t actually prove any of this until the witch wakes up, assuming you can make her talk. Is that right?”

“Wow,” I said with genuine admiration. “You should be in charge of all my summarizing from now on. Seriously. Not even kidding.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but Jesse came back into the room, still shoving his cell phone in his pocket. “Good news, finally,” he declared. “I described the tattoo to my friend at the Santa Clarita Sheriff’s Department. She thinks the guys we saw are with the Demon Kings.”

I had been taking a sip of my soda at that moment, and while I managed to not spit it out, the carbonation went up my nose, and a few minutes of hacking and coughing followed, while Eli thumped me on the back and I wiped tears from my eyes. The Demon Kings? Were they run by an eleven-year-old?