Jesse got into the car and locked the door. But he couldn’t help himself. He rolled down the window. “You see the irony here, right?” he called.

Eli paused. His shoulders were tensed, his fingers curled like claws. He turned around slowly, scowling.

“Three years ago, she picked you,” Jesse went on, not without sympathy, “because I wanted her to be something she wasn’t.”

Eli actually stumbled back, just a step, as though Jesse had shoved him. Before he could recover, Jesse jerked the gearshift and drove away.

Chapter 24

I had a practice area behind the house, with a big foam target I’d gotten from a sporting goods store and a small bucket of throwing knives. Shadow, who had followed me outside, recognized what we were doing and trotted over to her usual spot, a stone bench that was part of the landscaping. It was close enough for her to keep an eye on me, but far enough away that even when I’d first started out, I didn’t accidentally send a knife her way. She leapt gracefully onto the marble, turned around four times, and curled into a surprisingly small ball with her eyes on me.

I saw this out of the corner of my eye as I went to the target and yanked out the knives I’d left last time, tossing them into the bucket with a satisfying clunk. These weren’t tipped in silver—I only had one of those, though I trained with it regularly—or particularly pretty, but they were great for practice. And for letting off steam. I counted off twenty paces, the bucket clutched in my hand.

Before I turned around, though, I found myself contemplating the little house. I had moved a number of times since coming to LA, but the guest cottage was the first place I’d lived in this city that felt like home. Maybe because I had chosen it, instead of having it foisted on me when I had no time and few options, or maybe because I had personally painted the walls and helped move in the furniture. I had made choices on this house, and I’d been happy here. After nearly three years, it felt more like my own than any place I’d ever been.

And yet I suddenly felt like I was seeing it for the first time. It was strange, realizing how different everything had become in a few short years. Maybe I was just noticing it because Jesse was in my life again, but that didn’t make the differences any less valid.

Was Eli right? Had Dashiell and the others sent me on a useless hunt for clues just to keep me busy until the Trials began? Had they already decided to drop the whole thing and let the bad guys get away with framing Molly? I could see Dashiell doing that. And Will would probably go along with it—he wasn’t passive, our alpha werewolf, but he was pragmatic when it came to safety.

I didn’t want to think that of Kirsten, though. But Molly had killed a Friend of the Witches. Did Kirsten want justice badly enough to overlook the nuances?

I whirled around, fast as I could, and threw the first knife. People think knives spin around in the air, but that’s a cute party trick, the kind of thing they do at circuses and magic shows. If you want to hurt someone with a throwing knife, I’m a big fan of the quarter-turn method, which lets the blade bury itself further into the target.

The first knife hit the bullseye. And the second. And the third. When the bullseye circle was too crowded for more blades, I went over to the target and began pulling them out again.

This thing with Eli was becoming a problem. I loved him so much, but it felt like we were heading toward some kind of point of no return. He treated me as an equal romantically, but when it came to anything outside of our relationship, he acted like I was a porcelain doll. Wait, I thought, my hand frozen on the handle of one of the embedded knives. That wasn’t quite right. It was more that he treated me like the Scarlett he had met four years ago, the broken, guilt-stricken girl who blamed herself for her parents’ deaths. My head and insides had gotten all twisted up by my psycho “mentor,” Olivia, and I’d started experimenting with self-destructive misadventures. My relationship with Eli had started out as one of those misadventures, and now I was beginning to think this was how he still saw me. Someone to be protected. To be saved. He loved me in a way that was uncomplicated, and his love came without strings. He didn’t want me to be any more than I already was. He loved me broken.

But what if I wasn’t so broken anymore?

On her bench, Shadow lifted her head to watch me closely. I’d been standing there too long without moving. I shot her a reassuring smile and picked up my bucket, taking it back to my starting point.

Eli wanted me to keep my head down, do my job to the letter only, and I couldn’t blame him for expecting that, because that’s what the old Scarlett would have done. The Scarlett who’d been going through the motions, allowing herself to be herded through choices. I’d never chosen my job, for example—I’d been manipulated into it by Olivia, and then I’d kept doing it after her death because I didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t like I’d ever dreamed of mopping up blood or spinning lies to cops.

I hadn’t picked the job, but it had crept up on me, bit by bit, and now I—well, if not loved it, at least mostly enjoyed it. It was interesting, and challenging, and most important, I felt like the things I’d done had helped some people, even if it was just stopping werewolf bar fights and taking vampires to occasional daytime business meetings. Oh, I wasn’t a born do-gooder, like Jesse. I’d never been one of those people who’d come out of the womb wanting to make the world a better place. What I’d wanted was to have a place in the world.

But now that I had that, I found myself oddly grateful that part of my job seemed to involve helping others. Keeping a balance. After what Olivia had done to me, and what several others had tried to do since then, it felt good to right wrongs.

I thought about Molly, and the way she’d looked crumpled on those kitchen tiles, crying and shaking over what she’d been forced to do. And then I remembered what she’d said about Alonzo, and the things he’d done to young women like Molly, for centuries. Someone wanted to do that again. Someone was trying to pick up his mantle.

In my town.

And then I smiled. Maybe Eli was right. Maybe Dashiell and the others hadn’t actually wanted me to help Molly. But so fucking what?

They weren’t stopping me, either.

Chapter 25

Forty-five minutes after he left Scarlett’s place, Jesse was sitting down with Jimmy’s confidential informant.

Coming up with a meeting place had been a challenge—it had to be somewhere that none of the other Kings would visit, but where a biker wouldn’t look so completely discordant that everyone remembered him later. In the end, Jesse suggested the viewing platform at Echo Park, right in front of the pond. At least it was close to his apartment, so he was able to stop at home for a shower and clean clothes.

It was late afternoon, but there were plenty of people walking dogs, jogging, or strolling while they talked on cell phones. There were also several lumpy islands of dirty blankets—homeless people, buried under layers to avoid both stares and the cool wind.

When Jesse reached the viewing platform, the CI was already sitting on the bench, picking at a soupy cup of ice cream he’d brought with him. He was a lean, rat-faced white man with a lackluster goatee who went by the name Rod, though Jesse didn’t know if that was his actual name or an MC moniker. Rod seemed jittery, which Jesse sort of expected in a CI, but there was some excitement in his eyes, too. As soon as Jesse sat down, he figured out why.

“Hey, man, Wunderkind, is like, my favorite book ever,” the guy said right away, keeping his gaze focused straight ahead of them, where a family of ducks was sailing around the pond. “I didn’t want to do this meet, you know, but I couldn’t resist the chance to have you sign my copy.” He pulled a battered hardcover out of the equally battered knapsack at his feet and slid it over to Jesse.

Jesse had to make an effort not to cringe. The book had come out months ago, but the fandom still caught him off guard, especially from this greasy-looking biker who couldn’t lace his work boots without missing eyelets. Rod also didn’t look like much of a reader, but that was probably unfair.

Jesse left the book on the bench between them, though he flipped it over so his face wasn’t showing. “In a minute,” he said. “First I’d like to know what happened this afternoon at the condo in Sylmar.”