She stared at me. At least her tears had slowed. “Bernard, what the hell are you on about?”

“Please, trust me. I can fix this, but I need you to get your brother’s body and hide it somewhere. Can you do that?”

“I . . . I guess . . .”

“Did the bad guys ask for anything besides Molly?” I asked. “Any information on me, or anything else?”

“No . . .”

“Good. I’ll call you when we’re done here.” I stood up and looked at Jesse. “I have an idea. We need to go.”

He blanched. “Where?”

I gave him a grim smile. “To wake the dead.”

Chapter 33

I could feel Jesse practically vibrating with unasked questions as we half-trotted out to the van, but he managed not to ask any while we were in public. At the van, I tossed him the keys. “You’re driving.”

“Where are we going?”

“My place.”

Shadow hadn’t eaten another headrest, but she had shredded her dog bed in protest of being left behind yet again. I was probably supposed to discipline her when this happened, but you try punishing a hundred-eighty-pound dog-monster and see where it gets you. I chose not to comment. This is why I bought dog beds at Costco.

While Jesse drove, I called Matthias, the doctor who had treated Lizzy after she’d been turned into a werewolf. I was kicking myself for not thinking of it earlier, but it had taken a combination of talking to Lizzy and seeing the doctors at the hospital for my tired subconscious to kick into gear and remember that I knew an off-the-books doctor who was used to dealing with magic stuff. Katia was maybe our only chance of finding whoever had taken Molly before he killed her to death. Which isn’t redundant when you’re talking about vampires. But we didn’t have to just wait around for her to wake up; we could actually do something about it. Well, maybe.

I wasn’t sure if Matthias was an actual MD. He had once treated Eli, but I had been too emotionally overwhelmed that night to ask any questions. Later, I had learned that Matthias came from an old witch family. Like most males, he hadn’t inherited the active witch gene, or whatever the phrasing was, so he knew about magic but had no access to it. Matthias had found his niche, though: he had a nice little semi-legal racket treating supernatural creatures like Lizzy, who couldn’t go to a regular doctor.

I’d known him for years, but something about the guy forbade questions about his personal life. I didn’t know if he’d been to medical school, or if he had a family, or what he did with his time when he wasn’t bailing out members of the Old World. What I did know was that he could get results.

One thing about being a slightly shady illegal doctor: you always answer the phone. As soon as he picked up, I explained the problem as quickly as I could. When he asked questions about boundary magic that I couldn’t answer, I gave him Lex’s phone number. I would probably catch hell for it later—I had a feeling the badass boundary witch would not appreciate me handing her cell phone number out to randoms—but I was too wired on adrenaline to care at the moment.

After I hung up with Matthias, I dialed Eli. Matthias lived in Orange County, which meant he might make it to the cottage before Jesse and me. Once again, I launched into an explanation without bothering with pleasantries.

“You mean that guy that gave me the injection . . . that one time?” He sounded disbelieving, like maybe I’d picked tonight to start playing unfunny but elaborate jokes. “You told him where we live?”

I sighed. “Yes, and I don’t like it either, but this is the very definition of desperate times. We can worry about home security when everyone survives this, Molly included.”

There was a long moment of silence, and I thought the call had dropped. And by “call had dropped,” I mean “Eli had gotten pissed and hung up.” But his worried voice finally said, “Scarlett . . . I love you.”

I heard it in his voice. “But?” I prompted.

“But are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“If I don’t,” I said, my voice coming out harder than I’d intended, “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

There wasn’t a lot to say after that.

After I hung up with Eli, I took a slow, deep breath, calming myself. Jesse must have figured out what I needed to do next, because he shot me a sympathetic look. I nodded my thanks and dialed the number written on my palm. The phone in the theater.

A witch I didn’t know answered the phone. “Get me Kirsten,” I said immediately. The witch, who sounded very young, protested that it was almost time for the next break, and could I wait ten minutes? She was probably afraid to interrupt Dashiell, but I didn’t have time for hand-holding just then. “I don’t care if you have to pull the fire alarm,” I said through my teeth. “Get Kirsten now.”

Jesse shot me a questioning look. Hayne was, after all, going to be just as dead . . . or, well, undead in ten minutes. “I don’t want to risk her calling the hospital herself,” I explained, and he nodded.

A few minutes later, the phone was picked up again. I was planning to open with something along the lines of “Stay calm as I tell you this,” but the first words out of Kirsten’s mouth were, “Is he dead?”

“Err . . . yes. But he’ll get better,” I added quickly. Before she could even speak, I explained about Molly feeding him her blood.

“A vampire?” Kirsten echoed, sounding crestfallen. In the Old World, different species almost never partnered with each other. It’s not like there’s some law forbidding interracial romances or anything—nobody actually gives a shit who sleeps with whom. But as it turned out, the various species tended to be sort of physically repulsed by one another. For a werewolf, the thought of sleeping with a vampire would be disgusting, and so on. There was some evolutionary reasoning for this, according to Olivia, but the takeaway was that if Hayne became a vampire, his relationship with Kirsten was effectively over.

“I mean, I’m glad he’ll . . .” she said, trying to rally, but her voice trailed off. It was pretty heartbreaking. Kirsten and Hayne had rekindled things a couple of years ago, but they’d been hesitant to fully recommit to each other, even after Ophelia was born—hence the separate houses. Kirsten didn’t exactly confide in me, but it was obvious that the two of them were still worried about the same things that had driven them apart the first time. It was equally obvious that they were over-the-moon in love. Now she was afraid they’d missed their chance, forever.

“Kirsten,” I said. “Listen to me very carefully, because I’m about to tell you a big fucking secret, okay?”

I heard her breath catch. It sounded a lot like a sob. “I’m listening.”

“You remember Ariadne, Dashiell’s archnemesis?”

“Yes.”

“And remember three years ago, when Eli disappeared for a while and no one could explain it?”

“Yes,” she said, a little firmer. Eli’s absence had almost created a serious rift between the Old World sects. It wasn’t the kind of thing you forgot.

“I . . . well, for lack of a more politically correct term, I cured them,” I said. “Both of them. And I can cure Hayne. I mean, probably. I can try.”

Jesse, who already knew my secret, said nothing, but he reached over and gave my shoulder a comforting squeeze. He also knew that both times I’d turned someone back into a human, it had almost killed me. But for Hayne, I would try again.

“That’s . . . that’s not possible,” Kirsten insisted. “I’ve never heard of a null being able to do that.”

“Yeah, neither have I,” I said wryly. “It’s hard on me physically”—I glared at Jesse as he snorted—“and no one in the Old World can know about it.” There were so many reasons for this, not the least of which was that half the werewolves would want me to cure them, and most of the vampires would want to kill me.

“But Dashiell and Will know? And they didn’t tell me?”

Oops. It hadn’t been my decision to keep this from Kirsten, but I hadn’t exactly fought to inform her, either. In my defense, I’d been practically comatose at the time. “Yes, but you’ll have to take that up with them. More importantly, right now everyone has to think Abigail got Hayne out of the hospital and he’s hiding out somewhere recuperating.” I ran her through what had happened at the hospital. “You can send someone to help her, but it has to be someone you trust completely, because we have to keep this quiet, okay?”