We carried Katia inside, and when we had set down the cot in the living room, I sat down on the couch, near Katia’s head, and finally asked the big question. “Where is he, Katia? What else is he planning?”

“I am not sure on either question, though I have a few guesses,” she said. Her voice was weakening from exhaustion. “I can tell you what he was planning, but not what he will decide to do now that I am no longer helping him.” Her expression soured. “He will have moved the girls by now, knowing I have been captured. He does not trust me much.”

“Okay, well, what was the plan before?” Jesse said.

“Take the patsy,” she said without hesitating. “Sorry, I mean, Molly. Kill her—though now that I know the details, I am sure he will take much time to do this.” She shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry, again.”

I shrugged. It wasn’t like I was surprised. But I was doing everything I could not to think about Molly being tortured. “Then, once she is dead,” Katia went on, “I was to sneak into your Trials and begin whispering in ears, sowing seeds of mistrust among the vampires. Dashiell is corrupt, Dashiell let Molly escape to please his pet null—sorry, again,” she added to me. “We would let that simmer until the girls woke up, hoping that the rumors would destabilize the community. Then, perhaps a few nights after, I would go to some of Dashiell’s lieutenants, and if necessary, press them into committing . . . mmm . . .” She searched for a word, and finally settled on “mutiny.”

I gaped at her. “You were going to kill Dashiell?”

She spread her hands. “Not me, no. I was just supposed to induce some of his loyal followers to turn against him. We would leave it up to them whether they chose to kill him or exile him.”

“Why?” I burst out.

She looked at me strangely again, like she couldn’t believe I was this far behind on the chain of logical events. “Because,” she said, “Oskar is planning to take Los Angeles.”

Chapter 37

Jesse and I just stared at her.

On the one hand, in that moment, I felt really fucking justified. No one—not Kirsten, not Will, not Dashiell—had taken Molly’s frame job seriously. They had all assumed it was just a little isolated revenge plot, and they’d been willing to let Molly die to keep her from spoiling their goddamn Trials. If they had thrown resources into finding Oskar in the beginning, he would never have gotten this far.

On the other hand, I felt like a fool. How had I not seen this coming? Jesse’s informant had said the man giving the orders was setting up a new business with the MC. And I’d just told Jesse about how vampires loved to live on the edge of chaos. What could be more chaotic than a power vacuum? Neither Will nor Kirsten was strong enough to hold the city alone, and the vampires would fight amongst themselves for leadership. Dashiell’s stance on peace—that it was okay to share power with witches and werewolves—wasn’t as popular as he would like, and there was a great chance that whoever stepped into his role would declare dominance over the others—or war. It might last for years. And while they all fought, Oscar would be making a killing in the sex industry. So to speak.

Before either of us could form words, Katia held up one hand. “Let me clarify,” she said. “He does not want to run the city. He knows he does not have enough natural power for that, at least not now. But he wants to take down your structure, to create anarchy. That will allow him to run his new brothel undisturbed.”

“He’s going to an awful lot of trouble,” Jesse pointed out. “Couldn’t he just build his brothel somewhere else?”

It was a good point. “I actually asked him that,” Katia said wryly. “In a respectful manner, of course. He loves Los Angeles, but more importantly, he has connections here, both in the criminal world and the movie industry. I believe he wants to start a side business in snuff films.”

Vampire snuff films. Goosebumps broke out on my arms. Oskar wanted to use his new vampires—Molly’s friends—in films where they’d be subjected to human death over and over again.

No. Just a great big no.

“How do we find him?” I said to Jesse, who had dropped down next to me on the couch. He looked as grim as I felt.

“If Katia is sure that Oskar would have moved the girls after we took her”—beside him, she nodded—“I don’t really know. Wait.” He looked at the boundary witch. “What is Oskar driving?”

“A black Hummer H2,” she replied.

“Rental?” he asked, a little hopeful. Even I knew that rental cars had LoJack.

But she shook her head. She seemed to be fading fast, and I wondered how much longer she could talk to us before her body would demand sleep. “It is specially modified to contain a vampire. I drove it here from our current base in Reno.”

“Damn.”

I turned back to Jesse, who was staring very thoughtfully at the ceiling. To let him keep concentrating, I resisted the urge to dramatically crane my neck and pretend I could see what he was seeing. “The SUV that I saw at Hayne’s house—which was the same one they used at Dashiell’s—was a Ford, not a Hummer,” he said finally. “I can’t ask anyone to run the plates, because he swapped them with stolen ones, but . . .” He made a face.

“What?”

“The SUV must belong to the Kings,” he concluded. “They would have driven Molly to wherever Oskar is.”

I checked Katia. Her eyes had drifted closed. “Can you call that CI?” I asked Jesse.

“No. Jimmy wouldn’t give me his direct number.”

I grunted, which must have sounded like annoyance, because Jesse added, “She was just protecting him. I’d have done the same thing, if I was on the job and he were my informant. But I can call her and beg her for it.”

“Will that work?”

Jesse was starting to look like he was doing some pretty serious long division. “It might,” he said at last. “If I can figure out the right story.”

Oh. Well, now I could pretty much read his thoughts. I touched his shoulder. “I know you don’t like lying to her,” I said in a low voice. “She’s a cop, like you were. But if we can’t find them, Molly dies, and God only knows what Oskar will do next.”

He nodded. “I know. In these weird circumstances, lying to Jimmy is the right thing to do. But it still feels shitty.” Without another word, he got up and went into the other room to make the call.

I flopped back on Will’s couch, which was both comfortable and sturdy enough to withstand werewolf tantrums. A few minutes later, Katia’s eyelids began to flutter open. “I fell asleep?” she asked, sounding surprised.

“Yeah. Jesse is making a phone call, trying to find Oskar.”

She rubbed her eyes with one hand. “Do you mind if I ask you a question while we wait?” she asked.

I gestured for her to go ahead, figuring it was about Shadow. I always got plenty of questions about Shadow.

But I was wrong this time. “Who are you?” she said. “I mean, I know you are a negator; I have heard of these. But you are not just doing this to save your friend, are you? What is your role here? And the pretty guy?” She tilted her head after Jesse. “The human.”

The questions surprised me, though they shouldn’t have. From Katia’s perspective, I was blundering around the Old World with an alarming degree of power and influence, yet I obviously wasn’t the one in charge. “I don’t have a title, not really,” I told her. “But my job is to make sure the Old World stays secret. And Jesse helps me sometimes. You know that we share power in LA, right?” She nodded, though she had the same polite-but-dubious expression I wear when someone says raw vegan diets are delicious. “Well, when someone messes up, and we risk exposure, I come in and clean it up. I would try to stop Oskar just for Molly’s sake, but it actually does fall within my job description. At least now that we know he wants to pull apart our whole way of life.”

She considered this. “You are like . . . a custodian,” she said at last. “Part janitor, part protector.”