Molly was crying, and when she held up Oskar’s body I could see that most of the back of his head was missing. “No!” she sobbed. She looked up at me. “Move away, Scarlett!” she cried. “Maybe the vampire magic—”

I shook my head. “He’s gone, Molly.”

Molly rose and saw the old biker who’d shot Oskar. She flew at him, but I darted forward and grabbed the back of her dress with the arm that didn’t have a bullet graze. The dress came apart in my hand, but not before I’d stepped close enough to wrap my arms around her. She fought me to get at the biker, but even wounded, when we were both human I was stronger than she was. I held on. After a moment, the fight left her. She turned herself around and buried her face in my neck, crying in earnest.

“Could someone please explain,” the biker said in a low, dangerous voice, “what in all of fuck is going on here?”

I patted Molly’s back, giving Jesse a look that said, All yours, dude.

Jesse stepped forward. “You were taken for a ride, that’s what happened,” he said. He pointed to Oskar’s body. “This man gave you mind-control drugs that convinced you to go along with some seriously fucked-up plans.”

“What plans?” the guy demanded. “Who is he?”

“He’s just some asshole,” Jesse said, and truer words were never frickin’ spoken. “He made you think that he was a guy you trusted twenty-odd years ago. He got you to send your guys to do some pretty nasty things, Lee.”

Lee, for that was apparently his name, shook his head stubbornly. “No. I don’t take no drugs. That never happened.”

“Then can you explain how you got here?” Jesse’s voice was gentle. “Or why you sent your guys to be killed, just on this one man’s say-so? You were dosed.”

Lee looked uncertain. And then in the distance, I heard the first siren. Apparently, even in City of Industry you can make enough noise to alarm someone.

“Say I believe you,” Lee said over the noise. “How the fuck are we going to explain all of this to the cops?”

“I’ve got an idea about that,” Jesse said grimly. “But I’d need you to go along with some things.”

Chapter 46

Telling lies to cops is a major part of my occupation. I’ve done it plenty of times, with and without Dashiell helping the lie along via some creative mind-control. But even I had to admit that the story Jesse cooked up for the police was masterful. Like we should write it on a poster, frame it in gold, and hang it on the wall in Dashiell’s mansion kind of masterful.

Here’s how it went: Molly, a helpless young college student with a rare sunlight allergy, had had a fling with a biker, an asshole named Carl. According to Lee Harrison, Carl, who was not terrible-looking once you got past the greasy beard, had a couple of very real convictions for rape and assault. Eventually this fictional version of Molly wised up and decided to break it off, but old Carl didn’t take the news well. In fact, he showed up at her house, killed her roommates, and burned down the building, all while she was away from home. Molly had run to hide with an old friend, Frederic, but Carl and his biker buddies had found her at his place. Frederic had shot Carl in the foot, and his Rottweiler had killed two of Carl’s pals. Carl had beaten the shit out of Frederic and taken him and Molly to the Mock-Donald’s in City of Industry, where Carl intended to . . . well, do really bad things to her.

Meanwhile, Molly’s old friend Scarlett (me) got wind of Molly’s kidnapping and called Molly’s ex-boyfriend Oskar, as well as my friend Jesse Cruz, the famous ex-detective. I convinced Jesse not to call the police, and the three of us stormed the Mock-Donald’s to rescue Molly. We also brought Frederic’s Rottweiler, who helped us “subdue” the bikers. Unfortunately, the evil bikers managed to shoot Frederic and Oskar, killing them both. Lee came to the Mock-Donald’s to stop Carl, but arrived too late to save him. We saved Molly, and the (imaginary) Rottweiler ran off. There would likely be searches, and the press would probably have a lot to say about responsible dog ownership. I felt a tiny bit guilty about that, but it was worth it to keep Shadow out of all this.

Under regular circumstances, of course, the police would probably have figured out that this story had a few ridiculous holes. But Dashiell sent his “lawyer,” an Arabian vampire named Fahima, to help press the police officers who were questioning us. It also didn’t hurt that Molly was so obviously abused and distraught—I’d stayed close enough that she still had the black eyes and the cut on her face, not to mention a lot of blood staining her hair and shredded clothes. And it helped that that Jesse had a solid gold reputation within the department. He wasn’t well liked, but he was grudgingly respected, and that counted on our side. Finally, we were told we could go home, as long as we stayed in town.

At 6 a.m., Jesse pulled the van into the driveway at my house, and he, Molly, Shadow, and I dragged ourselves toward the front door. Molly was carrying her go-bag, which still held a change of clothes for her. To my surprise, Eli was not only awake and home, but sitting outside on one of the Adirondack chairs we used when we were playing with Shadow.

“Jesse,” I said, “can you get Molly set up in Shadow’s cell? The cot’s gone, but there’s a sleeping bag in the hall closet.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Shadow, go with him,” I instructed. “Jesse can give you a steak from the fridge.”

Shadow’s ears perked up, and she practically pranced into the house. At least one of us was unaffected by the night’s events. I was gonna have to hose blood off her again, though.

I went and sat down in the chair next to Eli’s, tilting my head back. I was so tired that I needed a new classification for tiredness.

“You’re okay,” Eli said quietly. His voice was heavy with relief, and it was only then I realized that this was why he was waiting up. I hadn’t even thought to call him until we were almost back to the cottage, and then I’d figured he’d either be at the Trials or sleeping. “Is it over?”

“For the most part. We’ll need to do some more cleanup tomorrow night, but . . . yeah. We got the bad guy.” I told him about Molly’s friends, who were on their way to a safe house in San Francisco. Fahima had made the arrangements for me. As it turned out, she knew how to access all of Dashiell’s business-y stuff. She’d offered Molly a few different cities to choose from, but we’d picked San Francisco because that’s where Corry was located. She would be able to check on the girls for us, and give them occasional breaks from vampirism if they needed it. She was even about their age.

“We still need to talk about us,” Eli said when I was finished.

“Okay . . .” I said, letting it hang. I could have pled tiredness, or claimed that I’d been through enough for one day, but that wouldn’t have been fair. Eli had been patient, setting his personal worries aside until the crisis was over. I owed him this conversation. I gestured for him to start. “You go first.”

“Last week, at Jack’s wedding, we talked about marriage,” he began.

My stomach flopped over, a cold, wet feeling that somehow didn’t make an audible sound. “Yes.”

“I thought we were heading in that direction. I thought our life together was pretty damned good.”

“It is good,” I insisted. “I really love you.”

“I know you do. And I love you. The thing is,” he said, and his ice-blue eyes were bottomless in that moment, “until this situation with Molly, I thought we were on the same page about the future, and more than that, about . . . what’s really important.”

My eyes narrowed. “Are you suggesting Molly’s life isn’t important?”

He waved one hand. “No, not that, it’s just . . . I have this bartending job for Will, and it’s fine. I like making the sculptures, and that’s fine too. But the things that are really important to me are family—you and the pack. Especially the pups.”

I stared at him, not getting it. He sighed. “I know, I’m not explaining this very well. Look, there are people who wake up every morning excited to go to work. They might still complain about their jobs, and they’ll take vacations like everyone else, but at the end of the day, their work fulfills them. But that’s not me. I’m the other kind of person. I work for a paycheck, and while I don’t hate my job, if I lost it tomorrow I’d just go find a new one.” He reached across the space between our chairs to take my hand. “What fulfills me is being with you, and my place in the pack. I used to think you were a paycheck girl, too, but since this thing with Molly started, I realized . . .” He took a deep breath, pushed it out. “You love your job,” he said simply.