Dead Spots (Scarlett Bernard #1)(16)

He grinned, and even I could appreciate the irony. Two hours ago, I would have ducked all calls from Eli. Now I was ordering him to pick up the phone from me. Life is funny.

“Okay. Good night, then.” I turned on my heel and marched down the sidewalk to the driveway. So there.





Chapter 6


There were only two cars left in the driveway—Eli’s battered pickup truck and my van. I didn’t see any sign of Officer Cruz at first, but when I got closer, I realized he’d squashed himself down between the seats. I opened the driver’s side door, causing him to jump.

“Oh, hi,” he said nervously, looking embarrassed. “I wasn’t hiding.”

I climbed in and slammed the door. “What were you doing, then?”

“One of the guys who came out of there, he was with this girl, and she turned into a...a wolf,” he said, still a little shaky. The werewolves have to change at the full moon, but most of them are also strong enough to change a few times in between. “They were just playing, you know, goofing around like you do with a dog, but I thought it’d be easier if they didn’t see me.”

“Good call,” I said mildly and saw him cracking his knuckles, one by one, as he gazed intently out the window. I sighed. I had already turned the key in the ignition, but now I shut off the van.

“What?” he asked, finally looking up to meet my eyes.

“Get in your goddamned seat and buckle up. Everyone else has left. We’re fine.” Looking embarrassed, he climbed back into the passenger seat and clicked his safety belt. I looked him over again. “Are we gonna have a problem?” I asked. “Are you gonna wig out and run to CNN or something?”

“What? No,” he said, his focus now entirely on me. He sounded indignant enough that I started the van and began backing into the turnaround so we could go forward down the driveway. As we pulled back onto the street, Cruz finally said, “It’s just...When we were in the park, everything was already so heightened—the bodies, the blood, the fact that I was there alone with the suspect. No offense,” he added. “It’s not like I’d convinced myself that it was all my imagination, it was just...” In the corner of my eye, I saw his hands waving helplessly.

“Adrenaline,” I supplied.

“Yeah.”

I glanced over. Cruz looked calm now, like he was thinking through his words.

“But this time it was so casual and everyday. Like it was...normal.”

“It was normal,” I pointed out. I felt his eyes on me. When I got to a red light and looked over, he was grinning.

“Yeah,” he said in wonder. “Yeah, I guess it was.”


Hair of the Dog—yes, I know, the most obvious bar name ever—is located in one of the funky little stretches of Pico on the West Side. It was after 1:00 a.m. when we arrived, but Will’s place is always busy. Ordinary humans like his microbrews, and the werewolves tend to hang around long past bar close. They’re a pack, of course, but they also tend to stick together just like anyone who shares a common malady.

We came in the front door, and the bartender, an African American werewolf in her late twenties, looked up and nodded at me. I threaded my way toward the bar, Cruz lagging behind me as he tried to study the decor. I’d explained where we were going and why, but it hadn’t really prepared him for the bar’s effect: Will had set the place up to be sort of an overtly kitschy love letter to dogs and wolves. There are posters, cheap calendars, historic articles, Dog Fancy magazine spreads, etc. covering every inch of the brick walls. If you look really closely, you can even see a couple pictures of Will’s pack, disguised in wolf form. It’s a small space, so the effect is sort of like a den, I guess.

“Isn’t this a bit...on the nose?” Cruz murmured at my back.

“Yeah. It’s excessive. But Will’s a fan of the ‘hiding in plain sight’ approach.” To those in the know, it’s ironic and funny. To outsiders, well, lots of bars have themes.

At the bar, I asked for Will and learned that we’d beaten him, probably only by a few minutes. I ordered a Diet Coke and, playing a hunch, got a regular for Cruz. I carried the sodas to a battered wooden table that was as far as I could get from the rest of the bar patrons and settled down, with Cruz across from me.

After a long pull of the Coke, he began to study the people around us. “Bernard,” he said in a low voice, “why are half the people in this room staring at you?”

I glanced around. He was right. I was getting a lot of stares from the crowd. Most of them seemed curious but neutral, a few were a little pissed, and more than a few had the same pleased look of relief I’d gotten from Eli. When I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could feel all of them humming in my radius. I opened my eyes again. “Because right before we came in, half the people in this room weren’t human. Now they all are.”

“But they’re...you know. In people form.”

“It doesn’t matter. They never stop feeling the wolf. It pulls at them, like the vampires are pulled toward blood.”

“Really?”

I nodded, a little solemn, and explained about the magic residue. I’m really, really glad I don’t have to worry about ever becoming a werewolf. “Some of them love the feeling, but most have kind of a hard time.” I played with my straw, trying for inconspicuous. “Do you see the man from the park? I warn you, he may be wearing clothes now.”