Dead Spots (Scarlett Bernard #1)(19)

“My whole family does. My dad’s a composer; my mom’s a script supervisor. My older brother Noah is a stuntman.”

“Noah Cruz?”

He grinned. “It was part of the deal. My mom’s Mexican, and my dad’s Caucasian, but she really, really wanted to pass on her family’s surname, and he didn’t care. So their deal was that she’d keep her last name and give it to us, and he got to pick Anglo first names. So, Noah and Jesse.” He looked over. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Why the name Scarlett?”

Oh. I was a little thrown, having not realized we were on an adorable-family-story basis. “Uh, I was named after Scarlett O’Hara, but my mom always told everyone it was the book, not the film. She corrected everybody, and it was kind of a family joke after a while. I’ve never even seen the movie.”

“Do your parents know about, you know, what you can do? All of this?”

“They died,” I said matter-of-factly, “before I knew myself.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly. “Um...Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

I hesitated. I’ve always kept Jack’s existence far away from my work, but Cruz wasn’t really a part of my work, and he could probably find it in some police database anyway. “A brother, Jack. He’s older. He doesn’t know.”

“Do you see him much?”

I shrugged an I don’t want to talk about it kind of shrug, and we were quiet for the rest of the drive, which was just fine with me. I pulled into the parking garage at two forty-five, feeling gritty with tiredness. “So, tomorrow,” he said, one hand on the door latch, “will you come with me to check out this Ronnie guy?”

I leaned back in the seat, feeling even more tired than a moment ago. “Do I have to? Can’t you just go without me?”

“I’m guessing werewolves aren’t just strong and fast when they’re in wolf form, am I right?”

“Yes,” I said reluctantly.

“Then I’d like you to come with me. For protection.”

His smile was so warm and charming that I couldn’t help but smile back. Dammit. Stupid powers of hotness.

“Fine. Pick me up at one.”

“That late?” He sounded disappointed.

“I need sleep, Cruz. You can work your own end of the case without me.”

He shrugged, unbuckling, and made a move to open the van door.

“Wait,” I said, and reached out to snag his wrist.

He turned back, eyebrows raised, and I blushed and let go. Was I really this out of practice with dealing with attractive young men while sober? Get it together, Scarlett.

“Look,” I began, “I know we talked about this, and I know you already made it a whole day without telling anyone about the Old World—”

“How do you know that?” Cruz interrupted.

Because you’re still alive, I thought, but I didn’t think a cop would appreciate that particular wording. “Because,” I said carefully, “if you’d run around telling people, I can guarantee it would have gotten back to Dashiell by now.” While he was still thinking that over, I added, “But do I need to be worried about you going back on our deal? You can’t tell anyone, you know, not family or your best friend or your dentist...”

Cruz rolled his eyes and held up a hand. “I’m not a child, Scarlett. I understand the stakes here.” I must not have looked very convinced, because he met my gaze and held it, giving me a small nod. “Really.”

I let out a breath. “Okay. Good night.”





Chapter 7


Jesse Cruz couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this tired. There had been no point in trying to sleep after Scarlett had dropped him off, since he was working the day shift on Wednesday and only had two hours before he needed to be at work. So Jesse decided to go have breakfast at his parents’ house. He reasoned that free food and his mother’s customary interrogation would go a long way toward helping him stay awake and thinking.

Overall, he thought he was handling the Old World thing pretty well, although maybe that was partly just shock and exhaustion. Part of him felt as if he were in a movie, and any minute the credits would roll and he’d go back to his normal, supernatural-free life. Films were filled with all manner of supernatural, and though he was a cop now, Jesse had been a child of the cinema. It was hard not to be, growing up in Hollywood with film-production parents. When Jesse was seven, he had seen the original Dracula at a friend’s Halloween party and became instantly terrified of vampires. He’d hidden garlic cloves in the pockets of most of his clothes, and started sneaking his parents’ empty wine bottles out of the recycling bin and setting them up around his room, figuring that since Dracula didn’t drink wine, he probably wouldn’t like seeing the bottles everywhere. They also served as a nice early-warning system, creating a terrible racket every time someone entered his room and knocked down the stack behind the door.

After about a week of that, his mother had gotten fed up and taken Jesse on a visit to the set of a vampire movie, the third in a popular series. She’d shown him all the different tools that the crew used to make regular actors look like vampires, and the makeup artist had even given Jesse a set of old fangs to keep. He still had them somewhere. After that, young Jesse’s fears about vampires had dissolved, but he still remembered that feeling of wonder and terror, knowing there was something out in the night that wanted to get you. And now...He kept waiting for the makeup person to come out and show him the fake fangs, but it hadn’t happened yet. And there was something sort of...exciting about that, he thought. The world had gotten a lot scarier, but it had gotten a lot more interesting, too.