Dead Spots (Scarlett Bernard #1)(28)

I don’t know how much Artie knows about the Old World or what I do, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t really want to know. The whole studio is gated, and the furnace is around the back through a short hallway. I tell Artie I’m coming; he unlocks the back gate and leaves the back door open. Then he sends me a bill for “waste disposal,” which I pass along to the appropriate Old World party. Technically, the entire thing, except for what I put in the furnace, is completely legal.

I explained the plan to Eli on our way.

“So do you even see the guy?” he asked me as we pulled into the parking lot.

“Not usually. Artie’s got a pretty good system. I doubt we’re the only ones who use his services for...questionable materials.” I shrugged, not taking my eyes off the road. “It’s a tough market for artist teachers.”

“Oh.”

I jumped out of the van to open up the gate and then got back in to drive through. Most of Artie’s classes and events take place during the day, so the parking lot was deserted, lit by a few weak streetlamps and the building’s emergency lights. We drove around to the back of the building, where I backed the van up to the enormous double doors leading to the furnace area and turned off the engine. Eli helped me unload the dead birds from the cooler compartment in the back of the van, including the poor backward-headed dove I’d completely forgotten about. Way to go, Scarlett. I flicked on the light switch inside the door and led Eli down the hall toward the furnace room. It was hot just stepping in the door, and Eli flinched at the heat. I handed him my own ziplock bags of dead birds and went up to the iron furnace doors, which were big enough to wheel a piano through. I picked up a nearby industrial-strength oven mitt and pulled open one of the furnace doors, gasping at the heat, and nodded to Eli, who threw in the baggies. Then I slammed the door, and both of us speed-walked out of the room, pausing in the hallway to catch our breaths.

I pulled my sticky shirt away from my chest, flushed with heat.

“That,” he panted, “was a really big furnace.”

Eli followed me back outside, and I clicked the little doorknob lock behind us. I was buckling my seat belt when Eli spoke up.

“Look, Scarlett, we should talk...” he began, his hands twisting in his lap.

I froze. “This isn’t a great time, Eli.”

“Yeah, well, it’s never a great time with you, is it? But we should talk about what happened the other night—what’s been happening.”

I waited, silent.

Eli stared at me and then scrubbed at his face with the heel of his hands. “Look,” he blurted, “do you want to, like, grab something to eat sometime? Maybe have a real conversation in which neither of us is drunk?”

My mouth may have dropped open a little. “You mean like...a date?”

“Yes. An actual date.”

“I can’t,” I said immediately.

“You can’t, or you don’t want to?”

“I don’t know. Pick one.” There was hostility in my voice, and I wondered where it had come from. Why can I never say the right thing?

“Argh!” he grunted, looking frustrated. Scarlett Bernard, frustrator of men. His fingers flexed, and I realized he was angry. “You know, Scar, I get that you got a raw deal. What happened to you was awful. Will still feels guilty that he didn’t see it coming, or warn you, or whatever. But just because she turned out to be—”

“Shut up,” I said too sharply, then regretted it. “You don’t know anything about that, so just drop it.”

“Tell me, then. Talk to me like I’m a real person and not just a penis that delivers your whiskey.”

“Why?” I asked, unable to look at him. I stared at the steering wheel instead. “What’s the point? You can’t change any of it.”

“Maybe not. But I’d still like a shot at making you laugh.”

I did look at him then, startled. His light-blue eyes were calm and direct—no bullshit. I sighed and reached down to turn on the engine. “Look, Eli, if you don’t want to sleep with me anymore, fine. But—”

To be honest, I’m not sure what I was about to say. I never got a chance to find out, though, because at that exact moment, the driver’s side door was wrenched open, and a large head poked into the car. “Ladies,” said the enormous man, and the passenger-side door popped open, too. Eli had unbuckled, was trying to push his way out of the car, and the guy on my side reached in and punched me in the left eye.

“Son of a bitch,” I gasped, and Eli looked like he was about to howl. Eli is not a small man, and even in human form, I couldn’t believe the guy on his side was able to keep him in the seat.

“Stay, boy,” said the giant on my side of the van. He held up a wicked-looking handgun, pressing it against my temple, and Eli went very still next to me.

“Get her out,” ordered the man who’d appeared next to Eli, a weaselly-looking guy in a cheap dark suit.

Eli and I were dragged out of the van and marched around the back. I saw the slick-looking SUV the two men must have brought idling a few feet away. I’d been too involved in my romantic drama to even notice it arrive.

“Cuffs,” said the giant, and the smaller man pulled out a glaringly shiny set of handcuffs. It took me a second to realize why they gleamed.