Trail of Dead (Scarlett Bernard #2)(21)

“Exactly,” Kirsten said, but she kept her eyes on me. “Both Erin and Denise were like…girls who go to karaoke bars but only perform country music.”

“Limited,” he said, trying to catch Kirsten’s eye.

I was beginning to feel like the go-between in a middle school fight. Scarlett, tell Jesse I’m not speaking to him. It wasn’t like Kirsten to be this openly hostile, but at least she was talking to one of us. “But…I don’t mean to be insensitive, Kirsten, but wouldn’t they, you know—”

“See their own deaths?” Kirsten supplied. She gave me a wan smile. “Even if they looked at their own futures—and every witch I’ve ever known avoids it—future magic is almost impossible to plan or control, and mostly it works on smaller things that can still be changed. Death is…not small.”

“Okay, so they didn’t need Olivia for cleanups,” Jesse concluded. “But isn’t there another way they could have met?”

I thought it over. “The Vampire Trials?” I suggested. Every three years—three being a powerful number for the supernatural—Dashiell holds sort of an open court for the supernatural. Any vampire, witch, or werewolf in the city with a serious gripe can bring it to Dashiell for a ruling. A null—first Olivia, now me—sits with the “defendant” to make sure they can’t harm anyone during the proceedings. It’s almost exclusively vampire business, though: if a witch or a wolf brings a matter before the court, it’s because their leader is too conflicted or too involved to solve the matter in-house. Will and Kirsten deal with almost all of the disputes for their people. Either way, Kirsten would know.

Kirsten was glaring at me, and I realized I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the trials in front of Jesse. He was making a point of ignoring the question, but his eyes were jumping around with repressed curiosity. “No,” Kirsten said firmly. She broke the glare to look at both of us. “These were not powerful witches. They didn’t have enemies, and they didn’t know Olivia.”

“Okay, so what does that mean?” Jesse asked.

Kirsten and I shared a look, but I answered him. “I’m guessing it means that Olivia’s partner was the one who knew both of the witches. She’s helping Olivia kill them, or maybe Olivia is helping her.”

“Why ‘her’?” he asked.

I hesitated, but Kirsten cut in. “You can say it. If a vampire or a werewolf—or even a human—were going to kill Denise and Erin, they would have done it differently. Olivia is working with a witch. And most witches are female.”

“Are we sure that a witch didn’t just help Olivia against her will?” Jesse asked diplomatically. He looked at Kirsten. “Do you know if any other witches have died or disappeared in the last two days?”

She shook her head at him, caught up in the conversation despite herself. “That’s what I’ve been doing since three this morning. I called in sick and tried to contact every witch in Los Angeles. If I couldn’t reach someone, I used a tracking spell. Everyone is accounted for.”

Jesse looked at me with sudden fear. “Wait, that thing you told me about, the mind-control thing, can vampires do that to witches?”

Kirsten answered for me. “Not really. One of the weird things about magic is that it cancels itself out among species. So you can’t turn a werewolf into a vampire, you can’t change a witch into a werewolf, and you can’t really press the mind of a witch. A vampire might be able to press a really weak witch just a little bit, but that would be, like, getting her to lend you a dollar.”

“They’re like magnets,” I supplied, mouth half-full of onion ring. I swallowed and added, “Different…charges. Or whatever.”

“All right, well, forget the accomplice for a second,” Jesse said. “What do you think Olivia’s endgame might be? What does she want?”

“When we speak to Dashiell tonight he may have other insights, but my suspicion is that she wants Scarlett.” When Kirsten looked at me, it was chilling. “I’ve known that woman for more than a decade, and I’ve never seen anyone as obsessed with anything the way she was with you. But I don’t know if Olivia wants to kill you, or maybe toy with you first, or something.”

I looked sadly at my empty baskets of onion rings. “Three would probably be too many, right?”

“Scarlett.” Jesse’s voice was quiet. “This isn’t a joke. This is your life.”

“And maybe I should just give it to her.” When I said it, I was thinking aloud more than anything else, but I turned the thought around for another moment, realizing I was right. They were both staring at me. “Come on, you guys. How many more people have to die—”

“Shut up,” Jesse said fiercely. I stopped short. “I never want to hear that crap from you again. If you so much as think about giving yourself up to her, I will know, and I will throw you in jail. I’m still a cop, and I can make it happen.”

My mouth dropped open a little. Kirsten was looking at Jesse with a small, amused smile. It was the first look I’d seen her give him that wasn’t cold and untrusting.

Reindeer Headband bopped up to our table. “More onion rings?”





Chapter 8