Trail of Dead (Scarlett Bernard #2)(32)

“What else?” Jesse prompted.

“I don’t know…she never really talked about her childhood or her family or anything. I got the impression that her parents were dead, and she never mentioned siblings.”

“What did she like? I mean, what did she do for fun?”

It took me a long moment to answer. “She didn’t care about most of the things people do for fun—drinking, television, hobbies. She liked going out to fancy dinners, I guess, and shopping. But mostly she just liked playing with her favorite toy.”

“You,” he said softly.

I didn’t answer, and after a moment he said, “What? What’s bothering you?”

“That couple in the Jeep,” I said. “The ones she killed for me.”

“Scarlett, that wasn’t your fault.”

“That’s not what I mean…it’s just, killing them really doesn’t fit Olivia’s style. She does everything on purpose, for a reason. Killing those two witches theoretically makes sense, to hide what she and her partner were going to do,” I said. “But I don’t see the point of killing the Reeds.”

“Can’t they serve a purpose as a scare tactic?”

“That’s just it,” I said, getting frustrated. I couldn’t explain why, but something about the Reeds’ deaths felt wrong. “The thing about Olivia is that she doesn’t do threats or scare tactics. She’s already scary because she just does these things. Killing the Reeds, it’s like a taunt, but that’s all. It’s an empty gesture.”

“You think maybe they have a different significance? Like they knew Olivia somehow, or knew what she was planning?”

“No, not exactly,” I said. “I just…have a bad feeling about this. I think we were supposed to make the connection between Olivia and the witch murders. Then we were supposed to have a big meeting tonight to worry about her. I think she’s pulling our attention in one direction, on purpose.”

“That’s starting to sound kind of paranoid, Scarlett,” he said, not unkindly. “And even if you’re right, there’s not much we can do about it tonight. We should get some sleep.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said absently. But I couldn’t turn off my brain. This thing we were all apparently doing, where I was the bait or the trap or whatever, that was an awful feeling—after all, how was being a tool for Dashiell any different from being a toy for Olivia?

I rolled onto my stomach, cuddling into the quilt. Olivia had always treated me like I was this vaguely human-shaped piece of clay, and she got to be the master sculptor who made me into whatever she wanted. I was her confidante, her apprentice, her foster daughter, her servant. I’ve always thought brainwashing is a stupid word—this isn’t the Cold War—but it was something along those lines.

And I was the perfect plaything for Olivia. She made me start running every day, and fussed over my clothes and my grammar and my food until I could hardly pick between soup or salad without consulting her. It took me years to wake up. It was like one of those Lifetime movies where the wife finds a lipstick stain on the collar and suddenly these pieces fall into place—the late nights at “work,” the mysterious phone calls, the sudden disappearances. Then the wife always feels colossally stupid. That was me, only instead of a cheating husband I had a bat-shit crazy homicidal mentor who’d wormed her way into being my only connection to life.

Luckily, when I finally did realize all that, she was dying. Or she was supposed to have been dying. My employers seemed to have dismissed the problem of how Olivia, a null, had managed to get herself infected with vampirism, but it bothered me. No vampire should have been able to get near her without becoming a human again. I was used to not understanding things in the Old World, but I was also used to having someone to ask for the answers I needed.

I thought back to when I’d permanently turned Ariadne. The effort had caused my radius to weaken, leaving me vulnerable to magical attack for a few days. Was it possible that Olivia could do the same thing? No, she’d been way too weak at the end to channel that kind of energy.

Or had she? I’d found out about Olivia murdering my parents about ten days before she’d died, and I hadn’t visited her again. I had no idea what her final days had been like.

Suddenly, despite the heavy quilt, I was freezing. I rubbed my hands together under the blanket, but it didn’t help. I peeked over the side of the couch again, but Jesse appeared to have drifted off. Max looked up at me with hopeful eyes, slapping his tail against the blankets. Moving as quietly as possible, I lowered myself onto the floor between Max and the couch, with the dog between Jesse and me. He licked my hand happily, and with the dog’s warmth against my side, I finally fell asleep.





Chapter 12


I woke up just before seven, for no particular reason other than a stiff neck. As I started to stretch, I realized that my back was up against Jesse’s chest, his arm around me. I kept my eyes closed and held my breath for just a heartbeat, feeling what it was like to wake up with his Armani-and-oranges scent around me and his breath on my hair.

Then, of course, my phone rang. The tinny speaker chirped its rendition of “Black Magic Woman.” I extricated myself as fast as I could manage without elbowing Jesse in the ribs and crawled forward to grab the phone. He stirred a little, but his eyes stayed closed. As I sat up, I spotted Max’s tail thumping happily where the dog lay sprawled across the couch. “Traitor,” I whispered to the dog, and then reached for the phone.