Trail of Dead (Scarlett Bernard #2)(93)

“It is.”

“Kind of a long commute, though.”

“True.”

I turned around to face the house, leaning my elbows against the rails and turning my head to look at him. “Dashiell gave me your address, in case you were wondering. He knows that I’m here.”

Hayne frowned. “Miss Bernard, you say that like you think I’m going to murder you.”

I shrugged casually. “Just letting you know.”

“I see.” He looked back out at the ocean. “What is it you wanted to talk to me about?” he asked calmly. Which I suppose was a lot more polite than “What the f*ck are you doing at my house at two a.m.,” which would have been my reaction.

“I’ve been on this case,” I began, “and I don’t know how much you already know about it, but it’s kept me awfully busy the last few days. I had this little thought sometimes, though, at the back of my mind, and every time I tried to chase it down it just escaped me. Then today I realized it was actually a question.” I looked at him and waited until he turned his head to meet my eyes. “How did Olivia and Mallory know where to find the Book of Mirrors?”

Hayne flinched. It was small, but it was there. He looked away again, without speaking. That was okay. I could do the talking for both of us. “After all,” I said, “Mallory was never really part of Kirsten’s society. And I doubt Kirsten told any of her witches about a secret that big, because that’s just not what leaders do. You don’t give the governor of Hawaii the code to the nuclear weapons stash, for crying out loud. But if you had to be traveling back and forth to San Diego and you had to explain your absence to, say, a spouse…”

“Miss Bernard,” Hayne said, and then sighed. There was a long silence, and we stared at the ocean some more.

When Hayne showed no signs of speaking again, I said, “Okay, I’ll keep going. At the same time, I couldn’t help noticing the scars on your wrists.” Automatically, Hayne turned his hands palms-up, looking down toward the old puncture wounds. I couldn’t see them in the dark, but maybe he could. “It didn’t seem like Dashiell’s style to feed off his daytime security guy, not when he has regular volunteers for that. But I figured, what the hell, maybe he does it to keep you in line or something.

“If that were the case, though, why are those scars so old? Why wouldn’t he still be feeding off you? There’s more than one bite there, so it wasn’t just some weird initiation ritual or something. You were fed on, a bunch of times, a while ago. And not by Dashiell.”

When he still didn’t speak, I opted for a more direct route. “Tell me, Hayne: Why did you and Kirsten split up?”

After a beat, Hayne finally answered me. “It wasn’t Dashiell, though I imagine that’s what anyone would think. He’s a lot of things, but he knew I was in love with her, and he didn’t stand in our way. She met him because of me—that’s how she was able to campaign for the witches to have rights, to share a cleaner, all of that.” His voice had a tinge of pride.

“It was Kirsten who eventually…she just couldn’t accept that I trusted Dashiell, that I wasn’t worried that he’d kill me or feed from me.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “I knew that he pressed me sometimes, you know? I’d overhear a phone call, or he’d have secret guests over, or whatever, and he’d take the memory from me. It didn’t bother me, but it drove Kirsten crazy. She offered me a way to protect myself, protect my mind from him, but I refused.” He shrugged. “Eventually it came down to a choice. I loved her, but…anyway.”

“And the bites?” I prompted.

He sighed heavily. “Yes, the bites. We split up, and she eventually got remarried. I was in a rough place. I let my guard down. And then Albert asked me for a favor, just delivering some package to his friend on my way home from work, at sunset. No big deal.” Hayne stared down at his hands, miserable. “Olivia didn’t take all of it, all of the memory. I was there too long for that. And I think she and Mallory enjoyed having me know that I’d given up secrets—I knew some of Kirsten’s and some of Dashiell’s, you see. If I’d said anything to Dashiell about it…”

“Didn’t Dashiell see the marks?”

He nodded. “I told him I’d met a lady vampire at one of Gregory’s parties and things got out of hand. I was so messed up about Kirsten, still, that it made a lot of sense.”

Gregory was a creepy, powerful vampire who threw weekly parties for the vampire hangers-on. I had to agree, it was a great place to go for some recreational self-destruction.

Hayne went quiet for a few minutes, and I let him stew.

“You’re going to tell him now, aren’t you,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “He’s gotta know that Olivia and the witch know things.”

“They’re dead, Hayne,” I said. “Both of them. And Albert was killed too. There’s no one left to know what you told them.”

He stared at me without blinking, for so long that I was beginning to worry. Finally, he said, “And?”

I looked at him levelly. “And Dashiell and Kirsten aren’t stupid. When the dust settles it may occur to them to ask questions. For now, though, I’m planning to keep it to myself.”

He eyed me warily. “In exchange for what?”