“You didn’t . . . try to get revenge?” Will asked, as tactfully as possible.
Dashiell’s expression darkened. “The cardinal vampire of the city forbade it. He had no love for werewolves, and the Luparii were not interested in vampires. He wanted to keep it that way.” Then Dashiell looked away, and I realized that he was ashamed. “I wasn’t as strong back then,” he said formally.
“We left, and never went back to Spain,” Beatrice said in a clearer voice. She smiled sadly at her husband, who squeezed her hand. I hadn’t really registered it before, but both of them were dressed in simple, comfortable clothes: T-shirts, yoga pants, gym trunks. Beatrice’s long dark hair was mussed, and Dashiell was squinting a little, like he might need glasses as a human. I had never seen either one of them in anything less than business casual. It was so strange to see them like this. Like . . . people.
“Why don’t more people know about them?” Jesse wondered. “If they’ve killed every werewolf in Europe, why hasn’t the entire Old World . . . I don’t know, gone to war against them?”
Kirsten bit her lip. “For us, the Luparii are a disgrace—and yet none of us want to cross them. Think of it like . . . having an uncle who’s a convicted murderer. You’d be ashamed, but you’d also want to stay far away from him.”
“And the wolves,” Will growled, “are afraid of them.”
I didn’t bother asking Dashiell why the vampires hadn’t stopped the Luparii. “So . . . what? We think the Luparii finally got around to expanding into America?” Jesse said doubtfully. “And they decided to start in LA exactly when there’s a nova running around killing people?”
“No,” Will said morosely. “They’ve never hunted in America, so far as I know . . .” He looked at Dashiell, who nodded his head in agreement. “. . . and I doubt they would send someone for an ordinary werewolf.”
“But a nova wolf,” I continued, catching on. “That might be rare enough to be worth the trip.”
Kirsten nodded slightly. “Europe is enormous, and there’s a lot of territory to cover,” she said softly. “And I doubt that the Luparii have had much of a hunt for years. Werewolves are that frightened of them.” Her eyes dropped with shame.
“So they’re all sitting around sharpening their wolf-killing silver, or whatever,” Jesse said skeptically, “and they just randomly hear about a nova wolf running around LA?”
“No.” Will had stopped pacing and was leaning against the glass patio door, resting his head on the glass. When we looked at him he straightened up, looking more tense than ever. “Someone called them.”
That left me speechless, and Jesse looked like he was in the same boat. Dashiell’s face was grim: he’d obviously come to the same conclusion. But Beatrice jerked her head toward Will in shock. “Who would do that?” she cried. “Who would bring them here?”
“Someone who put the missing women together,” I surmised. “They came to the same conclusion you did—that it was a nova—and told the Luparii.”
“Or,” Will said tersely, “whoever changed the nova to begin with summoned the Luparii to come clean up his or her mess.”
Every eye in the room turned to Will, and I was suddenly certain that he was right. “We need more information,” Jesse said pragmatically. “How many of the Luparii would they send here?”
Will shrugged. “We don’t know.”
“They send one first,” Beatrice said softly. We all turned to look at her. “That’s how it was in Barcelona. First a scout. One wolf dies, a few days before the full moon. It puts the rest of the pack in a frenzy, makes them careless. Then suddenly there are a dozen Luparii in the city, to kill the others.”
“But how do they do it?” Jesse asked, his voice strained. “How do the Luparii kill them?”
Beatrice shook her head, and Dashiell shot Jesse a glare. “We don’t know,” he said flatly. “They picked them off one or two at a time, over several days. The wounds themselves looked like maiming, but each corpse was missing the jaw.”
“So we have to find the scout,” Kirsten surmised. “If we stop him, maybe that will be the end of it.”
“I don’t think so,” Will contended. “If we kill the scout, they’re just going to send more. Lots more.”
Jesse blinked at the frank discussion of killing someone, but didn’t speak. Everyone sat in silence for a moment. We were stuck between a psycho werewolf and a terrifying hunter who was auditioning LA for the role of his family’s new stomping ground. And we had no idea where to find either one of them.
Finally Jesse made a noise of frustration. “We need to know more about the Luparii,” he concluded grimly. “We’ve got to get them out of the city.” My city, was the unspoken claim.
“And we still have to find the nova,” I pointed out. That one was on me, and I was determined not to get too sidetracked.
There was silence around the room. Dashiell usually had the world’s greatest poker face, but right then he looked sort of politely murderous, like he was gearing up to go kill the hell out of someone. Which was fine with me, as long as it wasn’t anyone I cared about. Beatrice’s expression was lost in the past. Kirsten’s was thoughtful, and a little ashamed, although I couldn’t see how the Luparii could be her fault. Will was staring out the window with his hair sticking up again. He must have been pulling at it when I wasn’t looking.
“I can put out feelers among my people,” Kirsten volunteered finally. “As far as I know, none of them have crossed paths with the Luparii, but it’s worth asking.”
“Beatrice, Dashiell, is there anyone else you can ask for more information?” Jesse asked.
Dashiell gave him a hard look. “No one who is awake during the daytime,” he said frostily.
Jesse winced and shot me an apologetic look. I gave him a tiny shrug. The news about the Luparii seemed to have downgraded Dashiell’s reaction from homicidal to grouchy. I could live with grouchy.
“But after the sun sets, I will begin contacting people in France,” Dashiell relented. “I will see if the Luparii will speak to me.”
“Why?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
Dashiell’s regal face soured, and Beatrice answered for him. “To ask them to retract the scout,” she said softly.
I made a little bleep of surprise, but managed to stifle any further comment. I had sort of expected Dashiell to declare war on the Luparii scout for coming into his city, but I realized that that wouldn’t really be his style. Beatrice and Dashiell wanted to be smart and look after LA more than they wanted revenge on the Luparii. Will flashed her a grateful look, but Beatrice’s eyes were on Dashiell. She took his hand.
“Will, what about your wolves?” Jesse said quickly, obviously trying to change the subject before Dashiell remembered he was furious with us. “Do any of them know anyone—”
“Wait,” Will said suddenly, turning to face us. His face flushed with sudden excitement. “I know who you can ask. We have someone who’s run into the Luparii before.”
“One of your wolves?” Kirsten asked, looking puzzled.
“No,” Will answered. He met my eyes. “Scarlett’s doctor.”
The plan came together quickly after that. Hayne would take Dashiell and Beatrice down to their . . . well, if ever there was a good time for the word lair, this would be it. Dashiell would call me for an update after the sun set. Kirsten and Will were both extremely motivated to stop the Luparii, for different reasons, so they would go home and start calling their people on the off chance that someone had more information. Will also wanted to warn all of his wolves not to change—they weren’t really supposed to anyway, but with the Luparii scout in town, it could be fatal.
And Jesse and I would go talk to the good doctor, who was more likely to talk to me than Will, who had an adversarial relationship with her, or Kirsten, who she didn’t know. “After you talk to her, get back to finding the nova,” Dashiell said firmly, looking at Jesse and me as though one of us might actually protest. Jesse had helped me climb out of the overs
tuffed chair, and we were standing in the doorway as the “meeting” was breaking up, waiting for Beatrice to finish having a quiet word with Kirsten. “Let us work on the Luparii,” Dashiell finished.
“There’s something else,” Jesse said as he shrugged into his jacket. Dashiell arched an eyebrow at him. “You said if I took this case I would have your support and authority.”
“I did,” Dashiell said coolly.
“But that was when the only official crimes were two missing women.” Jesse shook his head. “The case has expanded into the normal world, and now it’s intersecting with an official LAPD homicide investigation. Working on this during my time off isn’t going to cut it anymore. I need to be able to do this as a cop, not just as an investigator.”
“What exactly are you suggesting?” Dashiell asked.
Jesse jutted out his chin, and I winced. Don’t say anything stupid, I begged him silently. He wasn’t looking at me, though. “I’m suggesting you use some of that pull with the department you’re always bragging about and get me assigned to the murders, officially,” he said levelly. “Maybe Homicide Special puts in a request for a little extra manpower, or maybe my station decides to loan me out as a floater to Hollenbeck. I don’t care how you do it. But I need jurisdiction over the whole city, and I need to be able to use my badge when I ask questions.”
He met Dashiell’s eyes boldly, and we both looked at the vampire, waiting for him to react. Behind Dashiell, Beatrice heard the silence and broke off whatever she was saying. The concern on her face made me nervous. If I had to, I could just throw myself backward, get out of Dashiell’s radius maybe, except my stupid knee would slow me down . . .
But after a moment a tiny smirk appeared on Dashiell’s face. “Well done, Detective,” he said approvingly. “You’re beginning to understand how to work in and outside of the system at the same time.” My shoulders slumped in relief, although Jesse kept a straight face. “Give me a moment,” Dashiell continued. He took a couple of steps back toward the couch, pulling a cell phone from his shorts pocket.
While he was on the phone, Will came up to us, already holding his car keys. “Let me know if you two need anything else from me,” he said tightly. “I need to go make calls.”
He started to move past us, but I reached out and snagged his sleeve. “Will,” I said softly, to show that there were no hard feelings about our argument, “be careful, okay? If the Luparii found Drew and Terrence, they may know who you are too.”
The alpha werewolf went still. “I’ll take that into account,” he said quietly. I nodded, and he left.
A few minutes later Dashiell returned, looking a little smug. “It’s done,” he said to Jesse. “You’re a—what was the word you used? A floater. You’re being loaned to Homicide Special to do some footwork on some missing persons cases that may or may not be related to the homicides. Now go find the good doctor.”
Chapter 29
Will had put up Dr. Noring in a mid sized chain hotel just off PCH, not far from Molly’s house. I wondered why she wasn’t staying in one of Will’s guest rooms—I thought he had at least two—but decided not to ask. I fully intended to get to the bottom of their weird frenemy thing, but it could wait until the nova was caught and the Luparii scout’s ass had been kicked back to France. Meanwhile, Noring had agreed to meet us in the coffee shop at her hotel in twenty minutes, which was about the amount of time it took to get there.
The coffee shop was the most blandly generic room I’d ever been in. Simple wooden tables surrounded by four cookie-cutter wooden chairs with maroon pleather stretched over half an inch of padding. Plain, industrial carpeting. No signs or decorations of any kind. There was a haggard-looking African American barista with short, tight dreadlocks and suspiciously red eyes behind the counter. He gave us a bleary nod when we walked in and went back to leaning his head on his arms. At least someone had had a fun New Year’s Eve.
Jesse ordered us some coffee and we got settled at one of the tables. It had been varnished to a high gloss, and I suddenly longed to gouge out a chunk of the wood, just to add some character. Jesse gave me a suspicious glance like he knew exactly what I was thinking, and I just smiled sweetly.
Noring bustled in a moment later, wearing loose, comfortable-looking jersey pants and a red T-shirt with lace detailing around the collar. Her long black hair with its artful streaks of silver spilled down over her shoulders and chest. She looked irritable, which might have meant that she’d still been sleeping when I called. Then again, every time I’d seen her she’d looked irritable.
“Morning, Doctor N. Love your hair,” I said cheerfully.
Noring ignored the remark and sat down primly in the only chair at the table that wasn’t occupied by Jesse, me, or my leg. The barista slumped toward our table to deposit our coffees in front of Jesse and me, and Noring swiftly scooped my mug toward her own chest, claiming it for her own. Jesse raised his eyebrows at me but I decided to let the theft slide, mostly because I found her a teensy bit scary. “Dr. Stephanie Noring, this is Detective Jesse Cruz,” I said formally. “Jesse, this is Dr. Noring.”
Jesse held out his hand, but Noring ignored it. She eyed me up and down as she took a long sip of the coffee formerly known as mine. Then she snapped, “How is it that you look worse than before? What have they tangled you up in now?”
“Oh . . . the Luparii are in town,” I said offhandedly. And Noring choked on her coffee, which was shamefully satisfying. Apparently invoking the Luparii was the equivalent of announcing a Beatles reunion tour—with all the original Beatles.
She coughed for a few moments, and Jesse shot me a glare that said, You did that on purpose. I shrugged at him. You have to take fun where you can get it, even if your idea of fun is getting middle-aged women to gag on hot drinks.
Eyes watering, Noring finally sputtered, “That’s impossible; this is America.” Fear was threaded into her voice, as if she were asking me to make it not true. Suddenly, I wasn’t having fun.
“They’re here,” Jesse said quietly. “And we need to know what you know about them.”
Noring looked from his face to mine and back. Then she abruptly stood, pushing her chair back with her knees. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “We do not talk about them.” She looked around furtively, like talking about the Luparii might make them manifest in front of her.
I was too lazy to haul myself back to the counter for a replacement coffee, so I reached over and grabbed Jesse’s, taking a sip. He gave me a look. “We’re sharing now,” I informed him. Looking back at Noring, I asked, “Is it like a Beetlejuice-Freddy Krueger thing? You think if we talk about them they’ll appear?”
“No. We believe talking about them will give them more power,” Noring corrected stiffly. Tension had pervaded her entire body. “Names, stories, legends—these things have a degree of magic attached to them, especially when told with feeling and memory.”
“I didn’t know you were superstitious,” I said mildly. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about how magic works, since it doesn’t work at all near me. I’ve picked up a little bit of knowledge from working at witch-related crime scenes, and one thing I know is that witches don’t create magic—it already exists in the world, all around and part of us. Witches simply channel it into doing things. And at least some part of the reason that witches can access magic is because they believe that they can, which is why there are people with the innate ability to manipulate magic who live their whole lives without even knowing it. If Noring believed that talking about the Luparii would give them more power, and her belief was tied to her magic in any way . . . it was theoretically possible.
“There’s just one problem with that,” I said out loud. I set down my coffee and pointed my thumbs at myself. “Null.”
Noring’s eyes widened. “I keep forgetting,” she said slowly. I felt the subtle buzz of her magic flare up suddenly as she sort of . . . flexed it.
Jesse looked between us. “What’s going on?” he
demanded.
I answered him without looking away from the other woman. “I’m not sure she’s even aware of it, but Dr. Noring is trying some kind of spell right now.” The magic fizzled out against my radius. “See?” I asked her.
She nodded. “But that was a direct use of magic, you know . . . against you,” she admitted, her cheeks coloring slightly. “A conversation about the wolf-killers would just be putting magic out in the universe.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I told her. “My radius extends in a sphere around me, not in a direct line between me and the nearest witch.”
“How do you know?”
I was sipping my coffee, but Jesse understood and answered for me. “Because,” he said, “the wolves can’t smell her when they’re in wolf form. We talked to a werewolf last fall who said she was a space in the smell.”
I nodded my head. “Their enhanced sense of smell comes from magic, and magic can’t interact when I’m around. As long as you keep your voice down, nothing you say can . . . go out into the universe,” I said, feeling silly about invoking the universe in a conversation. Witches, man.
Noring held my eyes, and I knew she believed me. But she still leaned back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m still not going to say a word,” Noring said firmly. “Unless Scarlett promises to meet with an orthopedic surgeon.”
I snorted. “I didn’t know you cared, Doc.”
She gave me a piercing look. “You don’t get it, do you?” she snapped. “You’ve no idea what you even have here. Los Angeles isn’t like other cities. Haven’t you noticed the new members of Will’s pack? The new vampires who’ve made the city their home in the last few years? The Los Angeles Old World has gained a reputation for peace, for balance, and it’s growing.” She pointed a perfectly manicured finger at my chest. “You are part of that, Scarlett. Like it or not, you’re important to this town. You have to take better care of yourself.”
I stared at her. I didn’t want to admit that I’d had no idea that the supernatural population had been getting bigger. Was that why I’d had more crime scenes lately? I suddenly felt very stupid. And very young.
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