I waited about thirty seconds, and then I kicked the back of the driver’s seat. “Hey. Little guy.”
Hugo snarled, but the weasel adjusted the mirror again and looked at me with a flat expression. “One thing you should have learned by now,” he said calmly, “Dashiell takes care of his own. Now there’s gonna be a reckoning.”
He adjusted the mirror back. I kept trying, but no amount of kicking or whining would get him to say anything else, and Hugo followed his cue. I gave up and leaned into my window, as far from them as I could get. A reckoning? First of all, who talks like that? Well, vampires, obviously, but was there actually a point in history where that didn’t sound stupid?
Focus, Scarlett, I reminded myself. He’d said that Dashiell takes care of his people. Well, I knew that. It’s half the point of having a vampire leader, along with keeping the peace. So Dashiell thought I had done something to hurt his people or disturb the Old World...
Oh shit.
“He thinks it was me?” I sputtered, and yes, it seriously took me that long to put it together. Both vampires flinched but remained silent as we pulled into the long driveway leading to Dashiell’s mansion. And for the first time since the giant one had said they worked for Dashiell, I was afraid.
When the car stopped, Hugo dragged me by the arm through the front door and into the room with the patio doors. He had a death grip on my upper arm, but I clenched my teeth and stumbled along, determined not to cry out.
Dashiell was sitting in his usual seat at the far end of the big table, tapping into a cell phone. He looked up when we arrived and gestured to Hugo to bring me closer. Ten or fifteen feet away, I felt the immortality drain from him.
“Sit her down,” he ordered, collecting himself.
Hugo shoved me toward the chair next to Dashiell’s, and I nearly tripped, catching myself on the chair back. I fought the urge to rub my arm and sat down as calmly as I could.
Dashiell picked up a file folder that had been waiting on the table and removed a thick white envelope. “Albert,” he said to the weaselly guy, “please go deliver this to our friend in the department. Hugo, give us some space.”
Sneering at me, Hugo retreated a few steps back toward the doors, nodding at Albert as the other vampire went by.
When they had moved, Dashiell leaned forward to place three photographs in front of me. The heads were bloodless and bloated, but I knew without being told that they were the victims from La Brea Park. “Joanna,” he said, tapping the photo of the woman. Next was the young man with the punk haircut. “Demetri. And Abraham,” he finished, pointing to the photo of the black man, whose face was ashen with blood loss. “Demetri and Joanna were a useless couple, lazy hangers-on who required your services on at least one occasion. But Abraham,” he continued, picking up the last photo, “he was integral to my financial structure. Losing him is a blow to my business.”
I groped for something to say, and finally just blurted, “I didn’t kill them.”
“No, you’re not nearly strong enough. But you certainly helped.”
“I didn’t,” I said, working to keep my voice calm.
“Then who did? Abraham wouldn’t have gone without a fight, and you’re the only null within three thousand miles. Do you have an alibi for earlier that evening?”
I bit my lip. I had been with Eli, but there was no point in telling Dashiell; he would either think I was lying or assume that the wolves were somehow connected to the murders. In Los Angeles the different factions of the Old World lived in relative peace with each other, but it was an uneasy peace built on top of centuries of fighting. As small as my own place was in the grand scheme of things, I understood what would happen if war broke out in LA.
People would die.
“No. I was home, alone.”
“And if I asked Molly, would she say the same thing?” Dashiell shot back.
Oops. Backfire. I didn’t know how to respond, so I stayed silent.
Dashiell continued. “Tell me why I should believe you, Scarlett. Tell me why another null would come all the way to Los Angeles, without alerting any of my vampires or the wolves, just to kill three of my people in a public park? It seems far more likely that you were simply paid to be there. Another one of your ‘freelance jobs.’”
I leaned forward, too. “Dashiell, with respect, that doesn’t make sense, either. Why would I bite the hand that feeds me? If this Abraham—who I’ve never heard of, by the way—is important to your finances, and your finances pay my bills, why would I help kill him? And if I had helped kill these three, why on earth would I agree to help a police officer investigate their deaths? Why would I still be in this hemisphere?”
“To turn suspicion from yourself.”
I leaned back again. All of a sudden, the fear that had been growing since the vampires cuffed Eli just...evaporated. All I felt was tired. “Look, Dashiell, you are scary. The power that you have, vampire or not, is scary to me. If I had crossed you in some way, I would have gotten the hell out of town.”
He looked at me for a long minute, considering. The minute turned into two and then three, and I had to work hard not to squirm under his stare. “Hugo,” he said finally, without taking his eyes off me, “leave us.”
“Boss, you can’t be serious—” Hugo started from the back of the room, but Dashiell silenced him with a glance.
The mountainous vampire spun and retreated from the room, and Dashiell turned back to me.