Oh.
Boundary witches are connected to death magic, and that magic can’t or won’t let them actually die, at least not easily. I had heard about this in theory, and I knew that Lex, Jesse’s friend in Colorado, had died at least once and come back, but I had no idea how it actually worked. I didn’t have any time to think about it, either, because Jesse had grabbed my hand and was pulling me toward the door, Shadow right beside us. He didn’t let go until we were outside, where he crouched next to Katia’s body and checked her pockets with deft hands.
“Looking for a phone?” I guessed. He nodded and rolled her sideways to reach into her back pocket. There was the phone—or what was left of it. The fall from the second-story window had shattered the little piece of plastic. Jesse cursed, dropped the phone, and picked up Katia in his arms, carrying her toward the sedan. We were taking her with us after all.
While he got her into the backseat I kicked at the blood on the sidewalk, trying to cover up the bargest paw prints. An autopsy would reveal that the two dead guys had been mauled by an animal, but there was no reason to give them more details about Shadow’s size. They would probably get DNA from her saliva, but Shadow had started life as a dog-wolf hybrid, and I couldn’t imagine they’d get any more information than that. As Jesse backed out, I noticed that the garage door was still open, but it was now empty except for a wide smear of blood. The third guy had gotten away, then. And there hadn’t been any vampires at all. They had anticipated our next move and set us up.
In another fifteen seconds, Jesse was driving us around a corner while the police cars closed in on the condo. I turned to look over my shoulder. Katia was slumped upright in the backseat, though Jesse had thankfully closed her eyes. The bloodstain on her green blouse seemed huge, but anyone looking in her window would just see the shoulders and head of a sleeping woman, and anyone looking in from the other side of the backseat would only be able to see Shadow. The bargest was hulking next to the boundary witch with her hackles up, growling uncertainly at Katia’s body. Shadow still had blood on her muzzle and forelegs, and for a moment my breath caught in my throat, an instinctive fear response that sprung from thousands-year-old reflexes. She was terrifying.
Then she looked at me and whined, her tail thumping against the seat as she sought assurance from her mistress. Right. That was me.
“It’s okay, babe,” I said, leaning back to pet the top of her head, where there was no blood. “She’s dead, but she’ll get better. I know it’s weird, but it’s part of magic, so you don’t need to worry.” My voice sounded calm, but I realized my fingers were trembling as I petted Shadow’s head. That probably wasn’t very reassuring, so I sat back in my seat and tried to fasten my seat belt. I kept fumbling it.
Jesse glanced over. “Here.” He reached down and snapped the belt for me. “It’s just adrenaline. Now that the scary part is over your body has to burn through it. You’ll be fine in a minute.”
“If you say so,” I mumbled. I’d been through intense stuff before—this wasn’t even my first gunfight—but it had been three years since I’d dealt with anything more stressful than a bloody nose. I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe. “Can I take this thing off now?” I said, tugging at the Velcro straps on the vest. Jesse nodded, and I unstrapped the vest and wriggled awkwardly out of it, checking myself. There was a little blood on the vest and on my pants, but I didn’t think it was mine. Waterproof or not, I was glad I’d left the pretty, new jacket in the car.
“Can you still feel her in your radius?” Jesse asked, tilting his head toward the backseat.
Oh. I concentrated for a second. Witches in general feel like a very soft buzz in my radius, a constant, not-unpleasant feeling. I hadn’t seen Lex in years, but I remembered how she’d felt. Darker: like black noise instead of white noise. Katia had felt the same way when we’d encountered her at Frederic’s, so I looked for that again.
I’d gotten a lot of practice tuning out the bargest’s “interference,” but it still took me a moment to locate Katia’s “signal.” “Yes,” I said to Jesse, “but it’s faint.”
He nodded. “Better than nothing.”
“Those guys,” I said as my thoughts shifted abruptly. “They were human. What the hell were they doing helping a vampire and a boundary witch? And what were they doing with guns?”
“You said the bad guys probably figured out what you are at Molly’s place,” he reminded me. “If you had to take down a null, what would you use?”
I thought that over for a moment. “Humans with guns,” I concluded grimly. I didn’t like this one bit. This wasn’t how we did things in Los Angeles. We didn’t drag in humans, even as hired help, and we didn’t fuck around with guns.
Then again, I realized, I’d never lived in any other supernatural community. What if using human goons with Uzis was completely normal everywhere else?
“Even so,” I said to Jesse, “who were they?”
“I might have an idea about that, but I have to check with some old contacts,” Jesse replied. “Meanwhile, we need to call Lex.”
“Right now?” Whoops. My voice had come out a little whiny.
“Scarlett, I’m just driving around in circles,” he said with great patience. “I need to know more so we can figure out where to take her.”
“Right.” I shook my head. “Sorry. Of course you should call her. Use my phone; no one has the number yet. No way anyone’s tracing it.”
Jesse connected my phone to the car’s Bluetooth and had me dial the number from his screen so he could watch the road.
Lex answered after one ring. “Luther.”
“It’s Jesse Cruz. I’m here with Scarlett Bernard.”
“Cruz? What’s happening?” Wow. At least we didn’t have to bother with pleasantries.
“We caught the boundary witch. She said her name was Katia.” He described the dead woman in the back of the car, down to the accent. “Do you know her?”
“No, she doesn’t sound like anyone I’ve met thus far.” Her voice relaxed a bit. “But I’m glad you’ve got her. Is she talking?”
“No, not exactly . . . she’s dead.”
There was a long pause. Couldn’t really blame Lex for that one. Then I heard her talking to someone on her end of the line. “Charlie, honey, do you want to play on Daddy’s iPad for a minute?” Her tone was bright, which seemed like a foreign language coming from the Lex I’d met. “I know I said no, but now I’m saying yes, okay?” There was the sound of a door closing, and then she was back, as businesslike as before. “How?” she demanded.
“I shot her in the heart,” Jesse said, sounding a little apologetic. “She gave me no choice.”
Well, technically, he could have let her go, but that would have undoubtedly caused more damage in the long run. Plus she probably would have shot me. “I believe you,” Lex said. “How long ago was this?”
“Five minutes? We need to know if she’ll come back, and when.”
“If she’s strong enough to press vampires, then yeah, she should come back. But only if you get that bullet out quickly, get her a blood transfusion, and get Scarlett away from her.”
“I can do that,” I blurted. There was another pause, and I winced. Lex was definitely a member of the We Hate Scarlett club. Charter member. In her defense, I’d sort of cremated her dead sister without asking. “Hi, Lex.”
“Hi.”
“Sorry. I just meant . . . yeah. I can set up a transfusion and stuff.” Great. Way to sound like a grown-up, Scarlett. I flushed, and Jesse shot me an amused look.
“Fine.”
“When do you think she’ll wake up?” Jesse asked Lex, trying to get the conversation back on track.
“It’s hard to say. When I died from blood loss, EMTs were trying to revive me right away, and I think that almost . . . sort of interfered with the magic. But I can’t really remember what happened the time before that.” She cleared her throat. “I’ve seen a couple of boundary witches die since then, but I made sure they wouldn’t come back.”