I put on a tank top with a built-in sports bra, wriggled into the bulletproof vest, and strapped the knife belt on over that, adjusting the buckles to fit the vest’s extra bulk. It was a little too easy—I’d lost weight. Opening the door so Jesse and I could talk, I went to the bucket of knives on my dresser and began loading them into the belt.
Jesse came in and sat down on my bed, watching me slide knives into the little loops. Then he asked in a too-casual voice, “Do you ever hear from Eli?”
My fingers fumbled, and I dropped a knife on the floor and cursed.
“Not really,” I said once I’d recovered. “We’ve sort of agreed that I don’t go to Hair of the Dog unless it’s for work, and he doesn’t come to meetings at Dashiell’s unless Will orders it. I hear he started dating one of the new werewolves who came into town last year.”
Jesse’s eyebrows quirked. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah.” I finished loading the belt, covered it with a soft, loose tee shirt, and plopped down on the bed next to him. “I’ve met her. She’s tiny and cute and sort of obedient—not a dog joke, I swear. She worships Eli, which he . . . deserves, I guess? Frankly, I try not to think about it.”
“That all sounds very emotionally healthy,” Jesse said gravely.
I punched him in the arm. “Okay, why don’t we talk about your quickie marriage and divorce?”
I expected him to back down, but he just gave a little shrug. “What do you want to know?”
Oh. Well played. I almost blew it off, but we’d never really discussed what had happened between him and the woman who’d ghostwritten his book, and if I was being honest . . . I was incredibly curious. “Why did it fall apart?” I finally said. I knew Jesse wouldn’t have married the woman if he hadn’t cared for her, and I wasn’t so conceited as to think he was hung up on me, so something else must have tanked the relationship.
“It was my fault. She was nice and fun and easy to be with. I loved her, sort of, but mostly I was trying to will myself a normal life, or at least normal for LA. You know, working regular hours on a creative project, date night with the wife, Sunday evenings at my parents, everything orderly and on schedule.”
“That sounds kind of nice,” I admitted. The only thing I had that approached a schedule involved my DVR.
“It was, for a while. And there was no big fight, no cheating, nothing like that. We finished the book, and a couple of months went by with her taking these meetings for our next project.” He shrugged, looking ashamed. “But I kind of just woke up one morning and knew I was kidding myself. ‘Fake it till you make it’ doesn’t apply to everything. And she couldn’t understand what had changed.” He sighed, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. “The problem was that nothing had changed. I’d changed my life, but not myself. And I’d been using her to make myself feel like a different person. I don’t feel great about it.”
I kind of understood what he meant. For a long time, I’d sensed Eli and I weren’t working, that we were never really going to be able to fit together the way either of us needed. But I’d willfully ignored that because I thought I’d be happier with a compromised relationship than with no relationship at all. And I’d pretended to be fine with things that weren’t.
I wanted to . . . I don’t know, pat Jesse’s shoulder or tell him it was okay or something, but it was just too awkward. He met my eyes again. “Does that answer your question?”
I nodded. “Ready to go?”
“Yeah.” Then he froze. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“Someone just knocked on the front door.”
Oh. I squinted at the clock. It wasn’t even five a.m. Who the hell would be coming over? I couldn’t see the Luparii deciding to knock. Well, not again, anyway. I got up and moved toward the bedroom door, starting to extend my radius.
“Hang on!” Jesse said. He was reaching for his gun in its side holster. “It could be—”
Then there was a familiar bark. Jesse and I locked eyes, and I could see him opening his mouth to tell me to wait, that it might be a trap.
I ignored this.
Instead, I threw the bedroom door open and ran for the front door, though I at least had the presence of mind to look through the peephole. There was a young man standing outside, bedraggled and exhausted-looking, but I barely glanced at him. My fingers scrabbled at the locks, and I threw the door wide. “Shadow!” I cried out.
The bargest knocked me flat on my back.
Chapter 24
Jesse couldn’t help but smile as he watched the bargest slobber all over Scarlett as she laughed, tears running down her face. Shadow’s fur—the little she had—was matted and filthy, and her dry, pebbled skin was obviously streaked with blood around her mouth and sides. The blood was coated in what looked like thick brown dust. Her tail, which naturally clubbed off at about ten inches long, was wagging back and forth so fiercely that Jesse was sure it would leave a welt if he stepped within its reach. A small cloud of dust was coming off her tail.
Then Shadow turned to Jesse, rearing up and putting her front paws on his shoulders so she could lick his face, too. “Ack! Down, please,” Jesse said. When Shadow finally dropped back to all fours, Jesse turned his attention toward the young man, one hand going to rest on his gun. The kid was maybe eighteen, and he was even filthier than Shadow, covered in the same dirt. There was a strip of what looked like his shirttail tied around one arm, and a brownish-red stain had soaked through it.
“Um, hi,” the kid said, shifting his weight from one side to the other.
Scarlett climbed to her feet. “Who are you?”
“I’m Owen? Um, your dog or whatever saved me, and then she was super insistent that we needed to come here?” He blushed. “She kind of herded me like I was a sheep, actually. Is this where—I mean, are you her owner?”
Shadow’s head snapped around so she could give him a dirty look. Scarlett just smiled, reaching down to scratch behind the bargest’s furry ear. She was practically radiating relief and joy. “Nobody owns Shadow,” she corrected. “But I pay the rent and buy the dog food, yeah. I’m Scarlett.” She held out her hand, which the kid shook.
“Okay. Shadow, that’s her name. Okay. And you’re Scarlett.” The kid nodded to himself, like this was a really important mystery he’d just solved. “You’re the one.”
Scarlett’s expression hardened a little. “The one what?”
The kid took a step back, scuffing his feet. “Um, the one they went to kill last night? We would have warned you, but we didn’t escape till after, and then I didn’t know how to find you . . .” He pushed out an anxious breath and tried for a smile. Jesse realized that beyond all the caked dirt and blood smears, his face was familiar.
“What’s your name?” Jesse asked.
“I’m Owen. Owen Schmidt.”
Jesse and Scarlett exchanged a look. “You’re Karl’s grandson,” she said. “I saw you in the picture at his house.”
The boy didn’t actually fall down, but his whole body seemed to crumple, like someone had extracted all the oxygen from him. “Yeah. They killed him. But they wanted me alive, see, because I—”
“Because you have witchblood,” Scarlett said quietly. “Luparii witchblood.”
“Yeah,” the kid said, looking at Scarlett with astonishment. “How did you know that?”
There was a heartbeat of silence, and then Jesse and Scarlett both started asking the kid questions at the same time. Owen Schmidt raised both hands and took a tiny step backward, giving Scarlett a pleading look. “Look, I’ll explain the whole thing, as much as I can, I swear. But first—and I know I’m a stranger—but I would be really, really, deeply grateful if you’d let me use your shower? Please?”
There was a flurry of activity after that. While Scarlett found the kid some clean towels and sweats, Jesse fed Shadow ostrich steaks from the freezer. She gobbled them up still frozen, along with about two gallons of water, and Jesse knew that he and Scarlett had been right about the Luparii’s plan to starve her to death.