“You know who I am?” My voice was still strong and clear, I noted with satisfaction. Although my question was dumb.
“Of course.” He gave me a kind of polite
duh
look. I’m like one of those rich society girls—ridiculously famous in certain circles but only for stupid reasons.
“Well, then you know that every time I get up and move around, it makes people nervous. And I am here to serioshly drink.” Whoops. Had I just said “serioshly”? “So maybe you could make an exception just this once,” I added carefully.
“Fair enough,” he said easily. “What are you drinking?”
“Double shot of Irish whiskey. Rocks. Please.” It was my mother’s drink. My father was something like seven-eighths Irish—his mother had come to America from Galway—but he hated the taste of whiskey. My mother’s people were from Eastern Europe, but it was her absolute favorite. They’d met at an Irish pub in LA, and their first conversation was about whiskey.
When Eli brought me my fourth drink, he wouldn’t hand it over without getting my keys in exchange. When I asked for my fifth, he brought over a cheeseburger and fries instead and promised me that I could drink more as soon as I ate them. By the time I asked for number six, the bar had emptied out and he was wiping
down the tables. I could have walked over to the bar to get it, but I wasn’t very confident in my ability to walk straight. So I just yelled across the empty bar. “Barkeep! More whiskey!”
Eli tossed down his towel and went behind the bar, coming back with a big mug of coffee instead. He set it down in front of me and then dropped down into the opposite seat. “Eli. My name is Eli.” He pointed to the name tag pinned to his chest, tucking in his chin to see it. “See? It’s right here. Eli.”
“Eli, this is not what I ordered,” I said.
“Drink this instead. Then I’ll call you a cab.”
“Make you a deal,” I said, only slushing the words a little. When I get drunk, the ability to speak is the last skill I retain. Don’t ask me why. “I will drink thish coffee if you go pour yourself a whiskey. But it has to be a double, or it don’t count.”
He looked at me for a long moment, then sighed and scooted out of the booth. He came back with the drink and resumed his post across from me.
“On three,” I commanded. I was working pretty hard to get all of the pesky syllables. “One, two, three.”
We both stared at each other suspiciously, then took a sip of our respective drinks.
“So,” Eli said when we’d set our glasses back down, “do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“Whatever is making you sad.”
I thought about that for a second. “What’s in it for you?”
“Pardon?” he said, taken aback.
“Are you hoping to hang out in my little circle of peace for a little bit longer, or trying to get laid, or what?”
“No,” he said, and there was enough surprise in his voice that I relaxed a little bit. “You just looked like you could use a friend.”
“Well, I don’t. Friends are for suckers.” I took another sip of the coffee and pointed to his drink, which he sipped dutifully. “Tell me about what you did today instead.”
So he did. He had slept late, gone surfing, and cooked himself dinner. He talked about surfing with a dreamy look on his face, the way some runners talk about running as though it’s the greatest drug the world has ever known. He didn’t mention that it helps him tame his inner wolf, too, but I figured that out myself. Then he asked me about what I’d done, which was equally boring, and I told him. Half an hour later, we’d moved to the bar, where he was finishing his second drink, me my second coffee. Since Eli hadn’t had alcohol as a human in years—the wolves’ tolerance is off the charts, to go with their metabolism, so they mostly don’t bother drinking—he misjudged his safe number of drinks, and by the time he finished describing his plans for the weekend, we were more or less on an equal level of drunkenness. Which, on a scale of one to ten, was probably about a seven.
I can’t remember who kissed whom first or when we left the bar. In fact, my next clear memory is of being in the back of a cab, kissing Eli with a need and a recklessness that scared even drunken me. We went to his apartment in Santa Monica, stumbling up the outdoor staircase and through the door. The second it was closed, he backed me against it, his lips on my neck, his hands sliding down my back, and I felt my body relax for the first time that day. When he cupped my ass and picked me up, it was the most natural thing in the world to wrap my legs around his waist, and then my memory gets a little fuzzy again.
The next morning, I woke up around five with a bad hangover and no idea where I was. The shower was running, presumably with Eli in it, and so I hastily threw on my clothes and scurried out of there like the coward I was. And I promised myself that I’d stay away from Hair of the Dog for like a year. Minimum.
Seven weeks later, it was my dad’s birthday. And we did the same thing all over again.
And then, of course, there was two nights ago, when I had gone to Hair of the Dog specifically for Eli—although let’s not kid ourselves; I was there for him the second time, too—who had eventually forgiven me for blowing off his calls (twice) and invited me home with him again. I’d been only a little tipsy that time, and it still scared me that I’d said yes. This time the sex was less frantic and carnal and more...tentative. Exploratory.
When we stopped at a light, I looked over at him and realized—not for the first time—that I barely knew him. Until tonight, I hadn’t known that his parents were dead or that he was from New York. Hell, I didn’t find out his last name; Kirsten had mentioned it.
What is
wrong
with me?
Eli didn’t say anything when I dropped him off, just started climbing the stairs to his apartment. His back was straight, his chin up, but there was a sadness to his face that had me pressing down on the button to lower my window and call out to him. I could still fix this. Then I lifted my hand from the controls. What was I going to say?
I’m sorry
?
Let’s go out on a date
? I sighed and put the van into reverse, backing away down the alley. Eli deserved someone much more stable than me, and dammit, I deserved someone who didn’t just need me for my weird effect on the supernatural.
As usual, I ignored the little niggling voice that told me Eli had other reasons to want me.
Miranda wanted results. Jesse forced himself back to Lexington’s La Brea Park file, and managed to make it through about ten pages before he couldn’t stand it any longer. He checked his watch, and decided to give himself ten minutes on the Old World side of the investigation.
When he was sure no one was watching, Jesse went back to the computer and ran a search on Thomas Freedner, the human servant of one of the dead vampires. According to Freedner’s driver’s license photo, the guy was the complete opposite of James Rucker: Freedner was twenty-five, whippet thin, and sported black eyeliner and pierced ears that had been stretched until they were big enough to contain one-inch metal washers. Freedner smirked at the camera, a five-foot-seven, 160-pound kid who seemed bigger because he felt bigger.
Freedner had four arrests, all for smoking or dealing pot. He had served time for the last two incidents and come out of prison with a T-rex tattoo and a massive chip on his shoulder. His last prison sentence—a three-year lockup for dealing pot to an undercover officer—had ended two months ago. Maybe Abraham had hooked up with James Rucker while Freedner was in jail.
The arrest record listed three known associates—two men and one woman. One of the men had been killed in a meth lab explosion
two years earlier, and the other was back in prison, serving a ten-year sentence for assault. The woman, Janine Malaka, lived in a West Hollywood apartment. He copied down the address. Glancing around again, he picked up the phone. Scarlett answered on the fourth ring.
“Hey, it’s me,” he said quietly, trying to look businesslike.
“Cruz. I was just about to call you. I’ve got an address for the guy who made the specialty cuffs. Do you want to go see him?”
He looked at his watch: 10:15. The whole floor was bustling with cops, most looking tired or discouraged, a few still focused and intent. There was no way he was going to sneak out of there anytime soon.
“Can we wait until about lunchtime? I can get away for about an hour.”
“An hour?” She sounded skeptical. “You understand that this is Los Angeles, right? It takes an hour to get out of my parking garage.”
“I’ll figure something out. Just give me the address.”
She read him the address, and he did a reverse search on his computer. “Okay, computer says it’s a...bait shop? Are you sure this is right?”
“Look at the map, Cruz. Who would put a bait shop in Van Nuys?”
He MapQuested the area, clicking the little minus button to figure out the context. She was right; the address was miles from the ocean. “Okay. Meet me there at one?”
“Fine.” She abruptly hung up the phone, and Jesse wondered what had gotten her all pissed off.
He made a vending machine run and then dug back into the old reports on his desk—hard. If Miranda looked up from her desk, she would see him with his nose to the grindstone. At noon, he bounded down the stairs to forensics, running on Red Bull—he’d switched to the hard stuff—and adrenaline.
“Glory!” he sang, bursting into the lab.
Four different techs looked up, each one annoyed.
“Whoops,” he said more quietly.
“Sorry about that, guys. He’s like a puppy that won’t heel,” Glory said tiredly, coming up the lab’s main aisle toward the doors. She was usually the night tech, but even forensics was working overtime on this case. Her ash-blonde hair looked wilted, and her makeup did little to hide the dark circles under her eyes. “In my office,” she ordered, and Jesse trailed her toward a side door, feeling embarrassed. Her office was a tiny cube, with metal chairs and a cheap fake-wood desk. There were pictures of her children in a little folding frame near her mouse pad. “Sit,” she said, and he sat. “Now, what is this about?”
“Can you cover for me for, like, two hours?”
Her face went from indignant to skeptical. “Cover for you? Even if I were willing, how would I pull that off?”
“I don’t know. Tell Miranda you need someone to collect more evidence, or that I was down here for the last hour picking your brain and then I went to lunch. Please? You’re my only friend in this precinct.” He batted his eyelashes at her theatrically.
Glory just shook her head, smiling faintly. “Don’t you flirt with me, kid. I’m old enough to be your mother.”
“No, you’re not—” he protested.
She raised a hand. “Enough. Jesse, what is this about? A girl? That girl with the prints?”
“No. Well, yes, kind of. But it’s about the case. I have this lead. I just can’t...tell anyone about it.” He fidgeted with his shirttail. That sounded lame, even to him.
“That makes absolutely no sense.” She stifled a yawn. “Jesse, I’m exhausted. If you’ve got something, just tell Miranda. I need to get back to work.”
“Look, I promised I wouldn’t say anything about this lead, and if I go back on it...Well, people could get hurt.”
“You’re a cop, Jesse. You can’t just promise your informants that you won’t give information to other cops. That defeats the whole purpose.”
Jesse squirmed in his seat. “Glory...It’s not an informant thing. I just can’t talk about it. Life and death, I promise.”
She studied him for a few long minutes, then stood up, walked around her desk, and closed the door, leaning against it. “I’m gonna go out on a limb, here...Does this have anything to do with vampires?”
Despite all the time with Scarlett, the word
vampires
sounded gaudy and ridiculous coming from Glory. But she’d said it all the same.
Jesse’s eyes boggled. “Uh...how did...?”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Glory sighed, going back to sit down at her desk. “About seven, eight years ago, I was doing evidence on a homicide case where the victim was a teenage boy with two bite marks in his neck. The techs at the scene figured they were superficial; the kid was into playing cowboys and vampires, but the city morgue was backed up and the body came here for autopsy. It happens. They told us it would be hours until the ME could get here, so I happened to be alone here with the body when I got a visitor. Said his name was Dashiell.”
Jesse took a sharp breath. “He’s a really big deal, apparently.”
“Apparently. Anyway, he told me that vampires were real and the teenager was probably going to rise from the dead, and if I didn’t want to die, too, I should help him. Naturally, I went to the phone to call security, but he got there first. Just appeared on the other side of the room. He offered me a deal. If I went about my other work for an hour and nothing happened, I could call in the National Guard, for all he cared. But if it did, he said that I would want him there. And twenty minutes later...Well, he was right. I wanted him there.”
Glory’s chin was trembling, and Jesse reached across the desk to touch her hand. She squeezed his briefly and let go, scooting
back in her chair. “I’d never seen anything like it, and I hope I never do again. Anyway, Dashiell said it might be useful to have someone like me know the truth, but I had to stay quiet. Before I could even respond to that, he asked me how Rob and Natalie were doing. He used their
names
, Jesse. He knew that Rob was in fourth grade, and Natalie in kindergarten. That was pretty much all I had to hear.”
“What happened to the kid? The teenage vampire?” Jesse asked, caught up in the story.
She gave him a wry smile. “Well, that was the hard part. We figured the easiest thing would be to show that he was still alive. Pretend it was drug-related or something. Dashiell took him out to ‘eat,’ and then when they came back, I faked a migraine and went home. The kid laid back on the table, and when the ME showed up at four a.m., he was blinking and drooling, like he was shaking the effects of some crazy new street drug. Five people and the ME saw him walk out of this building, and nobody looked at me twice.”