Authors: Melissa F. Olson
“Well, Olivia can be quite persuasive,” Will said mildly. “Vampire or not, if she really set her mind to controlling someone, she’d find a way.” His face flushed the moment he’d finished, and I didn’t need my null superpowers to feel everyone at the table suddenly
not looking at me
. I tried not to squirm.
“It’s not about audacity, or controllability,” Kirsten said. “Most of my witches were extremely nervous around Olivia when she was alive.” Probably because she was psychotic. “At the time, I thought it was almost helpful, because if they didn’t want to have to call her in, they wouldn’t risk dangerous spells.” She reached up to run a hand over her blonde ponytail, smoothing back nonexistent stray hairs. “But if Olivia approached any of them
now
, as a vampire, they’d turn and run the other way.”
“Could that have been what happened to these two witches?” Will wondered aloud. “Maybe she just approached them, and they started to run, so she killed them?”
Kirsten shook his head. “Erin was killed before sunset, and Denise was somewhere she’d never be on her own.”
“Someone had to know Olivia,” Eli said quietly, causing heads to turn with surprise. He’d been so silent until then that everyone but me seemed to have forgotten his presence. “One of them wanted something enough to work with her to get it.”
Kirsten’s jaw set, but Dashiell waved a hand dismissively. “Trying to figure out what all of Kirsten’s witches might want that badly isn’t going to get us anywhere; let’s table this line of discussion for the moment.”
Jesse jumped in, sounding businesslike. “What about this other vampire she ran off with? Albert? Do we know anything about his relationship with her?”
“I might be able to help with that,” Dashiell said. He picked up the telephone that was sitting on a table next to the big armchair. I hadn’t even noticed it. “Laurence, please come in here for a moment.”
The rest of us exchanged glances. My radar or whatever felt awfully crowded, with a vampire, a witch, and two werewolves, all quite powerful, more or less within my radius. But I still felt it when Laurence crossed the invisible line and became human too. “Yes, sir?”
“You were close to Albert, correct?”
Laurence glanced at the rest of us in turn, looking a little worried. “Yes, sir.”
“Were you aware that he was spending time with Olivia Powell?” Even with his humanity, Dashiell’s tone was calm, quiet, and absolutely terrifying. Laurence swallowed.
“Yes, sir.”
Dashiell leaned back as far as he could without actually bending his spine, gesturing for the other man to go on.
“I don’t know how it started, though,” Laurence began, already sounding defensive. “I was living in Santa Barbara, and I came down a couple of times to visit Albert and some other friends. Get a drink, talk about old times. During one of those visits Albert was…just different.” He trailed off.
“Different how?” Jesse prompted. He was in his element now, eyes focused on Laurence like they were the only two in the room.
“He was…lighter, I suppose would be a good word. I asked him about it over…” He glanced at Jesse and me, “uh, drinks, and he said he had a girl. He talked about her like she was a goddess, even mentioned trying to turn her someday.” Laurence glanced at Dashiell nervously. “I know we’re not supposed to try to turn new vampires without your permission, sir, but I assumed that he would ask for it.”
“Did he?” Will asked Dashiell, frowning.
Dashiell bristled. “No, of course not. Even if it was unlikely to work, there is no way that I would have allowed Olivia to become one of us. Albert was going against my explicit orders.” His voice darkened enough for Laurence to visibly flinch. “What else?” he demanded.
Laurence’s brow furrowed as he concentrated. “He said…she saw great potential in him.”
“What do you mean, potential?” I asked warily.
“I—I don’t know,” Laurence said. He wiped his hand across his forehead and then held it in front of his face, studying the perspiration
like an alien had just sprouted from his hairline. “She had…plans, he said. That could change the way things worked in Los Angeles. I dismissed it as nonsense. I swear, sir, that’s all I know about it,” Laurence said to Dashiell. He was pleading, and I suddenly understood that Laurence was here in Pasadena to be punished for not telling Dashiell this story right away. Maybe that just meant he had to serve as Dashiell’s butler for a while.
Maybe.
“The last time I spoke to Albert was in early September. Until you called me down here I had no idea he was…missing.”
Dashiell looked at Jesse, who gave a small shrug. Dashiell waved a hand dismissively, and Laurence did plenty of bowing and scraping as he backed out of the room.
When he was gone, Will said to Dashiell, “But Olivia was a vampire for almost a year before the witch murders. Didn’t you know?”
I doubt anyone but Will could have gotten away with second-guessing Dashiell like that, but Will’s tone was so neutral and reasonable that Dashiell simply shrugged. “She kept a very low profile for many months, and Albert continued to work here, even after the events of the fall,” he said, with a little nod toward Jesse and me. “I didn’t find out that she had been turned until Scarlett told me she showed up at the hospital. I never got close enough to ask who had done it.”
I jumped in with the question that was nagging at me. “Can we back up a second? We’re skipping a really important step. Laurence said Albert was in love with her, and she used him to turn into a vampire.” I’d figured as much, but I would bet every penny I’d ever have that she didn’t love him back. Olivia didn’t love people. She loved owning things. “But Olivia was a null, just like me. So in order to become a vampire, wouldn’t she have had to become human first? Is that even possible?”
There was a long, heavy pause. Finally, Kirsten said, “Scarlett, the truth is that we don’t know. No one knows all that much about your power. We only know what doesn’t work against it.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ve seen all the old books at my house, right?”
I nodded.
“There are stories in there, plenty of them, about witches trying to cast a spell against a null. Nothing ever worked. Then in the twenties a New York witch became friends with a null, and they did a little experimenting. I can tell you with absolute certainty that there’s no spell that even works against you, much less can take away your power. If we physically, permanently change something, you can’t undo that, but there’s just no active spell that can work against you or around you. We know that much, but we don’t know where your power comes from or why it works against magic.” Her voice rose with frustration.
I glanced at Will and Dashiell. Will was shaking his head. “The wolves haven’t had a ton of interactions with nulls, and we certainly don’t have documentation. We just know that when we get close to a null—in either form—we’re suddenly normal humans again. Simple as that.”
“Dashiell?” I asked. “Any ideas about how Olivia turned?”
He shrugged gracefully. “Don’t you think I would tell you if I did?”
I had a few potential answers to
that
, but without warning, Kirsten slammed her hand against a side table. “Enough with the prince of darkness evasion crap,” she snapped. “If you’d kept us in the loop from the beginning, this might never have happened. You knew, you
knew
who she was, how crazy she was, and you still let her live in your city after she turned. You let her live, period, even knowing what she did to Scarlett.”
I figured this was what Kirsten had been wanting to say since she’d entered the house that night, and she wasn’t wrong. As she
spoke I felt her power flare again. The feeling was incredible, like I was a socket with a bunch of cords plugged in and one of them suddenly surged. For the first time, I thought I felt whatever was different about me actually push back at something, as though my nullness were saying
down, girl
to Kirsten. And although I felt her magic strain against me, I never doubted my ability to ground it. It was extraordinary, and I had to make an effort to hide my surprise.
Something like guilt flew across Dashiell’s face, and then he remembered how to control his human expressions. “I do not answer to you, Kirsten,” he said coldly. “You have both”—he turned his head to include Will—“agreed to my leadership in this city. That I would have final word. It was a condition of this little experiment, our working together. If you don’t like the way I am running things, you’re welcome to try to take what I have built for yourself.”
I’m not sure how it happened, but suddenly I was laughing. And then I was laughing a lot, while everyone in the room stared at me. And then I was doubled over with tears of laughter dripping onto my jeans. “I’m sorry,” I said when I could breathe. I sat up. Dashiell was glaring at me; the others just stared with their mouths open. I giggled again, until I managed to say, “I’m sorry, Dashiell. Really. It’s just a lot of tension, and then you’re all ‘Grr! My way or the highway!’ And I’m just really tired, and you need better dialogue.” I cracked up again and saw Will trying to smother a tiny smile. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down.
“I’m going to attribute that to the apprehension, and not insubordination,” Dashiell said stiffly. At that, I kept my jaw clenched shut, but I couldn’t help the giggles escaping through my lips. “What?!” he finally said, exasperated.
“Did you know, Dashiell, that when you’re stressed your speech patterns gain, like, a master’s degree? Food for thought,” I said as soberly as I could manage. I’d never talked to Dashiell like that. “But more importantly, I don’t know that much about how
deep Olivia’s manipulations go—as Will so helpfully pointed out, I pretty much fell for all of it—but whether or not she planned this, I would bet that she would
love
what’s happening right now. Us arguing. Me losing it. All that good stuff.”
There was another long silence, and then Kirsten spoke first. “She’s right. I’m sorry.”
Dashiell tipped his head. “Human emotions and reactions still feel strange to me,” he allowed, which was as close to an apology as we were likely to get. To be fair, I did often forget how difficult it must be for the vampires to be around me, given what they are. The wolves retain their human emotions—often, like their metabolisms, they’re even revved up—but the vampires seem to lose their grip on feelings over time.
“Okay,” Jesse said after a beat. “You’ve told me what we don’t know—who is working with Olivia, and how she became a vampire. So what
do
we know?”
Will said diplomatically, “I think one thing we can all agree on is that there is some kind of pattern or plan here. Olivia is working toward something.”
“Kirsten suggested that Olivia wants Scarlett,” Jesse said. I had a sudden elementary-school urge to punch him in the arm for tattling. All the eyes in the room turned toward me with speculation, like they were all trying to figure out what Olivia saw in me.
I started picking at a cuticle, my hands hidden under the table. This was probably the most uncomfortable I’d ever been in my life. Everyone at the table knew that I’d been Olivia’s puppet, and that I’d fallen for her psychopathic bullshit for years. Not to mention that the two men I had a sort-of thing for were both sitting right there in front of me, aware of each other. I wanted to get up and leave so badly that all I could think about was the route I’d need to take from where I was sitting to the front door. Even if I made it that far, though, I didn’t have my van. Jesse had driven us. I fought the urge to bury my face in my hands.
“You’re probably right, Kirsten. But if all she wanted was Scarlett, she could have taken her after Scarlett’s…injury…last fall. She had the opportunity, and Scarlett’s defenses were down. And there would be no need to have an accomplice or kill the two witches,” Will said thoughtfully. “There is something else at stake here, as well. I’m guessing that Olivia is saving Scarlett for last.”
Jesse said, “My concern is that we won’t find our answers until it’s too late.”
There was a moment of grim silence.
Eventually, Dashiell broke it. “Given what we do know about Olivia’s past behavior,” he said, “I think we can safely say that Scarlett needs to be protected.”
There was a round of agreeable murmurs.
Now?
Now they all decide they’re going to get along? Unbelievable. I was thoroughly annoyed, mostly because I had been trying to convince myself that I wasn’t pee-your-pants terrified of whatever machinations Olivia had in motion. The last thing I wanted was for everyone to
agree
that I was in deep trouble. And when had they all started discussing me like I wasn’t actually a person?
“Scarlett,” I retorted, “who is
sitting right here
, by the way, can protect herself from one newborn vampire.”
“I agree,” said Jesse, to my surprise. I felt a flush of gratitude that he was taking me seriously. But then he added, “Scarlett shouldn’t be alone, though, if for no other reason than to trap Olivia when she does decide to come for her.”
“Yes, of course,” Dashiell said smoothly. He gave Jesse a cool smile. “Someone will need to either kill Olivia or keep her still until I can arrive.”
Jesse looked perturbed, but didn’t comment, and I felt like I’d missed a chunk of the conversation. Dashiell seemed to be daring him to argue, while the rest of us glanced back and forth between the two of them in bewilderment. Finally Dashiell continued, “It’s settled then. For the immediate future, Eli will handle all cleanup
problems, except any future crime scenes that relate to Olivia. Detective Cruz will stay with Scarlett for the time being. When you need time away, call one of us at this table to be with her instead.” He looked around as he spoke, making eye contact with each of us in turn. “Do not trust anyone else with Scarlett’s life. We don’t know who else Olivia may have gotten to.”
Everyone but Jesse and I simply accepted this pronouncement and began gathering their belongings to leave. Jesse looked confused, his eyebrows knitted in a classic
wait, what just happened
expression, and I sat there sputtering. Dashiell is the cardinal vampire in Los Angeles, but I was a person, not a pet kitten that had to be kept inside while there was a coyote running loose in the city. This wasn’t three months earlier, when I had temporarily lost my radius of protection. Olivia—or the witch who was helping her—couldn’t lay a fang or a spell anywhere near me now. In some ways, I was better equipped to handle Olivia than any one of them.