Dead Spots (7 page)

“Look, Eli—” I began, but he cut me off.

“I get it. You don’t have to do the whole ‘just friends’ talk.”

I didn’t say anything.

“And I want you to know, none of this”—he gestured toward the house, to the meeting we’d just left—“was my idea.”

There was a long, awkward pause, and then he suddenly burst into an earsplitting grin.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry, I just always forget how nice it feels to be around you. How...restful.”

I rolled my eyes. This is exactly why Eli and I will never go anywhere. The remnants of the very powerful magic—the Original magic that led to conduits evolving into shape-shifters and shape-shifters evolving into werewolves—just never leaves the wolves. As I understand it, werewolves constantly have to fight to keep their control, like an itchy humming that’s always in the back of their minds. (Ironically, real wolves have a similar problem—what was once described to me as “genetically coded predatory behavior.”) They can’t help themselves; the magic makes them feel a continuous pressure to be hunting, killing, feeding.
Maybe that’s why the shifters chose to become werewolves
, I thought suddenly. Huh.

Some wolves have a harder time than others, and Eli really struggles with his inner animal. When he’s around me, though, he is a de facto human again, and all that goes away. If he were an alcoholic, I would be the thing that made him never want another drink. Or maybe I’d be the thing that let him stay permanently drunk.

Some girls would probably get off on that kind of thing, but whenever this happened, with any of the wolves or the vampires, I just felt vaguely used. I didn’t mind when it was Molly because I
was getting paid for my services, and because she’s sort of become my friend. But I didn’t want the guy I was...seeing...to be in it for those kinds of perks.

“Listen,” I said brusquely, “you’re working for me now—for
me
, not for Will or Dashiell. You’re not a spy or a partner; you’re my apprentice, at least temporarily. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good. Keep your phone on. The next time I get a call might be later tonight, or tomorrow during the day, or not for another week. But when I call, you need to answer, wherever you are.”

He grinned, and even I could appreciate the irony. Two hours ago, I would have ducked all calls from Eli. Now I was ordering him to pick up the phone from me. Life is funny.

“Okay. Good night, then.” I turned on my heel and marched down the sidewalk to the driveway. So there.

There were only two cars left in the driveway—Eli’s battered pickup truck and my van. I didn’t see any sign of Officer Cruz at first, but when I got closer, I realized he’d squashed himself down between the seats. I opened the driver’s side door, causing him to jump.

“Oh, hi,” he said nervously, looking embarrassed. “I wasn’t hiding.”

I climbed in and slammed the door. “What were you doing, then?”

“One of the guys who came out of there, he was with this girl, and she turned into a...a wolf,” he said, still a little shaky. The werewolves have to change at the full moon, but most of them are also strong enough to change a few times in between. “They were just playing, you know, goofing around like you do with a dog, but I thought it’d be easier if they didn’t see me.”

“Good call,” I said mildly and saw him cracking his knuckles, one by one, as he gazed intently out the window. I sighed. I had already turned the key in the ignition, but now I shut off the van.

“What?” he asked, finally looking up to meet my eyes.

“Get in your goddamned seat and buckle up. Everyone else has left. We’re fine.” Looking embarrassed, he climbed back into the passenger seat and clicked his safety belt. I looked him over
again. “Are we gonna have a problem?” I asked. “Are you gonna wig out and run to CNN or something?”

“What? No,” he said, his focus now entirely on me. He sounded indignant enough that I started the van and began backing into the turnaround so we could go forward down the driveway. As we pulled back onto the street, Cruz finally said, “It’s just...When we were in the park, everything was already so heightened—the bodies, the blood, the fact that I was there alone with the suspect. No offense,” he added. “It’s not like I’d convinced myself that it was all my imagination, it was just...” In the corner of my eye, I saw his hands waving helplessly.

“Adrenaline,” I supplied.

“Yeah.”

I glanced over. Cruz looked calm now, like he was thinking through his words.

“But this time it was so casual and everyday. Like it was...normal.”

“It
was
normal,” I pointed out. I felt his eyes on me. When I got to a red light and looked over, he was grinning.

“Yeah,” he said in wonder. “Yeah, I guess it was.”

Hair of the Dog—yes, I know, the most obvious bar name ever—is located in one of the funky little stretches of Pico on the West Side. It was after 1:00 a.m. when we arrived, but Will’s place is always busy. Ordinary humans like his microbrews, and the werewolves tend to hang around long past bar close. They’re a pack, of course, but they also tend to stick together just like anyone who shares a common malady.

We came in the front door, and the bartender, an African American werewolf in her late twenties, looked up and nodded at me. I threaded my way toward the bar, Cruz lagging behind me as he tried to study the decor. I’d explained where we were going and why, but it hadn’t really prepared him for the bar’s effect: Will had
set the place up to be sort of an overtly kitschy love letter to dogs and wolves. There are posters, cheap calendars, historic articles,
Dog Fancy
magazine spreads, etc. covering every inch of the brick walls. If you look really closely, you can even see a couple pictures of Will’s pack, disguised in wolf form. It’s a small space, so the effect is sort of like a den, I guess.

“Isn’t this a bit...on the nose?” Cruz murmured at my back.

“Yeah. It’s excessive. But Will’s a fan of the ‘hiding in plain sight’ approach.” To those in the know, it’s ironic and funny. To outsiders, well, lots of bars have themes.

At the bar, I asked for Will and learned that we’d beaten him, probably only by a few minutes. I ordered a Diet Coke and, playing a hunch, got a regular for Cruz. I carried the sodas to a battered wooden table that was as far as I could get from the rest of the bar patrons and settled down, with Cruz across from me.

After a long pull of the Coke, he began to study the people around us. “Bernard,” he said in a low voice, “why are half the people in this room staring at you?”

I glanced around. He was right. I was getting a lot of stares from the crowd. Most of them seemed curious but neutral, a few were a little pissed, and more than a few had the same pleased look of relief I’d gotten from Eli. When I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could feel all of them humming in my radius. I opened my eyes again. “Because right before we came in, half the people in this room weren’t human. Now they all are.”

“But they’re...you know. In people form.”

“It doesn’t matter. They never stop feeling the wolf. It pulls at them, like the vampires are pulled toward blood.”

“Really?”

I nodded, a little solemn, and explained about the magic residue. I’m really, really glad I don’t have to worry about ever becoming a werewolf. “Some of them love the feeling, but most have kind of a hard time.” I played with my straw, trying for inconspicuous.
“Do you see the man from the park? I warn you, he may be wearing clothes now.”

Cruz smiled and glanced around, but shook his head. “No.”

“Damn. It would have been nice if it were just that easy.”

“Do you come here a lot?”

“I try not to. My being here, it messes with people. Some of them don’t mind—hell, a lot of them like it—but I try not to interfere.” Also, I tend to do stupid things like get drunk and go home with bartenders when I’m not really supposed to be drinking at all, since I’m continuously on call for crime scene cleanup. Sometimes, though, I get sick of being around normal people, who have absolutely no concept of my life.

Cruz just nodded, and I looked over at him, suddenly feeling a little girly rush of something like shyness. He was so good-looking—that perfect skin, warm eyes, full lips, muscle tone—I just kind of had to marvel at it. He looked a little flushed and excited but seemed to be handling all of this pretty well, all things considered.

“Don’t you have people you should be reporting to right now?” I asked him. “Aren’t you on the park case?”

“Technically, I was off duty at eight p.m., and I’m not due in again until eight a.m. I’m on my own time right now.”

Damn. So much for sending him off to his boss. “What kind of things are you guys investigating?”

He stared at me for a moment, then shrugged, probably figuring the same thing I had: we were in this together. “Today we were mostly trying to identify the victims, see what they had in common. That kind of thing can lead to a common link.” He hesitated. “Before, you mentioned the possibility that this wasn’t related to the Old World at all. Do you really think that could be true? Honestly.”

If I lied and said it looked human, would he leave me alone? But before I could respond, the bartender called my name and
tilted her head toward Will’s office. I nodded my thanks. Before I could think about it too carefully, I said, “It’s possible, but I doubt it. The wolves run in that park, and there was so much blood everywhere, and it looked so ritualistic...It looked like a lot of other supernatural crime scenes I’ve seen.”

He stared at me, and I realized my mistake.

“You’ve seen a lot of crime scenes?”

Aw, crap
. The thing is, I’m not all that great with subterfuge or politics—I’m not really a five-moves-ahead kind of girl. I caught the bartender’s eye again and held up one finger, rolling my eyes a little to suggest that the delay was Cruz’s fault.

“Okay. I need to explain what I do for a living,” I began.

As I talked, his face got more and more stormy. When I finished, Cruz was quiet for a long moment, digesting. “Let me see if I understand this,” he said at last. “You destroy evidence for a living.”

“That’s one way to see it, I guess.”

“But don’t you know how much damage you’re doing?” he protested, sounding heated. “These people belong in jail. You’re not only destroying any chance for the justice system to work, you’re actively incriminating yourself.”

“Keep your voice down,” I warned, and he took a breath, looking around. “We sort of have our own justice system. And in that system, everyone can tell if you’re lying, and smell where you’ve been, or do a spell that recreates the whole scene. Physical evidence just isn’t important. For that, the only thing that matters is getting rid of it before it draws attention in your world.”

He rolled his eyes. “Do you hear yourself? ‘My world’ and ‘your world’? What is that? You’re a human, too.”

I shrugged. “Not exactly. Besides, think about the practicalities. How is the modern justice system going to contain someone who turns furry for three days a month? Or who needs blood to survive? Where’s the prison cell that can hold a powerful witch?
If regular humans decided to try to police the Old World...A lot of people would die.” I didn’t mention that I’d also be out of a job.

He thought about that for a long moment. “They still have to come out,” he decided. “That’s the only way to make sure everyone is held accountable for their actions. There will be a panic for a while, but then the government will change, and the laws, and the system will adapt.”

The first time I’d been taken to meet Dashiell, I’d been too young and stupid to be properly afraid of him, and we’d had practically this same conversation. Confident in the soundness of my argument, and with all the wisdom of my eighteen years, I had told the cardinal vampire of the city that surely the vampires’ exposure had to be
inevitable
as technology advanced; cell phone cameras, CCTV, ATM videos, and so on had to make it tough to stay under the radar. Wouldn’t it be easier to just come out, get in front of the story?

He’d allowed me to blather on about it for a while, then held up a patient hand. “Miss Bernard,” he’d asked calmly, “have you ever heard of the lions of Tsavo?”

“Uh, no.”

“In 1898, the British Empire was trying to build a simple railway bridge over a river in Kenya,” he began. “But in March, two lions began attacking the camp, eating the workers. They’d developed a taste for human flesh, you see, and for nine months, those two lions terrorized the region. There is some disagreement on the numbers, but they killed and ate at least forty, and possibly closer to a hundred and fifty people in that time.”

“So?” I’d said, not carefully enough.

“Lions don’t usually hunt humans. This was very strange behavior, and they were very strange lions. But the humans didn’t abandon the area. They didn’t move the bridge, or send in a bunch of scientists to capture and study the two lions. They hunted them
down and killed them. For being
predators
. For simply following their natures.”

“That was a long time ago, Dashiell. Times have changed.”

He shook his head. “In many ways, yes, but not in the way that humans react instinctively to a threat. They
hunt it down and kill it
. Look at the Americans and terrorists.” He had said
Americans
as though we weren’t sitting in beautiful Southern California at that very instant. “The witches can mostly pass for human, but the wolves and the vampires have very distinct weaknesses—the full moon and the daylight. We can be hunted so easily.” His eyes had met mine then, and glittered with meaning.

“You’re trying to tell me something,” I’d said, not getting it.

He leaned back in his chair, spreading his hands expansively. “Nulls appeared when the balance between magic and the natural world had shifted toward magic. But when the balance swung back, when the population of magical creatures began to drop, and then to drop further and further, nulls continued to be born. Why do you suppose that is?”

I’d shrugged. “Maybe evolution is phasing magic out entirely.”