It took me a second, but I finally understood. “It’s covered in bullet holes. They’re planning to shoot all of you.”

“Yes, ma’am. Behind the boardinghouse there’s a natural canyon, walls on three sides. It fills with water during the rainy season, but most of the year it’s dry enough that they rent it out for weddings. When the property was a shooting club, they would herd animals toward the canyon and trap them there.”

“That doesn’t sound very sporting,” I muttered. “But you’re right, it sounds like the perfect place to kill people.”

“The Holmwoods could have killing parties every weekend, take out a dozen or more vampires, and no one would be the wiser.”

Dashiell had said that the show hadn’t been open long enough for many vampires to travel to see it. Once they began arriving, there would be lots more of them to kill. “What about the bodies?”

A shrug. “Like I said, plenty of space on all sides. They can bury them on-site.”

“Jesus.” Say what you will about LA, but you have to go a long ways out of town before a mass grave would go unnoticed. I got up and paced the room a little, thinking it over. This was usually the moment in any given skirmish when I would step back and let the professional ass-kickers make a plan. I was not the planner. Generally speaking, I would classify myself as “reluctant participant.”

“Hold on,” I said to Wyatt. I paced a few feet away and called Jesse.

When he answered, I could hear some sort of shouting match going on in the background. “Hey, Scar, it’s not really a good time,” Jesse yelled.

“What’s going on?” I said anxiously. “Is it Shadow?”

“No, Shadow’s fine—although she did try to eat a Pomeranian yesterday; Corry stopped her—Hey!” There was a muffled thump, and then Jesse yelled, “Dammit, stay where you are!” To me, he added, “Kirsten caught one of her witches selling ‘holistic plastic surgery’ to human women in Bel Air.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Yeah, I wish. Anyway, Kirsten figured it out when one of the ‘procedures’ went wrong, and now we’ve got a human with some serious cosmetic issues, and the witch who did it keeps trying to get away before Kirsten can get the spell out of her. Ow!”

“Are you okay?”

“She bit me!” he said incredulously. “Scar, I gotta call you back.” He hung up the phone.

Well, shit. I felt bad that Jesse was dealing with that situation because of my absence, but there was little I could do to help him.

Meanwhile, I still needed advice from someone accustomed to storming castles. After a moment of hesitation, I placed another call—to Boulder, Colorado. Allison Luther scared me a little, but she also owed me a favor.

It rang twice, and then a brusque voice said, “Scarlett.” Lex always answered the phone brusquely. Or maybe that was just when I called. “I heard you met Sashi.”

“What—oh, right. Yeah.” I had forgotten all about my meeting with the thaumaturge witch. “She’s . . . nice.”

“I take it that’s not what you’re calling about,” Lex said, her voice guarded. “What’s going on?”

“I need advice,” I began, hating the way that sounded, like I was a fourteen-year-old with boy problems. “Um . . . tactical advice, I guess? Have you got a minute?”

“Go ahead.”

Making an effort to be as concise as possible, I ran her through the situation: Demeter, Jameson, the Holmwoods, their intention to kill vampires. I was halfway through the story before I remembered that Lex herself was dating a vampire, last I heard. Boundary witches and vampires were the big exception to that whole “Old World inter-dating” stigma. That might work in my favor: unlike many witches, Lex wouldn’t be immediately prejudiced against the undead.

“So you and your client, who wants revenge, are trying to keep them from killing a bunch of vampires,” Lex said when I was finished. “But your friend is working for the bad guys.”

“Right.” Damn. Say what you would about Lex, but the woman could grasp a situation. “The problem is that we have no idea how many people the Holmwoods have working for them, or how many of their employees are actually true believers,” I added. “There could be twenty hostile vampires in there, or it might be just the Holmwoods and my friend.”

“Who you want to save.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, but for some reason I still felt judged.

“Yes. He’s like me. And like Charlotte,” I said, and immediately regretted it. That had been a little below the belt. Lex was silent for a moment, and I added, “I’m sorry. Just . . . look, Sashi told me that people have tried to kidnap Charlie and brainwash her, or whatever. That could have happened to me, if I hadn’t grown up in a small town with no Old World. It did happen to Jameson. I want to help him, not kill him. Like you did with Katia.”

“Okay.” There was a pause, and then she said, “Tell me about the location.”

With Wyatt supplying details, I told her as much as I could about Erson Station. She absorbed that without comment, then asked, “What do you have for resources?”

“Resources?”

“People, weapons, vehicles, that kind of thing.”

Wyatt was mouthing something at me. “We can get guns, apparently,” I relayed to Lex.

“But it’s just you and this vampire? Who else do you know in Las Vegas?”

That was a good question. “Well, Sashi, but I got the impression that she’s not really a fighter.”

“No, she isn’t. Anyone else?”

Could I get Cliff back? He was supposedly driving the SUV back to LA, but if they hadn’t left yet, maybe Bethany or Tara could drive. But convincing Cliff to help me save a bunch of vampires, without Dashiell’s permission, was going to be a hard sell. “I might have one other guy. Human, but a well-trained bodyguard type.”

“That’s good. And you mentioned a witch?” she asked.

“Yeah, Laurel. But she’s pretty weak.” I shot an apologetic look at Wyatt, who shrugged in a you’re not wrong kind of way.

“There may be ways to boost her magic,” Lex said immediately. “That’s something I’ve been working on here. Is she a trades witch?”

Most witches did general magic, but a few specialized in something, the way Sashi could do healing magic and Lex worked with death magic. I started to ask Wyatt, then just said, “Hang on, I’m going to put you on speakerphone with Wyatt; he’s the family friend.”

“Is Laurel a trades witch?” I asked him after I’d hit the speakerphone.

Wyatt hesitated. “Not exactly,” he said. “She can do trades magic, but her clan has a sort of talent. I wouldn’t call it a specialty so much as a . . . family tradition. It’s what brought them to Vegas, actually.”

He launched into an explanation, while Lex and I listened silently. I couldn’t tell what Lex was thinking, but at the end Wyatt added, “Look, Laurel’s already got one kid, and her wife’s expecting their second. I don’t want to put her in danger, not for me. Not for my revenge.”

“That’s okay,” Lex said. “I think you can use her ability without putting her in harm’s way.”

“How?” I asked.

“Well, look, you guys are going to have to make your own plan, based on the terrain and the players. But I do have a few . . . suggestions.”

Chapter 28

After I hung up with Lex, Wyatt went down to the seating area to call Laurel, while I sat on the bed and called Cliff. When he answered, he was in the Venetian parking lot, driving around to pick up Juliet, Tara, and Bethany to rush them back to Los Angeles. I asked him to pull over for a moment, and explained the situation.

“I don’t know, Scarlett,” he said, sounding uneasy. “No offense, but I’m not all that invested in saving a bunch of vampires from themselves. And this does not sound like something Dashiell would want you to do.”

I heard something in his voice. On a hunch, I said, “Did Hayne already call you?” Dashiell would be pissed that I was going against his wishes, if not his direct orders. And Hayne was Dashiell’s human right-hand man.