“Yes. The only reason I don’t have a bunch is that they’re...well, sort of allergic to Molly. Animals can’t handle vampires. Their little hearts just can’t take the stress of that kind of predator.” I rested my head on the car behind me. I missed animals. But even if I survived the week, who knew where I’d be living in a year, two years.

“I didn’t know that,” he said quietly.

It occurred to me for the first time that Jesse could have known a lot about me. “You know, most of this is public record—my parents’ crash, the fire, Olivia’s death. You could have looked all this up.”

He gave me a heartbreaking grin. “That would be cheating.” Jesse reached over and pulled a little piece of feather out of my long hair, a tagalong from the bait shop. It was a pretty suave move, and I could feel the warmth coming off his body. His fingers lingered in my hair, moving toward my cheek, and for the length of a heartbeat, I saw his goodness and I wanted in. In that moment, I wanted, more than anything, to crawl into his arms and make myself a home there. A place to rest, and to let go. All I’d really have to do was be still and let him kiss me.

That’s the thing about homes, though; they can just kind of fall out from under you. And I wouldn’t be falling again.

“Anyway,” I said carefully, turning away so my hair slipped from his hand. “You asked me how I deal with all of this. As bad as it is right now, as bad as it would be even if I were killed, nothing will ever be worse than that for me.” I didn’t tell him what I really believed—that I was already half-dead anyway. Better to die the rest of the way than let anyone else get hurt because of me. I was just sorry that Jesse’s fate was tied to mine.

I was too much of a coward to look at his face, and he finally just said, “So, what do we do now?”

I checked my watch. It was almost 2:00 p.m., which meant I now had about sixteen hours to find the killer and clear my name before Dashiell would come for me. I sighed, letting my head thunk back against the car. “I have no idea.”

He looked at me again, but this time it was just thoughtful. “Come on,” he said finally. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Chapter 24

Twenty minutes later, Jesse led Scarlett up the walkway to his parents’ front door. “Now, you’re going to want to stand back,” he whispered, with exaggerated seriousness. “Be ready for anything. Remember, it can smell fear.”

She’d been game up to a point, but now Scarlett was beginning to look nervous. She touched her hair and tugged her T-shirt down over her jeans. “Jesse, come on, what are we doing?”

“My folks work weird hours, so if I’m in the area, I stop to let him out during the day,” he said. She was still processing that when he turned the key in the door. There was a second of frantic scrabbling, and then Jesse pushed the door inward and eighty pounds of taut, hyperactive muscle flew out of the house. With a cursory glance at Jesse, Max beelined for Scarlett, knocking her down onto her ass and licking her face with frantic abandon. Jesse winced—that was a little much, even for Max—but Scarlett was laughing. She’d dropped the guarded look on her face so quickly that he hadn’t even seen it happen.

“Scarlett, Max. Max, Scarlett,” he called over the sound of Max’s excitement and her giggling. “Sorry, my parents are terrible disciplinarians.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. “Stop, you crazy thing,” she was saying, but her fingers were digging into his pelt, scratching enthusiastically. Max took that as confirmation of her love and wagged his tail hard enough to wiggle the whole back half of his body back and forth. Scarlett managed to roll over onto all fours and drop her shoulders into a fake pounce. Max immediately mirrored her, and she attacked, rubbing at his head as he danced around her. Sunlight filtered through the oak tree on his folks’ front lawn, and Jesse held his breath as he watched them. For the first time since he’d met her, Scarlett looked happy and unguarded. And young. He felt as if he were in sort of a reverse It’s a Wonderful Life, looking at what Scarlett Bernard would have been like if one thing in her life had gone differently. Her long hair was slipping out of her ponytail, and her cheeks were flushed. In her ratty T-shirt and old jeans, she was beautiful.

Finally, Max wandered off to pee, and Scarlett returned to Jesse. “Thank you,” she said, eyes bright. “He’s wonderful.”

Jesse was smart enough to be casual about it. “No problem,” he said. “Listen, I really do need to get back to the precinct. I’m supposed to be digging through all this paperwork on the history of the park. I know it’s a long shot that I’ll find anything at this point, but I don’t know what else to do.”

He winced as Scarlett’s face shut back down, and she reached back to redo her ponytail. “That might not be a bad idea,” she said finally. Her voice was back to flat professionalism. “Whoever is doing this is obviously trying to say something, with the teeth and the blood and the silver. It could be that the location is important, too.”

They made plans to meet up again in a few hours.

Before he went back to work, Jesse decided to take a shot at Thomas Freedner again. He took surface streets the short distance to Janine Malaka’s West Hollywood apartment building, a six-floor, pueblo-style walkup that had that LA look of long-expired glory. The halls were a little dingy and the lobby plants were plastic, but many of the residents had made an effort to put out a welcome mat or wreath of dried flowers to spruce up their doors.