Noah’s eyebrows went up. “Even to apologize for my brother?” he asked, not bothering to keep his voice down.

Tommy started to shake her head, but then shrugged defensively. “I’d give it some time.”

Noah didn’t speak to him for a long time after they left. After a few miles of freeway, Jesse suddenly found the silence suffocating. “What?” he asked.

“You used me,” Noah said wonderingly. Jesse glanced over. Noah was looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and disbelief. “You were . . . a cop. With me.”

“I’m always a cop,” Jesse said flatly.

“You’re always my brother,” Noah reminded him.

Jesse didn’t answer. Minutes ticked by, and finally Noah said cautiously, “Jess, if you’re over it—if you want to be done being a cop—nobody would blame you. Hell, Mamá would be thrilled to have you off the force. She never understood this urge to serve and protect, anyway.”

Jesse’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel, and he fought to keep his voice low. “I do not,” he said through clenched teeth, “arrange my life to thrill Mamá.”

“Whatever, man.” Noah shook his head. “What do I know? Maybe you’re just having a rough day. But that wasn’t you back there, man.” His voice hardened. “And if I ever hear you talking like that to Mamá or Dad, I will put your goddamned forehead through a wall.”

Jesse felt a flood of shame. Noah commanded, “Tell me what’s going on with you.”

Noah waited patiently as Jesse didn’t speak for a long moment. Then he said, very quietly, “I agreed to do something I’m not proud of.”

His brother answered almost immediately. “So don’t do it.”

“If I don’t, more people could get hurt than if I do.”

“What—”

Jesse shook his head. “I can’t give you details, Noah. I really can’t.”

Noah looked like he wanted to argue with that, but after a beat he just nodded. “People have to do things they’re not proud of sometimes, Jesse. But that doesn’t mean this one decision has to change who you are.”

“Doesn’t it?”

Noah sighed. “You’re such a goddamned perfectionist sometimes. The real world’s not always black and white, little brother.”

“Do you know how many people I’ve arrested who said some variation of that same thing?” Jesse asked sourly. “That’s a criminal’s perspective.”

Noah let out a snort. “Now you’re just being a drama queen. Nobody forced you to join the LAPD, Ugly. You’re the one who signed up to teeter on the moral high ground.”

Jesse smacked the steering wheel in frustration. “I did not sign up for this,” he shot back. That was what was bothering him, wasn’t it?

“And yet here you are,” his brother said, not unkindly. “So stop feeling sorry for yourself, do what you have to do, and live with the consequences. That’s being a grown-up.”

“I don’t need you to tell me how to live with consequences,” Jesse snapped. “You don’t know what the last few months have been like for me.”

“Maybe not,” Noah said quietly. Unlike Jesse, his brother was one of the rare people who got quieter when he got upset. “But I do know that you could have gone to the pawnshop by yourself tonight. Instead, you called me.”

The thick bubble of anger in Jesse’s chest began to deflate. “Fuck you,” Jesse said, but without heat. They rode in silence for a few more minutes, until finally he added, “Thanks.”

Chapter 16

I told Corry I needed to think about what she’d said—what else could I do? She was right, but then, so was I. After everything Corry had already gone through because of being a null, she had earned a place in the Old World. But that place was also incredibly dangerous, and if she became part of the supernatural community, it couldn’t be undone. How was I supposed to make that kind of decision on her behalf? I couldn’t even decide when it was time to water a houseplant. They all died on me.

In true Scarlett fashion, I pushed the problem aside for the moment and went to bed.

When pain from my knee woke me up around eight on Thursday morning, there was a note on my bedside table. Gotta call biz manager today. Please wake me up during biz hours. M. I yawned, picked up my cane from the floor, and shuffled off toward Molly’s room, my stiff, swollen knee protesting with each movement. I didn’t know how long I’d be interviewing victims’ families, so I figured I might as well get Molly up now.

She made her call from right outside the bathroom door while I was in the shower. Molly’s pretty private about her finances, but I know that she has a business manager who handles all her payments, because I send my comically small rent checks to his office. Like most vampires who’ve lived long enough to make extremely long-term investments (and press the minds of a lot of bankers), Molly never seems to worry about money, or even give it much thought. I suppose the whole point of a business manager is to have somebody else worry about it for you.

After I had completed the arduous procedure of getting dressed while Molly waited just outside my door, she came downstairs to have coffee with me at the kitchen counter. We were sitting there with our mugs, talking about the midnight movie Molly had seen the night before, when the doorbell rang. She slowly walked over to open it, with me following just close enough to keep her in my radius. We had a lot of practice moving around the house during the day like this, and had gotten even better at knowing the exact boundaries of my radius since my injury.