Even Jesse’s eyes widened a little at her tone. I wanted to scream, Why are you so scary? But I managed to keep my mouth shut as he asked, “Best guess?”

“Mmm . . . maybe twelve to twenty-four hours. But that’s a guess,” she cautioned. “Listen, John gets back from his trip tomorrow, so I’ll hand off Charlie and catch a flight tomorrow night or early the next morning.”

For a moment, I almost passed out from relief. An adult was coming! She could fix this for me! But then I realized how stupid that was. I couldn’t depend on someone else to fix a problem this big, and even if I could, it would look terrible. More important, it was unlikely that Lex would arrive in time to save Molly.

Whoops, she was talking to me again. “Sorry, what?” I said.

“I said, can you clear it with your people? Make sure it’s okay for me to enter your territory?”

“Oh.” Because boundary witches were so dangerous, Lex would need official permission to run around LA. Under the current circumstances, though, I couldn’t see Dashiell or the others objecting to it, especially if Kirsten vouched for her too. Although Kirsten was so busy preparing for the Trials tonight, I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to get her on the phone. “Yeah, I’ll figure it out.”

“Meanwhile,” she added, “I’ve got some resources here. Feel free to call.”

That reminded me. “Lex?” I blurted before she could hang up. “Have you ever heard the phrase midnight drain? Like as a noun?”

Jesse shot me an approving look. We’d both almost forgotten.

“No,” she said slowly, either because she was really thinking about it or because she had to force herself to speak to me. “But I can ask around after sunset.”

Jesse thanked her and promised to call back if Katia woke up. When he hung up, he gave me a questioning look. “Where do we take her? Dashiell’s in-home jail?”

“No, that’s the last place she should be. She could press the vampires to release her.”

“Good point. Where, then?”

I sighed. “I really only have one other idea, and it’s a terrible one.”

Chapter 21

“Wait, you want to bring her here?” Eli sounded flabbergasted, which is not a word I use lightly. Next to me, Jesse’s mouth twitched in what might have been amusement. I had taken the phone off Bluetooth, but Eli’s voice had been loud—not mad, just kind of shocked. I thought maybe he’d resigned himself to sitting this whole crisis out. Nope, sorry, honey. You get to tag in, too.

“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “But we need Shadow’s cell; it’s the only secure place with no vampires. Plus, you were a paramedic; you can do the transfusion, right?”

“Well, yeah . . .”

“Great. I already called Hayne; he’s sending blood bags.”

Eli didn’t sound happy, but he understood the concept of “all hands on deck” as well as anyone. “I should probably check in with Will to let him know what’s going on,” he said warily.

I understood the unspoken question, and for once, I didn’t have to worry about making Eli choose. “Please do,” I said. “If he has any questions or objections he can call me, but at this point Jesse and I are still operating under our pre-existing instructions.”

Eli hung up, and I gave Jesse directions to our place in Marina del Rey.

I love Shadow, but an enormous magical dog-monster does come with some logistical problems, especially in terms of her living situation. Behaviorally, she acted more or less like an ordinary dog—one who could understand most human speech—but she’d been bred and trained to kill werewolves, and that made her unpredictable. The bargest spell was also a very powerful, very rare form of magic, and it was possible that someone would come after Shadow to try to replicate it. We needed a place with decent security.

Shadow, for her part, seemed happiest and most comfortable when she had plenty of exercise and a little buffer space from strangers, so it had to be a place with few neighbors and a large yard, where we could modify a small room—a walk-in closet, as it turned out—to contain Shadow when I needed to leave her home. At the same time, however, we needed to ensure she stayed well within LA County.

Eli and I were never going to find anything that suited all those needs on our budget, so Dashiell had arranged a house for us. It was actually a small guest cottage on a property that belonged to one of Dashiell’s vampire friends, who hadn’t lived in the mansion for nearly a decade. Both the mansion and the guest cottage had just been sitting empty that whole time.

Eventually the vampire owner would come back and claim the mansion, and we would probably need to move, but it would be years before I had to worry about that. Meanwhile, we didn’t pay rent, but I had to cover the modifications to Shadow’s room, any damage she caused, and her extraordinarily expensive “dog food,” which was mostly raw buffalo steaks. Most months it amounted to nearly as much as Eli and I had paid for his last apartment.

At any rate, the walk-in-closet-turned-bargest-cell would also hold our new prisoner. And no one would hear if she screamed.

“Whoa, swanky,” Jesse said in an awed voice as I gave him the code to the gate.

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t get too excited,” I told him. “We’re not allowed in the big house.” He drove the sedan past the mansion and around the back to the small parking area, which was too big to be called a driveway and too small to be an actual parking lot. One of Dashiell’s people had kindly delivered my van, as promised. Eli’s SUV was parked in his usual spot next to mine. The guest cottage was on the other side.

“Yeah, the big house and the landscaping are really nice,” I continued, “but our place is pretty utilitarian. Plus we have to deal with making sure Shadow doesn’t eat any of the gardeners.”

“That’s a full-time job right there,” he said in a solemn voice.

Shadow and I went right for the front door while Jesse got Katia out of the backseat, gathering up her flopping limbs. I had to look away, because although she wasn’t smelly or rotting or anything, she seemed very, very dead.

The door popped open before I could even put my key in, and suddenly Eli was wrapping me in his arms.

Mmm was the noise that came out of my mouth. I allowed myself a moment to just breathe him in. His hair smelled like saltwater—he must have gone surfing that morning—and when I pulled back he kissed my lips briefly.

“I was worried,” he said.

“I know.” I stepped back and held my arms out. “But see? Completely fine.”

He gave an audible sigh of relief.

“Hi, Eli,” Jesse said as he approached, lugging the witch. “Where am I going?”

“Down the hall to the right,” I directed.

As Jesse passed us, he gave me a mischievous look and called over his shoulder, “Did Scarlett tell you she got shot?”

“Dick!” I yelled after him.

Eli rounded on me. “Shot?”

“It’s nothing.” I held up a finger and shrugged out of the new jacket so he could see the bandage on my arm. “It was just a tiny graze,” I promised. But lifting my arm had caused my shirt to shift in the front, and Eli raised an unhappy eyebrow at the wound there. His hands moved toward my collar to look, but I gently pushed them away. “Just a teeny bit of shrapnel. From my cell phone, not a bomb,” I added hurriedly. “I got a clean bill of health at the ER and everything.” There was no reason to mention the part where I’d left against doctor’s orders.

“You had to go to the ER?” Eli shook his head, hands gripping my shoulders well above the wound. “I don’t like this. I’m away from you for less than twenty-four hours, and someone shoots you. Here. In LA. What the hell is going on?”

“I will tell you the whole story,” I promised. “But we need to take care of the boundary witch first.”

His lips turned downward, but the pack’s beta werewolf understood priorities. “Fine. I put a bedroll in there, and your buddy Hayne dropped off a couple of bags of O neg and some IV equipment. He left about thirty seconds before you got here.”