She nodded, reaching over to squeeze my forearm lightly. “I’m sure it will all work out,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to check on the refreshments now that the human help is gone.”

She was gone before I could respond. I stared at her back for a moment, surprised. Had I just gotten a brush-off from Beatrice? That was a first. Why wouldn’t she want me to talk about Molly? Was she afraid I’d ask her to intervene with Dashiell?

Or, I told myself, maybe we were just low on wine.

The rest of the first cocktail hour was surprisingly sedate. As the vampires woke for the night and more people arrived, the room began to naturally divide itself into three factions, as everyone stuck to their own kind. At least a few people were mingling around the food table, though. Damn, this really was like a high school dance.

As I watched them interact with each other, I saw a couple of glares being traded between the wolves and the vampires, and a lot of smug smiles, too. There was a certain mood of “just wait till the trial starts; you’ll get yours” in the air, and that was just fine with me, because it meant that no one wanted to start anything physical, in case it would affect the outcome of the leaders’ decision. I was more concerned about after the Trials, when the losers would be upset, and the winners would gloat. And everyone would be drinking.

A very thin, curly haired woman of mixed race wormed through the crowd directly toward me, although it took me a second to recognize her in formalwear. Lizzy was the werewolf pack’s sigma, its weakest member, and one of the three newer wolves whom Eli affectionately called “the pups.” Tonight she was wearing a slinky, dark green dress that ended at midthigh, along with high heels that would have given me airsickness. Werewolf grace does have its benefits.

“Scarlett! I’ve been looking for you,” she cried, throwing her arms around me. She drew in a long breath through her nose. It usually weirded me out when a werewolf sniffed me like that, but Lizzy was a special case. She had been attacked by the same nova wolf who’d killed Lex’s sister, and for nearly two years after that, she’d been out of her mind. I mean that literally.

Will knew a somewhat shady doctor who specialized in the Old World, and when it had become apparent Lizzy wasn’t going to recover on her own, he had called Matthias to evaluate her. It was Matthias who’d discovered that the nova wolf attack had induced a sort of magically forced manic depression in the new werewolf, and after a few terrible months of trial and error, he had found a combination of serious drugs that kept Lizzy in balance—although she needed to take them every two hours, thanks to werewolf metabolism. But she was finally stable, and had joined the equivalent of the werewolf freshman class.

Jesse and I were the ones who’d stopped the nova wolf, and afterward Lizzy had sort of imprinted on me, for lack of a better word. She could smell me as much as she needed to.

Finally, Lizzy disentangled, pulling back and tugging at her dress hem. “Have you seen Eli?” she asked, looking anxious.

I felt a stab of guilt. “He’s not coming, Lizzy, sorry,” I told her. “But Will’s here, and all the rest of your pack.” She wrapped her arms around herself, looking uncertain. I turned my body to point to the exit. “And by the women’s bathroom there’s this little room where they used to care for children, with murals on the wall and stuff. We’ve set that aside as a quiet space for anyone who needs to take a breather.”

Lizzy’s shoulders finally relaxed, and she gave me a nod. “Thanks, Scarlett.”

“No problem.”

I had already shifted my weight to move away when she added, “Is it true, about your friend?”

I stopped. “Is what true?”

Lizzy looked embarrassed. “Oh, sorry, I just . . .” She gestured around the room. “Everyone’s talking about it, and I thought it was more polite to just ask the source . . . ? Sorry, maybe not.”

Following her hand, I looked around the room and realized that, sure enough, half the people here were eyeing me and whispering. I was used to that, to some degree, because having a null in the room was always disruptive in the Old World. But usually they would look away, embarrassed or even a little frightened. Tonight, I was getting angry looks, and not just from Manuela the witch.

“What exactly is everyone saying?” I murmured to Lizzy.

“Uh . . .” She twisted her hands together, uncomfortable.

“It’s okay,” I promised. “You won’t get in trouble for telling me.”

“Well, the rumor is that your friend, the vampire, killed a whole bunch of college girls, and now you’re trying to convince Dashiell to let her go,” Lizzy said in a rush. “Everyone’s really mad because they think she broke this big rule and now you’re going to help her get away with it.”

I winced. Not good. “Is it true?” Lizzy added in a soft voice.

“No. Well, some of it. But I’m not trying to help Molly get away with murder. We’re just looking into all the possibilities before she goes on trial,” I said vaguely. Lizzy nodded, looking uncertain. I wanted to tell her—and everyone else—the whole story, but Dashiell and Will were right. If people found out about the boundary witch, or even the homicidal vampire, in town, it could provoke a serious uprising even now that we had Katia. I prayed that she would wake up in time to testify at Molly’s trial. It might be the only way to set things right.

A pleasant but loud chime sounded, and the ballroom went quiet. I checked my watch. Eight o’clock. Showtime.

Chapter 29

Rod hadn’t driven his motorcycle to the meeting at Echo Park, probably wanting to remain low profile. Jesse trailed the guy’s beat-up sedan toward the entrance to the 101 freeway, wondering what the hell he was doing. Rod was probably just going back to Santa Clarita for some kind of MC meeting, and Jesse was wasting his time. Still, he couldn’t go to the Trials, and he couldn’t think of any other way to help Scarlett and Molly just then, so he kept going. A wild goose chase would be better than sitting around doing nothing.

But then Rod went south on the 101, the complete wrong direction from Santa Clarita, and Jesse began to trust his own instincts. Although he wished he’d thought to bring snacks.

It was a short trip on the freeway—Rod exited after less than a mile, and Jesse realized with a degree of panic that he was heading for Union Station. Was the biker fleeing town? Jesse couldn’t see why, unless it was somehow in the call he’d received at their meeting. Had the MC president figured out that Rod was informing to the police and friends?

But Rod didn’t go into the train station; he just cruised around the parking lot for a bit before stopping behind a Ford SUV. As Jesse watched, the biker glanced around for pedestrians, squatted down, and removed the SUV’s license plates. He tossed them into the back seat of the sedan and took off again. Interesting.

They got back on the 101, and keeping Rod’s sedan in sight got tricky as hell in the early evening traffic. After more than an hour, the red sedan bumped onto a long stretch of deserted road near Palisades Park, almost all the way to the ocean. Rod turned onto a small dirt road that led into a field of dead grass. Jesse could see several motorcycles and a black SUV already parked along the same turnoff, so he kept driving. Rod may have been too inattentive to notice he was being followed, but his MC buddies might be a little sharper. Jesse pulled over a quarter of a mile down the road and turned around so he could watch the turnoff entrance.

It was fully dark now, but there was just enough light reflected from the LA smog for Jesse to make out the group of men emerging on foot, crossing the street and tramping into the scrubby trees on the other side of the road from the turnoff. Surprised, Jesse got out of the car and jogged after them, wary of being spotted. When he got to the place where they’d left the road, he crouched low and peered into the trees. There was a faint path, possibly just from the men themselves. The group of trees was too small to be called a forest—more like a little oasis of trees in a desert of beach sand and dead grass. Jesse drew his gun and followed the path for three or four minutes before he saw where the men had exited. Just past it was a wide expanse of sand, with no coverage at all. A hundred yards away, there was a wooden cottage facing the ocean. The small back porch held some sort of gear—Jesse couldn’t make it out from his hiding place—and a back door. Light was spilling through every window, and Jesse saw at least one shape inside the house, moving at an unconcerned pace.