For a moment, Jesse looked like he was going to answer, but then he just shook his head tightly.

Impulsively, I stepped forward and hugged him, breathing in his scent. Stupid baby hormones. Jesse hesitated for a second, and then his arms went around me. We stayed like that for a long moment. I hoped that the shadows would hide us from the occasional car driving past.

When he finally stepped back toward the door, his eyes were just a tiny bit pink. “What now?” he said. He obviously didn’t want to talk about the Luparii’s attack anymore.

I pushed out a breath, increasing the space between us a little. A car turned onto the street, and I realized we needed to get out of there before someone called the police. “I’ll make that call to Kirsten, just to cover our bases. Then we can check in with Dashiell and—”

“Scarlett!” Wyatt was suddenly running toward me with a wild look on his face. He slowed down when he hit my radius and then abruptly changed direction, heading across the yard instead of toward me. I stared at him, confused, until I finally registered that the car on the street had slowed down, and the window was lowering.

Jesse had put it together a half-second before I did, and was already pushing me down, but not fast enough. A quick pop-pop of gunshots rang out in the night.

Chapter 20

I instinctively tried to reach for the knives in my boots just as Jesse was shoving me toward the ground, and the two of us ended up going down in a tangle, my shoulder scraping hard against one of the narrow pillars framing the front door. Jesse drew his gun from a side holster, propped himself on his elbow, and began firing at the car’s open passenger window, causing the driver to peel away down the street. The noise of Jesse’s gun seemed deafening.

When he was sure the car wasn’t coming back, Jesse put the gun back in his holster and turned to me, yelling, “Are you hit? Are you hit?”

“I think I’m okay,” I mumbled, trying to disentangle my arms and legs. Then I saw Wyatt lying on the front lawn.

He was on his back, his eyes closed, holding what looked like exit wounds in his stomach. That was when I realized he had changed his trajectory across the yard so he would be between the bullets and me. “Wyatt!”

I fought the natural urge to run to him and instead began scooting away on my butt. I could still feel him in my radius, which meant he wasn’t dead . . . but he would be if he stayed human.

My response had been too quiet, so Jesse was still yelling at me, but I cut him off. “I’m fine! Wyatt jumped in front of the bullets. Help him.”

So he stumbled to his feet and staggered toward Wyatt, pulling his jacket off along the way. I backed all the way off the front step and into the side yard, until the birds-of-paradise leaves began pricking at the backs of my bare arms. Then I hugged my knees to my chest, closed my eyes, and concentrated as hard as I could on shrinking my radius away from Wyatt.

It was more difficult than it should have been. When I’m overwhelmed by emotion—a.k.a. anytime I totally lose my shit—my radius flares outward. Getting shot at certainly qualified as overwhelming. On top of that, the nausea was flaring back to life, but I could not throw up at a crime scene. I just couldn’t. I tried to slow down my breathing.

Think it through, Scarlett. I had no doubt that the attack had been intended for me—Jesse had been behind me, closer to the house. If Wyatt hadn’t gotten in between me and the car, I’d be the one bleeding out on the grass. I shivered.

Okay, so someone had tried to kill me. I was protected in Los Angeles by Dashiell, so it was probably the Luparii . . . which meant they were still in town. Which meant Jesse had been right about them being committed to killing me. I just didn’t really know why. Yeah, I had helped kidnap Shadow from them, but plenty of others had helped me do it. Why not take a run at Dashiell, or kill Jesse properly? Why was killing me worth the risk of sticking around now that they had Shadow?

They’d found me at the crime scene . . . which meant they’d known I’d be coming. So they were involved with Karl Schmidt’s murder, but why? Had they set up a random weird crime scene just to lay a trap for me? That seemed ridiculous—there were plenty of easier ways to trap me. They could have just pretended to be an animal shelter that had found Shadow, and I would have raced over without thinking.

At the same time, though, I couldn’t see any other reason for them to attack some elderly human in Long Beach who had no ties to any of us. I didn’t get it . . . but I’d be willing to bet if we went and talked to Gloria Sherman in person, we’d find that a vampire had pressed her to call Jesse. Or a vampire had pressed someone at the coroner’s office to call in Gloria, knowing she would call Jesse and me. Vampires were working for the Luparii now, and the Luparii wanted to kill me; therefore, non-Jesse humans couldn’t be trusted.

“Scar?” Jesse yelled from the front walkway.

I stood up so he could see me, still holding in my radius. “Is he okay?”

“I’ll be fine, Miss Scarlett,” Wyatt called back. “But do you hear that?”

My ears were still ringing, but when I focused on listening, I heard it too: the sound of sirens in the distance. The damn neighbors must have called the police.

I groaned. Between Wyatt pressing humans and Dashiell’s influence with the LAPD, we could get out of this fairly easily, but it would take forever. I reached for my phone to call Dashiell—but it wasn’t in my pocket. I’d been so pleased to see Wyatt that I’d forgotten to take it off the charger in the van when we arrived. Goddammit. What a rookie mistake.

Jesse had stood up and was hurriedly unbuttoning his shirt, which was stained with blood. I started toward the yard to get the phone, but there was no way to get down the walkway and through the metal gate without getting close to Wyatt, who was only now struggling to his feet. I stopped ten feet away from him, my radius clenched tightly around me. “I left my cell in the van,” I told them, in a voice that was probably louder than it needed to be. “I need to call Dashiell and get us some help.”

“Here, use mine,” Wyatt offered, and tossed me a slim black iPhone. “I’ll fetch yours while you make the call.”

I wanted to protest that he was still healing from a bullet wound, but we didn’t have time, so I shrugged to myself and tossed my van keys at him, pointing left down the street toward the White Whale. He turned to go. “And Wyatt?”

He looked over his shoulder. “Thank you,” I said. “I know you moved into the path of those bullets.”

The cowboy grinned. “You do keep things interesting, don’t you, Miss Scarlett?”

As Wyatt took off at light jog—slow for a vampire, damned fast for a vampire healing from bullet wounds—Jesse wadded up his bloody shirt and put his jacket back on over his undershirt. He looked like he was about to audition for a mob movie in the early nineties. “That was Killian shooting at us,” Jesse said grimly. “I saw his face. Sabine was probably driving.”

“Shit.” I turned my attention to Wyatt’s unlocked cell phone. Dashiell’s number was one of only a handful in the contacts folder. I touched the number and held the phone to my ear, waiting for him to answer. Wyatt was far enough ahead now for me to wander down the little walkway toward the sidewalk. I looked idly in the direction of the van, parked about half a block away.

“Hello?” Dashiell said.

The sirens were very close now. “It’s me!” I practically yelled, but I was distracted by the van. If the cops saw Wyatt, they might stop to talk to him first.

But they never had the chance, because as he opened the driver’s door, it exploded outward in a dazzling burst of fire.

Chapter 21

When the van door exploded outward, I instinctively dropped to the ground, feeling the rush of escaping heat. It wasn’t as big or colorful as a movie explosion, but that somehow made it even worse, more real and terrifying. As soon as I could, I staggered upright. “Wyatt!” I screamed, lurching toward the van. It looked like a giant had wrapped one enormous hand around it and squeezed. Bright orange flames were rising from the shattered windows, and I couldn’t see any sign of Wyatt.

I ran into the street, vaguely aware of Jesse shouting something right behind me, trying to get me to stop. Neighbors were running out of their houses, many of them holding cell phones. Shit. Any second someone was going to start taping, if they hadn’t already.