“Are you okay?”
“You should see the other guy.”
He suddenly felt very awake, for the first time since he’d left his mother’s house. “Sounds great. Where can I find him?” he asked, an edge sharpening the words.
But Scarlett didn’t answer.
He opened his mouth to press the point, but closed it again. They’d be spending the next few hours together; he could work on her when they weren’t with the friend. He turned to the red-haired girl and tried for a pleasant smile. “So you’re Scarlett’s roommate?”
“Yup. And friend and landlady. Psuedo-employer, too, I guess,” Molly said. She turned to Scarlett. “Listen, Scar, I need to head out. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Molly stepped into sandals, picked up a laptop bag, and was out the door before Jesse could get out a “Nice to meet you.”
He turned and looked at Scarlett, raising his eyebrows. “Was it something I don’t think I had time to say?”
Scarlett sighed. “It’s not you. She’s afraid she’s going to be ordered to kill me, so she’s trying to keep some distance.”
Jesse’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“Get comfortable, Cruz. There are some things I need to fill you in on. But first, there’s someone who needs your help. Eli,” she called, and a stranger came in from the other room.
He was tall and good-looking, leaning against the doorway and shoving his hands in his pockets. Jesse felt a bewildering sense of jealousy. Why should he care if Scarlett had a boyfriend?
“Cruz, this is my...um...This is Eli. Eli has a little problem.” The other man didn’t move, and Scarlett prompted, “Go ahead, show him.”
Looking reluctant, Eli pulled his hands out of his pockets and held up his wrists. Jesse saw the glint of cuffs, but there was something weird about them.
“Whoa,” he said, stepping over to examine them. “Where’d you get these? Tiffany’s?” They were just way too shiny. His department-issued handcuffs were stainless steel, but these looked like...White gold? Silver?
“They’re silver,” Scarlett said briefly, and Jesse looked up, startled. As if she had read his mind. Scarlett glanced at Eli, who gave a very small nod. “Eli is a werewolf,” she continued. “Someone put the cuffs on him to incapacitate him. I cut the chain, but I don’t have a key to actually remove them. And until we do, he’s gotta stay within a few feet of me.”
“Um, okay,” Jesse said, pulling a little ring of keys out of his pocket. “I stopped at the precinct and signed these out. One of the vice detectives found this ring of handcuff keys years ago in an S and M shop, and the whole department adds to it whenever we find a weird one.”
They shifted around awkwardly for a few minutes, but after a little discussion, Eli found a position where he could rest one wrist on the arm of the couch, and Jesse pulled up a straight-backed chair so he could began fitting keys in the lock. It was still kind of uncomfortable, being this close to a guy—another werewolf, he remind himself—he didn’t know. It made Jesse talk too fast.
“So the silver thing is true? Poison to werewolves and vampires?”
The blond guy glanced at Scarlett, who gave an it’s up to you shrug.
“Magic does weird things to silver, or maybe vice versa,” he said. His voice was low and gravelly. “I don’t know why. Some magics are enhanced by it, some the opposite. For werewolves, it’s pretty much our kryptonite, yeah.”
“Not for the vampires, though,” Scarlett added. “Silver just makes them itch a little, so don’t go thinking silver bullets will do the trick there.”
Huh. “I meant to ask you about that. Exactly what would do the trick?”
“Oh. Um...sunlight. And fire, of course. Those are classics. Other than that, you have to detach the head or destroy the heart.”
“Wooden stakes?”
She held out a flat hand and wiggled it back and forth in a so-so gesture. “Mostly just a superstitious tradition. It technically works, but you have to really squash the shit out of the heart to destroy it. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.”
Eli glanced at her.
“So I’ve heard,” she added.
Eli said, “I heard once that the vampires spread a lot of rumors themselves, about what would kill them. That way when humans tried to test them, they would always pass.”
“I suppose that makes sense.” Jesse thought it over for a minute. What else had he heard about? “Crosses and holy water? Garlic?”
“Garlic’s also a little itchy,” Scarlett said. “No religious stuff, that’s a myth. There are also—”
Eli cleared his throat, cutting her off, and Jesse saw the two of them exchange a complicated look.
“Here,” Jesse twisted a key in the lock, and the cuff popped open. He unlocked the other and handed both rings to Eli. “Souvenir,” he offered.
“Thank you,” Eli said, looking very relieved. He quickly dropped both rings on the coffee table, as if they’d burned him. Which, Jesse realized, seeing the welts on Eli’s wrists, they had.
“You’re welcome.” Jesse turned to Scarlett, who had been sitting on the couch eating her burrito during the exchange. “Now, what the hell’s going on?”
The werewolf excused himself to get to a bartending job, and Jesse spent the next half an hour listening as Scarlett explained the call to the dog park, her kidnapping, and the “meeting” with Dashiell.
When she was finished, Jesse was almost in a daze. “That...is a lot to take in.”
“Yes.”
“The vampire boss, Dashiell—he thinks you’re behind it?”
“Yes.”
Her eye was already purpling, despite the frozen veggies, and the bruise on her jaw was one of the darkest he’d seen. And that was only from a few hours ago. Jesse felt his teeth grit together. They’d slapped her around for something she hadn’t done.