There wasn’t an immediate answer, so I used the bathroom and threw on some sweats. I wasn’t going to be sleeping anytime soon, and I was determined to go for a run today. After a moment’s hesitation, I dug out my old fanny pack and put the Taser inside. Better to be alive than to be fashionable, I always say. When I checked again, the phone was blinking. Will had kept it short and sweet: 3:17.
I spent a few minutes stretching, then I left Molly’s house at a light jog. The sky was overcast, which had made sunrise more or less pointless, but I knew the route and could have run it in a blackout. I pelted down the hill by Molly’s house, heading for my usual big loop, but my mind was on the case. Ronnie’s murder had happened at 3:14, but the text from Ronnie’s phone came three minutes later, which meant that it must have been from the killer. He or she had wanted me to get to the scene but hadn’t realized that Ronnie’s screaming had alerted other people, who called the cops. The killer gave me fifteen minutes to get there and then called the police himself. I felt a quick burst of that escaped-death kind of adrenaline—if the Starbucks couple hadn’t called the cops, and I’d been at home on the West Side instead of in Orange County, I would have beat the cops to the scene by just a couple of minutes. Again.
“It’s me,” I said out loud, panting. Without really deciding to, I had slowed to a walk and then stopped. But why me? Had I pissed someone off so much that they wanted me in jail? Maybe someone wanted to expose the whole Old World and figured I’d sing like a canary if I got arrested? Well, he was wrong there—if the cops ever caught me, I’d make up a story and do my time. Dashiell would never let me breathe a word about the Old World to the cops, Jesse excluded. I thought about how horrible Ronnie had looked, the welts on his skin. Someone wanted to pin that on me?
I leaned forward, resting my hands on my knees. Welts on his skin. Whoever had killed Ronnie—and I was assuming it was a human, because there was no other reason to use a null—must have subdued him with the null, then tied him up with the silver and sent the null away. With that many silver chains, the killer could have basically laid the chains on top of a werewolf in either form and completely immobilized his victim. Ronnie, panicked and desperate, would have made the painful switch back to wolf form, which is what the werewolves tend to do when they get cornered. It must have hurt like hell, especially covered in silver. That’s how Ronnie’s teeth were pulled out. Then, by command or on his own, the null came back, and Ronnie had switched back to human, where he died. Or, I realized, the null might not have come back, but the bad guy could have killed Ronnie. The thing about werewolves changing back to human when they die, that’s actually true. But it takes a lot to kill a werewolf, even with silver chains.
People were starting to stare at me, standing dead still in running clothes, panting heavily, so I moved back into a light jog, heading home. I was picturing those chains in my head. They’d been shiny and untarnished, either brand-new or very well taken care of. Where do you get chains like that?
As soon as I got home, I called Will—I can never tell whether he’s one of those people who can wake up instantly and sound fine on the phone or if he just doesn’t sleep, but he answered—and asked him. Not only did he not know, but he was offended that I might think he’d keep that kind of thing around. Will takes pride in not having to beat the crap out of his wolves to maintain his power, the way that some alphas do. I wanted to ask Dashiell the same question—he, unlike Will, would have no qualms with tying up a belligerent werewolf—but it was seven in the morning, and I couldn’t wait the entire day to talk to him. I was running out of time.
Back at Molly’s, I took a quick shower and put on a T-shirt and underwear. As I was digging through my dresser for clean jeans, I called Cruz and left a simple message for him to call me as soon as possible. Giving up on the jeans—laundry had not been a priority this week—I paced the room a little and plopped down on the bed. I wanted to bounce my idea off someone, but I was pretty much stuck until Cruz finished up at the crime scene.
I didn’t mean to close my eyes, but at that point, I’d been awake for almost twenty-four hours for the second time that week, and even all the coffee and the adrenaline couldn’t keep my exhausted body conscious. As I drifted off, I felt a muted jolt of fear that I would dream of the clearing. I shouldn’t have worried, though; instead, I dreamed of Olivia once again.
It was the smirking, pre-cancer Olivia, as she’d been when we first met. In my dream, she was so real, so present, her chestnut hair drifting loose from its bun and her heavy jewelry clinking on her chest. We walked along the beach, and though we didn’t speak, I could feel Olivia radiating that unique sense of purpose. Next to her, I felt ungainly and inexperienced, a colt trying to keep up with its graceful mother. We were heading toward something, two figures in the distance. When we got close, I realized it was my mom and dad, who both rushed to greet Olivia, ignoring me. Olivia pulled out a knife, grinned at me, and in one long swipe, slit both of my parents’ throats. Then, with blood covering them, all three danced off into the distance, leaving me behind.
The nightmare woke me up at seven forty-five, less than an hour after I’d drifted off. The first thing I felt as my eyes opened was the loss, all over again, like when you fall and the ground rushes up to meet your face. I curled up into a ball and took a few sobbing gasps. I struggled to get my breathing under control.
“Scarlett?”
I jumped about four feet in the air, leaping off the bed and backing into the corner farthest from the doorway before I realized what I was doing.