She was silent for a beat too long, and I paused, skidding to a halt on the black-and-white-tiled hallway. I looked back at her. “Right?”
Beatrice shook her head. “I do not know, Scarlett. Yesterday, probably yes, but the situation is quickly growing worse. The powerful vampires in town are saying that Dashiell does not have the strength to hold the city, considering he can’t even protect his right hand. Our people say that they have been arguing among themselves about who should challenge Dashiell.” Her pale face looked even whiter in the bright hall light. “Scarlett, I know you do not always agree with Dashiell, but there are much, much worse vampires in California. Ariadne is among them.”
“She’s leading the revolution?”
“Yes.”
“And what happens to you if Dash is...overthrown?”
Her jaw tensed as she spoke. “If Ariadne takes control”—she shook her head—“my death will be bad.”
I don’t know which one of us was more surprised when I threw my arms around Beatrice, hugging her fiercely. “Don’t worry,” I said quietly.
She leaned back from me, looking shocked, and I stepped back, afraid I had hurt her. But then her hand reached slowly up to her eye, and when it came away, it shone with wetness. She stared in amazement. “I had forgotten.”
“Beatrice, listen. I have to help someone tonight, but when I’m done, I’ll come back here, and I’ll stay with Dashiell, okay? With both of you. I won’t let anyone get close enough to challenge. I know that’s not a long-term solution, but...” I trailed off. She had the oddest expression on her face. “What?”
“You know that he is ready to kill you for all of this, whether or not you were involved?”
“Yeah. I know.”
Her eyes searched mine for a long moment, and then she smiled faintly. “He underestimates you.”
Before I could deal with that, steps echoed down the hall in front of us, and I felt Dashiell even before I could see him. He wore the same smooth black suit as always, but with no tie and the top button undone. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of something shiny at his hip, behind the suit jacket. A gun. Dashiell was carrying a gun.
Oh, God. We were all gonna die.
“You,” he said, taking that first gasping human breath. “What are you doing here? Have you come to confess? To throw yourself at my mercy?” He raised an amused eyebrow, but his all-too-human voice sounded dead serious. Emphasis on dead.
“Not just yet. But I would like to ask you some questions, if I could.” I nodded to his office door. “May I?”
He frowned at me, unmoving.
“Come on, Dashiell. You said I had a few more hours. I’m trying to use them wisely. And I have a lead.”
Dashiell glanced at his watch. “Five minutes.”
Beatrice squeezed my hand and turned away, walking back toward the front of the house. I was on my own.
I straightened my spine and followed Dash into his colossal office, which didn’t match the rest of the house at all. The mansion reflected Beatrice’s tastes, which ran toward her native Spain and the Mediterranean. This office, however, was all medieval library—huge ornately carved oak desk, antique everything, oil lamps instead of electric. There was even a pair of white gloves lying out, presumably for the reading of extremely old books. For a moment, I wondered if Dash had seen the Renaissance. He couldn’t be that old, right? I felt very small, and wished that Jesse were there with me. Or even Eli, as complicated as that was.
Focus, Scarlett.
Dashiell pointed me to the chair opposite his desk, and we both sat down.
It was my turn to open a file of photos in front of him. I took a deep breath and passed over the two shots of the Hess children. “Emily and Jared Hess,” I told him, tapping their faces, just as he’d tapped the photos of the dead vampires. “Ten years ago tonight, Emily disappeared from La Brea Park, where she’d been playing with her brother after dark. Jared told the police he saw monsters drinking her blood, but they ignored him—or were paid to ignore him.”
Dashiell picked up the photo of Jared and studied it with renewed interest.
“Jared was very angry.”
“Go on.”
“All this time, we’ve been focusing on Abraham, figuring that he was the main victim and the other two a distraction. But Gregory told me that Joanna liked to feed from children.” I looked up, meeting his eyes. “Someone had to have called Olivia to clean up this scene at the park. Am I getting warm?”
Dashiell leaned back in his chair, looking thoughtful rather than simply angry. I hoped that was a good thing. “I remember this now. You are correct, Scarlett. Joanna went too far, and I sent Olivia in for the cleanup. We didn’t know that there was another child on the scene that night. When it made the newspapers, it seemed so perfect—crazy teenage boy kills little sister, hides the body. Joanna was punished—by Abraham, who took care of those things for me.” He stared at the ceiling, as if reading text from the tiles. “I believe he had her starved.”
I shuddered. Olivia had told me once that Dashiell’s punishment for the vampires was to lock them in a basement cell with no access to blood. They would never die, but they could sometimes go insane. Or in Joanna’s case, probably more insane. “And you’re just telling me this now?” I tried to keep my voice level.
“Scarlett, Joanna has had a handful of these incidents in her centuries of life. She was starved for five years then released, and she hadn’t made any trouble since. I had forgotten all about it.”
Steady, Scarlett, steady. “You forgot about your crazy pet child killer?”