“Remember, you’re not the only game in town anymore. Little Corry is all safe and cozy—as long as you do what you’re told. If not, I slit your throat and go pick up our girl. I’m not particularly interested in having to kill her whole family to take her, but if you insist on making me kill you...” He grinned, and a shiver of fear passed through me.
It was coming to my attention that he was batshit crazy. I turned my head and spit the rest of the blood on the concrete floor. If Hess killed me, maybe Jesse would find my DNA somehow and catch the fucker.
“How did you find her?” I asked.
“Little Corry? Contacts.” He leaned back and spread out his arms, grinning. “I’ve got contacts all over town, on both sides of the Old World.”
“Both sides?”
He cocked his head, looking closely at me; then he giggled. “You really don’t know? You think there aren’t even a few humans who know what’s going on, who want to put the animals down?”
I stared. “Like...vampire hunters? You’ve gotta be kidding.”
He smirked at me.
I decided it wasn’t important for the moment. “What do you want?”
“I want him,” he hissed. “Dashiell. The one who makes this all possible. He let that vampire whore kill Emily and did nothing to keep her from doing it again. He hires bottom-feeding twats like you to keep everything covered up and makes sure the police find someone else to blame. Like a grieving sixteen-year-old.” He spat out the last few words with an intensity that would have terrified me if I weren’t already so numb.
“You want to kill Dashiell?” I asked dumbly. I have to admit, for an instant, I thought about just helping him do it. I would probably die anyway, but Corry would be safe. And it wasn’t as if I were feeling particularly loyal to Dashiell, who was planning to kill me in a couple of hours, regardless.
But after that instant of consideration, I remembered what Beatrice had said about lesser evils, and I knew she was right. There were other vampires in this town, and not all of them were willing to play nice with the werewolves, or make deals with cops, or keep their minions from killing without prejudice. Like Ariadne, who gave off more than a whiff of batshit crazy herself. Killing Dashiell wouldn’t solve my problems. It was just create more, and for everyone.
But it didn’t matter; I was wrong about Jared’s intentions.
“No, I’m not going to kill him. Another like him would just take his place—it’s pointless. But I’ve been making silver for the vampires for years and years, getting to know all the ins and outs of his little troupe, and I figure there’s only one thing that he loves, truly loves, in the entire world. So I’m going to kill her.”
My stomach dropped. “Beatrice?” I whispered.
Chapter 30
From the way he’d looked at me, I’d been more than a little afraid that Jared Hess had pre-murder plans for my body, but after his little gloating session, he stomped back upstairs. I twisted my wrist around far enough to peer at my watch. It was midnight. I hoped that Jesse had cooled off enough to worry when he couldn’t get a hold of me, but I had little hope for him storming the basement to save me. Kirsten or one of the more powerful witches could have tracked me with an object that belonged to me, but Kirsten was in Santa Barbara, apparently, and Jesse didn’t know how to get a hold of anyone. I didn’t think he even knew Kirsten’s name.
I thought about Corry for a long time. She’d seemed so full of confusion and pain, and despite the direness of my own current situation, I was overwhelmed with sympathy for her. Being a teenager is hard enough without sexual assault and murder staining your soul. Even if I could successfully keep her out of the rest of this ordeal, I wondered if she’d be able to recover from what she’d done, and what had been done to her. There’s no therapist for the supernaturally inclined, as far as I know. I hoped she wouldn’t lose herself to this.
Then I thought about the two men who had suddenly become so prominent in my life. There was Jesse, of course, who had seemed like he might like me. That moment in the bait shop parking lot came back to me, when he had looked at me as if I were just a girl, a girl that he liked. But I’d also seen the look on his face in the coffee shop. To him, I was tainted. Ethically compromised. And I couldn’t really blame him. I had been right when I’d thought that there was something pure about Jesse. I just hadn’t realized how little purity there was left in me. No, even if I were...well, not so messed up, Jesse wouldn’t be wanting to date me anytime soon.
And Eli. What the hell was I doing with Eli? For starters, I was avoiding letting him get the least bit close to me. I thought about that first night in the bar and the look on his face when I came back for him at Artie’s. I reached a couple of conclusions: First, I couldn’t let go of the idea that he just wanted me for the calm only I could give him. But at the same time, the way he treated me wasn’t the way you treat someone who’s just calming. It’s the way you are to someone you want. Did I want him back? This was a thought I’d never really considered much, which just goes to show you how deeply messed up I am. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might want someone.
Since Olivia died, I had been going through the motions. Clean up crime scenes. Ignore my brother. Watch TV with Molly. Have slightly drunken sex with Eli. Do laundry. Repeat. I might as well have died with Olivia, or with my parents, for all the living I’ve been doing. But since the moment when I’d decided to push for Jesse to live, it felt as if I were waking up—not that I particularly wanted to. It’s so much easier to just think of your life as a giant checklist that has to be worked through. But like it or not, I couldn’t sit on the bench anymore. If I made it through the dawn—and really, I had no idea how—I needed to get in the game. Somehow.