She was right about one thing, though—she and I were connected. I knew, in a simple, calm kind of way, that I would die before I let her get hurt again, and that she needed to stay far away from me. “Corry, I wish I could say that things have calmed down for me now, but that’s not how it is. My life is dangerous. And after everything you’ve been through, the last thing in the world I want is for you to get hurt.”
Corry took a deep breath, meeting my eyes, and when she spoke again her voice shook, like she was delivering a speech she’d practiced. “About that,” she began. “I know what you said, and I get it. But a lot has been going on for me, and I feel like there’s this whole other . . . there’s this part of my life . . .” She waved one wrist in a frantic circle, searching for the right words. “It’s like having your back turned to the ocean, you know? It’s just big and vast and I don’t understand any of it, and I’m way overwhelmed.” Her hands, which had been fidgeting in her lap again, suddenly stilled. “I need you, Scarlett,” she said quietly. “I know you’ve been trying to protect me by keeping me out of it, but I need to know how to protect myself. I can’t get blindsided again. I want in.”
I stared at her. Well. Goddammit.
Chapter 15
After Jesse had helped destroy Kathryn Wong’s body, he’d steered his car away from Will’s house only to pull over on Temescal Canyon Road, unsure of where he even wanted to go. He was reluctant to head home when he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep any time soon. His apartment was a tiny bunker that functioned as half sleeping place, half storage compartment; it had zero appeal for him when he was this keyed up.
He turned the engine off, staring out the windshield. The nova may have killed Kathryn Wong, but it was Jesse and Scarlett who’d erased her. She had been a full person, with her own thoughts and parents and probably a hold list at the public library. And they’d just . . . wiped her off the board. And no one would ever know.
Jesse rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hands. “You gotta get your shit together,” he said aloud. On top of his agreement with Dashiell and Kathryn Wong’s body, he was worried about the fact that he would soon be questioning Old World suspects without Scarlett around as a safe zone. Only a day earlier he wouldn’t have found that to be quite so daunting, but after Dashiell had pressed Jesse’s mind, he was reluctant to be vulnerable around any Old World creatures.
The problem, he thought, is that I don’t have any weapons I can use against werewolves.
Unfortunately, the only person he knew who sold silver weapons was a dead serial killer—Jared Hess, who’d made silver handcuffs, silver chains, and presumably other silver weapons as well. But all of Hess’s stuff had been seized by the police, and Jesse wasn’t about to break into a police evidence locker to steal it.
Then an idea struck him—Noah is in town. He checked his phone’s calendar to make sure he had the dates right. Yes. A plan began to clink together in Jesse’s mind, as he started his sedan and headed for Los Feliz.
Jesse’s older brother, Noah, was a stuntman, currently working full-time on a network action-adventure show about an FBI agent who could speak telepathically to his guardian angel. He usually shot on a soundstage in Vancouver, but he’d left Jesse a voicemail a few days earlier saying that he was doing exteriors in LA for the next two weeks. Jesse dialed with his phone’s Bluetooth. Noah often filmed his show at night, so he was likely to still be awake, and maybe even up for a minor adventure.
His brother picked up on the second ring. “Hey, Ugly,” Noah said cheerfully, by way of hello. Jesse grinned as he drove.
“Hey, Meathead. Whatcha doing?”
“Throwing a tennis ball. Max and I are having an endurance contest.” Max was their parents’ energetic pit bull mix. Noah had an apartment in Vancouver, but stayed with their parents when he was in LA.
“Getting your ass kicked?” Jesse asked.
“Yes, I am,” Noah said airily. “What’s up with you?”
“Well, it’s after eleven on a weeknight, so I was just wondering if you wanted to go out and do something stupid.”
“Come pick me up,” Noah said immediately.
Jesse arrived at his parents’ home in Los Feliz fifteen minutes later. The cheerfully over-decorated house had been tiny when Rob Astin and Carmen Cruz had bought it, long before Noah was born. Since then, they had added a new addition every few years until the house had mutated into a stubby maze, with his father’s three-room mixing studio fixed to the back of the building, and his mother’s kitchen nearly twice its original size. Amidst the clutter, mementos, and family warmth, it was starting to look like a place where hobbits might live, but Jesse was fond of it.
When he pulled up, Noah was sitting outside on the front steps with their parents’ dog, Max, who was a strange combination of pit bull and greyhound. Noah let go of Max’s collar when Jesse stepped out of his car, and the big dog bolted toward Jesse’s knees, jumping up to lick his face. “Whoa, buddy,” Jesse said, darting to one side to keep the dog’s paws off his chest.
“Max, off,” Noah called from the stoop. “Come.” The dog immediately abandoned his greeting ritual and trotted back to Noah’s side. He sat patiently next to Noah while he and Jesse embraced.
Jesse shook his head in amazement. “He only listens like that to you,” he marveled to his brother. “Everybody else has to yell four times just to get his attention.”
“That’s because he knows I’m the alpha here,” Noah said casually. The word set off alarms in Jesse’s brain, and it took a moment for him to remember that his brother meant nothing by it.
Noah stretched lazily with a gracefulness that belied his size. Although their faces were different and only Noah could pass for fully Caucasian, the two brothers had almost the exact same frame: same height, same shoulder width, even the same shoe size. But while Jesse had some honest muscle on him, Noah was enormous, the result of spending twelve hours a week at the gym to keep his body up to the same standards as the actor he doubled. For Jesse, looking at his brother was always eerie, like being half of a before-and-after ad for steroids.