Jesse circled back around the counter and plopped himself in a chair across from me. I envied his easy movements. My leg was feeling more and more ungainly, like I was dragging around one of those old-fashioned ball-and-chain things. “Could you change Remus into a human again?” he asked me, unable to hide the hope in his voice.
That shocked me. I had been so busy trying to hide the fact that I could change someone permanently that I hadn’t realized it could be a viable option to save Henry Remus from death. As I looked at Jesse, I remembered the moment in my bedroom when he’d asked me if I could do it again. This was what he’d meant all along: he wanted to use what I could do to get justice in the Old World, without having to just kill. Of course he did. I felt like an idiot.
If it had been Dashiell or Will asking, I would have felt used, but I couldn’t even blame Jesse. He wanted so badly to keep his integrity, and what I could do might actually make that possible. I opened my mouth to say I would try—but I closed it again. I thought about my knee, and the vertigo that had returned the night before. Then I remembered what Noring had said about taking care of myself.
“Not yet,” I whispered. Clearing my throat, I added in a clearer voice, “I have to get better first, Jesse. I have to finish healing before I can try something like that again. I’m so sorry.”
He nodded, unsurprised. “If it’s a choice between you and Remus, there’s no choice at all,” he said earnestly. “But if we could figure out a way to contain Remus until you got better . . . would you be willing to try?”
I found myself nodding. “And listen, Jesse,” I continued, “about last night . . .” Crap. Why on earth had I brought that up? Stupid mouth.
He raised his eyebrows over the rim of the coffee cup. “What about it?”
I struggled for words and finally ended up with, “Just because you don’t see something that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
His gaze softened and he put his cup down. “What are you saying, Scarlett?”
My eyes unfocused as I felt something stir on the edge of my radius. “Molly’s coming downstairs.”
“Huh?” He blanched, and then the stairs behind him creaked as Molly came into the room.
“Is this all you guys do, sit and drink coffee?” she asked cheerfully.
Jesse and I exchanged a glance. “Pretty much,” I said, shrugging.
The smile faded from her face. “Scarlett, can I talk to you for a minute?”
My eyebrows lifted. “Uh, sure . . .”
Jesse rose. “I’ll go back to the living room and make some more calls,” he said. Nodding a farewell, he vanished through the doorway, taking his coffee with him. Molly sat down in his chair.
“What’s up?” I said nervously. It’s rare for Molly to actually be serious about something. No good ever comes of it, in my experience.
She held up a finger, leaning back to check on Jesse in the other room. I heard his voice start up on a phone call, and she leaned forward again. “I take it you haven’t told him about last night?”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure if she meant sleeping with Eli or killing Anastasia. Then I realized the answer was the same either way. “No, I didn’t . . .” I trailed off and then repeated, “No.”
Molly nodded. “Listen—”
“I’m really sorry about your carpet,” I interrupted. “I’ll pay to have it fixed, of course.”
She gave me a thin smile. “I don’t care about the money, Scarlett. Money I have. But last night was the second time in two weeks that someone broke into my house looking for you.” Molly paused and took a deep breath. “Whenever vampires put down roots, there’s a time limit on how long it lasts. I want to enjoy the time I have in this house before I need to move on. Meanwhile, your whole situation keeps escalating, and . . . I don’t think I can continue on this journey with you.”
I tried to swallow, but the inside of my mouth was suddenly dry enough to be a fire hazard. “You—you want me to move out,” I managed to say.
She nodded reluctantly. “Not, like, today or anything. But as soon as you catch this guy, I’d like you to start looking for another place to live.”
I nodded, unable to stop the rush of tears that spilled down onto my cheeks. I couldn’t even blame her. I had put her life in danger; kicking me out was completely fair. If anything, it was surprising that she hadn’t done it the first time, when Olivia had broken in.
But in that moment I realized that as much as I had tried to hold myself back, to keep a distance, I thought of Molly as my friend. Vampire or not, spy or not, justified or not . . . it hurts when your friend doesn’t want you around.
Molly, unaccustomed to genuine emotion, looked distressed by my tears. She stood up and patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “Uh . . . I’m gonna go out for a while. We can talk more later.”
She speed-walked out the back door. A moment later, Jesse finished his call and came into the room.
“What was that about—” he began, then saw my face. I was trying to get my tears under control but not having a whole bunch of success. “Oh, hey . . . what happened?”
“Can you—” I pointed at the roll of paper towels on the counter, and he went to retrieve it for me.
“She wants me to move out,” I said shakily, blowing my nose on a paper towel. I have never pretended to be a pretty crier.
“What? Why?”
Oops. I still didn’t want to tell him about Anastasia. Things were delicate enough between us. So I just said, “Too dangerous.”
Jesse ripped another paper towel off the roll and handed it to me. I nodded in thanks. “Well, I can’t really blame her,” he said frankly. I looked up from the paper towel to gape at him. “Come on, Scarlett. You know as well as I do that all this wasn’t what she signed on for.”
I flinched. With an effort, I met his eyes, my voice hardening. “Are we still talking about Molly?”
He looked away. A minute of awkward silence ticked by, and then Jesse stood up. “I can finish these calls by myself,” he announced.
Something had shifted between us. I could actually see his body language changing to professional detachment. “Why don’t you take the rest of the night off, get some rest,” he added. “We’ll start early tomorrow.”
“Good idea,” I said flatly.