Chapter 38
After Jesse left, I got my cane, swung my leg down carefully, and made my way toward the living room, collecting my cell phone as I passed the counter.
I got myself settled on the couch. Screw going back up those stairs, I was too tired. I held up my phone and realized that I’d missed a text from Dashiell. He had found the Luparii in France, but they weren’t responding to his requests for negotiation, and there wasn’t time for him to push it any farther. It was a dead end. And Will and Kirsten hadn’t contacted me, so I was assuming they were coming up dry too. There was no way to call off the scout.
Not knowing what else to do, I tried calling Eli again. This time the phone went straight to voicemail, so either his battery had died or he’d switched his phone off. Frustrated, I ended the call and dialed Hair of the Dog. The bartender transferred me to Will.
“Have you heard from Eli?” I said loudly. The back room was a lot quieter than the main bar area, but it still wasn’t actually quiet.
“Huh?” Will said distractedly. “Sorry, what?”
I repeated the question. “Oh.” Now Will sounded . . . reluctant. “Um, I’m sorry, Scarlett, but he checked out of the motel, and I don’t think he’s been back to his place. I think he left town.”
Oh.
I fought back tears. I did not want to cry again, goddammit. I had already cried too much this week. This year. And it wasn’t like Eli and I had been going steady. I’d saved him after he killed someone; he’d saved me after I killed someone. Maybe he just figured we were even now. And the night we’d spent together . . . that must have been good-bye.
Could I really blame him?
I leaned back on the couch, staring at the ceiling. Sometimes you are just so completely screwed that you almost have to admire it. Eli had left town right after sleeping with me which, aside from being humiliating and sad, also meant that Lydia was demanding something I couldn’t produce. The nova was going to attack a bunch of people tomorrow night, and the Luparii scout was going to go after the werewolf pack if he couldn’t find the nova, which we hadn’t been able to do even with knowledge of the city and a week’s lead time. Jesse and I were . . . complicated. Molly was evicting me on justifiable grounds.
The steady thrum of pain from my leg suddenly intensified, as if to remind me it existed. “Yes, thank you,” I told my leg. I had almost forgotten to catalogue my messed-up knee. Fantastic. I honestly didn’t know what to be most upset about. I leaned back on the couch pillow, feeling trapped and frustrated.
I wish I could say I tapped into reserves of inner strength and struck upon a plan to fix everything, but that’s not really my style. Instead, I laid there for a good long while, alternately pouting and feeling sorry for myself. I wasn’t even twenty-four, dammit! Most of the people I knew from high school were currently being supported by their parents while they figured out what to do with their useless but enjoyably obtained liberal arts degrees. I shouldn’t have to deal with all of this! It wasn’t fair.
I might have lain there sulking until Jesse arrived the next morning, except that it was still pretty early when he left, and by nine o’clock I was starving. I tried to ignore the hunger cramps in my stomach, but after a while my head began to ache too, and I realized that, unless I got some food, it was only going to get worse. So I took a deep, slow breath, and did what anyone would do in my dire situation: I called for pizza.
While I waited for the food, I ran through my options. I needed to do something. Will and Kirsten were both trying to find out more about the Luparii scout. Jesse was making phone calls. Everyone was busy, hard at work fixing my mess while I laid around waiting for pizza delivery. I felt a rush of shame. This had all started with my mistake, after all.
What I really wanted was someone I could talk to about all this, who could help me work out a plan—but my options were limited. I couldn’t exactly hash it out with humans. I considered calling Corry, but even if I had been certain that bringing her all the way into the Old World was the right play, she was fifteen and probably couldn’t help much. I knew that if I called Molly right then, she wouldn’t answer. She would have already begun to distance herself from me. And everyone else I knew in the Old World were people who were dumb enough to need help cleaning up a crime scene.
I tried Molly anyway, just in case, but her phone went straight to voicemail. I sighed, tapping the phone against my forehead. There was one other person I could try, but I really, really didn’t want to. “Suck it up, Scarlett,” I said, my voice suddenly seeming loud in the empty house. “Nobody cares about your stupid weird feelings.”
I dialed the phone.
A few minutes later, the pizza guy rang the doorbell. I limped to the door to sign the receipt and collect my delicious cheesy goodies. I had barely gotten the door closed when the doorbell rang again, and I opened it, expecting the pizza guy had forgotten to give me a receipt or something—but even before I saw her, I recognized the familiar sensation of a witch in my radius.
“Um . . . hi,” Runa Vore said hesitantly.
“You have a really nice place,” Runa said politely, looking around Molly’s kitchen. I set the pizza box in the middle of the table, pulling out a chair for myself.
“It’s not mine,” I said, a little shortly. I pointed to another chair, and as Runa was sitting down I said, “Do you want some pizza?”
“No, I ate. And I’m a vegan,” she added.