“I—I don’t know,” Laurence said. He wiped his hand across his forehead and then held it in front of his face, studying the perspiration like an alien had just sprouted from his hairline. “She had…plans, he said. That could change the way things worked in Los Angeles. I dismissed it as nonsense. I swear, sir, that’s all I know about it,” Laurence said to Dashiell. He was pleading, and I suddenly understood that Laurence was here in Pasadena to be punished for not telling Dashiell this story right away. Maybe that just meant he had to serve as Dashiell’s butler for a while.
Maybe.
“The last time I spoke to Albert was in early September. Until you called me down here I had no idea he was…missing.”
Dashiell looked at Jesse, who gave a small shrug. Dashiell waved a hand dismissively, and Laurence did plenty of bowing and scraping as he backed out of the room.
When he was gone, Will said to Dashiell, “But Olivia was a vampire for almost a year before the witch murders. Didn’t you know?”
I doubt anyone but Will could have gotten away with second-guessing Dashiell like that, but Will’s tone was so neutral and reasonable that Dashiell simply shrugged. “She kept a very low profile for many months, and Albert continued to work here, even after the events of the fall,” he said, with a little nod toward Jesse and me. “I didn’t find out that she had been turned until Scarlett told me she showed up at the hospital. I never got close enough to ask who had done it.”
I jumped in with the question that was nagging at me. “Can we back up a second? We’re skipping a really important step. Laurence said Albert was in love with her, and she used him to turn into a vampire.” I’d figured as much, but I would bet every penny I’d ever have that she didn’t love him back. Olivia didn’t love people. She loved owning things. “But Olivia was a null, just like me. So in order to become a vampire, wouldn’t she have had to become human first? Is that even possible?”
There was a long, heavy pause. Finally, Kirsten said, “Scarlett, the truth is that we don’t know. No one knows all that much about your power. We only know what doesn’t work against it.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ve seen all the old books at my house, right?”
I nodded.
“There are stories in there, plenty of them, about witches trying to cast a spell against a null. Nothing ever worked. Then in the twenties a New York witch became friends with a null, and they did a little experimenting. I can tell you with absolute certainty that there’s no spell that even works against you, much less can take away your power. If we physically, permanently change something, you can’t undo that, but there’s just no active spell that can work against you or around you. We know that much, but we don’t know where your power comes from or why it works against magic.” Her voice rose with frustration.
I glanced at Will and Dashiell. Will was shaking his head. “The wolves haven’t had a ton of interactions with nulls, and we certainly don’t have documentation. We just know that when we get close to a null—in either form—we’re suddenly normal humans again. Simple as that.”
“Dashiell?” I asked. “Any ideas about how Olivia turned?”
He shrugged gracefully. “Don’t you think I would tell you if I did?”
I had a few potential answers to that, but without warning, Kirsten slammed her hand against a side table. “Enough with the prince of darkness evasion crap,” she snapped. “If you’d kept us in the loop from the beginning, this might never have happened. You knew, you knew who she was, how crazy she was, and you still let her live in your city after she turned. You let her live, period, even knowing what she did to Scarlett.”
I figured this was what Kirsten had been wanting to say since she’d entered the house that night, and she wasn’t wrong. As she spoke I felt her power flare again. The feeling was incredible, like I was a socket with a bunch of cords plugged in and one of them suddenly surged. For the first time, I thought I felt whatever was different about me actually push back at something, as though my nullness were saying down, girl to Kirsten. And although I felt her magic strain against me, I never doubted my ability to ground it. It was extraordinary, and I had to make an effort to hide my surprise.
Something like guilt flew across Dashiell’s face, and then he remembered how to control his human expressions. “I do not answer to you, Kirsten,” he said coldly. “You have both”—he turned his head to include Will—“agreed to my leadership in this city. That I would have final word. It was a condition of this little experiment, our working together. If you don’t like the way I am running things, you’re welcome to try to take what I have built for yourself.”
I’m not sure how it happened, but suddenly I was laughing. And then I was laughing a lot, while everyone in the room stared at me. And then I was doubled over with tears of laughter dripping onto my jeans. “I’m sorry,” I said when I could breathe. I sat up. Dashiell was glaring at me; the others just stared with their mouths open. I giggled again, until I managed to say, “I’m sorry, Dashiell. Really. It’s just a lot of tension, and then you’re all ‘Grr! My way or the highway!’ And I’m just really tired, and you need better dialogue.” I cracked up again and saw Will trying to smother a tiny smile. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down.
“I’m going to attribute that to the apprehension, and not insubordination,” Dashiell said stiffly. At that, I kept my jaw clenched shut, but I couldn’t help the giggles escaping through my lips. “What?!” he finally said, exasperated.
“Did you know, Dashiell, that when you’re stressed your speech patterns gain, like, a master’s degree? Food for thought,” I said as soberly as I could manage. I’d never talked to Dashiell like that. “But more importantly, I don’t know that much about how deep Olivia’s manipulations go—as Will so helpfully pointed out, I pretty much fell for all of it—but whether or not she planned this, I would bet that she would love what’s happening right now. Us arguing. Me losing it. All that good stuff.”