“He will,” she spat furiously. “You are a prostitute! A whore! You probably spread your legs for half of London back in the day, and half of Toronto since you got here. He will believe it, and he will see just how cheap a slag you are and how unworthy you are of him and the love he proclaimed for you.”
“Where is Donny?” Beth asked rather than address her words. But she hadn’t missed that the woman had basically admitted that she must have been listening to her and Scotty in her room earlier when they’d said they loved each other.
“Somewhere safe,” Odilia said, calming at once. Her mouth even curved into a slight smile again. “Do not worry. You will be joining him soon enough.”
Beth nodded, and then raised her eyebrows. “So, I’m guessing this means it was you behind everything?”
“Yes,” Odilia said simply.
“Just so I’m clear,” Beth said, “you were behind it all? The highway accident? The sword attack? The barn? Rickart’s car? You were behind all those attempts on my life?”
Odilia nodded, but her expression was annoyed. “And you skated through every single damned attempt!”
“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘skated,’” Beth said modestly. “I mean, you almost hacked my arm off, and I was burned pretty good in the barn. I’m not sure what injuries I sustained from the bombing—nobody’s told me yet—but I’m sure they were gruesome and painful too.” She tilted her head. “I did survive, though. Sorry if that didn’t jibe with your plans. I’ve been told I can be difficult to work with. To be fair, though, you didn’t really tell me your plan, and it’s hard to cooperate when I don’t know the plan.”
Beth watched the woman for a moment and could see the fury building quickly in her again. She was up and down like a yo-yo, with little to no control at all. Definitely off her rocker. Anger was good. Angry people made mistakes. Crazy people, though? Yeah, they were unpredictable and dangerous. A change of tactics was necessary.
“So you were already in Toronto when Scotty got here?” she guessed, and wasn’t surprised to see the woman calm again at once.
“I arrived a day ahead of him. I was supposed to be checking out a tip about a possible rogue in Kirkwall in the UK. I called in the tip,” she admitted with amusement. “And I called in regular reports that were completely bogus.”
“How did you know we had gone to Vancouver?” Beth asked, very curious to hear the answer. That had been the stumbling block to connecting the attack in Vancouver to the others, after all.
“Scotty,” Odilia said with a grin. “He called in and told Magnus that Mortimer needed help out here and to round up Rickart, myself, and three others. He said to send the three others to Toronto and that Magnus, Rickart, and myself should meet him in Vancouver. He would contact us with the address as soon as he knew what it was.”
Odilia shrugged. “As I said, I was supposed to be in Kirkwall, which is way up in the north of nowhere, so I said I would fly commercial to British Columbia from Scotland and meet Magnus and Rickart in Vancouver rather than fly to London, where they were, and travel with them. I followed you from the house that first day, caused the accident, and when that didn’t work, I then hopped on a plane in Toronto. I probably landed an hour after you. I went to the Enforcer house there when Magnus texted me the address, and then followed you again, this time to the club.”
“Right,” Beth breathed. Well, they had kept saying only a hunter could know where they were. They’d been right; they just hadn’t even considered the UK hunters. And why would they? She’d never even met Odilia before. This wasn’t about her at all. It was about Scotty. Odilia was having a “little princess” moment. A “he’s my daddy and I don’t share” hissy fit, Beth thought with disgust, but simply asked patiently, “I presume there is a reason you’ve been doing all this? Scotty, perchance?”
“Of course, Scotty,” Odilia snapped. “You are not good enough for him.”
“Yeah, I’ve kind of heard that already. More times than I care to count, actually, and I’m really kind of getting tired of hearing it,” she muttered.
“Well then, maybe you should start listening,” Odilia said coldly. “You do not belong with him. He is mine.”
Frowning, Beth tried reason. “Odilia, I realize Scotty raised you and is like a father to you, but—”
“Father?” she said with amazement. “We were lovers!”
Okay, that caught her completely by surprise.
“I thought you said he raised you,” Beth said finally.
“I said he took me in,” Odilia snapped. “I did not say he adopted me.”
“Well then . . .” She stared at her with confusion.
“His house in London is huge,” Odilia said with a shrug. “I was given a wing along with Mrs. McCurdy, the woman who was brought in to take care of me as a child. Scotty had his own wing. But he wasn’t there often,” she added irritably. “I saw him maybe a handful of times before I reached the age of majority and then mostly at a distance. But he wrote letters. I wrote letters. He kept tabs on me through Mrs. McCurdy. He was always out traveling, hunting, chasing down rogues. And then of course I had to leave London or risk exposure, because I wasn’t aging. I traveled the Continent for a while, went to see the Americas, returned to the Continent . . . and then I heard that Jamieson was back in London. Scotty, of course, was hard on his trail almost immediately. It took me some time, however, to get back to England. The night I got there was the night they caught and killed him.”
“The night I was rescued,” Beth murmured.
Odilia nodded resentfully.
“I didn’t see you there,” Beth said quietly.
“I had gone to Scotty’s house, but he had already left. It took me some time to find out where he was and follow. It was all over when I got there. The carriage taking you and Alexandrina Argenis to the docks was leaving just as I finally arrived. I could not find Scotty at first, though, so went into the house. I . . .” She closed her eyes, and Beth knew exactly what she’d found. Blood everywhere, Jamieson’s remains, the bodies of the other women she and Dree had been going to save, the rotting corpses of men, women, and children strewn about and left to rot, and a stench so foul . . .
Beth lowered her head and closed her eyes briefly, trying to clear the smell and images from her mind. Just thinking about it put her right back in that house, in the middle of the madness and horror and—