“My parents usually throw a big party,” he said. “My brother Noah’s usually in town for it, and we team up and assault the food table.”
“Noah’s the stunt double, right?”
Jesse smiled. “Yes.”
“Is it weird for you, that they all work in Hollywood and you don’t?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “Mostly because they don’t understand why I wanted to be a cop. My mom, especially, was sort of hurt by it. She doesn’t understand why someone wouldn’t want to work in the movies.”
“So why did you become a cop?” I’d brought up the topic idly, but I realized it was a pretty good question.
Jesse looked away for a moment, thinking. “There was this detective,” he said slowly. “When I was a kid.”
“Did he, like, solve the murder of your best friend or something?” I asked lightly.
“It was my cousin,” Jesse said gravely.
I must have looked horrified, because he laughed out loud, his face brightening. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” I smacked his arm, and he picked up the story. “No, I used to go to movie sets with my folks once in a while, you know, and once on a teacher in-service day, my dad had to take me to this preproduction meeting with him.
“I was waiting in the reception area, with my Spider-Man comics, you know, and this guy walked in. You could just tell right away that he was somebody important. He had this . . . mmm . . .”
“Presence?” I offered.
Jesse snapped his fingers. “Yes, exactly. I just figured he was a movie star at first, but there was something different about him. A vibe, I guess. Anyway, he came and sat down with me, asked me about my comic books, and chatted with me a little bit. He was a homicide detective.”
“What was he doing at the movie studio?”
“Oh, he was there as a consultant. The movie Dad was working on was this cop drama, and this guy had come to advise them on the real-life procedures and things. They do it all the time.”
There was a loose strand of black hair on his forehead, and for a second I could picture exactly what he’d looked like as a little boy, waiting for his dad with a big stack of comic books. “What did this guy say to you?”
“He . . . ,” Jesse trailed off, caught in the memory, and started again. “It was something he said, exactly. The thing was, I had already seen so many cool things on movie sets: fake car accidents and space aliens and exploding buildings. And I figured out pretty early that there wasn’t anything you could do or imagine that couldn’t be faked by good filmmakers. And if anything could be faked, how did you know if something was real?” He looked at me for a moment.
“And that detective wasn’t fake,” I prompted gently.
Jesse took a breath. “No. He was real. And I wanted to do something real too.” Even in the streetlight, I could see his face color a little. “Of course, now I know that magic is part of the world, so I guess I don’t know what’s real anymore.” He looked forlorn for a moment.
I leaned back in the seat. “Sounds like the guy made quite an impression on you,” I said gently.
Jesse smiled wistfully. “He was . . . he was absolute. He just gave off this confidence and certainty, like there wasn’t anything that he couldn’t handle. He was really nice to me, friendly. But at the same time his eyes were just . . . scary.”
“Would you say,” I began, straight-faced, “that he had lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes?”
Jesse laughed out loud, and I felt the thrilling click of connection that you get when someone understands your movie reference. “You know, I might. Which I thought was cool.” He shrugged. “It’s just how cops look sometimes, I think. When you’ve seen enough of the things people do to each other, it just kind of takes over your face.”
I studied him for a long moment. “You don’t look like that,” I mused. “Not yet, anyway.”
“You do,” he said softly, and then looked surprised, like he hadn’t known he was about to say it. “Except sometimes, when there’s nobody from the Old World around, and you don’t think anybody is trying to get something from you, and you forget who you are.”
My mouth dropped open, and tingles of surprise prickled through my nervous system as a long silence passed between us. Jesse was staring at me with just a hint of defiance, like he was daring me to say something real, certain that I couldn’t do it. But this time he was wrong.
“I’m not a lost soul, Jesse,” I said quietly. “And I’m not an innocent. Nobody has done anything to me that I didn’t invite.”
He looked indignant, which was sort of adorable if you thought about it. “Dashiell—” he began, but I held up a hand.
“Dashiell is a vampire and he plays vampire games. Olivia was a psycho who made it her mission to fuck with my life. But it’s the scorpion and the frog story, Jesse.”
“The scorpion kills the frog,” Jesse pointed out. “It isn’t the frog’s fault.”
I sighed. “The dumbass frog should’ve just run like hell. Well, hopped like hell. Swam like hell? Whatever frogs do to get away, but really quickly,” I amended. “Instead he agrees to give a scorpion a ride across the river. He definitely deserves some of the blame.”
“He didn’t choose to be a frog. And you didn’t choose to be a null,” Jesse reminded me.