Sylmar was way to the east of Dashiell’s Pasadena mansion, almost all the way back to the storage facility. I was getting pretty sick of crisscrossing the county. At least we were traveling in the middle of the day, when we could avoid the worst of the traffic.
Jesse made a little conversation about the traffic—the go-to topic of any Los Angeles small talk—but soon I was barely listening. The closer we got to Sylmar, the more nervous I became about breaking into Frederic’s place. I rarely worked at all during the day, and if I did, it was usually to check in with Abigail and Hayne, not deal with the riskier parts of my job. At the very least, I was about to commit breaking and entering, in broad daylight. Much as I complained about him, Dashiell’s influence in LA—both vampiric and political—was my safety net, and if I got myself into trouble during the day, I was working without that net. If I got caught, I would have to try talk my way out of it, because spending the rest of the day in jail would mean burning through what little time I had left to help Molly.
I was also worried about Frederic himself. The vampire would lose his strength and speed the instant he entered my radius, but he would still be unpredictable. As a general rule, formidable beings such as vampires do not like to be made vulnerable by a twenty-something who can barely dress herself. Waking them up during the day, with no warning, just emphasized how much power I had over them. Frederic wouldn’t be the first vampire to react to it violently.
All too soon, we were cruising past Frederic’s condo. Despite what Jesse had said about this part of town, the condo complex seemed nice to me. It was basically one large, two-story square building that someone had quartered into four units, with driveways facing out on opposite sides of the square. Like most LA residences, the emphasis was on maximizing living space rather than creating a yard, so the building was as wide as it could be, framed by a narrow sidewalk running along each side. The sidewalk led to a small side door, although the residents would probably enter and exit through the garage.
Abigail had said that all four units were owned by vampires, so the bedrooms would probably be at the back corner of each unit, where there were no windows. I saw no visible signs of life as we drove by, which wasn’t surprising, given the daylight.
“Something’s off,” Jesse said quietly, making a left to go back around the block.
“Really?” I twisted in my seat, trying to get another glance at the building. “It looked okay to me.”
“The side door was cracked open on Frederic’s unit,” he reported. “If you’re a vampire and this is basically your fortress, wouldn’t you close and lock the door during the day?”
“Maybe the air conditioning is broken and he wanted the breeze,” I offered. “Or maybe his cleaning lady is coming in. Or he just forgot to close it before he died for the day.”
“Maybe,” Jesse said, but he was obviously unconvinced. “Did you see the shrubs? They’re big enough to hide a person. Like maybe a boundary witch.”
“Oh. Right.” Another common LA landscape choice: the designer had tried to make up for the lack of yard by planting some huge, thick green plants in the narrow space between the sidewalk and the fence delineating the property. There were birds-of-paradise, a flower that’s always kind of creeped me out, along with some big, Jurassic Park–looking ferns. I hadn’t even really noticed the plants, which were all over the place in Los Angeles, but once Jesse pointed them out, it was obvious that the row of foliage was wide enough to hide even a large man.
“Let’s do the cautious thing for once, okay?” Jesse suggested. He turned back onto Frederic’s street, then parked at the curb, a good ways before the building. Before we got out, Jesse reached into a small safe underneath his seat and pulled out a handgun, securing it in a holster at his hip.
“Guns?” I said, hearing my voice come out plaintive. I really didn’t like guns. Maybe it was silly, after going up against murderers and psychos, but guns still scared the bejesus out of me, and that wasn’t likely to change.
“We know that the people running all this aren’t afraid to use them,” he explained, loading the weapon. “Frederic might have one with him, or the boundary witch could be here with a gun, or both. You better put on your vest.”
I nodded. It took a few minutes, but we both managed to squirm into the Kevlar vests while inside the vehicle. We couldn’t really walk around a residential neighborhood in bulletproof vests without drawing attention, so I put the jacket back on over mine, which made it look more or less like a black shirt, at least from a distance. Jesse, on the other hand, had to take his shirt off to put the vest on underneath. As he lifted his shirt over his head I turned away, suddenly very aware of the close quarters, and Jesse’s wide expanse of smooth brown skin stretched over muscle. I busied myself with unhooking my knife sheaths from my boots so I could attach them to my waistband.
Hearing our preparations, Shadow stuck her head between the seats and nosed my arm.
“Are we bringing her?” Jesse asked, tugging his T-shirt over the vest. Both he and Shadow watched me closely for the answer.
“If she wants to come.” If the boundary witch was around, Shadow would be a hell of a weapon. But it felt more respectful to ask rather than assume, and I tried to treat Shadow with the same respect I would give a human. Okay, probably more respect than I would give a human.
I twisted awkwardly in my seat so I could look into her eyes. “We need to talk to someone in that building,” I told her, pointing toward Frederic’s condo. “But Jesse thinks there might be a bad witch waiting. Do you want to help us look?”
She licked the air, which was an affirmative. Her tail was wagging wildly with anticipation, and there was a look of perfect fulfillment in her eyes that flooded me with guilt. Sometimes I felt kind of bad that I didn’t let Shadow kill people more often. “Good girl,” I said, and opened the door.
There are some parts of the country where a strange couple and an enormous dog-beast descending on a suburban home in the middle of the day would be considered weird, but in this case LA was playing to our advantage. Movie people always come and go at weird hours.
Still, by unspoken agreement, Jesse and I kept our body language loose and friendly as we approached the condo building with Shadow. Just a couple out walking their dog. You’d have to look close to realize that Shadow didn’t have a leash, and Jesse and I had a lot of weapons between us.
Frederic’s unit was the one on the left. Jesse slowed down when we hit the driveway, and I realized he was wary of the big ferns. They looked even bigger up close—massive enough to hide the Lakers’ starting lineup, let alone one boundary witch.
“Is the witch in there?” Jesse murmured.
Oh, right. Sometimes I got so used to thinking of myself as the opposite of magic that I forgot I could actually detect it. Halting on the sidewalk just in front of the walkway, I closed my eyes, pushing out my radius a little. I got the low-level buzz of Shadow, but there was nothing else, at least not as far as I could reach, which was a ways into the building. I smiled at Jesse. “No witches,” I whispered.
His shoulders released a little, and he nodded with relief.
And that was when Shadow snarled and exploded forward into the bushes. A gunshot rang out from that direction, and the garage door began to open next to us. I could hear running footsteps inside the garage.
We’d walked into a trap.
Chapter 19
When he heard the first gunshot Jesse reacted instinctively, shoving Scarlett toward the corner of the building to give them at least a little cover. But the garage door was going up, which presented another avenue of attack. Huddling between the corner of the building and the rising garage door, Jesse peeked around the corner to his right, looking to return fire to whoever was hiding in the foliage. But the gunshots had stopped. The enormous bird-of-paradise fronds were rattling, and he could see Shadow’s clubbed-off tail whipping about. He took a step away from the house, trying to get a better look at her target.
Then a bullet whined past him, coming from the garage.
Jesse spun around, but the guy cried out, clutching his shoulder and retreating behind a parked pickup truck. Scarlett had gotten him with one of her throwing knives. Before the man fell back, Jesse caught a quick glimpse of a leather jacket with patches on it and a greasy beard.