“However,” Dashiell went on, “considering the current circumstances, I concede that you’d do well with an ally at your side. I’ll call Wyatt.”

I brightened. Wyatt was the cowboy vampire I’d brought back with me from Vegas. Only six weeks ago, he’d been suicidal after the death of his wife, but since coming to Los Angeles, he’d found a job and a place in Dashiell’s service. I went and checked on him a couple of times a week at the bar where he worked, and he seemed to have found a degree of peace. He’d even stopped announcing his running countdown of the days left before my agreement to kill him kicked in.

Long story.

“What about Shadow?” I said.

“Everyone will continue their current efforts, Scarlett, but until we get more information, there’s not much else we can do,” he said, not unkindly. “Get back to me when you know whether or not this murder is Old World.”

I wondered if he was sending us to a crime scene just to keep me busy, so I’d stop pestering him about the search. But he was right—I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

After we hung up, Jesse looked at me. “So he can just arrange a tour of an active LAPD crime scene?”

I shrugged. “The man has juice.”

We got ready to leave, which felt strange without Shadow hanging out by my leg, nudging my thigh to remind me that she wanted to come too. After I grabbed my keys and jacket and made sure I had a knife in each boot, we headed out to my van, the White Whale. I started toward the driver’s seat, then stopped in my tracks, putting a hand on the hood. The morning sickness was making itself known again. “Change of plans,” I mumbled, holding out the keys. “You drive.”

He didn’t comment, but when we got on the road, Jesse pulled into a gas station instead of heading for the freeway. The tank was already pretty full, but before I could ask what he was doing, he was out of the van and jogging into the store. He returned a few minutes later with a small box of saltines. “You need to eat,” he ordered, thrusting the crackers at me.

“Dammit, you too?”

The whole idea of eating was repulsive at the moment, but I reluctantly tore open the package and bit off a cracker. It tasted like crunchy dust, but I kept mechanically chewing anyway. “So what’s the significance of no defensive wounds?” I asked. “Dashiell seemed surprised, and your eyes went all ‘ooooh.’”

“I’ve never had a beheading case, but we studied one at the academy,” Jesse replied. “Let’s say I’ve got an ax.”

I blinked, swallowing a chunk of wet sawdust. “Sure. Kind of a left turn there, but fine. Ax.”

“If I swung it toward your neck, what would you do?” He took his right hand off the wheel to pantomime the swing.

I thought for a second. “Step into the swing so I’m too close for you to use the ax.”

“And that’s not a bad choice, but then I could punch you, and you’d stagger back far enough for me to cut off your head.”

I nodded, understanding. “Which would at least give me a bruise. What if I grabbed for the ax?”

“You’d probably get in the way of the blade and get cut. If you tried to wrestle it away from me, or hit me, that would show up somewhere: abrasions on your hands, cuts on your knuckles. Something.”

“What if I never saw you coming?” I suggested. “Ax ninja?”

“That’s pretty much the only possible way, but it takes a lot of force to remove someone’s head in one clean blow. Unless the killer is a complete badass with brass balls, he probably wouldn’t use enough force on the first pass. He’d have to hack at you, and if you could move at all, you’d get your hands up and your fingers would get cut, or you’d try to crawl away from him, which would likely result in carpet burns or broken fingernails. Defensive wounds.”

Huh. I thought that over for a few seconds. “Not if I was unconscious. Or pressed,” I reminded him. “It seems possible if there’s a vampire involved.”

“Maybe one of the Luparii’s vampires?” he suggested.

I groaned. “God, I hope not.” That would really be the pickle on this shit sandwich of a situation.

Chapter 19

Half an hour later, I threw my arms around a tall, lean vampire with a mustache that looked like it had arrived from 1890 in a time machine.

Jesse and I had parked just down the block from the crime scene house, and Wyatt pulled up behind us a second later, ambling over to greet me in his long duster jacket and cowboy hat, his big handlebar ’stache turned up in a smile. I jumped out of the van and hurried over to him. I’m not generally a hugger, but Wyatt always seemed like he needed it. And he was sort of my responsibility.

I stepped back and looked at Jesse. “Wyatt, this is my friend Jesse. Jesse, Wyatt.”

The men gave each other nearly identical wary looks, and then Wyatt looked down at me with concern. “Miss Scarlett, are you all right? You look a little peaked.”

“I’m fine, Wyatt. Let’s get this over with.” I stepped toward the house, then paused and looked back at him. “There might be a lot of blood in there, and I’ll need to shrink my radius so you can press the human. Did you, um, already eat tonight?”

Wyatt looked surprised, but gave me his slow, lazy grin. “Yes, ma’am. Don’t you worry about that.”

We trooped toward the house, a yellow stucco bungalow with crime scene tape wrapped on little sticks to block off the whole yard. The yard itself was tiny, maybe ten square feet total, with some of those goddamned bird-of-paradise plants lining the little footpath leading to the front step. I hate those flowers. They always look like they’re about to come to life and peck me to death. At the very least, they’re all definitely planning something.

There was someone waiting on the front stoop: a black guy in his late thirties, short and lithe-looking. He stood up as we approached, and his eyes narrowed. “Jesse Cruz?” he said in a voice with a soft southern accent.

I looked at Jesse out of the corner of my eye, and caught the way his shoulders slumped. “Hey, Aaron. I didn’t know you were working this case. How’s it going?”

The other man ignored the question, looking pointedly at Wyatt and me. “And who are you?”

“Jay Aaron, this is Scarlett and that’s Wyatt,” Jesse said. “Aaron is a crime scene investigator.”

Aaron made no effort to shake hands. “I was here from eleven o’clock this morning until half an hour ago, then I get called to come back and show around some consultant team,” he said coldly, his gaze moving back to Jesse. “That your new gig? Consulting?” He managed to imbue that one word with an impressive amount of scorn.

Jesse started to answer, but Wyatt glanced at me. I nodded and shrank my radius down to a couple of feet. Wyatt stepped forward, making eye contact with Aaron. “You don’t want to ask us any more questions about why we’re here,” he said smoothly. “You want to take us inside now.”

Aaron blinked a couple of times, then turned to the door. “Right. Let’s head in.”

Behind his back, Jesse shot both of us a glare, but I shrugged, unrepentant. We were going to erase this guy’s entire memory of us anyway. Might as well move things along.

Besides, he was kind of being an asshole.

We put on gloves, hairnets, and booties—Wyatt had to take off his cowboy boots to get his on—and then Aaron led us silently through the tiny foyer into a small, tidy living room that had last been decorated in the late seventies. There were splashes of blood everywhere, but they were especially concentrated around a blue velvet La-Z-Boy. Jesse went straight toward it, then looked quizzically over his shoulder at Aaron. “Was he sitting in the chair when someone cut off his head?”

“No.” Aaron still looked sullen. “Blood spatter indicates he was kneeling in front of the chair.”

Not unconscious, then. “Clean slice, or was there hacking?” Jesse asked.

“One slice,” Aaron said, with the tiniest bit of relish in his voice.

While Jesse questioned Aaron, Wyatt leaned sideways in the doorway, where he had a clear view of both the living room and the foyer with the front door. His job wasn’t detecting clues so much as watching our backs and pressing Aaron when we were done. He caught me glancing at him and gave me a slow wink, his moustache turning up at the ends as he grinned at me. I smiled back. It was good to be working together again.