Malediction: An Old World Story Read Online Free Page B

who stumbles into town looking for them.”
    Jesse, who had seen Lex’s angst over her missing sister up close and personal, thought that was unfair, but this was something they’d been through before: Scarlett wouldn’t let other people’s pain over her job keep her from doing it. He suddenly felt exhausted. “Well, what do you want me to do if she tracks me down?”
    “Exactly what you did. She can’t prove anything. I’ll mention it to the others, but for now, we gotta stick with information embargo.”
    “Okay, fine.” Jesse stood up and drained the beer. Scarlett gave him a hopeful look.
    “Do you want to stick around for a game of pool or something?” she offered. “I haven’t seen you in a while. I’d love to hear about the new job. That actor who plays the FBI agent, does he really—”
    “Thanks,” Jesse interrupted, “but I should probably get going.”
    He left her sitting there in the office, and somehow managed to not look back.
    As he drove north back to Studio City, Jesse couldn’t help but feel like there was some aspect of the cover-up he was forgetting. Will, Kiersten, Dashiell, Dashiell’s vampire wife, Scarlett, Noah …. He shook his head, not getting it.
    It nagged at him.

4. Lex

    I was ready to leave for LA immediately, but I had a few hoops to jump through first.
    If Jesse Cruz wouldn’t talk to me, I knew I’d have to get answers from someone else, and I figured my best chance was Petra Corbett. I wasn’t sure she even knew any details about Sam’s death, but I was betting she knew something . Her whole story about self-defense and a fake animal attack was just too weird. If there was something fishy about Sam’s death, the answer was probably with the woman who had the even fishier story. Hopefully she could give me something that I could use as leverage with Cruz.
    Of course, there was a voice in the back of my mind that kept asking why I needed to do this: what did it matter? Sam was dead, and nothing would change that. In my dream, Sam had said that I “deserved to know” what really happened, but did I want to know? What if I found out that Remus wasn’t really the killer? The evidence against him was overwhelming, and I was absolutely certain that he’d killed most of the other women he’d been accused of murdering, but was it possible that Sam wasn’t among them? What if the real killer had gotten away after blaming the friendly neighborhood serial killer? What if it was someone I knew?
    What if it was someone who could get to Charlie?
    And that thought was what convinced me that even if I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the truth, I definitely had to seek it out. If there was any chance that Charlie would be at risk because of information I didn’t have … I couldn’t allow that.
    But it turned out that the process for visiting a prisoner at the California Institution for Women was pretty complicated. I had to get Petra’s permission before I could visit her, and there were forms to be passed back and forth to the prison. While I was waiting to hear back from Corbett, I prepared for the trip. I had to arrange for my cousins to look after my animals, and for time off from both of my jobs—my new position assisting Colorado’s head vampire, Maven, and my part-time gig at a local convenience store, which was sort of my cover job. I was expecting a little resistance from Maven, particularly given how new our situation was, but to my surprise, she readily agreed to give me a couple of days off to “get my things in order,” as she put it. I wasn’t about to look the gift horse in the mouth, so I just thanked her.
    I didn’t tell my family or even Quinn, the vampire I was sort of planning on dating at some point, where I was going; I just said I’d be visiting some friends in the Los Angeles area for a couple of days. I think all of them assumed that meant I was going to see some army buddies, and I let them. It was a lot easier than saying that I had to go