“I don’t . . . I’m Lex.”
The girl took a step closer to me. “You’re different,” she said curiously.
Cruz looked steadily at the girl for a moment, and I could almost see the threads of history and emotion woven between the two of them, some kind of deep trust or love. Then Cruz glanced at me and remembered himself. “Excuse us for a moment, Miss Luther,” he said apologetically. Then he stepped between the girl and me and swept her into the hallway.
I sat back down, but before the office door could swing shut, I heard her say, “Jesse, there’s something weird about her. She’s not human, but . . .”
When he came back a few minutes later, Cruz apologized for the interruption and told me his friend had just come by to drop off some lunch for him. The story rang a little false, but I dismissed the whole thing—my sister had just died, and besides, it was LA. There were weirdos everywhere.
Looking back now, though, after everything that had happened in the last few days, I was suddenly convinced that the girl knew something about me. And considering the obvious closeness between them, Cruz had to know it, too. I picked up the phone and dialed the handwritten number on the back of the card.
The phone went straight to voicemail. “You’ve reached the cell phone for Jesse Cruz,” came his pleasant male voice. “I’ll be out of the country until October first. If you’d like to leave a message . . .”
I hung up the phone and opened my old laptop—a hand-me-down from John a few years earlier. Glancing at the business card from Cruz, I sent him a quick email asking him to call me as soon as possible. Before I could close the browser window, a new message popped up in my inbox: “Message Not Received.” I clicked on it, my eyes jumping immediately to the line reading, “The employee you’ve contacted is no longer with the Los Angeles Police Department. If you’d like to reach someone else . . .”
I frowned at the computer, nonplussed. Cruz had quit the force? He’d seemed like a good cop . . . I shook my head and closed the laptop. At any rate, he couldn’t exactly help me protect Charlie from Darcy. She would be safe for a few hours, while John had people over—vampire or not, Darcy wasn’t stupid enough to storm a house with four adults. That would give me a little more time to figure out how to keep her safe. I grabbed the phone again, called the number on Quinn’s card, and left him a voicemail asking him to call me.
When I hung up, I glanced at my bedside table. Four-thirty. I checked the weather on my phone and discovered that the sun would set in about three hours. I had a little time to kill before Quinn would be available. I dropped the phone on the bed, feeling the irritated stitches pull in my back again. Shit. Those stitches needed to come out. Quinn had said Simon would probably contact me, but I didn’t want to wait.
Switching back to the computer, I googled Simon Pellar. There was a semi-famous stamp collector with that name, but I seriously doubted the Simon I’d met had been publishing books in 1992. I kept clicking, and to my surprise, a picture of the right Simon came up on the website for UC Boulder. The guy was an associate professor, with an office in the main science building. I thought back to his glasses-and-messenger-bag look. Yeah, I could see that.
I called his office number and was a little surprised when he answered on the first ring.
“Simon Pellar.”
“Hey, it’s Lex,” I said, then added awkwardly, “Um, from last night.”
“Hey,” Simon said cheerfully. “I was gonna call you later, but it looks like you tracked me down.”
I blanched. “What were you going to call me about?”
“You’re a witch, Lex,” he reminded me. “We need to talk about training you to use your magic.”
Oh. That. “I don’t want to,” I said abruptly, and then immediately felt like a petulant child. “I mean, I have no interest in being a witch. It’s nice that I can’t be pressed by vampires, but I need to get back to my real life. No offense,” I added, feeling like an idiot. No wonder Big Scott thought I gave off a hermit vibe. I couldn’t handle a two-minute conversation with non-family.
There was a long pause. “Okay,” Simon said slowly. “Is that why you’re calling? To tell me you don’t want to get involved?”
“Not exactly,” I admitted. “I have this other problem . . .” I told him about the stitches in my back.
“Hmm,” Simon said thoughtfully. “I forgot about the stitches. Tell you what: give me your address, and I’ll call my sister Lily. She did a couple of years of medical school; I’ll see if she can stop by.”
While I waited, I spent time returning phone calls and texts. My dad had checked in from the office, and two of my aunts had offered to drop off some dinners so I wouldn’t have to cook for a few days. Bettina had called twice, and I spent half an hour reassuring her that I was fine, nothing had been her fault, and she’d done a good job by pressing the panic button, even if she couldn’t remember doing it. Rather than return the calls I’d gotten from the police department, I phoned Elise directly. My cousin was annoyed that I’d left the hospital without talking to the police, but we arranged for her and the detective in charge of the kidnapping to come and interview me first thing the next morning.
When I was finally finished with the calls, I looked around the cabin for something else to occupy me. I don’t usually spend a lot of time sitting still. If I wasn’t working or spending time with my family, I was usually outdoors—hiking or mountain climbing or riding my bike. When the weather was bad, I worked out in the little gym I’d set up in the basement. But I was too sore and weak to exercise, so I headed into the living room to my small collection of DVDs.