I gripped the wheel. “Let him call three more.”
I was still in my kick-ass, take-charge stance when I turned the corner onto Fallon’s street. My kick- assedness turned into a roiling stomach and sour saliva when the blue and red police lights washed over our car.
“Oh my God,” I murmured.
My heart started to thud as the car slowed down and my blood became ice as I pulled aside and swept the scene. A handful of police cars were parked at jagged angles, an open ambulance in between them. A fire truck was blocking the driveway, the hose, like the discarded skin of a snake, flopped and ignored on the driveway. A wisp of smoke came from somewhere and the smell of something charred hung in the air.
“Why aren’t you answering your phone?” Will bellowed the second my car door opened an inch. He was dressed for work—firefighting, not the Guardian stuff—and the entire scene stunned me.
“I was—what’s going on here?”
Every light in Fallon’s house was on, the warm light flooding into the front yard, mingling with the flashing lights of police cruisers and the steady headlights of the ambulance and fire truck.
Nina came around the side of the car and put her hand on my arm, the chill just shocking enough to shake me. “Why are you here? What’s going on?”
“Call came in about twenty minutes ago,” Will said, his voice low.
“Lawson!” Alex’s voice cut through the general din of idling motors, barking orders, and my pounding heart. My body stiffened as he marched across the street and clamped a hand around my wrist. “I need you for this.”
His eyes were stern and hard, in complete business mode. I stared at him blankly and started to move until I felt a hand on my other arm.
“Soph and I are working on this together. I need her to see something.”
Alex’s eyes went over my head and locked with Will’s. “This is official police business, Will.”
“And this is Underworld criminal activity. Sophie and I have been dealing with Fallon for a week.”
I knew I should have said something, but I was still in a weird stupor, leaning toward Alex, leaning toward Will. Finally, I felt a tight tug and heard Alex say, “Sorry about that, but police business trumps your stuff.”
Nina’s eyes cut to the house and then back to me. She shook her head and took a step back. I handed her my keys. As far as I knew, Nina had never broken UDA protocol. But adding a vampire—even an adherent one—to a crime scene, where there could be enormous amounts of blood and a plethora of warm cop bodies, was begging for a rule to break.
I stumbled aside and glanced over my shoulder long enough to see the anger flicker across Will’s face.
“Hang on, mate,” Will said, following us quickly.
“Soph.” Nina’s eyes were wide.
“Both of you, stop!” I shook my arms free and turned on my heel, going directly to the ambulance, where a paramedic was wrapping a heavy blanket around Fallon’s shoulders. I didn’t know if the guys were following me and I didn’t care.
“Fallon, what happened here?”
Fallon looked up at me, her eyeliner smeared, black rivulets of mascara laced with tears sliding down her cheeks. Her hair was still in pigtails, but they were lopsided now and somehow, she looked like a regular kid: vulnerable, sad—scared. She blinked up at me, her lower lip trembling.
“I—I’m not sure.”
“Miss?” The paramedic put an arm up between Fallon and me, his other hand pumping a blood pressure monitor. “Please don’t upset her. She’s had quite a scare.”
I was stunned to dead silence when Fallon looked from me to the paramedic and said, “That’s okay, she’s a friend.”
The paramedic finished his reading and backed away with a shrug. I sat down on the tailgate next to Fallon. We were silent for a full moment, the lights of the police cars washing over us, first responders rushing around, eventually getting in their cars or making notes.
“I went out to get something to eat. When I came back . . .” Fallon’s lip started to tremble again and her eyes filled with tears. I expected her to shake it off, to blink back the tears. The Fallon from school would have. This one just let the tears fall.
I put a hand on hers, squeezed gently. “What happened, hon?”
“Every light in the house was on. Blazing, like it is now.” She gestured absentmindedly toward the house. The doors were wide open. I went inside and—and—”
“There was a pentagram on the dining room floor.” It was Alex now, in front of Fallon and me, arms crossed in front of his chest, legs akimbo.
Fallon nodded and sniffed. “Someone had pushed aside all the furniture and drawn—drawn it in—in chalk or something. There were candles and—” Fallon closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip before whispering, “There was blood.”
I looked up at Alex and he nodded solemnly.
“I screamed and ran out. I guess I kicked over one of the candles because the curtains caught on fire.”
“Where are your parents?”
Fallon didn’t look at me. “Gone. My mom left for Portland tonight—that’s why I went out to get something to eat.”
“And your dad?”
“My dad is . . .” Her voice went thin again and I could almost see the wheels turning in her head, deciding what she should tell me. Exhaustion must have won over. “We don’t really know where he is. We haven’t for a while.”
My heart ached for her.
“Lawson?” I glanced up and Alex was right in front of me, eyes imploring. Will was twenty feet behind him suited up in his gear, soot streaked across his face, ax thrown over his shoulder. I felt my heart start to pound as Alex held out a hand. I saw Will shift behind him.
I swallowed hard, my stomach starting to roil. Finally, I stood. “I’m going to go in and check out what you saw, okay?” I was speaking to Fallon. She hugged the blanket tighter over her shoulders and frowned.
“What were you doing here, anyway?” She sniffed. “I mean, thanks, but you’re a substitute teacher. Why are you like, fighting crime?”
I sucked in a breath. “You have no idea what it takes to get teaching credentials in California. I’ll be right back, okay?”
Fallon nodded and rested her head on her knees.
The inside of Fallon’s house was opulent—more so than I expected—with a swirling staircase wide enough for my car and slick walnut carved everything. Pictures were spaced equidistantly apart, each one showing the same family of three in stiff familial poses, their surroundings and smiles imitating the perfect, happy family, while their eyes stared out vacantly. The kitchen had the same pristine, model-home feel, with glossy industrial ovens that looked like they had never been used and a bunch of fresh bananas that were the exact hue of the trim.
I wondered if Ms. Monroe would toss them once the color changed.
“It’s in here,” Alex said, ten feet in front of me. The dining room was the only room so far with its lights off, but there was enough light coming from the bouncing flames in the fireplace to give me a view of the whole room. I immediately started unbuttoning my jacket as the roaring fire ratcheted up the room temperature by fifteen degrees. An entire half-wall of the room was scorched, long fingers of soot crawling up to the ceiling. The remains of elegant drapery were gnarled rags on one side, Dupioni silk in a calming blue on the other. The window they were protecting was blown out and shards of glass littered both sides of the wall.
“What do you think?”
Alex was gesturing to the wood floor. Furniture hugged the walls, but the center of the room was bare. The pentagram that Fallon said was made of chalk had been ground into the lush wood, its luster covered by what looked like years of wear. A smear of red—blood, I supposed—was washed across the center circle. The candles set at the pentagram’s five points were out, and the one closest to the charred wall was still on its side, a little ripple of form in a pool of black melted wax.
“Anything significant?”
