Malediction: An Old World Story Read Free

while I waited for Cruz to call me back, I went online and looked up newspaper articles about the case. Ten months earlier, after Petra Corbett was arrested and the papers went nuts, I had gone on a self-imposed media blackout, which was easier than it sounds given that I live in Boulder and the murders were in LA. At the time, I figured that obsessing over the details wouldn’t bring Sam back, and, more importantly, I hated seeing my sister’s name in print, always attached to the word “victim.” That wasn’t how I wanted to think of her, or how I thought she should be remembered.
    I had some distance now, though, and I managed to force myself through most of the articles, which turned out to be a lot of material. Since the bodies were never found and Petra Corbett had accepted a plea deal rather than going through a big public trial, I hadn’t expected to find many articles. But the LA Times had run a whole series on the case, complete with an editorial speculating on what Remus might have done with the bodies—I was happy to ignore that one—and a long profile of Jesse Cruz, hero cop.
    I skimmed the profile, which revealed that my sister’s murder wasn’t the only high-profile case Jesse had caught. The year before, he’d been involved in catching the guy who’d killed those people at La Brea Park, a major case that Sam and I had actually discussed on the phone a couple of times. Was that why Cruz had left the force? Because he’d seen too many awful murders? At the same time, the LAPD was enormous. Wasn’t it kind of strange that one cop solved both those cases?
    Unless it was an Old World connection ? Sam’s suggestion that Cruz knew more than he was letting on seemed to support that, but if there was a connection, what could it be? He wasn’t a vampire; I’d seen him during the day. Male witches were rare, but possible. Or I supposed he could be a werewolf, though I knew very little about them.
    All of a sudden I felt silly. A werewolf cop? That sounded ridiculous. Maybe I was completely wrong about Cruz being part of the Old World. What evidence did I even have, aside from an offhand comment his friend made about me and Sam’s cryptic message?
    As if on cue, my phone rang. I didn’t know the number, but it had a Los Angeles area code. “This is Lex.”
    “Hi, Ms. Luther. It’s Jesse Cruz.” He sounded guarded. I couldn’t really blame him. “I understand you were looking for me.”
    I sat back in the chair, suddenly unsure of where to start. Humans were not allowed to know about the supernatural, so if Cruz wasn’t part of the Old World, I would be putting him at risk if I revealed anything about it. But how the hell was I supposed to get a straight answer if I couldn’t explain my reason for asking the question? “Hi, Detective,” I said, intentionally using his old honorific. “Please call me Lex. And thanks for calling me back.”
    “I’m not a detective anymore, actually. But you knew that.”
    “I was kind of surprised to hear the news. Would you mind if I asked what you’re doing instead?”
    There was a long pause, and I suspected he was trying to think of a nice way to blow me off. Instead, he just asked, “Is there something I can do for you, Lex?”
    Oh, fuck it. Frontal assault. “You could tell me how my sister really died.”

2. Jesse

    Jesse Cruz was already having a crappy day.
    The studio was shooting overnight in Vancouver and they kept calling him with the most inane little questions. Would a punk kid still hold a weapon sideways like a 90s gangster, or was that trend over now? What about an older gangster, one who might have been raising hell in the 90s? What kind of automatic weapon would a retired cop on a pension have on hand to combat a home invasion?
    And so on. Jesse had to come up with an answer for every single inquiry. He’d gotten smarter about that, though: during his first month as a police consultant, he’d given careful consideration to every