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“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” Saber said, “for letting her in.”
Doug smiled at her and shook his head.
“Not embarrassed,” he said. “I don’t care. I’m just telling you what happened. A beautiful woman appeared at my window, asked to be invited in, and she began to ask me who else I worked with, who had killed her child, that sort of thing. I honestly didn’t know what she was talking about. I think if I hadn’t put on the hawthorn crown, I would have told her everything. I didn’t know you killed another vampire, though, not until she told me.”
Saber nodded.
“Probably good you didn’t tell me. I think she could tell, somehow, that I didn’t know. Can they read minds?”
“Not really,” Saber said. “But they can get feelings and images.”
“You’re in danger, Lozen. You and Saber. She doesn’t know about Mia, or Elijah.”
“She saw me the night we ran over Derek.”
Doug nodded.
“She said she could smell you. She called you a strange name, though.”
Lozen seemed to tense.
“Can you talk to coyotes, too, Lozen?” Doug asked gently.
Lozen breathed out slowly.
“I’m working on it,” she admitted.
"She called you ‘that scrappy, were-bitch,’ which I thought was so strange. Do you know what she meant?”
Lozen shrugged, but Saber caught Mia’s eyes for a moment and Mia looked away.
“Now what?” Elijah asked. “What do we do?”
“I was just sitting out here thinking about that,” Doug said. “Wondering about the nature of evil, about right and wrong, and responsibility.”
“And?” Saber asked, putting her hand on his shoulder. “What did you decide?”
“I didn’t decide anything, Saber,” he sighed. “But I think back to that first meeting we had, where I said that of course we needed to kill them, and I wonder now if I was incredibly naive.”
“Maybe we were,” Saber said. “But it doesn’t even matter now. Then we were fighting for a principle. Now we’re fighting for our lives.”
“Last night when I realized I might die, that I was in mortal danger, I didn’t feel anything but animal fear and profound regret. I just wanted to live another day. Go on another walk. See my daughter or another sunset at Manzanita Beach.”
“So now what?” Elijah asked, unmistakable anger in his voice. “Now that we’ve done all these things, put ourselves in danger for a cause you don’t even believe in anymore, now what do we do?”
“We go inside,” Doug said, slapping his knees and standing up with a crack. “We make a pot of tea.”
It was on the car ride from Doug’s house that Lozen got the phone call.
Saber couldn’t hear the person on the other line, but looked up at Lozen when she laughed, a bitter, scoffing laugh.
“Is this a joke?” Lozen asked. “What you’re saying doesn’t make sense.”
After she hung up, she gazed at the road for a long moment.
“Someone set up an anonymous scholarship at USC with the stipulation that I be the only recipient considered. My tuition is completely paid for, all four years, along with a cost-of-living stipend.”
“What?” Saber asked. “Who would do that?”
