OVER THE NEXT FEW HOURS, WE HIT THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF THE PARTY SCENE in L.A. Tracking a lead, we crashed a giant house party in the Hollywood Hills where Sadie cornered some kind of witch dude who hadn't taken his eyes off her since we walked in the place. She flirted with him and then took him by the hand and into a side courtyard that was locked and dark, where Everett and I were waiting. She didn't flinch as he pushed her up against a wall and ran his hands up her body. She leaned into his neck and he raised it perfectly. Seamlessly, Everett struck. In seconds, he'd summoned the power to the surface, bit the hell out of the dude's neck, took the power, and I swooped in to heal it. The guy passed out, but he was still breathing and not turning into one of us, so I felt like we could leave him there.
After a prompt exit from that place, we hit some of the ritzy clubs where more than a few famous faces mingled with a surprisingly supernatural crowd. I could sense seven in the room other than us, and Sadie said she could read them in the crowd, her power growing with practice. Ginny and Sadie led each other onto the dance floor and stayed there for a while, attracting all kinds of attention. After they established themselves as a spectacle, it made it easy for everyone to go after a mark. Ginny bought a drink for a redhead in a dress not unlike her own who'd been paying just too much attention to the two girls not to tip Ginny off. She got her into a stall in the men's room — a fairly impressive move — where Noah locked the door, I froze the girl, and Everett acquired her power. She was a vampire of some kind, so there was no blood and no cleanup. Before the girl could figure out what happened, Ginny had her up against a wall and was making out with her again. I couldn't help but laugh.
Two shifters working together went after Sadie next, making our jobs easier. She did a few shots with them and feigned drunkenness and eagerly accepted an invitation to follow them outside a back door into an alley . . . where we were waiting.
She was lip-locked with one of them, which inspired Everett to take them down right away. His anger was a bit more evident on this one, making my job to heal and restrain harder, but I managed. Poor little shifters. Don't they know the city is a dangerous place at night?
I figured Sadie was getting a kick out of this. She seemed to be on a power trip. She'd been a sinister little thing all along, running a dedicated sprint to meet her end up until we stopped her. And so now she was channeling that energy into something else. Her halo broken. The devil running her down. She took that tortured mind and turned it into something useful, her way of running from it all while standing in one place. It seemed our little Sadie had learned to cope.
Cope healthily? Well, that was another thing entirely.
Having exhausted the resources at that club — the other four seemed to have no powers to acquire, or so Sadie said — we hit a few more places like that and then headed to a slightly seedier part of town, where we traversed gray streets filled with cheap bars serving cheap booze instead of sparking lights and high-end liquor. If anything, the work was faster and easier here. The girls caught the attention of everyone in the room the second they walked in, there were more weird side rooms and pool tables in back rooms and alleys to take advantage of, fewer people to sift through in a shorter amount of time, and surprisingly more down and out powerful supernaturals. Especially vampires. I was actually alarmed at the volume of them we came across in the crappier parts of town. Then I idly wondered what L.A.'s murder rate was like, and how it compared in these neighborhoods as opposed to the ones that had velvet ropes and bouncers in front of their establishments.
We got back to the hotel around 5 a.m. Ginny counted twenty-seven powers from eighteen supernaturals. And as if truly exhausted, Everett laid down on his bed, closed his eyes, and didn't move for hours.
Before we parted for the night, Sadie sat next to him, put her hand on his chest where a heart would have been. "Not bad for a day's work," she said. She looked up at me, softly. "Not bad at all."