50

"WHAT ARE YOU talking about?"

"Marks is in charge of the case. He has the right to use his resources as he sees fit."

"Stop talking political rhetoric and tell me what the little shithead has done now."

He smiled. "Okay. The men assigned to the case are one of those resources. He decided that I was best used at the police property room going over the items that we've confiscated from the victim's homes, and matching them to the pictures and video we have of some of the houses before the murders."

"Pictures and videos for what?" I asked.

"Insurance purposes. A lot of the houses hit had enough rare and antique pieces that they insured them, and that meant they needed proof that they had the pieces to begin with."

"What pieces did you find in the last scene I was at, the one on the Ranch?"

The smile didn't change, but the eyes did. They went from pleasant to shrewd. "It's not just that you're cute. I like the way you think."

"Just tell me."

"There were a lot of similar pieces since most of the people had collected things from this area, or the southwest in general, but nothing out of the ordinary. Except for this." He reached behind his back underneath the suit jacket and pulled a manila envelope out that must have been inside his belt underneath the jacket.

"I knew you had to be wearing the suit jacket for some reason."

He laughed. He unfolded the envelope and spilled out pictures into my lap. Half of them were semiprofessional shots of a small carved piece of turquoise. A glance and I wanted to say Mayan, Aztec, something like that. I still couldn't tell the difference at a glance. The second set were a few better shots of the object in the study of the man that had been killed. The one that had used salt to interrupt the critter. Then a series of Polaroids, taken from every angle.

"You took the Polaroids?" I asked.

He nodded. "This afternoon after he decided my best use was not at the murder site."

I lifted one of the first series of pictures. "These are sitting on a wooden surface, much better light, natural, I think. Insurance pictures?"

He nodded.

"Who did it belong to?"

"The first house you saw."

"The Bromwells'," I said.

He lifted another picture. "This one was from the Carsons', and that's it. Either no one else owned one, or they didn't think to get it insured."

"Did the people who didn't try to get it insured, try to insure their other pieces?"

"Yes."

"Shit," I said. "I don't know much about this stuff, but I know that it's valuable. Why wouldn't they try to insure it, if they owned one?"

"What if they thought it was hot?"

"Illegal? Why would they think that?" I asked.

"Maybe because of the two houses we can prove had it, their history of the piece ¨C where they got it and when ¨C isn't real."

"What do you mean?"

"Something like this doesn't just show up. It has to have a history if you want it insured. They gave their papers, what they'd been given, to the insurance company, and just a little investigation showed that the people that were supposed to have unearthed the piece, sold the piece, had never heard of it."

"They refused to insure it," I said.

"Yes." There was something in his face, a suppressed excitement like a kid with a secret.

"You're holding something back. What is it?"

"You know what Riker is?"

"He's a pot hunter, an illegal dealer in artifacts."

"Why would he be so interested in you and this case?"

"I have no idea." I looked at the pictures in my lap. "You're saying that he sold these to the victims?"

"Not him personally, but Thad Bromwell, the teenage son, he was with his mother when she purchased it. It was a present for Mr. Bromwell's birthday. They bought it from a shop that is a known associate of Riker. It takes pieces and makes them look legit."

"Have you talked to the shop owners?"

"Unless you've got a ouija board, we're not going to be talking to him."

"He's the newest victim," I said.

Ramirez nodded, smiling. "You got it."

I shook my head. "Okay, Riker is unusually interested in the case. He wanted to see me specifically about it. At least two of the victims are people who bought one of his pieces. The shop owner that sold it is dead now, too." I looked up at him. "Is it enough for a warrant?"

"We already searched his house. Riker's men are suspected in the killing of two local cops. It wasn't hard to find a judge that would give us a warrant on the crap they pulled out at Ted's house."

"What the hell did the warrant give you permission to search for? They didn't mention stolen artifacts at Ted's house. They just pointed guns at us and said Riker wanted to talk about the case."

"The warrant was to search for weapons."

I shook my head. "So even if you found stolen artifacts, you wouldn't be able to use them in court."

"It was just an excuse to search the house, Anita. You know how that goes,"

"Did you find anything?"

"A few guns, two without license, but the warrant didn't allow us to knock down walls or destroy things. We couldn't pull up carpet or pull down shelves, Riker has a secret cache of artifacts, but we didn't find it."

"Was Ted with you on the search?"

"Yes, he was." He was frowning now.

"What's wrong?"

"Ted wanted to take a sledge hammer to some of the walls. He seemed pretty certain there was a hidden room in the lower areas, but we couldn't find a way to open it."

"And the warrant didn't allow you to tear up things," I said.

"No."

"What did Riker think of all the fun?"

"He had his lawyer screaming about harassment. Ted got up in his face, not yelling, but in his face, speaking real quiet. The lawyer said he threatened Riker, but Riker wouldn't back it up. He wouldn't say what Ted had said to him."

"You think he threatened him?"

"Oh, yeah."

It wasn't like Edward to threaten anyone, especially in front of the police. The case really was getting to him. "So what the hell are these little figures?"

"No one knows. According to experts, they are Aztec, but very late period like after the conquest."

"Wait a minute, you mean these were carved after the Spanish came and kicked the Aztecs' butts?"

"Not after, but right about the same time."

"Who was your expert?"

He mentioned a name I wasn't familiar with at the university. "Does it matter who it was?"

"I thought you were using Professor Dallas."

"Marks thinks she's spending too much time with the unholy demons."

"If he means Obsidian Butterfly, then I agree. Marks and I agreeing on anything. Jeez, that's almost scary."

"So you think she's a contaminated source, too."

"I think Dallas thinks the sun shines out of Itzpapalotl's butt, so yeah. Have you shown any of these pictures to Dallas?"

He nodded. "The ones from the Bromwells'."

"What did she say?"

"That it was a fake."

I raised eyebrows at him. "What's the other expert think?"

"That he understands why someone would think it was a fake just from pictures. The figure has rubies for eyes, and the Aztecs didn't have access to rubies. So just from pictures, you might assume it was a fake."

"I hear a 'but' coming," I said.

"Doctor Martinez got to hold it in his hand, look at it up close, and he thinks it's authentic, something made after the Spaniards arrived."

"I didn't think anything was made after the Spaniards arrived. Didn't they destroy everything?"

"If these are authentic, then apparently not. Doctor Martinez says that he'll need more tests to he a hundred percent sure."

"Cautious man."

"Most academics are."

I shrugged. Some were. Some weren't. "So let's say for argument's sake that Riker found these things, and he sold them to some people who knew they were hot, or suspected they were, and sold some to shops that passed them off as legit. Now something is killing off the customers and following the trail back to Riker. Is that what he's afraid of?"

"Sounds reasonable," Ramirez said.

I started looking through the Polaroids. They were back and front shots, not great pics, but from every angle. It looked like the figure was wearing armor, sort of. Its hands held long thick strings of things. "What did Martinez say this figure's holding?"

"He wasn't sure."

There were people curled around its feet, but they were thin and sticklike, not fat and square like the figure itself. The eyes were rubies, the mouth open and full of teeth. There was a long tongue coming out of the mouth, and what looked like blood pouring from the mouth. "Nasty looking."

"Yeah." He picked up one of the pictures from the sheet, staring at it as he spoke. "Do you think this thing is out there killing people?"

I looked at him. "An Aztec god, as in the real deal, out there slaughtering people?"

He nodded, still staring at the picture.

"If you mean a real god with a capital G, then I'm a monotheist, so no. If you mean some kind of preternatural nasty associated with this particular god, then why not?"

He looked up then. "Why not?"

I shrugged. "You were expecting a definitive yes or no? I don't know much about Aztec pantheon stuff, except that most of the deities are big and bad and required sacrifice, usually human. They don't have much in their pantheon that isn't a major god. Something big and bad enough that you don't fight it, you just try and stop it with magic or sacrifice, or you die. And whatever this thing is that's been doing the killings, it's not that bad."

I remembered what Nicky Baco had said, that the voice in his head was still trapped, that what had been doing the killings was just a minion, not the real deal.

"You're all serious again. What did you just think of?" Ramirez asked.

I looked up at him and tried to decide how much of a cop he was, and how much of a player he would be. I could never have told Dolph. He'd have used the info for strict cop stuff. "I have information from an informant that I don't want to name right now. But I think you need to know what was said."

His own face was solemn now. "Did you obtain this information legally?"

"I did nothing illegal to obtain this information."

"Not exactly a no," he said.

"Do you want it or not?"

He took a deep breath and blew it out slow. "Yeah, I want it."

I told him what Nicky had said about the voice and the thing being trapped.

I finished with, "I don't believe in a real god, but I do believe there are things out there so terrible that once upon a time they were worshipped as gods."

"Are you saying that we haven't seen the worst of it?"

"If what is doing the killings is just a minion, and the master isn't up and around yet, then yeah, I'm saying the worst is yet to come."

"I'd really like to talk to this informant."

"You would be dandy, but Marks would have this informant up on charges so fast, we'd never find out what this person knew. Once you slap an automatic death sentence on someone, they tend not to cooperate."

We looked at each other. "There's only one person you've talked to that has a rep to get himself an automatic death sentence. That's Nicky Baco."

I didn't even blink. It wasn't like I hadn't known he'd figure it out. I was ready for it, and I'd gotten much better at lying. "You have no idea who I've talked to since I arrived. I've talked to at least three people that could be put up on charges with a death sentence attached."

"Three?" He made it a question.

I nodded. "At least."

"Either you are a better liar than I thought you were, or you're telling the truth."

I just looked up at him, giving him blank but earnest face. Even my eyes were quiet and able to meet his gaze, no flinching. There had been a time, not long ago, when I couldn't have pulled it off. But that was then, and I wasn't the same person anymore.

"All right, if there is some sort of Aztec god out there, what do we do about it?"

There was only one answer. "Itzpapalotl should know what this is."

"We questioned her about the killings."

"So did I."

He looked at me long and hard. "You went without police backup, and you didn't share what you found."

"I didn't find anything about the murders. She told me about what she told you, nothing. But when I talked to her, she stressed that no deity she knew of would flay people and keep them alive. Later I figured out that they were dead. She stressed that only through death could the sacrifice be a suitable messenger to the gods. She repeated almost word for word that she didn't know a being or god that would flay people and keep them alive. Maybe we should go back and ask her if she knows of any deity or creature that would flay people and not keep them alive."

"Oh, you're inviting the police now."

"I'm inviting you," I said.

He started picking up the pictures and shoving them back in the envelope. "I took the pictures out of the property room, but I signed for them. I brought Doctor Martinez in to see the statue, but it was official. I haven't done anything wrong, yet."

"Marks is going to be so pissed that you found out important stuff when he meant to just get you out of the way."

Ramirez smiled, but it wasn't exactly a pleased smile. "I've got better than that. Marks will take credit for the brilliant idea of putting one of his senior detectives on special detail to investigate the relics."

"You're kidding me."

"He did send me to the property room to look at what we took from the victims' houses."

"But he did it to humiliate you and get you out of the way."

"But that's not what he said out loud. Out loud it's going to make him seem inspired."

"He's done shit like this before, I take it."

Ramirez nodded. "He's a very good politician, and when he's not on his right-wing high horse, he's a good detective."

"Fine. You mentioned that I wasn't allowed on the murder scene either. What gives there?"

"Well, we all thought you were still out of the game, but he got Ted and company excluded by getting the powers that be to agree that Ted hadn't been a big help on the case, and that without you, his newest expert, Ted wasn't necessary on the murder scene."

"Oh, I bet Ted's going to love that."

Ramirez nodded. "He was very ... unprofessional, or unlike himself when we searched Riker's place. I've never seen Ted so ... " Ramirez shook his head. "I don't know, he just seemed different, close to the edge."

Edward had let a little of his real self peek out where the police could see. He had to be under immense pressure to be screwing up like that, or he thought that it was necessary. Either way, things were bad when Ted started losing focus and Edward's real self came through, accident or on purpose.

The door opened, no knock. It was Edward.

"Speak of the devil," I said.

His Edward face had been on, and I watched it move like liquid into Ted, smiling, but still weary around the eyes. "Detective Ramirez, I didn't know you were here."

They shook hands. "I was just filling Anita in on some of the things she's missed."

"You tell her about the search at Riker's?"

Ramirez nodded.

Edward hefted a gym bag. "Clothes."

"You didn't have time to drive from your house to here since the nurse called."

"I packed the bag the night you went in the hospital. I've been riding around with it in my Hummer ever since."

We looked at each other, and there was a weight of things unsaid and unsayable in front of company. Maybe it showed, or maybe Ramirez just felt it. "I'll leave you two alone. You probably have things to talk about. Mystery informants and things like that." He went for the door.

I called after him. "Don't go far, Hernando. When I'm dressed, we'll go see Obsidian Butterfly."

"Only if it's official, Anita. I go in, and we call for uniform backup."

It was our turn for solid eye contact and the weight of wills. I blinked first. "Fine, we go in with the cops like good little boys and girls."

He flashed that warm smile that he could draw from his bag anytime he wanted, or maybe it was real and my cynical nature was showing. "Good, I'll wait outside." He hesitated, then walked back and handed the envelope Edward. He looked at me one more time then walked out.

Edward opened the envelope and looked inside. "What is this?"

"The link, I think." I explained what Ramirez and I had been discussing, about Riker and why he might be interested in the case on a very personal level.

"That would mean that Obsidian Butterfly lied to us," he said.

"No, she never lied. She said she knew of no deity or creature that would flay people and keep them alive. They aren't alive. They're dead. Technically, it wasn't a lie."

Edward smiled. "That is cutting it very thin."

"She's a nine hundred, nearly a thousand year old vampire. They tend to cut the truth pretty thin."

"I hope you like what I picked out for you to wear."

The way he said it made me start pulling things out of the gym bag. Black jeans, black scoop-neck T-shirt, black jogging socks, black Nikes, a black leather belt, my black suit jacket, the worse for being folded for two days, black bra, black satin panties ¨C Jean-Claude had been a bad influence on my clothing ¨C and under it all was the Browning, the Firestar, all the knives, an extra clip for the Browning, two boxes of ammo, and a new shoulder rig. It was one of the lightweight nylon ones with the holster itself angled for the front carry, downward draw that I favored. I always needed one with a very sharp downward angle to avoid scraping my breast every time I drew the gun. I'd found that the millisecond I lost from the angle was made up for from the second I lost every time I went past my breast and had the flinch reaction. Concealed carry is the art of compromise.

"I know you like leather, but most of those would have to be tailored down for you. The straps on the nylon ones can be adjusted down smaller," Edward said.

"Thanks, Edward. I was missing my rig." I looked at him, trying to read past the neutral baby blues. "Why this much ammo?"

"Better to not need and have it," he said.

I frowned at him. "Are we going some place where I'll need this much ammo?"

"If I thought that, I'd have packed the mini-Uzi and the sawed-off shotgun. This is just the normal stuff you carry."

I drew the big blade that would have normally rode down my back. "When they cut off the shoulder holster, they cut through the rig for this, too."

"Was it a specialty item?"

I nodded.

"I thought it must be because I asked around and no one had a sheath for concealment of something that large for the back, especially not when you throw in how damn narrow you are through the shoulders."

"It was a custom job." I laid the big knife back in the bag, almost sadly. "There's no way to conceal this thing without a rig for it."

"Did the best I could."

I smiled at him. "No, it's great. I mean it."

"Why are we taking the police in with us to Obsidian Butterfly?"

I told him what Jean-Claude had told me, though not how the message had I gotten through. "With the police at our backs, she'll know it's not vampire politics and we'll probably be able to walk out without a fight."

He was leaning against the wall arms crossed. The white shirt didn't quite lay smooth over the front of him. His gun was showing but only if you knew what you were looking for. A paddle holster or a clip holster because the gun was riding outside the pants. It explained why the white shirt wasn't tucked in, and the fact that he was wearing a T-shirt under the shirt probably meant that he had something on him that would chafe without cloth between it and his skin.

"You still carrying that band of throwing darts?" I asked.

"You can't see it, not with the shirt untucked." He didn't even try to deny it. Why should he?

"Because you're wearing an undershirt, and because the shirt is untucked. I know, it's partially to hide the gun, but you never wear an undershirt, so you've got to be wearing something under the shirt that would chafe without the undershirt."

He smiled, and it was a pleased smile, almost proud, as if I'd done something smart. "I'm carrying two more guns, a knife, and a garrote. Tell me where they are and I'll give you a prize."

My eyes had gone wide. "A garrote. Even for you that's a little Psychos'R'Us."

"Give up?"

"No. Is there a time limit?"

He shook his head. "We've got all night."

"If I guess wrong, is there a penalty?"

He shook his head.

"What's the prize if I figure out where everything is?"

He smiled that close, secretive smile that said he knew things that I didn't. "It's a surprise prize."

"Get out so I can get dressed."

He touched the belt where it lay on the bed. "This buckle didn't come black. Who painted it?"

"I did."

"Why?"

He knew the answer. "So that if I'm out after dark, the buckle doesn't catch the light and give me away." I lifted the tail of his white shirt exposing the large ornate silver belt buckle. "This is like a freaking target after dark."

He looked down at me, making no move to lower the shirt. "It just clips on over the real buckle."

I let the shirt slide back. "The buckle underneath?"

"It's blacked," he said.

We smiled at each other. It went all the way to our eyes. We did like each other. We were friends. "Sometimes I think I don't want to be you when I grow up, Edward, sometimes I think it's too late, I'm already there."

The smile faded, leaving his eyes the color of winter skies and just as pitiless.

"Only you decide how far gone you are, Anita. Only you can decide how far you'll go."

I looked at the weapons and the black clothing like funeral clothes, even down to the things that touched my skin. "Maybe it would be a start if I bought something pink."

"Pink?" Edward said.

"Yeah, you know, pink, like Easter Bunny grass."

"Like cotton candy," he said. "Or almost everything women give each other at baby showers."

"When were you at a baby shower?" I asked.

"Donna's taken me to two of them. It's the new thing, couples baby showers."

I looked at him, eyes wide. "You, at a couples baby shower, Edward."

"You in something the color of children's candy and baby doll clothes." He shook his head. "Anita, you are one of the least pink women I've ever met."

"When I was a little girl, I'd have given a small body part to have a pink canopy bed, and ballerina wallpaper would have been perfect."

He gave me wide, surprised eyes. "You, in a pink canopy bed with ballerina wallpaper." He shook his head. "Just trying to imagine you in a room like that gives me a headache."

I looked at the things spread on the bed. "I was pink once, Edward."

"Most of us start off soft," he said, "but you can't stay that way, not and survive."

"There's got to be someplace I won't go, something I won't do, some line I won't cross, Edward."

"Why?" That one word held more curiosity than he usually allowed himself.

"Because if I don't have any lines, limits, then what kind of person does that make me?" I asked.

He shook his head, moving the cowboy hat low on his head. "You're having a crisis of conscience."

I nodded. "Yeah, I guess I am."

"Don't go soft, Anita, not on my dime. I need you to do what you do best, and what you do best isn't soft or gentle or kind. What you do best is what I do best."

"And what is that? What is it that we do best?" I asked, and I knew the anger came through in my voice. I was getting angry with Edward.

"We do what it takes, whatever it takes, to get the job done."

"There's got to be more to life than the ultimate practicality, Edward."

"If it makes you feel any better, we have different motives. I do what I do because I love it. It's not just what I do. It's who I am. You do the job to save lives, to keep the damage down." He looked at me with eyes gone as empty and bottomless as any vampire's. "But you love it, too, Anita. You love it, and that bothers you."

"Violence is one of my top three responses now, Edward, maybe my number one."

"And it's kept you alive."

"At what price?'

He shook his head, and now the blankness was replaced by anger. He was just suddenly moving forward. I caught his hand going under the shirt, and I was rolling off the bed, with the Browning in my hand. I had a round in the chamber and was falling back onto the floor with the gun pointed up, eyes searching for movement.

He was gone.

My heart was thudding so loudly that I could barely hear, and I was straining to hear. A movement, something. He had to be on the bed. It was the only place he could have gone. From my angle I couldn't see anything on top of the bed, just the corner of the mattress and the trail of sheet.

Knowing Edward, the ammo in the Browning was probably his homemade brew, which meant that it would pierce the bottom of the bed and go up into whatever lay on top of the bed. I felt the last of the air in my body slide outward, and I sighted on the underneath of the bed. The first bullet would either hit him or make him move, then I'd have a better idea of where he was.

"Don't shoot, Anita."

His voice made me move the gun barrel just a touch more right. It would take him mid-body because he was crouched up there, not lying down. I knew that without seeing it.

"It was a test, Anita. If I wanted to come against you, I'd warn you first, you know that."

I did know that, but ... I heard the bed creak. "Don't move, Edward. I mean it."

"You think you can just decide to turn all this off. You can't. The genie is out of the bottle for you, Anita, just like it is for me. You can't unmake yourself. Think of all the effort, all the pain, that went into making you who you are. Do you really want to throw all that away?"

I was lying flat on my back, gun pointed two-handed. The floor was cold where the gown had gaped at my back. "No," I said, finally.

"If your heart starts bleeding for all the bad things you do, it won't be the last thing that bleeds."

"You really did this to test me. You son of a bitch."

"Can I move now?"

I took my finger off the trigger and sat up on the floor. "Yeah, you can move."

He eased back off the other side of the bed as I stood up on this one. "Did you see how fast you went for the gun? You knew where it was, you had the safety off and a round chambered, and you were looking for cover, and trying to target me." Again there was that pride, like a teacher with a favorite student.

I looked across at him. "Don't ever do anything like that again, Edward."

"A threat?" he asked.

I shook my head. "No threat, just instinct. I came so close to putting a bullet through the bed and into you."

"And while you were doing it, your conscience wasn't bothering you. You weren't thinking, 'It's Edward. I'm about to shoot my friend.' "

"No," I said. "I wasn't thinking anything but how to get the best shot possible before you had time to shoot me." It didn't make me happy to say it. It felt like I'd been mourning dead pieces of myself, and Edward's little demonstration had confirmed the deaths. It made me sad, and a little depressed, and not happy with Edward.

"I knew a man once who was as good as you are," Edward said. "He started second-guessing himself, worrying about whether he was a bad person. It got him killed. I don't want to see you dead because you hesitated. If I have to bury you, then I want it to be because someone was just that good or that lucky."

"I want to be cremated," I said, "not buried."

"Good little Christian, fallen Catholic, practicing Episcopalian, and you want to be cremated."

"I don't want anyone trying to raise me from the dead or stealing body parts for spells. Just burn it all, thanks."

"Cremated. I'll remember."

"How about you, Edward? Where do you want the body shipped?"

"It doesn't matter," he said. "I'll be dead, and I won't care."

"No family?"

"Just Donna and the kids."

"They are not your family, Edward."

"Maybe they will be."

I put the safety on the Browning. "We don't have time to discuss your love life and my moral crisis. Get out so I can get dressed."

He had his hand on the door when he turned. "Speaking of love life, Richard Zeeman called."

That got my attention. "What do you mean Richard called?"

"He seemed to know that something bad had happened to you. He was worried."

"When did he call?"

"Earlier tonight."

"Did he say anything else?"

"That he'd finally called Ronnie and had her track down Ted Forrester's unlisted number. He seemed to think that you leaving a forwarding number with him would be a good idea." His face was utterly blank, empty. Only his eyes held a faint hint of amusement.

So both the boys had finally grown frustrated at my silence. Richard had turned to my good friend, Ronnie, who happened to be a private investigator. Jean-Claude had taken a more direct route. But they'd both finally gotten hold of me on the same night. Would they compare notes?

"What did you tell Richard?" I laid the gun on the bed with the rest.

"That you were all right." Edward was looking around the room. "Doctor Cunningham still not allowing you a phone in here?"

"Nope," I said. I had managed to untie the back of the gown.

"Then how did Jean-Claude contact you?"

I stopped in mid-motion. The gown slid off one shoulder and I had to catch it with my hand. It caught me off guard and I'm never as good a liar on the spur of the moment. "I never said it was a phone call."

"Then what was it?"

I shook my head. "Just go, Edward. The night's not getting any younger."

He just stood there, looking at me. His face had gone all cold and suspicious.

I got the bra in one hand and turned my back on him. I let the gown slide to my waist, leaned back against the bed to hold it in place, and slipped the bra on. There was no sound from behind me. I got the panties and slipped them on underneath the gown. I had the jeans hallway up my legs under the cover of the gown when I heard the door hush open and close.

I turned and found the doorway empty. I finished dressing. I had my toiletries in the bathroom already, so I threw them in the gym bag along with the big knife, and the boxes of ammo. The new shoulder holster felt odd. I was used to a leather one which fit tight and secure. I guess nylon was secure, but it was almost too comfortable, as if it seemed less substantial than my leather one had. But it beat the heck out of sticking it down my jeans.

The knives went in the wrist sheaths. I checked to see what kind of ammo the Firestar had in it. Edward's homemade stuff. I checked the Browning, and it was his stuff, too. The backup clip for the Browning was the Hornady XTP Silver-Edge. I changed the clip. We were going into the Obsidian Butterfly as cops, which meant if I had to shoot someone, I'd have to explain it to the authorities later. Which meant I didn't want to go in there with some possibly illegal homemade shit in my gun. Besides I'd seen what the Hornady Silver-Edge could do to a vampire. It was enough.

The Firestar went into an Uncle Mike's inner pants holster, though truthfully the jeans were too tight for an inner pants holster. Maybe I wasn't spending enough time in the gym. I had been on the road more than I'd been home. The Kenpo was neat stuff, but it wasn't the same thing as a full workout with weights and running. Another thing to pay more attention to when I got back to St. Louis. I'd been letting a lot of things slide.

I finally transferred the Firestar to the small of my back and hated it, but it dug in something fierce in front. I have a slight sway to my back so there's always more room for a gun there, but it wasn't a quick place to draw from. Something about a woman's hip structure makes a gun at the small of the hack not the best idea. That I kept the gun at the small of my back tells you just how tight the jeans were. Definitely going to have to get back into a regular gym schedule. The first five pounds are easy to get rid of, the second five are harder, and it gets even harder from there. I'd been chunky in junior high, close to fat, so I knew what I was talking about. So that no teenager out there will get the wrong idea and go all anorexic on me, I was a size thirteen in jeans, and that was at five foot nothing. See, I really was chunky. I hate women who complain about being fat when they're like a size five. Anything under size five isn't a woman. It's a boy with breasts.

I stared at the black jacket. Two days folded in a gym bag and it desperately needed to go to the dry cleaners. I decided to carry it folded over one arm, on the theory it would unwrinkle a little. I didn't really need to hide the weapons until we got to the club. The knives were illegal if I'd been a cop or acivvie, but I was a vampire executioner, and we got to carry knives. Gerald Mallory, the grandfather of our business, had testified before a senate subcommittee, or something like that, at how many times knives had saved his life. Mallory was well liked in Washington. It was his home base. So the law got changed to let us carry knives, even really big ones. If someone challenged me, all I had to do was whip out my executioner's license, and I was legal. Of course, that was predicated on them knowing the loophole in the law. Not every cop on the beat is going to know. But my heart is pure because I'm legal.

Edward and Ramirez were waiting for me in the hallway. They both smiled and the smiles were so close to identical it was unnerving. Will the real good guys please stand up? But Edward's smile never faltered. Ramirez's did. His gaze hesitated on the wrist sheath. The jacket hid the other one. I walked up to them smiling, and my eyes were shiny, too. I put a hand around Edward's waist and brushed my arm along the gun I'd thought was there at the small of his back.

"I've called for backup," Ramirez said.

Edward had given me a quick Ted hug and let me go, though he knew I'd found the gun. "Great. It's been a long time since I visited a Master of the City with the police."

"How do you usually do it?" Ramirez asked.

"Carefully," I said.

Edward turned his head away and coughed. I think he was trying not to laugh, but you can never tell with Edward. Maybe he just had a tickle in his throat. I watched him walk and wondered where in the world he was hiding the third gun.

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