been with Quinn the weretiger. They had been in their human forms then, and he hadn’t known their second identity since the two-natured hadn’t revealed their existence. By now he’d figured it out. Mike Coughlin might be slow and unimpressive, but he wasn’t stupid.
“So you’re with the party that came in with T-Rex?” he asked.
I wasn’t used to the humans being more interesting than the vampires. I smiled. “Yes, I met him tonight at Eric’s.”
“You ever see him wrestle?”
“No. He’s a big guy, huh?”
“Yeah, and he does a lot for the community, too. He takes toys to the kids in the hospital at Christmas and Easter.”
So, though T-Rex was not a wereanimal, he was two-faced. One side of him did community service and helped area charities raise money. The other side of him hit opponents upside the head with chairs and made out with women on other people’s dining room tables.
Mike Coughlin said, “If they rope me in to help question, I’l ask for you.”
“Thanks,” I said, wondering if that was real y anything to smile about. “But I hope I’m through with questions.”
He went off to have a closer look at Thad Rexford. Pam, Eric, Bil , and I sat together without exchanging a word.
Vampires are super at silence. They just go into motionless vampire mode. You would swear they were statues, they get so stil . I don’t know what they think about when they do this; maybe they don’t think at al , but just switch themselves off. It’s almost impossible for a human to do this. I guess deep meditation would be the closest state a breather could achieve, and I am no practitioner of meditation, deep or shal ow.
After a while, during which nothing much happened at al , Detective Coughlin came over to tel us we could go. He gave no explanation. Eric didn’t request one. I had been on the point of asking if I could curl up under someone’s desk. I was too tired to summon the energy to be resentful at our treatment.
Pam whipped out her cel phone to cal Fangtasia so someone would pick us up. Dawn wasn’t far away; Felipe and his party wanted to go directly to their vampire-safe rooms at the Trifecta, and the Shreveport vamps didn’t want to wait on a human cab.
While we were standing outside waiting on our ride, the three vampires turned to me. “What was it the man on the telephone was tel ing Cara Ambrosel i?” Pam asked. “What did they find?”
“They found a little glass vial, like florists stick individual flowers in?”
The vampires looked puzzled. I measured one off with my fingers. “Just big enough for one flower stem to soak in water,” I said. “The vial may have had a stopper on it, but they didn’t find that. The vial was on the ground underneath her. They think it had been tucked in her bra. It had traces of blood.”
They al considered that. “I’l bet you a demon’s dick that she had a bit of fairy blood in it,” Pam said. “She came into the house somehow, and when she got close to Eric, she uncorked the little vial and made herself irresistible.”
“Except he could have resisted,” I muttered, but they al ignored me. “And if that’s what happened, where is the stopper?”
We were al too tired to talk about this interesting development any further; at least, I was, and the other three didn’t.
In five minutes, Palomino showed up in a candy-apple-red Mustang. She was wearing the uniform the female waitstaff wore at the Trifecta, and there wasn’t much to it. I was too sleepy to ask her when she’d begun working at the casino. I climbed into the backseat with Bil , while Pam sat in Eric’s lap in the passenger front seat. We didn’t even discuss the seating.
Eric broke the silence by asking Palomino if anyone had heard from Mustapha.
The young vamp glanced over at him. Her hair was like corn silk and her skin was like milky caramel. The unusual combination had earned her the nickname, and that was the only thing I knew to cal her. I had no idea what had been written on her birth certificate.
“No, Master. No one has seen or heard from Mustapha.”
Bil silently took my hand. I silently let him. In the heat, his hand felt pleasantly cool.
“Everything al right at the club?” Eric said. “At least, as far as you know.”
“Yes, Master. I heard there was one disagreement, but Thalia settled it.”
“How big was the bil for this settling?”
“A broken arm, a broken leg.”
Thalia was ancient, incredibly strong, and notoriously short on patience.
“No furniture?”
“Not this time.”
“Indira and Maxwel Lee kept an eye on things?”
“Maxwel Lee says so,” Palomino said cautiously.
Eric laughed; not a big laugh, but something in the chuckle range. “Damned with faint praise,” he said.
Indira and Maxwel , who lived and worked in Eric’s sheriffdom, Area Five, were required to put in so many hours a month at the bar so Fangtasia could boast that every night there were real vampires in the club. That was the big draw for the tourists. While Indira and Maxwel (and most of the other Area Five vamps) were dutiful about their bar appearances, they were not enthusiastic.
Palomino and Eric might have solved the mysteries of the universe during the rest of their conversation, but I
