“Technically he’s not psychotic.”
“So just a crazy killer,” I said.
“Yeah.” He smiled and it actually reached his eyes; it was a real smile, not Ted’s smile, but Edward smiling. I didn’t get to see the smile often, so I valued it when I did. I had to smile back.
I shook my head, still smiling. “Fine, I’ll try to get the other marshal to sign off, and then you call in Bernardo and Olaf, but I can’t get bodyguards from home to come help us. We’re marshals, they aren’t, and being able to deputize people isn’t a power the Marshals Service has been granted in a very long time.”
“You haven’t been keeping up on current events.”
I frowned at him. “What?”
“Last month a marshal died, because backup didn’t arrive in time, but a soldier just home from Iraq was able to take the marshal’s weapons and finish the shapeshifter off.”
“I did hear about that. It was tragic and brave and, so what?”
“You really don’t check the official emails, do you?”
“Maybe not as often as I should; what’d I miss?”
He got his phone out of his pocket and used his finger to roll through emails, then held the tiny screen up to me. I read it through twice. “You’re joking me.”
“It’s official.”
“We have the right to deputize not only if we are without backup, but if we feel that an individual’s skill set is of benefit to the execution of our warrant and will save civilian lives. Mother of God, Edward, this gives us carte blanche to form a fucking mob.”
“There’s potential for abuse, yes.”
“Potential for abuse, there’s potential for pitchforks and torches,” I said.
“Anita, come on, no one would use pitchforks or torches anymore. It’d be flashlights and guns.”
“This isn’t funny, Edward; this is a civil rights problem waiting to happen.”
“I didn’t know you cared about that, or did that change when you helped get the law passed to spare little vampires when their master is the bad guy?”
“I’m just saying that this little amendment to the law could get out of hand really fast.”
“It could, it probably will, but for us, right now, it’s useful.”
“Are you saying we deputize some of the bodyguards from St. Louis?”
“It’s a thought,” he said.
I opened my mouth, closed it, thought about it, then said, “Damn, great for us right now, but . . .”
“Take that it helps us right now, Anita. We’ll worry about legal rampaging mobs later.”
I nodded. “Deal.”
“Get her to sign the warrant over to you and I’ll call Olaf and Bernardo in, and you pick bodyguards from home.”
“You know most of them now; you want to help pick?”
“I trust your judgment,” he said.
“High praise coming from you.”
“Deserved,” he said.
I tried not to look too pleased, and probably failed. “Thanks, Edward.”
“Don’t mention it, but first you need her to sign the warrant over to you. Get the warrant, and then I have a plan.”
He wouldn’t tell me the plan, but since he’d actually admitted his “real” name to me, I could let him keep his secret plan—for now.
4
THE MARSHAL I needed to sweet-talk out of her warrant was female, so we got to split a hotel room. Marshal Laila Karlton was five-six and built solid. I don’t mean she was fat, I mean she was all muscle and curves. In too much clothing she looked like it might be fat, but when you saw her just in a T-shirt and jeans, you realized the “bulk” was half curves and half solid muscle. It wasn’t lean muscle and that was the reason it could fool the eye, but when she picked up her backpack of vampire-hunting gear, which probably weighed the same fifty pounds that mine did, her biceps bulged, and you realized it was all camouflage for the fact that she was strong. She didn’t see it that way, though.
“God, you’re tiny. I bet I can put my hands around that little white-girl waist, and you still have boobs and an ass. That is not fair, girlfriend.”
She’d taken the I’ll-cut-myself-down-and-compliment-you-beforeyou-beat-me-to-it tack. I had the choices of ignoring it, complimenting her in some way, or agreeing that I looked good without complimenting her back. The last choice would make her dislike me more. She’d already let me know, nicely, that my being a few sizes smaller than her made her predisposed not to like me. One of the good things about working with men was that they didn’t do this shit.
I tried, but I sucked at these games. “I know men who prefer your body type to mine.”
“Bullshit,” she said, and was ready to be angry.
“I hang around with a lot of older vampires. They don’t like the really thin girls. They like women to look like women, not preadolescent boys with boobs sort of stuck on as an afterthought.”
“You don’t look like that,” she said, her voice a little less angry, but still not friendly.
“Neither do you. We both look nice and curvy the way God intended grown-up women to look.”
She thought about it and then grinned at me. It lit her whole face up, and I knew we’d be okay. “Ain’t that the truth. But that booty is not white-girl booty.”
“I’m told I look like my mother, except paler. She was Hispanic.”
“That explains it. I knew you were too round in the right places to be white bread.” She laid out her clothes in a neat line on the bedspread, and then said, “What do you mean, ‘told you’ you look like your mother?”
“She died when I was eight.”
“I’m sorry.” And she sounded like she meant it. In fact, there was an awkward pause as we each unpacked on our side of the room. I had the bed nearest the bathroom and farthest from the door. We hadn’t discussed it; I’d just entered the room first.
“It’s okay,” I said, “it was a long time ago.”
“What about your dad?”
“German, as in his was the first generation born in this country.”
“What does he think of you being a marshal and vampire hunter?” she asked, as she dumped her clothes in a pile on the bed and began to sort them.
“He’s okay with it. My stepmother, Judith, on the other hand, doesn’t like it much.” I must have smiled because Laila laughed, a deep, throaty laugh. It was dark, and sensual like Guinness in a glass. It was a good laugh.
“Oh, yeah, I’ve been my mom’s despair since I could walk. My dad’s a football coach and I just wanted to be like my brothers and my dad.”
“No sisters?”
“One and she’s the girl.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a stepsister; she was the girl. I went hunting with my dad.”
“No brothers?”
“One half brother, but he’s a little too gentle for hunting. I was my dad’s only boy.” I made quote marks in the air with my fingers.
She laughed again. “I was always competing with my brothers and losing. They’re six feet and up like my dad. I’m short like Mama.”
“I’ve always been the smallest kid in class.”
“I’m not the smallest, just not as tall as I wanted to be.”
“So, does your dad like your job?”
