Necromancing Nim (2 page)

In any case, having police cars arrive when you’re just getting acquainted with someone never makes a good impression. Call that a life lesson. And the street was swarming with them. Okay, there were two, but in the middle of the night when your heart’s pounding from almost getting eaten by vampires, two seems like a lot. They screeched to a stop next to my car, and it was all too obvious they were there for my still-anonymous benefactor.

I regarded him narrowly through the partially open car window. “What’s up with the cops?”

His mouth tightened to a thin line, and his blue eyes darkened. He could have gotten away if he’d moved fast enough, but he didn’t. He glanced back down at me as if trying to make up his mind about something. Then, slowly, as the cops began to emerge from the cars, he lifted his hands. Probably wise.

The first cop, a tall African American man with shoulders approximately six miles wide, stepped toward us. I stayed right where I was in the car, figuring it would be best to wait until I was told to get out. I’d dated a cop for a couple of weeks—I knew how to keep from getting shot by one. Or getting laid by one, for that matter.

“Sebastian Marcheleto?” he asked, focused on my new vampire friend.

Surely that wasn’t his real name, I thought, although I have little room to throw stones in that department. But the vampire nodded.

“ID?” the cop continued. The other police officers had joined the scene by now. It seemed like a lot of people for one relatively mild-mannered, English vampire.

Sebastian withdrew a wallet from his back pocket and handed over the familiar, dark blue vamp ID card. All vamps are required to carry them. They can’t get blood from the blood banks without them, and they’re not supposed to be able to get blood from the fang bars without them, either, although that regulation goes by the wayside more often than not. And I know there are vamps around who never bothered to register. After all, when you were born in 1730-whatever, why would you care about a law enacted in 1969?

The cop—his name tag said Wilson—jotted down Sebastian’s ID number and handed the card back. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to bring you in, Mr. Marcheleto.”

“And why might that be?”

“Suspicion of murder,” the cop replied.

I expected Sebastian to protest, like people faced with suspicion of murder always do on TV, but he just gave a grim nod. “I won’t resist arrest,” he said. “I didn’t do it, though.”

Officer Wilson remained unmoved. “I’m pleased on both counts,” he said, sounding not pleased at all. He gave a half turn and spoke to the cop right behind him. “Petty, get him in the car. I’ll talk to the woman.”

It took a moment for me to realize that “the woman” was me. In fact, it didn’t register at all until Officer Wilson bent next to my window, tapped on the glass and said, “Ma’am, could you step out of the car, please?”

“Sure,” I said automatically and opened the car door.

I didn’t expect a frisking, but I got one anyway. Wilson pulled my Taser, pepper spray and squirt gun out and laid them on the hood of my car.

“Those are all licensed,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” he replied skeptically.

But I produced the requisite paperwork from my wallet, leaving him less skeptical but still annoyed. “How well do you know Mr. Marcheleto?” he asked.

“I don’t know him at all,” I answered. “I just met him right before you guys pulled up.”

“I see.” The skeptical was back. He was standing far too close to me, trying to intimidate me with his height advantage. I was far too used to people being taller than me for it to work. Obviously disappointed by my lack of terror, he said, “I’m going to have to ask you to come by the station for questioning.”

“Right now?” There went the rest of my night’s stops. Colin was going to be pissed.

“Yes, ma’am. Shouldn’t take long.”

“Right.” Now I was the skeptical one. It was a given that a stop by the police station would definitely be long, no matter what Wilson said. I sighed and started to get back into the car.

“Ma’am?” Officer Petty called. She was standing by her cruiser, Sebastian next to her, cuffed now but quiet.

“Yes?”

“Could you come here for a moment?”

I glanced at Wilson, who shrugged acquiescence. I’d been hoping he’d tell me to get my ass in the car and on to the police station, but of course he would do just the opposite. Typical. I made my way to the other car. “Yes?”

Petty gestured toward Sebastian. “He wants to tell you something before we take him in.”

I frowned. Since when did arrested vampires get to request a visitor? Then I fell into Sebastian’s far-too-blue eyes and understood. He had the kind of face that could go from heart-stoppingly intense in a really hot way to classy and debonair in a really hot way to hangdog, “please scratch behind my ears because somebody was mean to me”. In a really hot way. With that kind of ammunition, he didn’t even need a vampire whammy to make women do his bidding. He was using the latter mode right now, and I had an urge to cuddle him close and lick him. I mean comfort him. “What is it?” I asked.

“You’ll tell them I saved you, right?” There was an edge of pleading in his voice. “If it comes to that?”

“Of course I will.”

He leaned forward a bit, his cuffed hands brushing the edge of my open jacket, and whispered in my ear.

The moment he drew his head back, his breath still wafting against my ear, I hauled off and slapped him across the face as hard as I could. His head whipped back, and his expression changed from an easy smile to a feral grin, his eyes suddenly shrewd and narrow.

“Hey, hey!” Officer Petty grabbed Sebastian and yanked him away from me, pulling him almost off-balance. “Take it easy.”

Officer Wilson peered at me in concern. “You okay? What did he say to you?”

I just stared at Sebastian, unable to form words. He met my gaze steadily and gave a small nod. My hands were shaking. “Nothing,” I said to Wilson. “Nothing at all.”

Wilson laid a gentle hand on my elbow and steered me back toward my car. “Let’s get you back to the station so we can get this over with.”

I nodded. But, sliding behind the steering wheel, I frowned. The flood of adrenaline had eased, and I knew now what had happened. Sebastian had whammied me. Why, I didn’t know, but there had to have been a reason he wanted me to club him in the head. Because all he’d said to me, whispered soft and hot into my ear, was,
“Thank you. And tell Colin I said hi.”

 
“There are approximately six quarts of blood in the average human body. The average vampire can subsist quite comfortably on approximately one pint a day. It’s absolutely ludicrous to think that any human being—much less multiple human beings—should have to die in order to properly feed any single vampire.”—
Colorado State Representative Marcus Woodruff (human, D), address to the Colorado House of Representatives, in defense of the Vampire Beverages Act, September, 1972.

Chapter Two

Just as I’d figured, once they got me to the police station, they kept me for three hours. Two and a half of them were spent on paperwork and waiting. They also confiscated my collection of defensive weapons—“Just a formality, miss, we’ll get them back to you, provided everything’s in order.” Understandable, since it’s not good practice to let just anybody carry weapons into a police station. But it left me feeling naked.

Aside from a dentist’s office, a police station is the worst place ever to be kept waiting. Also like the dentist, there’s not much chance you won’t be kept waiting, so all in all it’s best to have a way to deal with the situation. Unfortunately, I’d come unprepared. I tried a pointed examination of my watch, projecting a distinct
I need to be somewhere else
air, but nobody seemed interested, except one helpful receptionist type who brought me a donut. It was stale. Obviously, I hadn’t hit on an ideal coping technique. I was left with nothing to do but take in the scenery.

The Englewood Police Department is much like any other suburban police department. There are places to wait, places to fill out paperwork, places to be intimidated, interrogated or incarcerated. It’s always a little wackier at night. At night, there are more drunks, more vampires and more drunk vampires. The cops who work there after dark are also quite a bit testier, or at least that’s been my experience.

In lieu of asking someone for a magazine on the off chance they might handcuff me for being annoying, I occupied myself reading the Wanted notices on the wall. There were a good many fanged faces in the group—you’d think Englewood was suffering from a rash of vampire attacks. Except when you actually read the notices, most of the vamps were wanted for tax evasion.

Finally, I got up, poured myself a cup of coffee from the pot on the counter and sat back to commune with my iPod. The coffee was black and so strong I could barely drink it, and I like strong coffee. What little I managed to choke down tasted like battery acid. With crappy creamer and Splenda.

By the time they finally got around to me, it was far too late to salvage my evening’s work. Even though I’d expected this, it pissed me off, so when Detective Eric Harrison meandered his way to my chair to start the formalities, I didn’t really care that he was six one and hot. Nor did I want to shake his hand. I did, anyway, but I scowled when I did it. Of course, his general hotness was mitigated by the fact we’d already dated. It hadn’t gone well.

“Ms. Taylor,” he said to me. A smirk lurked along his mouth. “Come this way.”

“What’s with the formalities, Eric? And you wrecked my work schedule.” I shook my head. “Colin is gonna kill me.”

“I can write you a note.” Eric grinned as he pushed open the door to the interrogation room.

“Gee, thanks.” I trudged in and sat down.

“You want more coffee?”

“No, thanks. Not sure I can survive another cup.”

He chuckled and took a seat across from me. He had green eyes, and both the eyes and the mouth were a bit too big and feminine for what was otherwise a rugged, manly sort of face. The effect was both disarming and ridiculously sexy. Also? Freckles. His looks, as well as his rakish air, had convinced me to say yes last year when he’d asked me out after the last time I’d been dragged to the police station in the middle of the night. A hazard of the job, I supposed. Getting dragged to the police station, not dating hot but annoying cops. Maybe both, actually.

He folded big, square hands on the table. “So. Tell me what happened.”

“Why?” Probably not the best way for me to start my formal interrogation.

Eric narrowed his eyes at me. I have to say I deserved it. “Because I asked you to?”

“No, I mean why are you doing the interrogating?” He was a Denver cop, not from Englewood. “Why can’t I talk to that nice Officer Wilson who brought me in?”

His eyes narrowed. “Because it’s my case, not Wilson’s. Now, Ms. Taylor, if you could please tell me what happened?”

Fair enough. I gave a brief account of my encounter with HDTV Guy and Sebastian’s rescue. Eric nodded and took notes.

“So you didn’t see where Marcheleto came from?”

“No. I was kind of occupied with not getting killed. And he just popped in out of nowhere. I told the officers at the scene everything else I know. Can I go now?”

He quirked an eyebrow at me. His relatively good humor seemed to have returned once I started following the right script. “You don’t seem to be showing me the right kind of, you know, fear.” I could tell from his eyes—a little twinkly, like he was flirting—that it was a joke, but Jesus. God save me from alpha males. And, yeah, that was why I quit dating him. Well, part of it.

“I work for a vampire,” I told him dryly. “Compared to him, you’re relatively un-scary.”

He shook his head dolefully. “I hate that. I like to be feared. Damn vampires.” And that was the rest of why I quit dating him. Though he hid it fairly well under most circumstances, Eric’s dislike of vampires was more than casual. He was, to put it bluntly, speciesist.

“Maybe if you get out the thumbscrews.” I glanced at my watch. Colin was going to be pissed. Worse, he was probably going to let Mitch finish my roster for me, and Mitch would just fuck it all up, and then Colin would be pisseder. More pissed. Whatever.

Eric nodded. “I’ll have to talk to my supervisor. I’m not sure we use thumbscrews anymore.” He looked at his little notebook, then back at me, now painfully earnest. I pictured him with lipstick and had to fight not to smile. He’d make a really pretty girl. A little eyeliner would be damn hot on him, in fact. “I’d really appreciate any help you can give us,” he went on, sober and sincere. “You’re aware this Sebastian Marcheleto is being held under suspicion of murder?”

I nodded. “It was mentioned. No details to speak of.”

He perused his notes. “The victim was found in a vampire-safe room downtown at the Brown Palace, drained of blood, with the obvious neck wounds.” The green eyes turned to me again.

I frowned. Something about the situation felt wrong, and I was sure it wasn’t just because Sebastian had been helpful. “What makes you think it was Marcheleto?”

Eric didn’t seem pleased with my question. “The room was in his name.”

I nodded. “He didn’t seem all that surprised when the cops showed up.” I considered, then suddenly blurted, “I don’t think he did it.” It came to me in a sort of blurry gut feeling—nothing I could justify, but I couldn’t argue with it either. And once I’d realized it, I couldn’t stop myself from saying it.