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“Your family,” I finished for him so he wouldn’t have to go into details.

He nodded.

“I’m glad, Dolph, really. Lucille’s been…” I shrugged. What was I supposed to say, that his wife, Lucille, had been frantic, afraid for him and of him? His rages had trashed a room or two of their house, much like he’d done to an interrogation room with me in it, once. He’d manhandled me at a crime scene. Dolph was close to losing his badge, if he didn’t get a grip.

“She said you’ve been helpful about it. Her.”

I nodded. If Edward hadn’t been in the room, I’d have said your son’s fiancée. “I’m glad I could help.”

“I will never be okay with you dating the monsters.”

“That’s fine, as long as you don’t let it rain all over police business.”

“Fine, police business.” He glanced at Edward, then reached into his suit coat and got out his notebook. “What killed the vampire in the hotel room?”

“When her animal to call died, the master didn’t survive it. It happens like that sometimes: kill one and they all die.”

“The police have killed wereanimals that were guarding vampire lairs, and the master vampire didn’t die.”

“Most master vamps have an animal that they can control, but the phrase ‘an animal to call’ means it’s the furry equivalent of a human servant.”

“A human that’s helping a vampire because of mind tricks?” He made it a question.

“I thought that once, too, but a human servant is more than that. It’s a human with a preternatural connection, a mystical connection, with the vampire. Sometimes the vampire survives the death of its servant, but the servant usually doesn’t survive the death of the vampire. I’ve also seen the body survive, but the human servant driven crazy by the master’s death. But this weretiger had healing abilities that it shouldn’t have had. It was almost like it had the best of both worlds on healing. The lycanthropy healing, and the rotting vampire’s ability to laugh off bullets, even silver.”

“I thought you just woke up?” Dolph said.

“I did.”

“How did you know she rotted?”

“I didn’t, but her animal healed like a rotting vampire, so I assumed she was one of them. But even if she was, her animal to call should not have had that close a tie with the vampire’s powers. It’s unusual, very unusual, as if the tie between master and servant was closer even than normal.”

“She started to rot as soon as we took her head,” Edward said.

“Ol…Otto must have been disappointed,” I said.

“He was, but at least they don’t smell like they look. Why is that?” Edward asked. “Not complaining, mind you, but why don’t they smell like a rotting corpse?”

“I don’t know, I think maybe because they aren’t really rotting. It’s like they, the vampires, went to a certain stage of rotting, then stopped. The smell is from decomposition. If the vampire isn’t actually rotting, then no decomp, no smell.” I shrugged. “Truthfully, that’s just theory. I don’t know for sure. I don’t think I’ve seen more than a handful of them. It doesn’t seem to be a common type of vamp, at least not in this country.”

“They’re all rotting corpses, Anita,” Dolph said.

“No,” I said, and met his eyes just fine, “no, they aren’t. Most vampires, if you ever see them rotting like that, looking like that, they are well and truly dead. But the rotting ones can actually rot around you, then sort of heal themselves. They can go from looking like the walking dead to looking normal.”

“Normal,” Dolph said, and made a sound.

“Normal as they started,” I said. I turned to Edward. “Do we know where the other vamp went?”

Dolph answered, “We know that a white male, late twenties, early thirties, brown hair, cut short, jeans, jean jacket, carried a large duffel bag out to his car and drove away while two uniforms watched.”

“They watched,” I said.

“Civilians who saw the incident said the man told the officers”—Dolph flipped back through his notebook, then read—“‘You’re going to let me go to my car, aren’t you?’ The policemen replied, ‘Yes, we are.’”

“Shit, he pulled an Obi-Wan,” I said.

“What?” Edward and Dolph said together.