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“Is that what you’ve been thinking, that Jean-Claude somehow sicced a vampire on your son, so she’d seduce him?”

He gave me a look. “You’re not the only vampire hunter in this country now, Anita. You’re not even the only one with a badge. They tell me that the Master of the City has absolute authority. That no local vamp does anything without permission.”

“If only that were true, but your son’s fiancée belongs to the Church of Eternal Life. She’s Malcolm’s problem right now, not Jean-Claude’s. The Church of Eternal Life is its own little universe in vampireland. Frankly, the other vamps are a little puzzled on how to deal with the Church when its members do stupid stuff like dating a policeman’s son.”

“Why was it stupid?”

“Because most police still hate the vampires. It’s just better policy to leave the cops alone if you can. None of Jean-Claude’s vampires have gone near a police person of any kind for anything.”

“He’s gone near you,” Dolph said.

“I wasn’t officially a cop when we started dating.”

“No, you were a vampire executioner. He shouldn’t have come near you, and you should have known better than to go near him.”

“Who I date is not your business, Dolph.”

“It is if it affects how you do your job.”

“I do my job better because I’m up close and personal with the monsters.” I struggled to sit up a little, tired of him looming over me. My stomach was tight, but it didn’t hurt. “You count on me knowing more about the monsters. Hell, every cop that comes near me for help counts on me knowing more about the monsters than they do. How the hell do you think I found all that out? By keeping them at arm’s length and hating them the way you do? They don’t like talking to people who treat them like shit. They don’t volunteer information to people they know hate them. If you want someone’s help you have to reach out to them.”

“How many have you reached out to, Anita?” Such innocent words, but he made it sound ugly.

“Enough so I could help you every time you called.”

He closed his eyes then, balled his fist around his notebook until something in it ripped. “If I’d left you where I found you, raising the dead, Jean-Claude would never have met you. You went into his club on police business the first time. On my business.” He opened his eyes and there was such pain in them.

I reached out to touch his arm, but he moved back, out of reach. “We did our jobs, Dolph.”

“When you look in the mirror, is that enough, Anita? At the end of the day, is that enough, that we do our jobs?”

“Sometimes, sometimes not.”

“Are you a lycanthrope?”

“No,” I said.

“Your blood work says different.”

“My blood work is puzzling the hell out of the lab, and it’ll puzzle the hell out of any lab you send it to.”

“You know you’re carrying lycanthropy.”

“Yeah, I’m carrying four different kinds of lycanthropy.”

“You knew.”

“I found out when I ended up in the hospital in Philadelphia, after that zombie case with the FBI.”

“You didn’t mention it to anyone here.”

“You hated me for dating shapeshifters; if you found out I was carrying it”—I spread my hands—“I couldn’t depend on how you’d react.”

He nodded. “You’re right. You were right not to tell me, but you could have told Zerbrowski or someone.”

“It doesn’t affect my job, Dolph. I’ve got a disease that I’m mostly asymptomatic for. It’s no one’s business unless it impacts the job.” In my head I wondered what would happen if the almost-beasts that I carried inside me got out of control on a case. That would be bad. I almost had the ardeur under control, and now I had something else that might keep me from being able to do my police work.

“Anita, did you hear what I said?”

“I’m sorry, no, I didn’t.”

“I said, how do you know it doesn’t affect the job? How do you know that your ties to the monsters don’t color your choices?”

“I’m tired, Dolph. I’m tired, and I need to rest.” Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I was in a hospital, I could have just cried hurt. Damn, I was slow tonight.

He uncrumpled his notebook, tried to smooth it out