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I sighed loud enough so Zerbrowski could hear it. “A little help here.”

Zerbrowski opened the door with the phone still in his hand. “Thanks, Sheriff Christopher, I think Marshal Blake and I have it from here.” He clicked the phone shut, smiled at everybody, and moved aside enough for me to pass through, but not enough for the sheriff, who stood at the bottom of the steps glaring at him. I finally realized that the pissing contest had started before I got there, and I’d just gotten caught in it.

Zerbrowski shut the door behind us, and leaned against it shaking his head. He’s 5' 9", with short black hair going more and more gray every year. When his wife makes him get it cut, the hair is short and neat. When he forgets, or she’s busy, it’s curly and wavy, and as untidy as the rest of him. His suit was brown, his tie was pale yellow, and so was his shirt. I think it was the first time I’d seen all his clothes match in all the years I’d known him. Okay, match and not have food stains on them.

His glasses were silver and helped hide that his eyes were tired, but not that he was pissed. He took me off to one side by the fountain with a once-real-live stuffed lion crouching beside it. The Sapphire Room is a cross between a hunting lodge, a safari room, and other things people think men think is masculine. Most of the room was carpeted in leopard print, so that my first thought was, always, Oh, no, a leopard blew up and plastered itself all over everything, but hey, animal prints are in this year. People pay hundreds of dollars a night to be back here, so they must like it.

Zerbrowski turned his back on the room and motioned for me to move in front of him so that no one would see us talking. “Welcome to the party.”

“Why are you keeping out all of the sheriff’s men?”

“When we pulled up, they had the vampires in here and were using crosses on them. They didn’t touch them, just made the crosses glow like hell, and basically said, you talk, or we keep crosses out.”

“Shit, use of a holy item on a vampire for questioning was ruled assault, what, three months ago in federal court?”

“Yeah,” he said, and he raised his glasses up and rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

“Every vamp here could press charges,” I whispered.

He nodded and readjusted his glasses. “Like I said, welcome to the party.”

Before the ruling, a lot of police departments had holy items as part of their uniform, like lapel pins or tietacks, but now they were back to carrying them undercover somewhere on their bodies. Holy items were now considered weapons when dealing with vampires. Which meant what the sheriff had done constituted assault with a deadly weapon.

“Was it just him, or his men, too?”

“Some of his men. Before we got here, they were all wearing little cross-shaped lapel pins. I got them to remove them, but only after I threatened to call the closest FBI office.”

I looked at him, because no cop likes to call in what they so affectionately call the Feebies.

“I’d rather let the FBI take this entire case away from us than let crap like this go down. The vampires are scared shitless now. If there are any guilty ones here, I can’t tell it, because they’re all either royally pissed, or scared. Most of them won’t even talk to us, and legally they don’t have to.” It didn’t really show in his voice, but he was as angry as I’d seen him. I could see it in the tightness around his eyes, the way his hands kept stiffening up. Zerbrowski was usually one laid back guy, but everybody has their limits. “We got a hit from New Orleans and Pittsburgh. Very similar crimes. Two in Pittsburgh, five in New Orleans, then they moved here.”

“Lucky us,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “but that means we have at least three more bodies to look forward to. We need these nice citizen vamps to talk to us.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Do you have anyone you want me to start with? I mean it’s 4:30, we’ve got about three hours or less until dawn. They’ve got to be allowed to go home before dawn, unless you can charge them with something.”

“We’ve got