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He raised the tape to let us inside and then had to push back the press of bodies that tried to follow us through. We walked towards the house to a hail of questions that I ignored. God knew what they’d do with the few things I’d said. It could be anything from the Executioner says, vampire attack, to the Executioner says not a vampire, to my love life. I’d stopped reading the papers, or watching the news, if I thought I might be on. First I hate to watch myself on a moving camera. Second, it always pissed me off. I was not free to discuss an ongoing police investigation, no one was, so the press were left to speculate on what few facts they had. And if Jean-Claude and our love life was the topic of choice, I never wanted to see, or read the coverage.

For some reason being caught in the media feeding frenzy had made me feel shaky again. Not as bad as earlier, but not as good as I’d felt when I first got out of the Jeep. Great, just great.

There were fewer cops here, and most of them were faces I recognized, members of RPIT. No one questioned my right to be at the scene, or Jason’s presence. They trusted me. The uniform on the door looked pale, his dark eyes flashing too much white. “Lieutenant Storr is expecting you, Ms. Blake.” I didn’t correct the title to marshal. Marshal Blake made me feel like I should have been guest-starring on Gunsmoke.

The uniform opened the door for us because he was wearing rubber gloves. I’d left my crime scene kit at home, because when I raised a zombie for the higher-end clients, Bert liked me to not be covered in a baggy overall. He said it didn’t look professional. Once he’d agreed to reimburse me for all dry cleaning incurred from this little rule, I’d agreed.

I told Jason, “Don’t touch anything until I get us some gloves.”

“Gloves?”

“Surgical gloves, that way if they find a latent print, they won’t get all excited and then find out it was yours, or mine.”

We were standing in a narrow entryway with stairs leading straight up from the door, a living room to the left, and an opening to the right that led into what looked like a dining room. There was an opening beyond that where I caught a glimpse of countertop and sink.

I couldn’t see the color scheme clearly because I was still wearing sunglasses. I debated whether taking them off would make the headache come back. I slipped them off, slowly. I was left blinking painfully, but after a few seconds, it was okay. If I could stay out of direct sunlight I’d probably be all right.

It was Detective Merlioni who walked into the living room and saw us first. “Blake, thought you’d chickened out.”

I looked up at the tall man with his curling gray hair cut short. The neck of his white long-sleeved shirt was unbuttoned, his tie tugged down crooked, as if he’d loosened everything without caring what it looked like. Merlioni hated ties, but he usually tried to be neater than this.

“It must be a bad one,” I said.

He frowned at me. “What makes you say that?”

“You’ve tugged your tie all crooked like you needed air, and you haven’t called me girlie or chickie, yet.”

He grinned flashing white teeth. “It’s early days, chickie.”

I shook my head. “Do you have some gloves we can borrow? I wasn’t expecting to do a crime scene today.”

He glanced at Jason then, as if seeing him for the first time, but I knew he’d seen him. Cops see almost everything around a crime scene. “Who’s this?”

“My driver for the day.”

He raised eyebrows at that. “Driver, woo-woo, coming up in the world.”

I frowned at him. “Dolph knew I was too shaky to drive, so he gave me permission to bring a driver with me. If there weren’t enough press outside to cover an entire city block I’d have had him leave me at the door, but I don’t want him going back out in that. They’ll never believe he’s not involved in the investigation.”

Merlioni stepped to the big picture window in the living room and lifted the edge of the drape enough to peek out. “They are damned persistent today.”

“How’d they get here so quick?”

“Neighbor called them probably. Everyone