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“Did he bite her?”

Perry nodded.

“Shit,” I said.

“But she lit him up, Anita. He’s badly burned. He may not make it. What could she have thrown on him to get third-degree burns so quickly?”

“How quickly?”

He checked his notes. “Seconds and he went up.”

I asked Harry. “What was she drinking?”

He didn’t ask who, just said, “Straight Scotch. Best we had in the place.”

“High alcohol content?”

He nodded.

“That would have been enough,” I said. “Once you get a vamp burning, they burn until they’re put out. They’re very combustible.”

“So she didn’t come in here with some sort of accelerant?” he asked.

I shook my head. “She didn’t need it. What I don’t like is the fact that she knew to light the drink. If he’d been human and gotten out of hand, she’d have thrown the drink and yelled for help.”

“He did bite her,” Perry said.

“If she had that much problem with a vampire sinking fang in her, she wouldn’t have been cuddling with him in a bar. Something’s off about this.”

“Yes,” he said, “but I don’t know what. If the vampire survives, he’s going to be up on charges.”

“I’d like to see the woman.”

“Dolph took her to the emergency room to get the bite tended. He’s got her down at our headquarters. He said to come on down if you think you need to see her.”

It was late, and I was tired, but dammit, something was wrong. I walked over to the bar. “Was she trolling for vamps, Harry?”

He shook his head. “Came in to use the phone, then sat down. She’s a beauty. Didn’t take long for someone to hit on her. Just bad luck it was a vampire.”

“Yeah,” I said, “bad luck.”

He kept polishing the bar in small round circles, while his eyes watched me. “If she sues us, it’ll ruin us.”

“She won’t sue,” I said.

“Tell that to the Crematorium in Boston. A woman got bit there and sued them out of business. They had pickets going outside.”

I patted his hand, and he went utterly still under my touch. His skin had that hard almost wooden feel that vamps can have when they aren’t trying to be human. I met his dark eyes, and his face was as immobile and unreadable as glass.

“I’ll go talk to the supposed victim.”

He just looked at me. “It won’t help, Anita. She’s human. We’re not. Nothing they do in Washington will change that.”

I took my hand away and resisted an urge to wipe it on my dress. I never liked the way vamps felt when they went hard and otherworldly. They didn’t feel like flesh then, almost plastic like a dolphin, but harder, as if there was no muscle underneath, nothing but solidness like a tree.

“I’ll do what I can, Harry.”

“We’re monsters, Anita. We’ll always be monsters. I’ve really enjoyed being able to walk the streets like everyone else, but it won’t last.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “Let’s take care of this problem before we borrow another one, okay?”

He nodded and walked away to stack glasses.

“That was very comforting of you,” Perry said. Anyone else on the squad would have said it wasn’t like me to be comforting. Of course, anyone else would have already given me a hard time about the dress. I was going to have to go down to RPIT headquarters. Dolph would be there and Zerbrowski, probably. They’d know just what to say about the dress.

24

THREE O’CLOCK FOUND me at the headquarters for the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team. Another squad had buttons made up for us with the abbreviation RIP bleeding down the front of the button in red or green, your choice. Zerbrowski handed them out, and we all wore them, even Dolph. The first vampire we killed after the buttons arrived came through the morgue with one of the buttons pinned to its shirt. Never did find out who did it. My money was on Zerbrowski.

Zerbrowski met me on the steps leading into the squad room. “If that dress was slit any higher, it’d be a shirt,” he said.

I looked him up and down. His pale blue shirt was coming untucked from a pair of dark green dress slacks, his tie so loose, it looked like a bulky necklace. “Jeez, Zerbrowski, is Katie mad at you?”

He frowned. “No, why?”

I motioned at the tie that matched neither