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Zerbrowski looked in at me from the doorway. “How’s it going?”

I nodded, because I didn’t trust myself to speak.

He grinned suddenly, and if I’d felt better I would have dreaded his next comment, but today I was too numb. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Because for anything to matter I could not have gone back into that room, and I had to go into that room. So nothing mattered. I was empty, and quiet, and there was nothing.

“Who was the girl this morning? We’ve got a pool going. Some people think its your best bud Ronnie Sims. Personally, I don’t think so; she’s still hot for that professor guy at Wash U. I’m betting on the blond wereleopard that’s always at your house. Which is it?”

I think I just blinked at him.

He frowned then and stepped into the little room. “Anita, are you okay?”

I shook my head. “No, I am not okay.”

His face was all concern, and he came close enough, almost took my arm, then stopped himself. “What’s wrong?”

I stayed leaning on the sink, but pointed backwards with one hand, not looking where I was pointing, not wanting to look.

He glanced back where I was pointing, then his eyes flicked, very quickly, back to me. “What about it?”

I just looked at him.

He shrugged. “Yeah, it’s bad. You’ve seen bad before.”

I lowered my head so I was staring at the golden faucet. “I took a month off, Zerbrowski. Thought I needed a vacation, and I did, but maybe a month wasn’t enough.”

“What are you saying?”

I looked up into the mirror, and my face was almost ghost pale, my eyes standing out like black holes in my face, the remaining eyeliner making my eyes larger, more compelling, more lost than they should have been. What I wanted to say was I don’t know if I want to do this anymore, but what I said out loud, was, “I thought the bedroom scene was bad, but this is worse.”

He nodded.

I started to take a deep breath, but remembered in time about the smell, and took a shallow breath, which wasn’t nearly as soothing to my psyche but better for my stomach. “I’ll be okay.”

He didn’t argue with me, because Zerbrowski treated me by guy rules most of the time. If a guy says he’ll be okay, you just take him at his word, even if you don’t believe it. The only exception is when lives are at stake, then the guy code can be broken, but the man that you broke it with will probably never forgive you.

I straightened up, hands still death-gripping the sink. I blinked into the mirror a couple of times, then went back for the far room. I could do this. I had to do this. I had to be able to see what was there, and think about it logically. It was an awful thing to ask of myself. I’d finally acknowledged that. Acknowledged that seeing things like what lay in the next room were soul-destroying. Acknowledged and moved on.

I was back in the bathroom door. Zerbrowski had come with me, though, standing just behind me. There really wasn’t room to stand in the doorway together, not comfortably.

I looked at the room, at the walls with their coating of blood and gore. “How many people were killed in here?”

“Why?” he asked.

“Don’t be coy, Zerbrowski, I don’t have the patience for it today.”

“Why?” he asked again, and this time there was a note of defensiveness in his voice.

I glanced back at him. “What is your problem?”

He didn’t point at the carnage. In fact for a second, or two, I thought he was going to tell me to mind my own business, but he didn’t. “If Dolph said why, you’d just answer him, not argue with him.”

I sighed. “Dolph’s shoes hard to fill?” I asked.

“No, but I’m damned tired of repeating myself when I know that nobody makes Dolph fucking repeat himself.”

I looked up at him and felt a smile creep across my face. “Well, actually, I make Dolph repeat himself, too.”

He smiled. “Alright, alright, maybe you do, but you are such a fucking pain in the ass, Anita.”

“It’s a talent,” I said.

We stood in the doorway and smiled at each other. Nothing had changed in that small horror chamber. There wasn’t a drop less of blood, or an inch less of gory