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He leaned forward, hands folded on his desk, small eyes very serious. “Is this true, Larry?”

“I’m afraid so, Mr. Vaughn.”

“That could have been very serious, Larry. You understand that?”

“Serious?” I said. “It would have been a bloody disaster. The zombie could have eaten one of our clients!”

“Now, Anita, no reason to frighten the boy.”

I stood up. “Yes, there is.”

Bert frowned at me. “If you hadn’t been late, he wouldn’t have tried to raise the last zombie.”

“No, Bert. You are not making this all my fault. You sent him out on his first night alone. Alone, Bert.”

“And he handled himself well,” Bert said.

I fought the urge to scream, because it wouldn’t help. “Bert, he’s a twenty-year-old college student. This is a freaking seminar for him. If you get him killed, it’s gonna look sorta bad.”

“May I say something?” Larry asked.

I said, “No.”

Bert said, “Certainly.”

“I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

I wanted to argue that, but looking into his true-blue eyes I couldn’t say it. He was twenty. I remembered twenty. I’d known everything at twenty. It took me another year to realize I knew nothing. I was still hoping to learn something before I hit thirty, but I wasn’t holding my breath.

“How old were you when you started working for me?” Bert said.

“What?”

“How old were you?”

“Twenty-one; I’d just graduated college.”

“When will you turn twenty-one, Larry?” Bert asked.

“March.”

“See, Anita, he’s just a few months younger. He’s the same age you were.”

“That was different.”

“Why?” Bert said.

I couldn’t put it into words. Larry still had all his grandparents. He’d never seen death and violence up close and personal. I had. He was an innocent, and I hadn’t been innocent for years. But how to explain that to Bert without hurting Larry’s feelings? No twenty-year-old man likes to hear that a woman knows more about the world than he does. Some cultural fables die hard.

“You sent me out with Manny, not alone.”

“He was supposed to go out with you, but you had police business to handle.”

“That’s not fair, Bert, and you know it.”

He shrugged. “If you’d been doing your job, he wouldn’t have been alone.”

“There’ve been two murders. What am I supposed to do? Say sorry, folks, I’ve got to babysit a new animator. Sorry about the murders.”

“Nobody has to babysit me,” Larry said.

We both ignored him.

“You have a full time job here with Animators, Inc.”

“We’ve had this argument before, Bert.”

“Too many times,” he said.

“You’re my boss, Bert. Do what you think best.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Hey, guys,” Larry said, “I’m getting the feeling that you’re using me for an excuse to fight. Don’t get carried away, okay?”

We both glared at him. He didn’t back down, just stared at us. Point for him.

“If you don’t like the way I do my job, Bert, fire me, but stop yanking my chain.”

Bert stood up, slowly, like a leviathan rising from the waves. “Anita . . .”

The phone rang. We all stared at it for a minute. Bert finally picked it up and growled, “Yeah, what is it?”

He listened for a minute, then glared at me. “It’s for you.” His voice was incredibly mild as he said it. “Detective Sergeant Storr, police business.”

Bert’s face was smiling; butter wouldn’t have melted in his mouth.

I held out my hand for the phone without another word. He handed me the receiver. He was still smiling, his tiny grey eyes warm and sparkling. It was a bad sign.

“Hi, Dolph, what’s up?”

“We’re at the lawyer’s office that your friend Veronica Sims gave us. Nice that she called you first and not us.”

“She called you second, didn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“What have you found out?” I didn’t bother to keep my voice down. If you’re careful, one side of a conversation isn’t very enlightening.

“Reba Baker is the dead woman. They identified her from morgue photos.”

“Pleasant way to end the work week,” I said.

Dolph ignored that. “Both victims were clients with dying wills. If they died by vampire bite, they wanted to be staked, then cremated.”

“Sounds