“You’re saying I’m still raw from killing Haven?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever had to kill a lover?”
“Yes.”
I glanced at him. “Really?”
He nodded. “Now ask me if I cared about her.”
“Okay, did you care about her?”
“No.”
“And I cared about Haven, so it hurts more.”
“I think so,” he said.
We leaned against the wall some more in companionable silence. Edward and I didn’t need to talk—we could talk, but we didn’t need to. “We’re going about hunting these killers all wrong. Even if we didn’t know what was killing them, and sort of why, we’re still doing it ass-backward.”
“We need to consolidate the warrants of execution from the first three cities and just make it one hunt,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“But the first three warrants are all in the hands of marshals who were book-and-classroom trained. They were cops, but no one has a violent crimes background. I’m not sure why they’re recruiting some of these kids.”
“We were all kids once, Edward, but we need to take over the warrants before some of the other marshals get themselves killed. Raborn said that you, me, Jefferies, and Spotted-Horse are the cleanup crew. We come onto a warrant after other marshals have been killed or injured.”
“It’s the law, Anita. The warrant is theirs until they are unable to execute it, through death or injury, or they sign it over to another marshal for some other reason.”
“Let’s make them sign it over to us now.”
“How?” he asked.
“We could just ask,” I said.
“I asked two of the marshals. They both refused.”
“You asked the men,” I said.
“Yes.”
“So I’ll ask the female marshal,” I said.
“A little girl talk?” he asked.
I frowned at him. “I don’t really do girl talk, but I’ll try to persuade her to sign the warrant over to me. If just one of them signs off, then we can hunt the monsters. Stop the crimes by killing the criminal, not by solving them.”
“I like it,” he said.
“You know and I know that we’re legal assassins, not cops. Sometimes we solve crimes and catch the bad guys, but at the end of most days we kill people.”
“You sound like that bothers you,” he said. He looked at me as he asked it.
I shrugged. “It does, and we already discussed that it doesn’t bother you. Well, fucking bully for you, but it’s beginning to get on my nerves.”
“I think I’ve figured out a way to use you as bait to lure them out, if it’s really you they’re wanting.”
I studied his unreadable face. “But first we’ll need someone to sign a warrant over to us, right?”
“That would help, and you getting some bodyguards from home, and maybe calling in Bernardo and Olaf now, before anyone’s dead, as backup wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“Olaf still thinks I’m his girlfriend or something.”
“The couple that slaughters people together stays together.”
“That wasn’t really very funny,” I said.
“Yes, it was, but I apologize anyway. We both know that someday you, or I, will have to kill Olaf because he’s decided to kill you.”
“If he really plans on killing me he’ll kill you first, Edward, because he knows that you won’t rest until he’s dead.”
“You’d do the same for me.”
“True, so he’d kill us really close together, so neither of us could go all revenge on his ass.”
“Probably,” Edward said.
“And yet, you’ll call him in to back us up on this case.”
“He’s a good man in a fight.”
“He’s a crazy psycho killer, is what he is,” I said.
“Technically he’s not psychotic.”
“So just a crazy killer,” I said.
“Yeah.” He smiled and it actually reached his eyes; it was a real smile, not Ted’s smile, but Edward smiling. I didn’t get to see the smile often, so I valued it when I did. I had to smile back.
I shook my head, still smiling. “Fine, I’ll try to get the other marshal to sign off, and then you call in Bernardo and Olaf, but I can’t get bodyguards from home to come help us. We’re marshals, they aren’t, and being able to deputize people isn’t a power the Marshals Service has been granted in a very long time.”
“You haven’t been keeping up on current events.”
I frowned at him. “What?”
“Last month a marshal died, because backup didn’t arrive in time, but a soldier just home from Iraq was able to take the marshal’s weapons and finish the shapeshifter off.”
“I did hear about that. It was tragic and brave and, so what?”
“You really don’t check the official emails, do you?”
“Maybe not as often as I should; what’d I miss?”
He got his phone out of his pocket and used his finger to roll through emails, then held the tiny screen up to me. I read it through twice. “You’re joking me.”
“It’s official.”
“We have the right to deputize not only if we are without backup, but if we feel that an individual’s skill set is of benefit to the execution of our warrant and will save civilian lives. Mother of God, Edward, this gives us carte blanche to form a fucking mob.”
“There’s potential for abuse, yes.”
“Potential for abuse, there’s potential for pitchforks and torches,” I said.
“Anita, come on, no one would use pitchforks or torches anymore. It’d be flashlights and guns.”
“This isn’t funny, Edward; this is a civil rights problem waiting to happen.”
“I didn’t know you cared about that, or did that change when you helped get the law passed to spare little vampires when their master is the bad guy?”
“I’m just saying that this little amendment to the law could get out of hand really fast.”
“It could, it probably will, but for us, right now, it’s useful.”
“Are you saying we deputize some of the bodyguards from St. Louis?”
“It’s a thought,” he said.
I opened my mouth, closed it, thought about it, then said, “Damn, great for us right now, but . . .”
“Take that it helps us right now, Anita. We’ll worry about legal rampaging mobs later.”
I nodded. “Deal.”
“Get her to sign the warrant over to you and I’ll call Olaf and Bernardo in, and you pick bodyguards from home.”
“You know most of them now; you want to help pick?”
“I trust your judgment,” he said.
“High praise coming from you.”
“Deserved,” he said.
I tried not to look too pleased, and probably failed. “Thanks, Edward.”
“Don’t mention it, but first you need her to sign the warrant over to you. Get the warrant, and then I have a plan.”
He wouldn’t tell me the plan, but since he’d actually admitted his “real” name to me, I could let him keep his secret plan—for now.
4
THE MARSHAL I needed to sweet-talk out of her warrant was female, so we got to split a hotel room. Marshal Laila Karlton was five-six and built solid. I don’t mean she was fat, I mean she was all muscle and curves. In too much clothing she looked like it might be fat, but when you saw her just in a T-shirt and jeans, you realized the “bulk” was half curves and half solid muscle. It wasn’t lean muscle and that was the reason it could fool the eye, but when she picked up her backpack of vampire-hunting gear, which probably weighed the same fifty pounds that mine did, her biceps bulged, and you realized it was all camouflage for the fact that she was strong. She didn’t see it that way, though.
“God, you’re tiny. I bet I can put my hands around that little white-girl waist, and you still have boobs and an ass. That is not fair, girlfriend.”
She’d taken the I’ll-cut-myself-down-and-compliment-you-beforeyou-beat-me-to-it tack. I had the choices of ignoring it, complimenting her in some way, or agreeing that I looked good without complimenting her back. The last choice would make her dislike me more. She’d already let me know, nicely, that my being a few sizes smaller than her made her predisposed not to like me. One of the good things about working with men was that they didn’t do this shit.