“I didn'tsay that,” I said.
“Oh, please, it was all over your big blank face.” Her broad smile was forced—it was clear the barb was genuine, and not at all a joke.
“What iswith you these—” I began, forgetting all about Alonzo, Sophie, bare feet, only to be interrupted when Detective Nick came back into the room.
“Thanks,” he said cheerfully. “I was in the stakeout van half the day—no time to take a—oh.” He slowed down. “Hi, Betsy.”
I stifled a groan. Nick was a whole new problem, his own subset, you could say. I'd known him before I died. I'd bitten him right after I'd died, and it had driven him nuts. Literally crazy. Sinclair had had to step in with a bit of vampire mojo to make him all right. The official line was: Nick never knew I died, didn't know we were all vampires.
But we all wondered if he was going along with the party line, or fooling us. Normally I'd think nobody could get past Tina's bullshit radar, but Nick was a cop. They paid him to lie.
And Jessica had decided todate him. Because, you know, my life wasn't stressful enough.
He held out his hand, and I clamped on it and escorted him to the parlor door. “Great to see you again.” I had no intention of introducing him to Alonzo, the Amazing Spanish Killer Vampire. “Guess you two want to get to your date, huh?”
“Actually…” Jessica began with a mischievous glint in her eyes.
“Well,” Nick said as I hustled him out, “the show starts at ten, so we thought we'd stay and visit for a few…”
“Right, don't want to miss it, have some popcorn for me, bye!” I hollered as he practically went sprawling into the hallway. Jessica rolled her eyes at me and followed. “See you later!”
Much later.
“That was—” Tina said, stopped, and put a hand over her mouth so I wouldn't see she was fighting a grin.
“Efficient,” Alonzo suggested.
“You hush. You're still on my list, chum.”
“Oh, Majesty.” He clasped his heart like a player in a bad opera. “I would gladly cross seven raging oceans to be on any list you might have.”
“Are you trying to pick me up?” I asked irritably, “or overthrow me?”
“Can we not do both, darling Majesty?”
“Say that now,” Marc said cheerfully. As usual, he was clueless—or didn't care. He just loved the whole vampire politics thing. It was a lot more interesting than his day job, saving lives.
“Don't you have some patients to intubate downtown?” I asked him pointedly. “Or some dates to fondle uptown?”
“If I did, do you think I'd be here?” Damn. So reasonable, and the truth besides. He looked at Eric and Alonzo again. “So tell me about the show. Where did you see Dorothy? Did she look fabulous? She did, didn't she?”
“I was there for other reasons,” Sinclair said. “I must admit I paid little attention to the stage goings-on.”
Marc groaned and covered his eyes. His hair was growing out—he'd been shaved bald when I first met him—and his scalp was almost entirely black now, with an interesting white streak above his left eyebrow. His green eyes were shaded with long black lashes—guys always got the good eyelashes—and he was dressed in the scrubs he'd worn to work. They made him look doctor-like and professional, which was good, because he was actually a few years younger than I was, and sometimes patients had a hard time taking him seriously.
They should see him now, bouncing on the couch and grilling an undead Spaniard about somebody named Dorothy.
“As I was saying, it was inNew York City ,” Alonzo said, smiling as Marc sighed and squealed like a bobby-soxer. “ 'La Vie en Rose.' Could it have been… 1950? Yes, I think so.”
“Oh, man, this totally makes my night. It was a shit night to put it mildly. I'm on my third set of scrubs.”
“Oh, a lot of patients?”
“Bus crash. A lot of DOTS. Just really a downer.”
“DOTS?” Alonzo asked.
“Dead on the Spot,” Sinclair and I answered in unison. Thanks to Marc, we were up on all the medical slang.
“That sucks,” I continued. “Maybe you should skip work for a while, Marc.”
He shrugged. “They're hauling in a shrink for us to talk to, you know, talk about how helpless and arbitrary the whole thing was.” He seemed to make a determined effort to look cheerful. “Anyway, you were saying about Dorothy, Mr. Alonzo…”
“She was wonderful,” the Spaniard said at once, and I almost liked him for his obvious attempts to cheer Marc up. “Illuminating, gorgeous. It was impossible to take your eyes off her. Unless you were the king,” he added, with a nod in Sinclair's direction.
“Thanks for not killing her and dumping her in an alley somewhere,” I observed sweetly.
“Her neck, her voice box, was a work of art,” he said, having the colossal gall to sound wounded. “Risking damage to such delicate organs with my teeth, even for the sake of eternal life, would have been sacrilege.”
“And ending Sophie's life was not?”
Marc shook his head sadly, unwilling to completely damn this magnificent Spaniard. “Sophie's a great chick, man. You shouldn't've killed her. A great chick.”
“Who would, if my math is correct, be at least fifty years under her cold, stony grave by now had I not turned her. Assuming she died of natural causes.”
“That wasn't for you to decide,” I said sharply. “Vampires can drink without killing people. You didn't have to take it that far.”
He spread his hands. “This argument is pointless. The girl is dead. She hates me for it. There is nothing I can do about this now.”
Marc looked at me. “Good point.” I could see he was half in love with Alonzo already.
“Go make yourself some Malt-O-Meal,” I snapped. “This is vampire business.”
“Hey, I know when I'm not wanted.” He didn't move from the couch.
“You're not wanted,” I said.
“Oh.” He got up. “Well. It was nice to meet you. Maybe you can tell Betsy and Sophie you're sorry and, you know, hang out for a while.”
“Perhaps.” Alonzo held out a hand, and Marc shook it. “A pleasure, Dr. Spangler. I look forward to our next conversation.”
Marc was staring raptly into Alonzo's golden-colored eyes. “Yeah, that'd be good. I'm off for the next two days, so maybe—”
“Maybe,” I said, seizing him by the back of his scrubs, “you shouldn't break your dating drought with this guy.”
“Hey, I deserve a social liiiife,” he trailed off as I practically threw him into the hallway. It was my night for tossing men out of the room, it appeared.
I stuck a finger in Alonzo's bemused face. “Don't even think about it.”
He licked his thick lips. Which probably sounded gross, but it wasn't—it actually called attention to his lush mouth. “I assure you, Majesty, I do not make a move toward that delicacy of a man without your express permission.”
“Ha!”
“But it is the truth,” he said, sounding vaguely hurt. “Why else am I here, if not to make amends for yesterday?”
“To figure out how to kill me, after a rotten evening?”
He smiled at me. It was a nice smile; lit up his whole face and made him look like a pleasant farmer fromValencia instead of a rotten undead fiend from hell. “Oh, Majesty. Forgive me if I patronize, but how young you are to me. There was nothing rotten in last evening. Just a simple misunderstanding. To kill you in response—forgive me, to try to kill you in response—would be an overreaction of the worst sort.”
Tina and Sinclair looked at each other and I could sense their unspoken agreement:it's a peace offering. Take it . As usual, when I was the only one who felt a certain way, I got pissed.