"There are a lot of fish in the sea, Inspector; you need to fish a little farther out into the ocean, that's all," Edward said.
"But all the good fish are taken," she said, looking at him.
"Not all of them," I said.
She looked at me then, and gave me wide eyes. "Well, you certainly have caught your limit."
"Or a little over," I said.
She smiled. "Well, let me know if you're going to throw one of them back. I might want to be there with a net."
"I'll keep that in mind," I said, smiling.
"I think Anita and her men in the hallway still need food," Edward said.
"We can have food brought in for everyone," Sheridan said, "unless you think that eating and looking at the photos will be a problem?"
I looked down at the torn throats, the mangled bodies, and then had another thought. "I let myself get distracted; are any of the skull, brain, head parts in the debris I'm seeing in the pictures?"
"What do you mean, Blake?"
"I mean, did they crush the head and mix it up with the other small bits, or did the killer take the heads?"
"We haven't found any brain matter at the crime scenes," she said.
"So whoever is killing them is taking souvenirs after all."
"Why wouldn't they eat the head?" Sheridan asked.
"It's like all animal heads, not great eating raw, though I'm told that brains mixed with eggs make really fluffy scrambled eggs."
Sheridan made a face at me. "Have you eaten brains?"
"No, but I went to college with a girl whose family owned a cow farm, and her mom mixed the brains into her scrambled eggs without telling the kids. They thought it was delicious and didn't know, until they got out on their own and tried to make eggs like Mom did, and couldn't get the fluffy, creamy texture."
Edward gave a low chuckle as Sheridan's face paled. Nolan joined him in the chuckle and tried to turn it into a cough. Edward apologized. "I'm not laughing at you, Rachel. I'm laughing at Anita telling that story when we're thinking about getting food."
"We're going to be looking at crime scene photos while we eat. I didn't think the egg story would be a problem."
He laughed again and patted my shoulder. "You just keep thinking there, Butch. That's what you're good at."
I rolled my eyes at him and wished I could remember a movie-line comeback, but nothing sprang to mind.
Pearson stuck his head back in the room. "What does everyone want for lunch?"
"Not eggs," Sheridan said.
63
THE SANDWICHES WEREN'T Irish; they were just food. When you're ordering sandwiches that can be eaten while you look at paperwork and photos on a crowded table, a sandwich is a sandwich is a sandwich. It wasn't a bad sandwich, but it wasn't great, either. It really was just another work trip for me except that I was the only one who got a Coke to drink; even Edward got bottled water. He told me if I behaved myself today maybe the detectives would let us all eat in the big room with desks so we weren't all having to share the little kids' table.
"I don't know what you mean by that, Ted," Sheridan had said. Pearson apparently had decided to eat elsewhere, or was skipping lunch and holding Logan's hand, or maybe beating the shit out of him. I really didn't care which, as long as Logan was somewhere else. I knew I'd have to deal with him again, but later was better than now.
"It'd be much more comfortable sharing this meal at your desk like we normally do," he said with that Ted smile that seemed to melt women into their socks but had never worked on me, because I'd met him when he was being just Edward. His cold-blooded-killer mode was far less charming than good ol' boy Ted.
She actually got a little flustered, spilling bits of her sandwich on one of the photos. Thanks to modern technology, we could print more almost instantly, but still you tried not to get the evidence messy. While Sheridan grabbed for napkins I gave Edward a raised-eyebrow look. He smiled innocently back at me as if butter wouldn't have melted in his mouth, then went to help her clean up, which made her start to drop things again. I didn't know what game he was playing, only that he was playing one. I was so bad at being devious that I didn't try, but he was really good at it. I just didn't know why he was being devious in Inspector Rachel Sheridan's direction. Maybe it amused him? I wouldn't know unless he told me, and if I asked outright, he wouldn't, so I just watched the show.
Nolan, who was sitting at the end of the table again, caught my eye, and just the look let me know that he was wondering what game Edward was playing, too. I gave a small shrug and took another bite of my sandwich.
"I wonder if Jacob Pennyfeather would have any insight into these crimes," he said as he helped Sheridan pick up the papers she'd managed to knock off the table.
She looked up at him, brown eyes wide and a little startled. "I don't know."
"He knew more about saving vampires than we did at the last crime scene. Anita and I know more about killing them than healing them."
She stood up with the papers clasped to her chest. "I don't think this case is about saving vampires."
Was Edward flirting with her because he saw an opening to manipulate her? Nothing specific, but just a possible way to gain an edge if he needed it. Was that it? If so, it was very calculating. He was my best friend; sometimes I forgot how cold-blooded he could be dealing with other people. Would he talk Sheridan into doing things we wanted and risk damaging her career? Would he care? He told me once that he'd tried manipulating me like a girl--i.e., flirting--and I'd been so oblivious to it that he'd stopped trying. I watched him with the detective and wondered how different things would have been if I'd been more susceptible to his manly wiles.
Nolan shook his head, so I looked at him, giving him encouragement to explain his expression if he wanted to. "Good to know that one of us has gotten better at it." His smile was a little ironic, but not unhappy. He just seemed amused.
Edward turned and gave that version of a younger smile again. "That's not the only thing I've gotten better at."
Nolan laughed out loud, which startled me and Sheridan. We exchanged one of those looks that women have probably been exchanging around men since cave painting was the new thing. I shrugged, because in this instance I really had no clue. I watched the two men, their eyes sparkling with laughter and some secret adventure that their long-ago selves had had together.
"If I ask what's so funny, would you tell me?" I asked.
They did another of those looks that meant more to them than it did to us. Nolan shook his head. Edward said, "You wouldn't think it was funny."
I said, "You know, a few years back, I'd have said, Try me," which made Nolan laugh again and he hid his face with his hand. I frowned at him, but continued. "Now, I'll just trust you that it won't amuse me."
"Thank you," Edward said, his face still shiny with suppressed humor. "I know that's high praise from you, because you like to know everything that's going on around you."
"What if I want to know what it is?" Sheridan asked.
The two men looked at her, looked at each other, and then cracked up like a pair of twelve-year-olds. I'd never seen Edward like this; I liked it and found it unsettling at the same time.
"Trust me on this, Sheridan. If Ted doesn't think I'd find it funny, you won't either."
"Is this a male-bonding type of thing?" she asked.
I nodded. "Oh, yeah."
She shook her head, and we got to have one of those shared moments when women shake their heads at the men in their lives. I was usually all alone when these moments happened, so it was nice to have someone to roll my eyes with and feel vaguely superior because we weren't men. Men get to do it in reverse.
I finished my sandwich while they continued to do the straight-guy version of giggling. The flirting with Sheridan for whatever purpose was put on hold while the men bonded, or maybe rebonded. Between the flirting and this, my bestie was just surprising the heck out of me this trip.
We'd all finished our lunch, and Pearso
n rejoined us without Logan. I was okay with that. Sheridan actually did talk to Pearson about getting Jake's input on the case. He didn't say yes, but Edward's little bit of flirting had paid off. It made me wonder, if he actually took her to dinner, how much more cooperative she'd be with us, but that seemed a slippery slope since I was going to be best "man" at his wedding.
"Mr. Pennyfeather and his partner aren't in the hallway to invite inside even if I were so inclined, Sheridan. It's only Murdock and Santana on post currently."
"They were going to take turns grabbing sandwiches," I said. "It's hard to eat standing up in a hallway. An international flight takes a lot out of you, so we're still a little beat."
"We could have offered your men a desk or something to eat their lunch at," Pearson said.
"That would have been nice," I said.
Pearson got up and started for the door. "I can see what I can find for them to use."
"Thank you, Inspector, but I'm pretty sure that at least two of them will stay on the door."
"I know you're implying they're standing guard, but we are inside a police station."
"True, but until they have more of a role in the case, they're going to do the only job they have."
"The men with you don't even have badges in your own country. I can't justify letting them see evidence in an ongoing investigation."
"Totally reasonable," I said.
Pearson gave me a narrow look. "Why does that sound like a criticism?"
"It's not meant as one," I said.
He looked from me to Edward and back. He looked downright suspicious. People usually had to know me longer before I got that look. I did my best to give inoffensive and pleasant back. I used to try looking innocent, but I really wasn't good at it, even when I was innocent.
Pearson looked even harder at me. It wasn't his hardest look--I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he hadn't made detective without being able to stare the socks off a suspect--but he was still trying to give me a "hard" look. I smiled at him. I'd found it an effective way to either irritate people or win them over. It could go either way when they were already trying to intimidate me by being a hard-ass.
"Now, Anita, I'm sure Superintendent Pearson is just doing his job," Edward said in his drawling Ted voice, which managed to be pleasant and theatrical. I wondered if the Irish police were disappointed that my accent wasn't the same as his.
I started to say, I never said he wasn't, but one minute we were doing some mild double-team manipulation and the next minute the hair at the back of my neck rose and goose bumps ran down my arms. I think I stopped breathing, my throat tight with the power that was reaching out.
"Anita," Edward said, "what's wrong?"
"You're pale," Sheridan said.
Nolan had grabbed the back of a chair. He was fighting to stand upright and not show that he was sensing it, too.
I held up a hand, and Edward understood that I wanted them to be quiet for a second. He made everyone else stop talking. I needed to listen. Listen to what? There was a voice on the air, or in it, and the voice was saying something, wanting something.
There was a sharp double knock on the door. Pearson said, "Who is it?"
"Nicky Murdock," he announced, but didn't wait for an invitation before opening the door. "Anita, what the hell is that?"
I held up my hand and waved it at him, and he went quiet. I listened, reached out toward that skin-prickling rush of energy, and found . . . "Come out," I said.
"What does she mean, come out?" Sheridan asked.
I repeated it. "Come out. That's what it's saying, over and over. It's wanting . . . us to come out. Them to come out."
"Who is them?" Edward asked.
I felt Damian take his first breath for the day inside the bag at my feet, felt him startle before the bag moved. Edward actually jumped as the bag bumped his chair.
I knelt beside Damian's bag. He was afraid of the small space and of the power that had jarred him awake. "Close the shades," I said.
Nolan was closest, but I think it was taking all he had to simply try to stand there, gripping the back of the chair, and not show the reaction that all the other preternaturals were having. Nicky walked across the room to do what I asked. The weak sunshine was suddenly plunged into gray twilight. Pearson didn't complain or tell Nicky to get out of the room because of evidence. No, Pearson was staring at the bag on the floor as it struggled. It was his turn to look pale. I saw Domino in the doorway; he was still watching the hall like a good bodyguard.
I unzipped the duffel bag. One long pale arm shot out, grabbing for air. Damian forced the zipper down before I could get to it, pulling his upper body free of it like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. His hair spilled out around him like liquid fire, so perfectly red in a stray line of sunlight that managed to get through the draped window.
He grabbed my hand in his, green eyes wide with the fear I could already feel. "It can't be," he whispered.
"It can't be who?" I asked.
"Her."
"Who is her?" Sheridan asked.
"It's a compulsion spell," Jake said from the open door, where he and Kaazim had just run up.
"A what spell?" Pearson asked.
"A compulsion spell, a magical way of ordering or commanding people," Jake said.
"I have not felt one so strong in many, many years," Kaazim said.
Damian wrapped both his hands around mine. "It's her. It's her, Anita. It's her."
"Who?" Sheridan asked.
"She-Who-Made-Me."
"Who made you? What are you talking about?" Pearson said.
"She was always able to call her vampires from their coffins in daylight. She could wake us early."
"The vampire that made him," I said.
"She's calling all her vampires to her," Damian whispered, "and I still answered her." He clung to my hands. "I'm yours, yours now; why did I answer to her?"
"I don't know. I don't know why I'm hearing it, too." I looked up at Jake and Kaazim. "Can you hear it, too?"
"Yes," Jake said.
"We can," Kaazim said.
I looked down at the bag that still held Echo. "She's not waking up."
"She was not created here," Kaazim said.
"Neither was I, or the two of you."
"I can't hear it," Nicky said. "I just feel you."
"I can hear something," Domino said. "It's like a whisper in the next room, just noise, but it's still there."
I wanted to ask if Nolan could hear it more clearly, since he had been born here in Ireland, but he was trying to play human. He was grim-faced, fingers turning white as he gripped the chair, but he wasn't going to admit he could hear anything.
"So why are the three of us hearing it?"
"And why is Domino hearing it more than I am?" Nicky asked.
"I don't know," I said. Damian was getting a little frantic to get out of the bag, but he'd gotten a piece of his shirt caught in the zipper. Nicky knelt to help me with it.
"I smell fresh blood," Domino said from the door.
I didn't smell it, but I trusted that he did.
All the wereanimals except for Nolan sniffed the air. "What are they, scent hounds?" Pearson asked.
"Better than that. They can smell a scent and then tell us about it," I said.
"A lot of blood," Nicky said, and he started tugging at the stuck zipper a little harder.
"It's close to us," Kaazim said.
"How close?" I asked.
"It's in the building, on this floor. I'm sure of that," Domino said.
"No, no," Pearson said softly, but there was a lot of feeling in those two words. He smelled scared.
"What did you do, Pearson?" Edward asked.
He didn't answer, just took off and pushed his way past Domino and running down the hallway. Sheridan followed him, and so did Edward and Nolan.
I yelled, "Edward!"
He ignored it, because it wasn't his name. Damn it. "Go with them," I said.
/> Domino did what I asked, but Jake and Kaazim stayed in the doorway. "Our loyalty is to you."
"Damn it, then carry Echo!" Jake came to do what I'd ordered. Nice to know he listened to some of what I said. Nicky tore the zipper away from Damian's bag so that he was finally free; we helped him to his feet and started running out of the room. Kaazim was still helping Jake get Echo settled on his back. They yelled for us to wait. I listened to them as well as they'd listened to me: selectively.
64
THERE WAS NOBODY in the hallway except for a few uniformed officers, but Nicky started jogging down the hallway without hesitating on a direction. I stayed with him, trusting his nose to lead us to the blood. I had to drop back a little behind him to keep from running into people as I ran and he jogged. Damian came up beside me, both of us at Nicky's broad back. We got some puzzled looks from the officers and personnel in the halls. Surely if it had been a serious emergency they'd have been running with us, but it seemed like business as usual except for us. Kaazim and Jake had caught up with us by the time we went around the second corner. No one was acting alarmed, so we'd slowed to a fast walk. Where were Edward and Domino? I wanted to find everyone, but I wasn't emotionally attached to anyone else.
Sheridan was standing outside a closed door. She was so pale her brown eyes looked black and stranded in her face like islands in the middle of a milk-white ocean. Even her lips were bloodless; the light lipstick she'd had on in the other room was gone. She raised one hand up to push at her hair, and I saw the pinkish shine of it as if she'd rubbed her lips a lot in the few minutes since we'd seen her. What the hell had happened?
"It's in the room," Nicky said.
"What is?" I asked.
"The blood."
Sheridan looked at us then, her eyes looking like burned-out holes in her head. I'd thought she was beautiful and now she looked haggard, as if every hour of sleep she'd ever lost had all caught up with her at once.
"Sheridan," I said.
She looked at me but didn't see me, not really.
"Rachel, can you hear me?"
She nodded. "I'm keeping the crime scene intact until forensics gets here."
"Where are the others?" Jake asked.
"Looking for him."
I grabbed her upper arms and gave her a little shake. Her eyes focused on me; she even blinked. "Inspector Sheridan, I need you to focus. Report, damn it."
Crimson Death Page 62