Skin Trade

The sidewalk was not as clean as I would have liked it to be against my cheek. I wasn’t scared, and probably should have been. A good guy’s bullet would kill me just as soon as a bad guy’s. This was one of those moments when I wondered if the people who wrote the laws understood how it looked to be walking around with this much firepower on us. We were going to need badges on our tac vests or somewhere more prominent than normal, or some vampire executioner was going to get shot by the police.

I stayed passive under his knee, while he handcuffed me. He started patting me down and found the second badge next to the gun on my waist. He unclipped it and brought it out into the light.

“Shit,” he said, with real feeling.

I did not say I told you so. I was still handcuffed, and he was still armed. I did try, one more time, to say, “I’m U.S. Marshal Anita Blake, I am with the preternatural branch, and I am serving on an active warrant of execution.”

“You’re hunting vampires down here?” he asked.

“That is my job, officer.” I was really wanting to raise my cheek off the concrete to talk, but wasn’t sure if he’d take that for me trying to get up. I did not want another misunderstanding.

He knelt again, but this time his knee wasn’t in my back. “I saw all the weapons, and then you tried to hide.” He uncuffed me, then stepped back from me.

“Can I get up?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I got up, carefully. There is always that urge after one of these misunderstandings to do something startling to the guy who just cuffed you and made you eat pavement. I fought off the urge because it can lead nowhere good.

He handed me my badge back. I took it and clipped it back next to the Browning. “My partner is down the alley. Marshal Forrester, can you come out where the officer can see you?” I wasn’t sure this was what Edward would want, but we had badges, and when you have badges you have to play by at least some of the rules.

Edward came out with his hands very visible to his side and a little up, so they showed empty. He’d fastened his windbreaker with the big U.S. Marshal written across it. I didn’t even know what had happened to the windbreaker he’d loaned me.

“Officer,” Edward said in his Ted voice, and even managed a smile.

“Marshal,” the uniform said. He’d put his gun up, but the holster was unclipped. “I’m going to check on the radio. Nothing personal.”

“If I saw people with this much firepower, I’d check, too,” Edward said, still easy and smiling. He so would not have checked; he’d have taken care of it himself, or ignored it as not his problem.

Officer Thomas, according to his nameplate, walked just a little away from us, without turning his back on us. He hit his shoulder mic and spoke quietly into it. He was far enough away that we couldn’t quite hear him, which was fine. He was trying to get someone to vouch for us. As long as he didn’t talk to Undersheriff Shaw, we’d be safe enough.

He made uh-huh noises; just from a distance you could tell he was simply agreeing. He took his hand off his mic and walked toward us. “You check out. Sorry about the misunderstanding.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, and meant it. I was going to have to find someone to give a memo to about the thought that the new law on carrying a small arsenal on our person was going to get us vampire executioners shot.

Edward put his hands down and, still looking pleasant, said, “We could use a ride back to the station, though.”

“No problem,” Thomas said. He took a breath as if he was going to ask something, then stopped himself. I was betting he wanted to ask where our car was, but he didn’t. It’s both a cop and a guy thing to not ask too many questions. Besides, he’d already made me kiss pavement; he probably was going to try for best behavior.

“I call shotgun,” Edward said.

“Fine,” I said.

Something in that one word had let him know I wasn’t happy. We just knew each other too well to hide much of anything. He looked at me, his face half in shadow and half in the light from a distant streetlight.

He called to Thomas, “Give us a minute.” Then it was our turn to step far enough away from the officer to not be overheard.

I wanted to tell Edward about at least part of my dream, and ask what he thought about Bibiana asking about it. How had she known? What did she know? Had Belle Morte changed the dream, or was she in touch with the Vegas tigers? Cats were her animals to call, just like Marmee Noir. But metaphysics like this wasn’t really Edward’s forte. He wouldn’t know more about this than I did. I needed to talk to someone who might. I needed to talk to Jean-Claude, alone.

“You all right?” he asked quietly, his back to Officer Thomas.

“Not sure. I need to ask Jean-Claude some stuff in private, soon.”

“She asked you about your dreams.”

I looked at him and realized that he had caught it and understood more than most. “I had a dream, and it was a doozy.”

He smiled, “A doozy, okay. Can you wait to talk to Jean-Claude, or do you need me to entertain Thomas?”

I thought about that. “Let’s get back to Olaf and Bernardo. Let’s see what’s happening with Paula Chu and the case. I’ll try to put the metaphysics on the back burner for a while.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.”

“Am I sure? Not really, but I’m here with a badge; let’s act like I’m a real marshal and not some freak.”

He touched my shoulder. “Anita, this isn’t like you.”

“Yeah, it is, Edward. I’m wondering if I can do my job, or if the metaphysics is getting too deep for a badge.”

“The metaphysics helps you be better at the job.”

“Sometimes, but we’ve just spent four hours with me in a healing sleep wrapped around a naked weretiger, so that the other cops couldn’t see that my own internal beast had cut me from the inside out. We had to take both you and me off the case while we did it. That’s not good, Edward. Now it’s full dark, and Vittorio is out there. We lost important time because we were trying to hide what I am.”

“Then let’s stop arguing about it and go to the station. Bernardo will catch us up.”

“Don’t you see, Edward, Ted, whatever, that for you and me for the last four hours, healing me, hiding me, was more important than the case. That’s not how cops think.”

“We think just fine, Anita.”

I don’t know what showed on my face, but he grabbed my arm. “Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t tear yourself down.”

“It’s the truth.”

“It’s only the truth if you buy into it. Yeah, we lost four hours, but you’re healed, and we know that Max doesn’t agree with what Bibiana is doing. We know that Victor isn’t happy with his mother and sides with his father. Knowing the politics of a city’s monsters is valuable, Anita.”

I wanted to argue, and might have, but Thomas said, “Sorry to interrupt, but if I’m leaving patrol, I need to get you guys to the station, then get back.”

“We’re coming,” Edward called. He still had my arm. “Do you need to call Jean-Claude now?”

I shook my head. “It can wait. We’ve lost enough time.”

He looked at me a moment longer; I met his eyes clear and straight. He let go of my arm and stepped back, then turned back to Thomas all smiles. “Sorry, Thomas, didn’t mean to keep you.”

“It’s okay, but I gotta answer to my supervisor, you know?”

“We know,” I said. Actually, we didn’t. One of the reasons the U.S.

Marshals Service didn’t like having us on their team was that we’d be grafted on without any extra support staff. Bascially, we were marshals, but we didn’t have to answer to their hierarchy much. The preternatural branch was almost a law unto itself. While the other marshals were filling out tons of paperwork every time they fired their guns in the line of duty, we were blowing people away with no paperwork required. Our warrants of execution were the only paperwork. They’d experimented with having some of us do reports, but the details were so grim, so disturbing, that some suit up the line decided the Marshals Service wasn’t sure it wanted the preternatural branch’s exploits immortalized on paper. In normal police work, reports are supposed to cover your ass, but sometimes when it’s really bad, they can be used against you later. We’d never had to do reports before, and so far still didn’t. That might change, but for now, it was a sort of don’t ask, don’t tell policy.