Laurell Hamilton - Kiss The Dead

Zerbrowski pulled out a chair so that Claudia could have a seat by his desk. He made suitably lecherous comments to her. She stood up and looked down on him, way down on him, since he was five-eight. She gave him her best glare, until he grinned and teased her until her mouth quirked and she almost smiled.

She looked across the room at me. “He doesn’t mean a damn word of it, does he?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“Hey,” Zerbrowski said, “I resent that, I mean everything I say. I am a pervert, I swear!” He raised his hand like he was about to be sworn into court.

We both laughed at him. He grinned at us, and it was just Zerbrowski.

Pride actually got invited to sit with Detective Tammy Reynolds, Larry’s wife. I’d been surprised at first, but Tammy hadn’t been as mean to me as Larry was, partly because she’d been gone for a while. Tammy was a natural witch, a psychic, and the Church had made room for people like her as a kind of holy warrior. They used their abilities to help the Church defeat Satan in all his forms. A lot of the witches went into police or social work. She’d taken a year of maternity leave with their daughter, and then gotten transferred to the Preternatural Branch at the FBI. She’d only been back a few weeks.

Her long brown hair was pulled back into a sensible ponytail. Her skirt suit was brown with a white button-down shirt, as sensible as the hair and lack of makeup. She was still pretty, but the clothes wouldn’t have flattered anyone. She was five-eight to her husband’s five-four, and I’d always liked that she hadn’t had a problem being taller than Larry.

Dolph had sort of loomed behind me. Claudia had stood to shake his hand, which made Pride come over and do it, too. It was nice to see a woman who was so close to Dolph’s six-eight. Pride looked small beside them, which made me smile. Did I feel tiny standing there with them all? A little, but I was used to it.

Dolph took me back so I could get a look on the video at our supposed human servant, before I went into the interrogation room. “See if you can tell anything from a distance,” he said.

I looked at the grainy black-and-white image. The man sat very still, hands folded on the table in front of him. He had short, dark hair, cut very traditionally. His shirt was white and button-down, top button open, no tie. His suit jacket looked black or true navy; either way the clothing was dark and conservative. There was a glass of water sitting by his hand. He never touched it. He sat, he blinked, and he waited.

“He looks almost too ordinary,” I said.

“He looks like a thousand businessmen in this country,” Dolph said.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Is he a human servant?”

I shook my head. “The point of a human servant is to appear human. I can’t tell from here. I’ll need to be physically closer.”

“So far almost everyone associated with this group has tried to kill you, Anita.”

I glanced up at him. “I can’t break through his defenses and tell you if he’s human or human servant without getting in the room with him.”

“If he is a human servant, will he be faster and stronger than normal?”

“A bit, but mainly he’s harder to hurt, harder to kill, just tougher. He shares his master’s near-immortality.”

“Why do you say near-immortality?” Dolph asked.

“Because anything you can kill with a gun or a blade isn’t immortal, just hard to kill.”

He smiled and nodded. “Agreed.” Then his face went back to being serious. “I don’t like you going in there with him.”

“You guys searched him for weapons and explosives, right?”

He nodded, again.

“I trust you guys to do your job.”

My phone sounded its text noise. I checked it automatically and found a text from Pride that read, “She’s trying to convert me to her version of Christianity. Rescue me, or I’m going to be rude.”

“Crap,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Detective Tammy is back to trying to recruit the preternaturally talented for the Church.”

Dolph scowled. “Religious freedom allows her to do it, but I have talked to her about concentrating more on saving lives than souls.”

“Is she more zealous than she was before she left?” I asked.

“Seems to be,” he said.

“I need to go rescue Pride and move him to a different desk, then let’s talk to the human servant.” I made air quotes around the last two words, a little hampered by the phone in one hand.

“Go save your bodyguard, then I’ll walk you in to our businessman.”

I didn’t even argue that I didn’t need Dolph at my back. There were people who would jump me, even with my reputation, who would hesitate at attacking with someone male and Dolph’s size beside me. I could hate that it was true, but it was still true.

I went to rescue my tiger. Pride’s face was darkening under his pale gold tan. His shoulders, arms, and hands were tight with tension, bordering on anger. Tammy had tried to recruit me to the order of holy witches when she first joined RPIT, and I’d been Episcopalian, so Christian. Pride wasn’t, none of the golden tigers were; they all followed a pantheistic religion that had originated in China centuries before Jesus Christ had been a glimmer in the Creator’s eye. Their religion had evolved from centuries of being in other countries and having to hide that they hadn’t all been slain during the reign of the First Emperor of China in the early two hundreds BC, yeah, as in 259 BC to 210 BC. But the golden tigers were very devout to their faith; they didn’t see it as inferior to the upstart religion that had started as a Jewish rebel sect.

I was almost to him when Arnet blocked my path. She spoke low. “Is he another boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend, or my lover, just a guard.”

“You swear,” she said, arms crossed across her small, neat breasts. I could never do that; my breasts were too big, I had to go under them and sort of lift.

“I swear,” I said.

She smiled. “I’ll rescue him from the Minister then.”

It took me a moment to realize that “the Minister” was Tammy’s nickname. Arnet swayed toward them; her skirt suit was cut to show off her ass, and though she was thin, she had a figure. She was also wearing makeup, understated, but Arnet made an effort. She used all that effort as she touched Pride’s shoulder and then smiled down at him, and at Tammy. She got him up and moving to her desk. Pride looked at me across the room, and I gave a small nod; he nodded back and let Arnet pull him up a chair. He was safe from Tammy’s recruitment drive, and he knew my background with Arnet, so he was as prepared as I could make him.

Zerbrowski was pretending to be scandalizing Claudia, but as I walked by to check on them, I saw that he was actually showing her pictures of his kids on his iPhone, not naughty pictures. He pretended to be a terrible lech, but in reality he was one of the happiest and most devoted family men I’d ever met. Katie, his petite and lovely wife, had told me once at a barbecue at their house that she thought his outrageous flirting was an outlet he needed. Apparently, he’d flirted like that when they first met, and she’d thought he didn’t like her because she was the only girl he didn’t flirt with; go figure.

Dolph sent two uniforms into the room ahead of us. They took up posts at corners of the room. Dolph said, “Mr. Weiskopf, this is Marshal Blake.”

Weiskopf smiled, and it seemed genuine, as if he were really glad to see me. “Marshal Blake, Anita, I didn’t expect to see you like this in an interrogation room. My master and I are very disappointed that it’s come to this.”

I offered him a hand across the table before I sat down. He hesitated, and then took it sort of automatically; most people will, even vampires, but he wasn’t a vampire. His hand was just a hand in mine, warm, alive… human. I could have put some power into the touch, but he might take that as an insult so I minded my manners.