Лорел Гамильтон - Bloody Bones

"So it's practice?" Freemont said.

I sighed. "In part, but hell, Detective, I raise the dead for a living. I have some preternatural abilities. It gives me a leg up."

"How the hell are we supposed to police creatures, Ms. Blake? If Bouvier had pulled a gun, we'd have sat there and let him shoot us. We just sort of woke up and he wasn't there anymore. I've never seen anything like it."

"There are things you can do to protect yourself from fairie glamor," I said.

"What?"

"A four-leaf clover will break glamor, but it won't keep the fey from killing you by hand. There are other plants you can wear, or carry that break glamor: Saint-John's-wort, red verbena, daisies, rowan, and ash. My choice would be an ointment made of either four-leaf clovers or Saint-John's-wort. Spread it on your eyelids, mouth, ears, and hands. It'll make you proof against glamor."

"Where do I get this stuff?"

I thought about that for a second. "Well, in St. Louis I'd know where to go. Here, try health-food stores and occult shops. Any fairie ointment will be hard to find because we don't have any fairies native to this country. Ointment from four-leaf clovers is very expensive, and rare. Try for the Saint-John's-wort."

She sighed. "Will this ointment work on any mind control, like for vamps?"

"Nope," I said. "You could drop a vamp in a whole tub of Saint-John's-wort and it wouldn't give a damn."

"What do you do against vampires, then?"

"Keep your cross, avoid eye contact, pray. They can do things that'll make Magnus look like an amateur."

She rubbed her eyes, smearing eye shadow on the ball of her thumb. She suddenly looked tired. "How do we protect the public against something like that?"

"You don't," I said.

"Yes, we do," she said. "We have to; it's our job."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't try. "So you thought it was Magnus because he ran, and he doesn't have an alibi?"

"Why else would he run?"

"I don't know," I said. "But he didn't do it. I saw the thing in the woods. It wasn't Magnus. Hell, I've only heard about vampires forming from shadows. I'd never seen it before."

She looked at me. "You've never seen it before. That's not comforting."

"It wasn't meant to be. But since it wasn't Magnus, you can call off the warrant."

She shook her head. "He used magic on police officers while committing a crime. That's a class C felony."

"What was his crime?"

"Escaping."

"But he wasn't under arrest."

"I had a warrant for his arrest," she said.

"You didn't have enough for a warrant," I said.

"Helps to know the right judge."

"He didn't kill those kids, or Coltrain."

"You pointed the finger at him," she said.

"Just an alternate possibility. With five people dead, I couldn't afford to be wrong."

She stood. "Well, you got your wish. It was vampires, and I don't know why the hell Magnus Bouvier ran from us. But just using magic on a police officer is a felony."

"Even if he was innocent of the original crime you were trying to bring him in on?" I asked.

"Felonious use of magic is a serious crime, Ms. Blake. There's a warrant for his arrest. You see him, you remember that."

"I know Magnus isn't nice people, Detective Freemont. I don't know why he ran, but if you put out the word that he used magic on cops, someone'll shoot him."

"He's dangerous, Ms. Blake."

"Yeah, but so are a lot of people, Detective. You don't hunt them down and arrest them for it."

She nodded. "We've all got prejudices, Ms. Blake; makes us all wrong once in a while. At least here we know what did it."

"Yeah," I said. "We know what did it."

"Do you know when the girl's body was taken?" she asked. She got a notebook out of her coat pocket. Down to business.

I shook my head. "No. It was just gone when I went up."

"What made you think to check on the body?"

I looked at her. Her eyes were pleasant and unreadable. "They'd gone to a lot of trouble to make her one of them. I thought they might try to get her. They did."

"The father's making noises that he asked you to stake her body before you went out after the vampires. Is that true?" Her voice was soft, matter-of-fact. But she was paying attention to the answers. She didn't take as many notes as Dolph did. The notebook seemed to be more something to do with her hands than anything else. I was finally seeing Freemont doing her job. She seemed good at it. That was reassuring.

"Yeah, that's true."

"Why didn't you stake the girl when the parents requested it?"

"I had a father. A widower. His daughter and only child got bit. He wanted her staked. I did it that night, right away. Next morning he's in my office crying, wanting me to undo it. Wanting me to bring her back as a vampire." I leaned back into the couch, hugging myself. "You put a stake through a new vamp's heart, and it's dead for good."

"I thought you had to take a vampire's head to be sure."

"You do," I said. "If I had staked the Quinlan girl, I would have taken out her heart, cut off her head." I shook my head. "There isn't much left."

She drew something on her note pad. I couldn't see what. I was betting it was a doodle and not a word. "I see why you wanted to wait, but Mr. Quinlan is talking about suing you."

"Yeah, I know."

Freemont raised her eyebrows. "Just thought you'd want to know."

"Thanks."

"We haven't found the boy's body yet."

"I don't think you will," I said.

Her eyes didn't look pleasant anymore. They looked narrow and suspicious. "Why?"

"If they wanted to kill him, they could have done it here, tonight. I think they want to make him one of them."

"Why?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. But usually when a vampire takes this personal an interest in a family, there's a reason for it."

"You mean a motive?"

I nodded. "You've seen the Quinlans. They're devout Catholics. The church sees vampirism as suicide. Their children will be damned for all eternity if they become vampires."

"Worse than just killing them," she said.

"To the Quinlans, I think so."

"You think the vampires will be back to get the parents?"

I thought about that for a minute. "Hell, I don't know. I mean, before vampires were legal you had some cases where a master vamp would take out entire families. Sometimes befriend them first. Sometimes just for revenge for some slight. But since they've been legal, I don't know why the vamp would do it. I mean, the vampire can take them to court. What could the Quinlans have done that was bad enough for this?"

The doors opened. Freemont turned, a frown already in place. Two men appeared in the doorway. They were both dressed in dark suits, dark ties, white shirts. Standard federal issue. One was short and white, the other tall and black. That alone should have made them look different, but there was a sameness to them, like the same cookie cutter had been used no matter how well cooked the outside was.

The shorter of the two flipped his badge at us. "I'm Special Agent Bradford, this is Agent Elwood. Which one of you is Detective Freemont?"

Freemont walked towards them with her hand out. Showing she was unarmed and friendly. Yeah, right. "I'm Detective Freemont. This is Anita Blake."

I appreciated being included in the introductions. I stood up and joined the foursome.

Agent Bradford looked at me for a long time. Long enough that it got on my nerves. "Is there something wrong, Agent Bradford?"

He shook his head. "I attended Sergeant Storr's lectures at Quantico. The way he talked about you, I thought you'd be bigger." He smiled when he said it, halfway between friendly and condescending.

A lot of scathing comebacks came to mind, but never get in a pissing contest with the Feds. You'll lose. "Sorry to disappoint you."