MaryJanice Davidson: Dead Over Heels

“Spare change?” the zillionth homeless guy asked us, and I smiled at him and gave him a dollar. Sinclair disapproved of this, being a self-made man, but what the hell. I was a rich woman now; legally half of his was mine, and I could do what I liked with my one dollar bills.

But—this was weird—I could hear the homeless guy fall into step behind us. Did he want more ? Because that was just being greedy. It was one thing to be out of work and ask people for money, but to—

I felt something sharp and pointy against the back of my neck.

“Alley, now , fuckers!”

“Which one?” I asked, which I thought was a pretty reasonable question, but he just dug the knife in a little more, pissing me off, and nudged me to the right.

“Rings, wallet, purse,” he chanted, once we were off busy Broadway. Obviously a professional.

“I can’t believe it!” I gasped.

“ I can,” Sinclair said with his usual air of morbid disdain. “And if he keeps jabbing you with that pin, I’ll be forced to make him eat it.”

“We’re being mugged! We saw the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Met, Ellis Island, and the Central Park Zoo, and now we’re finishing the day like real tourists!”

“I hate zoos.”

“What kind of a communist psycho hates zoos?”

“I’ll never get the smell of monkey out of my trousers.”

“Rings, wallet, purse, now , fuckers!”

“I can’t wait to tell my mom!”

“About my trousers?”

“Are you people fucking deaf?” Another jab. Sinclair snarled, but so quietly only I could hear him. “This is a robbery and you gotta give me your shit!”

“Oh, I know what this is,” I assured him. I whipped around, faster than he could track, and snatched the knife out of his hand. I bent the blade with my thumb until it was useless as a weapon, then handed it back to him. This was really for his own safety, as God knew what Sinclair would have done to him.

He stared at it, then stared at me, then turned to run. I thrust my ankle between his and he hit the street.

“You know, I haven’t had a bite since we got here,” I said. “I mean, besides you.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

We fell on him.

You’ve got an alibi,” Nick grumped at dinner the next night. It was early—about seven thirty—which was good, because I had places to be, and couldn’t suck down my drinks fast enough.

“Besides our word?” Sinclair asked mildly. He’d given up any semblance of politeness and had brought the paper to dinner, which he was carefully reading. Although we’d been talking for ten minutes, this was the first time Sinclair had spoken up.

“Yeah. Coroner placed the kid’s time of death between ten and eleven that night—”

“While the four of us were having dinner,” I finished.

“Well, duh, Nick,” Jessica said kindly. “You must have known it was a fresh crime scene. Betsy and Sinclair didn’t have time to ditch us, kill a child, and return to the table to argue over dessert.”

“Mmmff,” Nick grunted.

“Yes, an intelligent, unbiased professional would have known that,” Sinclair said to the paper.

Astonishingly, Nick didn’t rise to the bait. A crisis of conscience, maybe?

“Do you think it was someone here at the hotel?” I asked, almost whispering.

Nick sent me a look of sizzling scorn; I almost wanted to duck. “Of course.”

“I doubt it,” Sinclair replied absently.

“Come on! If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it’s a fucking duck.”

“I have no idea what ducks have to do with your crime scene.”

Nick leaned forward, his blonde hair flopping into his eyes. He pushed it back impatiently and said, “I mean, right around the corner from a hotel run by vampires, with vampire guests, a kid gets killed—by a vampire—and you’re saying it’s got nothing to do with this place?”

“I would be surprised. As Betsy said, vampires don’t shit where they eat.”

“The smart ones, anyway.”

“I’d actually agree with her”—he nearly gagged as he said it—“but what if it’s a message?”

“You mean like a note? Except left on the body of a kid?” I felt my gorge rise.

“Yeah. A message for the king and queen. They knew you were coming, right?”

“Of course,” Sinclair said carefully. He’d actually laid the paper down.

“So, maybe someone in here is trying to impress you. Pay tribute. Whatever.”

“They pay tribute with blood oranges, not ritual sacrifice.”

“And they oughta know killing a kid is the last thing that will impress us,” I snapped.

“Will they?” Nick asked quietly. “Your predecessors were pretty bloodthirsty, right? And aren’t you having some trouble being taken seriously by the teeming hordes of the undead?”

“I wish you wouldn’t put it like that,” I grumbled, downing my Cosmo (hey, we were in New York) in a hurry.

“All they know is that there’s a new sheriff in town. My bet is that they’re trying to impress you or freak you out. Either way, he—or she—or they—killed that kid to get to you two.”

“So what do you suggest we do, Detective Berry?”

He ticked our options off on his fingers. “One: leave town. Now. Tonight. Two: interview every vampire in this building. Thr—”

“Pardon me, Your Majesty.” We all looked up and saw the bellboy (bellman) who’d tried to help unpack my shoes when we got here. “The rest of the staff has arrived and await your convenience.”

“Thank you, O’Neill. I’ll meet with them when we’ve finished here.”

“As you wish, Majesty.” He bowed in my direction. “My queen.” He ignored Jessica and Nick, but Sinclair must have said they were okay, because otherwise he wouldn’t have come up to the table in the first place.

And then he trotted off. I was relieved that he hadn’t drowned himself or jumped off a high building after I’d snapped at him our first night, though I’d had no idea he was a vampire.

“You dog!” Jessica exclaimed. “That’s why you weren’t in the room earlier . . . you were out interviewing suspects.”

“Of course. I am not unaware of my responsibilities, though it is always refreshing to have someone less than half my age point them out to me.”

Score! I thought it, but didn’t say it. Nick had the grace to look abashed. Or was it annoyed? Then he went back into jerk mode and said, “I want to be there for the interviews.”

“No,” Sinclair said coolly.

“Sinclair, you’re not a cop. There’s stuff you might miss.”

My husband laughed politely.

“Maybe you should—” Jessica began tentatively.

Doing an eerie impersonation of Nick, Sinclair started ticking points off his long fingers. “One: he’s out of his jurisdiction. Two: even if he wasn’t, this is a vampire matter. Three: with his prejudice, he will be more a hindrance than a help, and four: although there is a killer in the city—perhaps more than one—I owe my people protection. Which does not include letting a human policeman find out they’re undead.”

“Besides,” I said, “you have to help me do something instead. Now that Sinclair’s going to be tied up.”

Nick managed to look mollified and pissed at the same time.

Iknew I looked like a dork, twirling around like Maria in The Sound of Music , but I couldn’t help it. “Oh, it’s all sooooo beautiful!” I cried. “This is a shoe store,” Nick informed me.