Skin Trade

by Hamilton, Laurell K.

  “I love you, too.”

  He hung up then, and I guess he was right. We were done, but it still felt like the conversation had gone badly, or like he hadn’t said everything he needed to say. I loved Jean-Claude, and Asher, but I missed my house. I missed living with Micah and Nathaniel in our house. I also missed my alone time with Jean-Claude. Asher, or someone, was always with us, because we finally realized we had a spy in our midst. Or maybe that was too harsh; we had gossip. Vampires love to gossip. You’d think living so long would make them great philosophers or scholars, and a few do that, but most are just people with very long lives, and they love a good rumor. So we had to make sure the rumor mill said that Jean-Claude was spending a lot of time with the men. Which meant that suddenly I was never alone with anyone. I liked, or loved, everyone, but a little alone time with them individually would have been nice. But how the hell do you date that many men and have any privacy? No clue. And forget me having alone time with myself; that just didn’t happen anymore. It was to the point that the only time I was alone was in the car going from one job to another. Things had to change, but I wasn’t sure how.

  But for today, all I had to do was find a serial killer. I knew I needed to see a Wiccan priestess, and the queen of all the weretigers in Vegas, or excuse me, Chang of all the tigers. I needed to do the tigers before it got too dark. I had clear-cut goals and a time constraint. When a murder investigation this awful is simpler than my love life, something has gone horribly wrong. The problem was, how did I fix what had gone wrong, and exactly what was wrong? I just knew I wasn’t entirely happy, and neither were some of the men. I was beginning to realize that unhappiness might include Jean-Claude. Not good.

  I got out of the car and watched the three men come toward me, their faces showing that they’d been arguing, too. Great, we could all be grumpy together.

  22

  EDWARD HAD BASICALLY been telling Olaf to stay the fuck away from me. Olaf had been telling him that unless he was fucking me, it was none of his business. Oddly, if Edward had been doing me, then Olaf would have accepted that I was off limits. Apparently, it had never occurred to Edward to lie about that. I was just as glad because I could never have pretended that. Not to mention that if the rumor got back to Donna, she’d be heartbroken, and their son, Edward’s stepson, Peter, would never forgive either Edward or me. It was all too weird and Freudian for me.

  The good news was that the warrants would be coming soon. Edward had a fax number for the local police. “You really have worked Vegas before,” I said.

  He nodded.

  Something occurred to me that hadn’t before, and I felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner. “Did you know the local executioner?”

  “Yes.” So, Edward, one word, simply yes.

  I studied his face and knew that the sunglasses probably didn’t hide anything useful in his eyes, but . . . I had to ask. “Did you like him?”

  “He was competent.”

  “Not good, just competent,” I said.

  “He had more rules than you and I do. It limited him.” His voice was utterly cool, no emotion.

  “So, you’d met the dead operators, too?”

  He shook his head. “Only Wizard.”

  “Wizard?”

  “Randy Sherman.”

  I studied his face. “You just saw a man in the morgue who you knew, had worked with, and it didn’t . . .” I waved my hands, as if trying to grab the right word out of the air. “Didn’t it move you?” The question was inadequate, but it would have been too stupid to ask Edward if he cared.

  “Only a woman would ask that,” Olaf said.

  I nodded. “You’re absolutely right, but I am a woman, so I get to ask. It would bother me more to have looked at a man who I knew in there. It was bad enough as a stranger. I kept thinking about the SWAT guys I’d met earlier, and knew that all the dead in there had been just as tall, just as professional, just as vital, and now it was all gone.”

  “You’d have cared more,” Edward said, “but it wouldn’t have stopped you from doing your job. Sometimes you work better when you’re upset.”

  “Do I say thanks?”

  “My reaction bothers you, I get that, Anita, but I’ve seen a lot of men die who I knew. After a while you either deal with it better or get a desk job. I don’t want a desk job.”

  I wanted to yell at him. Yell that I knew he cared for Donna and the kids. I was pretty sure he even cared for me, but his lack of emotion about the men in the morgue reminded me that Edward was still a mystery to me, and maybe always would be.

  “Don’t overthink it,” Bernardo said.

  I turned to him, ready to be mad, because being mad at him would be easier than yelling at Edward. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re being a girl, and you need to be the guy I know is in there, or you’re going to weird yourself out about Ted here. You need to trust him, not doubt him now.”

  “I do trust him.”

  “Then let it go, Anita.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it, then turned back to Edward. “I’m not going to get this, am I?”

  “No,” he said.

  I did a pushing-away gesture. “Fine, fine, let’s do something useful.”

  “When we serve the warrant, they’ll insist that SWAT go with us. They’re very serious about that here in Las Vegas.” His voice was still empty, as if his emotions hadn’t caught up wth him.

  “We aren’t hunting them. We’re just gathering information. You and I both are pretty sure Max is too mainstream to approve of his people killing policemen.”

  “One, if we’ve got a warrant in hand, SWAT goes with us in Vegas. They mean that. Two, Max is well connected, Anita, which means the local cops don’t want us walking in on his wife and family with a warrant of execution, and no one watching us.”

  “Do they really think we’d just go in there and start shooting?” I asked.

  Edward looked at me. It was the most emotion I’d seen on his face in the last few minutes.

  “Is my rep that bad?” I asked.

  Bernardo said, “Most of the police see us as bounty hunters with badges. Cops don’t like bounty hunters.”

  “There are going to be things that I need to say that I can’t say in front of Grimes and his men,” I said.

  “The lieutenant probably won’t be coming personally,” Edward said.

  “You know what I mean, Edward.”

  “We’ll see if we can distract them for you,” Edward said.

  “If I am not allowed to hurt them,” Olaf said, “then I will not be good at distracting them.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  Bernardo grinned at me. “I’ll do my best, but I’m better at distracting the ladies.”

  “I’ll see if I can get you some privacy,” Edward said, and frowned at both the other men.

  “Hey,” Bernardo said, “I’m just being honest, but frankly I think the SWAT team is going to glue itself to Anita.”

  “Why me?” I asked.

  “Deputy Lorenzo is friends with the woman who works in the front office for their SWAT. Did you really do a one-arm curl of two hundred sixty pounds?”

  I fought to give him full eye contact. “No.”

  “Then what did you do?” he asked.

  “A two-arm curl,” I said.

  Edward and Olaf were looking at me now, too. “Why would you draw that much attention to yourself?” Edward asked.

  “You’ve seen them, Edward; if you didn’t know me, would you let me serve a warrant with them?”

  “You’re a U.S. Marshal, Anita. It’s our warrant. They’re backing us up.”

  I shook my head. “I needed to prove to them that I could handle myself. The weights were right there. It seemed like the quickest way to settle it.”

  “How did you explain that you could curl almost three times your own body weight without falling over or busting something?” He sounded disgusted.

  “I
don’t need this from you, Edward, Ted, whatever. You don’t know what’s it like to be the girl. To always have to prove yourself. You get tired of it.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “The truth.”

  He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “What does that mean?”

  “That I’m carrying different kinds of lycanthropy. Grimes had read my file, Edward, it’s in there now. The Philadelphia police outed me when I ended up surviving and healing after having my skull cracked.”

  “You don’t have a scar,” he said.

  “No, I don’t, just like I don’t have a scar from the weretiger attack in St. Louis. You’ve seen Peter’s scars from the same beastie. It gutted me, remember?” I pulled my shirt out of my pants enough to flash my smooth, untouched stomach. “I can’t play human anymore, Edward.”

  23

  BERNARDO AND OLAF both moved away a little, as if the emotion were too much for them, or they were leaving the hysterical woman to Edward. There was more than one reason he was the unofficial leader. When you do the hard things, you get to call the shots.

  He looked at me for a moment, then asked, “Are you all right?”

  It was such a weird thing to ask that I wasn’t angry, just puzzled. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means what I said. You seem on edge.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I’ve got a serial killer mailing me body parts. I had Lieutenant Grimes actually ask me if I was Jean-Claude’s human servant. My blood test alone should have gotten my badge yanked, but no one’s come to talk to me about it. I’ve been living with Jean-Claude and the guys at the Circus for months, and I miss my house. I miss my stuff. I miss being alone with Nathaniel and Micah. I miss being alone with anybody. There are too many damn men in my life, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “You don’t want dating advice from me, Anita.”

  That made me smile, in spite of myself. “I guess not.”

  “But you aren’t the only preternatural branch marshal who’s been attacked on the job. I think unless you actually shift and they could prove you a danger in court, they aren’t going to bitch. I think they’re afraid of getting sued, workman’s comp or something like that. They certainly don’t want the first of us in court fighting to keep their badge to be you.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “You’re a woman. You’re pretty. You’re petite. You’d look like the poster child for being picked on by the big bad government.”

  I frowned at him. “I’m no one’s victim, Edward.”

  “I know that, and you know that, but the media won’t know that.”

  “So you’re saying that if I were a man, they’d have asked for my badge by now?”

  “Not necessarily, but being a girl helps you here; don’t begrudge that.”

  I shook my head. “Fine, fine, whatever, fuck it. Do you really think that SWAT will insist on coming with us?”

  “If we’re serving an active warrant, yes.”

  “Well, then a trip to the tigers is almost useless. I can’t talk freely enough in front of them.”

  “We can see the priestess first, but you’re not going to avoid Grimes and his men.”

  “Damn it.”

  “Most of the time it’s nice to have that much extra firepower and technology behind us. Just for you, me, Otto, we can do and say things on our own that we don’t want SWAT to see or hear. You for all the secrets, and us for practical solutions.”

  “I’m pretty practical myself, Edward.”

  “Ted, Anita; you need to work on that and use the right name.”

  “Fine, Ted, I do my share of practical solutions.” I took a deep breath in and blew it out, slowly. “We can see the priestess while we’re waiting for the warrants. It’ll give me the illusion we’re doing something useful.”

  Bernardo and Olaf had sidled back over. The fact that I hadn’t realized they were within hearing distance said I was a lot more distracted than was good for my job.

  “You sound bummed, babe, did your undead boyfriend not come through for you?” Bernardo said.

  “Do not call me babe, or any other term of endearment, okay?”

  Bernardo spread his hands, as if to say, Fine.

  “Did your vampire lover disappoint you?” Olaf asked, and whereas it had been pure teasing with Bernardo, Olaf made it sound way too serious.

  “My relationship with Jean-Claude is none of your business.”

  He just looked at me, and even through sunglasses I could feel his stare, heavy and uncomfortable.

  “What?” I demanded.

  Edward stepped between us, literally blocking my view of the other man. “Drop it, Anita. We’ll go see Sherman’s priestess; by then the warrants will be up. We’ll deal with our police escort when the time comes.”

  I realized that Edward probably needed to know some of the potential problems with the weretigers. But I didn’t owe the other two men the explanation. “We need to talk, Edward,” I said.

  “Talk,” he said.

  “In private.”

  “You just had a private discussion,” Bernardo said.

  “No, I got upset, and both of you bailed on the hysterical woman, and left Ed . . . Ted to deal with me. Now I need to tell him things that really are private.”

  “We are your backup; don’t we need to know what’s going on?” Bernardo said.

  “I’ll tell . . . Ted, and then if he thinks you need to know, I’ll tell you.”

  They didn’t like it, but when they got to sit in the car with the air-conditioning, Bernardo liked it better. Olaf went because he had no choice, but he didn’t like it.

  When we were alone in the pounding, bright heat of the Vegas desert, I told Edward. I told him about Max and his queen wanting me to sleep with their tigers. I told him about accidentally giving powers to Crispin.

  Edward took off his hat, wiped the area of the sweat band, and settled the hat back on his head. “You do have the most interesting problems.”

  “Is that a complaint?”

  “Just an observation.”

  “You know everything I know now; do we need to tell the other two?”

  “Some of it.”

  “I’ll let you tell as much, or as little, as you think we need.”

  “What if I tell them all of it?”

  “If you think that’s best; I trust your judgment.”

  He nodded, and started for the car. “Let’s get out of the heat, and I’ll tell them something while we go see a witch.”

  “She’s a Wiccan high priestess; not all Wiccans like to be called witches.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “You already know that,” I said.

  He smiled at me. “You know, if we really were sleeping together, Olaf would back off.”

  I gave him the look the comment deserved. “You aren’t serious?”

  “About doing it for real, no. Donna would never forgive either of us, and it would destroy Peter. Besides, it would just be . . .” He made a waffling motion with his hand. “Wrong.”

  “Like doing family,” I said.

  He nodded. “Something like that. It’s not what we are to each other.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “How close are you to this tiger Crispin?”

  “Biblical,” I said.

  He smiled and shook his head. “Is he dominant or weak?”

  “Weak.”

  “That won’t make Olaf back off. It’s got to be someone that Olaf can respect.”

  “Can’t help you there. Wait, he knows I’m doing Jean-Claude and Micah and Nathaniel. Are you saying none of them measure up to his standards, but you would?”

  “He doesn’t respect any man he thinks might be gay, Anita.”

  “Yeah, Otto is an all-around prejudiced bastard. But they’re all doing me, regardless of who else they’re doing; that makes them like girls?”

  “Otto is like a lot of people; bisexual is sti
ll gay, if you’re doing guy-on-guy.” He grinned suddenly, and it was pure Ted Forrester. “Of course, girl-on-girl is just one guy away from a fantasy.”

  “Please, don’t tell me you think that’s true?”

  His grin softened around the edges, and the real Edward leaked into his face, even around the sunglasses. “I have to be Ted while we’re here, Anita. We’ve got too many cops around to be myself.” The grin came back, wide and good ol’ boy. “And Ted thinks that lesbian means you just haven’t met the right man.”

  “I’d like to introduce Ted to my friend Sylvie and her partner. Trust me, neither one of them thinks they need a man in their life, not in any way.”

  “We good ol’ boys need our illusions, Anita.” We were almost to the car.

  I spoke low. “You’re about as much a good ol’ boy as I am . . . Ted.”

  “I’ll have to be Ted if SWAT is with us, Anita.”

  I stared at him. “Shit.”

  He nodded. “You aren’t the only one who has to be careful with an audience.”

  “When having police around makes you have to lie all the time, Edward, maybe we aren’t the good guys?”

  He opened the passenger door for me, which he never did. I let him, for Olaf’s sake, but it bugged me. Edward leaned close and whispered in my ear so that Olaf would think he was whispering sweet nothings, but what he actually said, was, “We aren’t the good guys, Anita. We’re the necessary guys.”

  I settled into the seat, with Olaf and Bernardo wondering what Edward had said to me. I couldn’t make my face match his smiling one. I couldn’t play along that he’d whispered something naughty in my ear. I could only sit and let my sunglasses hide my eyes and help me lie to the people who were supposed to be helping me.

  I was lying to the police, lying to my backup; the only person I wasn’t lying to was Edward. Funny how that was usually the case when we worked together. He explained that the weretigers’ queen might try to fix me up with some of her people in a bid to bind themselves closer to Jean-Claude’s power base. True, as far as it went. I just stared ahead and kept the glasses on.

  Edward turned in his seat so he could see both men better. He started by explaining to all of us. “I arranged for the warrant to be dropped off here, at the coroner’s parking lot. We can chat while we wait.”