Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  He pulled back, and his professionalism came over him like he had put on another set of clothes. One minute all cuddles and romance, and the next Captain Livingston was there again. “Pamela, you remember Kaitlin.”

  Pamela looked up at us and smiled with lipstick the same crimson as her nails. The black suit jacket framed a crisp white shirt, and there was an engraved gold nameplate on her lapel that read MANAGER. I was beginning to see how we’d managed a table during the restaurant’s busiest time of day.

  “Of course I remember her,” Pamela said as she started scooting out of the booth. Since it was a deep booth, that took some doing, but she did it with ease, even grace. I’d have looked like a five-year-old getting down from the dinner table. Of course, when Pamela stood up, she was about six feet tall. Longer legs help the whole scooting thing, or so I’m told.

  Pamela shook Kaitlin’s hand graciously. I could see she was wearing red designer flats that matched the lipstick and nails, so the height was all her. Her hair was black like mine, but a different shade and texture. I couldn’t imagine what kinds of hair products she used and what careful blow-drying she’d done to get her hair to lie in a smooth, shoulder-length hairdo. Maybe I was wrong, and Pamela’s hair in its natural state wasn’t as curly as mine, but I’d never met anyone with her skin tone and rich facial features who didn’t have my curls or more.

  Livingston scooted out on the other side of the booth and introduced us one at a time. It wasn’t until Pamela was shaking my hand and giving me great eye contact out of big brown eyes that I realized she was wearing very nice and understated makeup, except for the red lips. But thanks to Jean-Claude’s lessons in color and style, I knew the red gave just the pop of color that the severity of the black-and-white outfit needed. You also had to be staring right in her face to feel the full force of her personality and let the impact of it change her from pretty to beautiful, or maybe it wasn’t beauty exactly, but whatever it was, the force of it made me smile as she shook my hand.

  The only one who didn’t smile back at her was Olaf, and he frowned, which meant he felt her beauty, her personality, whatever it was, but he didn’t want to be moved by it. Or maybe he just didn’t like tall women, and I was way overprojecting.

  “I’ll leave you to talk business, but unless it’s a life-or-death emergency, you’d better come find me and give me a kiss good-bye.”

  Livingston smiled. He was wearing a line of her lipstick already. “Unless it’s an emergency, you know I will.”

  Pamela used her thumb to rub the lipstick off his lips, which was a strangely intimate gesture. It made me sad that I wasn’t wearing my own shade of red and that I was too far away from any of my sweeties to paint it across their mouths. It’s funny what can unexpectedly make you homesick for the people in your life. I was suddenly almost aching to be home.

  Livingston waited until Pamela had disappeared to the front of the restaurant before he sat back down. I was pretty sure he watched her ass as she walked away, but apparently, he was allowed to do a lot more than just watch, so it was okay. Then it was the fun of sitting down. When you have a bunch of police, or certain types of military, sitting down in public is harder than it sounds. The booth was against the wall, so that was good for everyone, but there were pros and cons to it all. Sitting in the middle of the booth meant your back was securely against a wall and you had a clear view in all directions; the farther from the center you were, the more easy viewing you lost on one side or another. Of course, if you were in the middle and there was an emergency, you were trapped behind the table. You couldn’t run either toward the emergency or away from it, depending on what was happening. You were sort of committed to doing something from where you were sitting. On the ends of the booth, you could move easily if you needed to, but you had your back toward one side of the room or the other. Did you keep your field of view and sacrifice maneuverability, or lose the view and maintain your ability to move? I expected that sitting arrangements would be complicated. What I hadn’t expected was for Olaf to complicate them even more. I shouldn’t have been caught off guard; that I had been meant I was in a certain amount of denial about him and me.

  Livingston went back to the center of the booth, which surprised me until I noticed that the table moved freely as he scooted into his seat. Obviously the table wasn’t bolted down, which gave him an option if he had to move fast. He could just tip the table over and get out. Despite what you see in movie shoot-outs, most tables won’t stop bullets from hitting you, because they are soft cover, not hard cover. Hard cover is what it sounds like, something so hard or dense that it will absorb or block bullets before they hit you.

  Kaitlin slid in on Livingston’s left side, and Newman slid in on his right. I started to slide in beside Newman, and it would have been normal for Olaf to sit beside Kaitlin on the other side so we’d be even, but he slid in beside me. I scooted as close to Newman as I could get, or thought I had until Olaf moved all the way in and suddenly Newman’s sidearm was digging into my hip. I was also in danger of hitting my head against Olaf’s shoulder.

  “Can someone please move down? I’m getting squished,” I said.

  Everyone else moved down enough for me not to be in danger of getting stabbed by Newman’s holstered weapon. I moved over enough so that my face wasn’t pressed in against Olaf’s shoulder or any other part of him. Of course, I could only go so far before I bumped into Newman again, and I was not going to make them all scoot down again. I had enough room—we all had enough room—I tried to convince that part of me that wanted to crawl under the table and go to the other side of Kaitlin, but I wasn’t a child. I could do this with a modicum of cool. Sure, I could, and I told that tight feeling in the pit of my stomach that it could fuck off and let me be a grown-up.

  I really expected Olaf to push the chance to sit close to me, but he didn’t try to put his hip or leg up against mine. Even with him behaving himself, it felt tight. I think it was the height difference, and his shoulders, though not as broad as Livingston’s, still crowded me. Olaf seemed to realize that he was a little close because he raised his arm and put it across the back of the booth. He wasn’t trying to be smooth or even aggressive; his shoulder was just at a bad height for us to be this close. With his arm up, we fit better. The span of his arm was so long that his hand went all the way past Newman to the edge of Livingston’s shoulder. God, Olaf was just so big. Even if he hadn’t been creepy, he was over my height preference for dating. I didn’t like to feel this physically overwhelmed just sitting next to someone.

  “I don’t have cooties, I promise,” Kaitlin said. She tried to make a joke, but I saw her eyes flick to Olaf, then to me. She was doing some sort of girl math in her head, or maybe just girl-plus-boy math. I did not want her to come up with an answer on this one.

  “Anita and I work together frequently,” Olaf said, “and I prefer dark hair to light.”

  That last remark made me glance up at him. He was wasting a smile on her, the one that filled his eyes with warmth. To me, it was like one of those fireplace channels where you can watch TV images of a crackling fire. It was pretty to look at, but you couldn’t warm yourself by it.

  “I always wanted to know what I’d look like as a brunette,” Kaitlin said, and she gave him a smile that said, Yes, I am flirting with you. Was she serious or just teasing him? He wouldn’t like either much.

  “Brunette would be dark enough,” he said, still smiling at her.

  She wiggled her eyebrows at him, which meant she was teasing, but enjoying it anyway. I looked into her gray-blue eyes and knew that as long as she stayed away from colored contacts, she was still safe from Olaf’s darker intentions. It helped me fight the tension that was trying to build in my shoulders.

  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who wanted to change the conversation. “You know how to fight, Blake,” Livingston said.

  “Thanks. Just part of the job,” I said.<
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  “No, it’s not,” Newman said. “We’re not supposed to get that up close with any of the supernaturals.”

  I looked up at him and nodded. “True, but then I don’t think I’ve ever been on a lycanthrope—Therianthrope—case where we managed to get the rogue in a cage. Usually we’re hunting them and they’re hunting us, so we shoot them before they get that close.”

  “So, you don’t learn serious hand-to-hand fighting for the job?” Kaitlin asked.

  “Not in official training,” I said.

  “Where’d you learn it?” she asked.

  “Ted started teaching me, um, Marshal Ted Forrester. He was one of my mentors back when I first started.”

  “You were one of the first, weren’t you?” Livingston said.

  “Vampire executioners?” I asked.

  “Is that what they called you at first?”

  “No, we were just vampire hunters. The job title didn’t change until after the law changed and made vampires legal citizens with rights. You can’t hunt citizens like animals, so they started calling us executioners.”

  “Wikipedia says that the vampires nicknamed you the Executioner. Is that true?” Livingston asked.

  I nodded.

  A waitress with long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail came up to fill our water glasses and hand out menus.

  “Hi, I’m Hazel, and I’ll be serving you today.”

  I looked at her name tag, and it did read HAZEL, which was an unusual enough name that she had to be the waitress Carmichael, the Marchands’ handyman, was dating. We hadn’t been waiting so long because of slow service; we’d been waiting for our potential witness to be free to wait on us. Brownie points to Livingston. Dating the manager hadn’t just gotten us a table; it had gotten us another person of interest.

  Knowing who the waitress was made me notice her more. Hazel had hazel eyes that had more gray in the brown than green, as if the original color had faded. I wondered if her parents had known ahead of time that Hazel’s eye color would fade, or if she’d been born with her eyes that way. Was that even possible? Something had etched harsh lines at the corners of her eyes and the edges of her mouth like unhappy parentheses, but even with that, I put her on the young side of thirty-five. She seemed hard-lived rather than old. I caught a faint whiff of cigarettes as she moved around the table. Ah, a smoker; that will age the face and skin. She probably couldn’t even smell the bitter scent of it on herself anymore, but a nonsmoker like me, I couldn’t not smell it.

  I’d have started interrogating her, but Livingston ordered his food, which meant the rest of us had to look at our menus ASAP. For future reference, I hate to be rushed when choosing food, especially at new restaurants. I ended up ordering pancakes, because pancakes are like coffee. They’re all good; it’s just a matter of how good. A side order of extra-crispy bacon, orange juice, a regular Coke, and coffee and I was set.

  “Think you ordered enough caffeine?” Kaitlin said, smiling.

  “Probably not,” I said.

  That made her laugh. I was beginning to wonder whether she was just that cheerful or she was flirting with me. I wasn’t always able to tell when women aimed at me. The fact that women were included in my poly group at home still caught me by surprise sometimes. I was beginning to think that if I hadn’t been metaphysically connected to Jean-Claude and a half dozen other people who preferred women, I might not have ever found the same sex attractive. But then again, maybe I was just a late bloomer.

  Olaf ordered an omelet with mostly meat in it, a side of fruit, and coffee. I wondered if he’d have ordered differently if we’d had more time to look the menu over. I know I probably would have.

  When Hazel left with our orders in hand, Livingston took up the conversation as if we’d never stopped. “So, you’re the Executioner to the vampires.”

  “Among other pet names, yeah,” I said, and sipped my water. Nathaniel was starting to pester me about not drinking enough water.

  “Doesn’t that make marrying their king sort of awkward?”

  “I thought it would, but it turns out that they’re used to being afraid of their rulers, so me being their bogeyman and their queen will probably seem like business as usual to them.”

  “When do we question Hazel?” Newman asked.

  “After we get our food and eat it,” Livingston said.

  “Why eat first?” Newman said.

  “I thought you were a regular cop before you became a marshal.”

  “I was.”

  “Then you know that you always eat first, in case you get another call and have to leave.”

  Newman smiled and looked down at the table, nodding. “I can’t even argue. The food is good here. I didn’t know you were dating Pamela.”

  “We both decided we were ready for people to know.”

  “Well, congratulations.”

  “Thank you and congratulations on the engagement.”

  “You know all the local gossip now that you’re dating Pamela,” Newman said.

  “More than I did before, but I had to swear not to use anything I overheard unless I run it by her first, or someone’s life is at stake.”

  “Smart woman,” I said.

  “She is,” Livingston said, smiling as if the fact that she was smart made him happy. Pretty is good, but pretty and smart are better.

  “Frankie told me that the other marshals call Ted Forrester Death, and I heard you say you’re War,” Kaitlin said.

  “Yeah,” I said, sipping my water and hoping the coffee got here soon. If I was going to have to answer twenty questions about myself, then I needed more caffeine.

  Kaitlin turned to Olaf. “She said that Blake and Forrester were half of the Four Horsemen and that one of the others was Marshal Jeffries.”

  “Yes,” he said, and sipped his water. Maybe he wanted something stronger, too.

  “It’s you and Marshal Spotted-Horse. I would not forget such a great name, but I can’t remember which of the horsemen you are.”

  “He’s Plague,” Newman said.

  “Why are the four of you named the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?” Livingston asked.

  “Doesn’t my Wiki page say?” I asked, and didn’t manage to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

  “It’s mostly vampire stuff and your love life,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Friends told me to stop looking myself up online, especially with all the publicity about the wedding, so I don’t know what people are saying about me.”

  “Probably best you don’t know,” Livingston said.

  “So friends keep telling me,” I said.

  “I promise not to look you up online anymore if you’ll answer my questions,” he said.

  “Depends on the question, but sounds fair.”

  “Why the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?”

  Olaf answered, “The four of us have the highest kill counts.”

  “And we’re some of the most senior marshals still on the job,” I added.

  “You both seem awfully young to be the most senior,” Livingston said.

  I looked up at Olaf, and he noticed, so he looked down at me. I’d never really thought about how old he might be. He seemed sort of ageless, not literally like a vampire, but as if he would always be like he was when I’d first met him. It had never occurred to me to wonder if he was closer to Edward’s age or mine. He had to be somewhere in that nearly ten-year age difference, didn’t he?

  “What?” he asked me.

  I shook my head, and said to Livingston, “There were never many of us, but once they added a physical requirement along with the shooting requirement, that took out most of the real old-timers. They could shoot, but they couldn’t pass the obstacle course and calisthenics part.”

  “Some of them are teaching classes to the newer marshals,”
Newman added.

  “I was glad when they invited them to teach you new guys. That much field experience shouldn’t go to waste.”

  “A lot of them are stake-and-hammer guys though,” Newman said. “Old-fashioned doesn’t begin to cover their methods.”

  “The hunter that taught me the ropes was like that.”

  “I thought Forrester was your mentor. He’s known for his gun knowledge,” Livingston said.

  “You get that off his Wikipedia page?” I asked.

  “No, he worked a case that a buddy of mine was on. My friend is a gun nut, and he loved Forrester’s arsenal. He said that Forrester even used a flamethrower.”

  “Yep, that’s Ted,” I said, shaking my head.

  “So, he wasn’t your first mentor?”

  “No, Manny Rodriguez was. He taught me how to raise zombies and how to kill vampires.”

  “What happened to him?” Newman asked.

  “His wife thought he was getting too old and forced him to retire from the hunting side of things.”

  “It is not a job for old men,” Olaf said.

  “I guess it isn’t, but I wasn’t ready to fly solo when Manny retired. I was lucky I didn’t get killed doing jobs on my own at first.”

  “When did Forrester start training you?” Livingston asked.

  “Soon enough to help me stay alive.”

  “Ted spoke highly of you from the beginning,” Olaf said. “He does not give unearned praise. Are you being humble?”

  “No, I don’t . . . I really did have some close calls when Manny first retired, or maybe I just missed having backup.”