Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Duke will have a fit.”

  “I know, but they aren’t coming to help with the police work. They’ll shadow us, but they’ll stay out of the way for witnesses or clues or anything that touches the investigation.”

  “Then I don’t understand why they want to be here, Blake.”

  “In case what happened in the club happens again.”

  “You said it has never happened before.”

  “It hasn’t, and if it never happens again, then Nicky and Ethan will waste their time following me around at a distance, but if it does happen again, they’ll be close enough to help.”

  “Help how?” Newman asked.

  “If I vamp out, one of them will take one for the team.”

  “What does that even mean? I mean, I know what the phrase means, but what does it mean for your . . . whatever it is?”

  “They’ll let me feed on them.”

  “Blood?” Newman looked like the thought made him ill.

  I couldn’t help it. I smiled at him.

  “Do you think this is funny?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t, but the look on your face when you thought I drank blood . . . I have to find it funny or I’ll start feeling more like a monster than I already do.”

  “I’m sorry. Don’t let me make you feel bad about yourself. I don’t mean to do that, but the thought that you could need to drink blood from something you caught on this job scares the shit out of me.”

  I wasn’t smiling when I said, “I don’t drink blood, Newman. I drink . . . energy.”

  “What kind of energy?”

  “The kind of energy that I’d rather not take from you or any of the other local cops.”

  “So you’ll feed on Nicky or Ethan?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you mean, you feed on energy?” he asked.

  I was debating how to explain and if I even owed him an explanation when Ethan drove into the parking lot with Nicky at his side. If I hadn’t been afraid it would give them the wrong idea about the quickie, I’d have given them both a kiss.

  65

  I WALKED TOWARD the SUV like I was a grown-up police officer who wasn’t going to embarrass herself in the middle of an investigation, but by the time Nicky was out of the car, I felt more like a teenager whose hormones were running high and common sense was running low. It was ridiculous to want to touch him this badly. We’d just seen each other a few hours ago. I balled my hands into fists at my sides to remind myself not to reach out until my bare hand touched his naked skin. What was wrong with me today?

  Ethan walked around the front of the SUV to grin at us. “I used to be jealous when I saw you looking at other people like that, but now I’ve got Nilda at home, and she looks at me that way.”

  That made me smile at Ethan. He looked so happy. It made me want to hug him, because I loved it when my people were happy. Nicky took my hand in his and was smiling at me and at Ethan. “It makes you so happy that Ethan is doing the whole happily ever after with Nilda.”

  “Of course it does,” I said, smiling at him.

  Ethan laughed and threw an arm around both Nicky and me and hugged us. “I love both you guys so much.”

  “Anita loves you, too, so I have to,” Nicky said, and hugged the other man back.

  I was caught up in the group hug, and it was like all the shared happiness washed away the anxiety and the sexual overtones of my skin hunger of just moments ago.

  “You guys are so cute,” Newman said, smiling at us.

  We all turned in the hug to smile at him, willing to share the happiness of the moment. We were like a happily married couple who just liked seeing everyone else as happy as we were, except that instead of us wanting everyone to be a happy couple like us, there were more options.

  “Thanks. Now I’ll take my snacks, and we’ll go look for more clues.”

  “Let’s sign the warrant over before we go clue hunting,” Newman said.

  I looked at him, the happy glow beginning to fade for me. I was glad he was signing the warrant over to me. It had been what I wanted, right? So why did it feel like I’d lost instead of won? But I let Newman take out the warrant and spread it across Nicky’s back. Newman and I signed it, and Ethan signed off as the witness. I folded it back up and tucked it into one of the pockets on my tactical pants. It was mine now, which meant I was in charge, for better or worse.

  “Anita says you’re going to follow us?” Newman asked.

  Nicky nodded. Ethan said, “Yes.”

  “If Duke spots you, he will lose his shit,” Newman said.

  “He won’t spot us,” Nicky said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  Nicky just looked at Newman with his sunglasses making him look tough and cool. Ethan smiled, ruining the tough part, despite his multicolored hair combined with his sunglasses and a body so fiercely in shape that body armor couldn’t hide it. Just because I was happy for him to be in love with Nilda didn’t mean I couldn’t admire the view.

  “They are as good as they look,” I said.

  Newman smiled and shook his head at us or maybe just at me. “You’re not catching Duke at his best. He’s better than he looks.”

  “Maybe he is,” I said, “but I’d rather risk them being spotted than not have them nearby.”

  “I feel like I’m missing something here, Blake.”

  If only you knew half of what you’re missing, I thought, but out loud I said, “You know that energy I feed off of?”

  “Yeah, you were going to explain what kind of energy it was when they drove up.”

  “You know how you didn’t want me cuddling with Giselle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want me cuddling with you?”

  Newman gave me a very long look. “What are you hinting at?”

  “I’m saying that I’d rather feed on people I’m already intimate with instead of embarrassing any of us by accident.”

  He frowned and looked at me and then at the other two men. “I thought Ethan here was monogamous with his girlfriend back home.”

  “Mostly,” Ethan said.

  “What does mostly mean?” Newman asked.

  I really didn’t want to explain that Ethan was emergency food, and I really didn’t want to say that Ethan had been my lover first and then moved out of my bed not because of Nilda, but because I had too many people in my life I was already in love with. Ethan was a great guy, but . . . he wasn’t my great guy. Luckily for all of us, now he was Nilda’s perfect guy. But he was still on the list of people I could feed the ardeur on without blowing up either of our lives. Nilda understood the metaphysics and treated it like Ethan was a blood donor for one of the real master vampires back in St. Louis.

  “It means rather than let Anita accidentally feed on a stranger in a strip club, she can feed on me without my girlfriend getting upset,” Ethan said.

  “If what I saw inside the club is the kind of energy Blake needs,” Newman said, “then my fiancée would most definitely be upset.”

  “Which is why we’re here,” Nicky said.

  “It’s some kind of sexual energy. That’s why there are all the rumors about you having affairs while you’re working,” Newman said.

  I fought to keep my face blank. “I do not sleep with the local cops when I travel as a marshal. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.”

  “I believe you.” Newman sounded like he meant it.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “We need to meet Livingston and the rest of the locals ASAP,” I said.

  Newman nodded. “Let’s go.”

  We went, though I risked a quick kiss with Nicky before I hurried to catch up with Newman’s long legs. Ethan and I didn’t kiss because we weren’t lovers. We were closer to friends with benefit
s, which sounded better than food.

  66

  I CALLED EDWARD from the car to tell him about the missing bagh nakha. I started to explain what it was, but he interrupted, “I know what it is, Anita.”

  “Of course you know what a bagh nakha is,” I said, smiling and shaking my head.

  Newman asked, “Did they learn anything from looking at the body?”

  I asked Edward the question, and he said, “Only that it wasn’t done by a wereanimal, and that whatever was used was only in one hand, and the killer is probably right-handed. We made a list of possible weapons, but I’ll admit I didn’t even put a bagh nakha on the list. It’s too rare.”

  “If I told you that the Marchand family had moved from India to here in the eighteen hundreds, would you have put it on the list?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “And if I’d told you that the murder was done in a room full of taxidermied animals from India and Africa and antique weapons of all kinds from all over the world?”

  “Yes, Anita, that would have been helpful.”

  “My bad, and I mean it.”

  “No, mine for not insisting on seeing the crime scene for myself.”

  I heard the rumble of Olaf’s voice, but couldn’t understand what he’d said.

  “Our bad for not looking at the original crime scene,” Edward said.

  “Well, we’ll know for next time,” I said.

  “Where are you and Newman headed now?”

  “To help with the search of Muriel and Todd Babington’s house and anywhere else they could have hidden the bagh nakha.”

  “Text us the address, and we’ll join you there.”

  I had to ask Newman for the address. “Address sent to you; we’ll see you there.”

  “If the murderer is human, what is Newman going to do with his warrant?” Edward asked on the phone.

  “It’s my warrant now. He signed it over to me.”

  Edward was quiet for a second or two. “Much more interesting,” he said.

  “Yeah, I thought so, too. See you at the house.”

  “Otto says not to do anything fun before we get there.”

  “He didn’t say fun.”

  “He said, ‘Don’t kill anyone before we get there.’”

  “I’ll do my best to restrain myself,” I said. I meant it as a joke, but I heard Olaf’s voice much closer to the phone, as if Edward had given it to him.

  “Killing is what we do best together, Anita. Wait for me.”

  My pulse was a little faster suddenly, but I managed to say, “I’ll wait for you, unless they shoot at us, and then self-defense trumps waiting.”

  “Do not die waiting for me, Anita.”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  Edward was back on the phone. “Newman won’t like you using the warrant to kill humans.”

  I fought not to glance at the man sitting next to me, driving. “We’ll play it by ear,” I said.

  Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I hadn’t been impressed with the Babingtons the one time I’d met them, and I actively disliked Muriel, but that was a long way from being morally okay with killing them in cold blood just because I had a piece of paper that said I could. If they were handcuffed and safely detained, I wasn’t going to shoot them. Maybe they’d try to shoot at the police. Then it would be self-defense. Short of that, I had no idea what to do.

  Newman broke into my moral quandary by asking a question. “Jocelyn’s alibi is airtight for the murder, but she still seems to have helped set Bobby up to be framed, so is she working with her aunt and uncle? I mean, if they did the murder while she was at the club getting her alibi? Are the three of them in it together?”

  “The aunt and uncle don’t seem to have treated either Bobby or Jocelyn like a nephew and niece. Everyone that knows the family has confirmed that there was no love lost between them and any other part of the family,” I said.

  “That’s true, but if Muriel found out she was cut out of the will, I think she’d do almost anything to get her hands on the money.”

  I looked at him; he was so serious. “I agree, but would she be willing to kill her own brother? I think she wouldn’t have a problem framing Bobby, with her attitude toward his beast. She doesn’t consider him fully human anymore. I can even see her paying someone to off her brother, but doing the deed herself, that is more of a stretch.”

  “What if she had her husband do it?”

  “Maybe, but I honestly don’t think he has the stomach for it.”

  “I think if one of them did it personally, it was most likely Muriel,” Newman said.

  “Honestly, I have trouble seeing either of them as the actual hands-on murderer.”

  “You like Jocelyn better for it, her own dad?”

  “The level of cold-blooded manipulation and lying that she’s had to do to convince Bobby that she loves him, is in love with him,” I said, and shook my head, “if she could do that, I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

  “He’s a wereanimal. Why didn’t he smell that she was lying?” Newman asked.

  “I’ve seen powerful wereanimals and vampires that were fooled if the lie was in one of their personal blind spots or they were too emotionally involved. Just because you’re supernatural doesn’t mean you can’t lie to yourself.”

  “And Bobby isn’t that powerful a shapeshifter, so it would have been easier to lie to him, right?”

  “There’s some of that. Being able to smell a lie is usually shapeshifter territory. You can lie to low-level vampires more easily than to low-level shapeshifters.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

  “Muriel seemed to believe that she’d inherit the family estate and artwork,” I said.

  “She and Todd are going to be charged with theft or something,” Newman said.

  “So why steal anything if they knew that Jocelyn was going to cut them into the lion’s share of the estate? I mean, why not just wait until the will goes through probate and the dust settles?”

  “Good point,” Newman said, “but if they didn’t do the actual murder, and Jocelyn was in full view of a club full of people, then who did it? Who killed Ray Marchand?”

  “You mean, besides Bobby?”

  He shook his head. “No, Forrester and Jeffries say the murder wasn’t shapeshifter claws and teeth, so that means it’s not Bobby.”

  “Not if Bobby knew he’d be the first suspect. What if he used the bagh nakha instead of his own claws?”

  “Then it would be premeditated and utterly cold-blooded. I don’t see Bobby pulling that off,” Newman said.

  “I agree, but I’ll admit that I like him better than any of the rest of the family, so I may be prejudiced in his favor.”

  “Me, too,” Newman said.

  “So Jocelyn seems to have set Bobby up as being a crazy sexual stalker after his own sister, and when the father said to cut that shit out, Bobby went all wereleopard crazy and killed Ray.”

  “If Jocelyn is the one lying, then yes,” Newman said.

  “We heard her voice on the video. That was not a victim. That was a willing participant in a relationship,” I said.

  “She’s lying about the relationship, but what if she believes that Bobby killed their father because of the relationship? Then maybe she’s so traumatized that she’s trying to distance herself from all of it.”

  I frowned at Newman. “Are you saying she’s convincing herself that Bobby stalked her, or even raped her, so she won’t blame herself for him killing their father over the affair?”

  “Sounds far-fetched when you say it like that.”

  “I’ve seen weirder things, but it makes more sense for Muriel to believe she was inheriting the house and contents.”

  “But if she’s inheriting all that, then why steal?” he asked.<
br />
  “Maybe their debts are so high, or maybe they’ve borrowed from dangerous people like a loan shark, and they can’t wait for the will to go through probate,” I said.

  “I’m not sure that Muriel and Todd would know anyone that dangerous.”

  “They have to know someone that could fence, or wants to buy, some very expensive and rare antiques and art,” I said.

  He nodded. “Good point. Okay, so either way, we think Muriel and Todd are in it somewhere?”

  “Yeah, I like them for it, either as the murderers on their own or in a conspiracy with Jocelyn, because unless Bobby is dead or guilty of the murder, then he still inherits the majority of the fortune.”

  “Killing Ray only ever really benefited Bobby,” he said.

  “Yeah, which gives him another motive,” I said.

  Newman shook his head. “Don’t say that, Blake. We’re too close to saving his life.”

  I couldn’t argue, but I also knew that even finding the murder weapon in Muriel’s purse wouldn’t take Bobby’s name off the warrant of execution, and it sure as hell wouldn’t put a new name on it. This case was so not what the warrant system had been designed to handle. I wasn’t sure there was a legal way to void a warrant once issued. You could only change the target, not the intent, but if it was all humans involved in the murder, then what? I actually didn’t know. Maybe we could solve a murder, save a life, and make new case law all in one fell swoop.

  67

  THE MARCHAND-BABINGTONS or the Babingtons, whichever, lived in a McMansion in a neighborhood of them. Each minimansion might have been beautiful on its own with a sweep of landscaped garden leading up to it. But stuck-on postage-stamp yards with the usual unimaginative suburban landscaping made the houses look out of place, like the house equivalent of trying to fit into a dress that was too small for you. Just because you could didn’t mean you should.

  There were so many of the bright blue state trooper cars that they spilled out the driveway and took up one side of the road; it looked like someone had sewn a blue border in front of every green yard on that side of the street. Newman had to pull into a driveway past the address and turn around; he finally parked close to the entrance to the subdivision. As we got out of Newman’s Jeep, I caught a glimpse of Nicky and Ethan driving by the subdivision entrance.