“How can I help you, Marshal?” the clerk said.
I opened my eyes and smiled. “Sorry, got distracted by the coffee.”
He smiled back and shrugged thin shoulders. “Glad I could make your day a little better. I’m so sorry about the other marshal getting hurt.”
“Thank you,” I said. “We’re actually here to get clothes from her room to take back to the hospital.”
“So she’s okay?”
I shrugged and smiled noncommittally. I doubted the marshal service wanted the media to learn about Karlton being a werewolf, and I knew Karlton didn’t.
Lisandro said, “We also need rooms.”
I nodded, and he was right to get me back on track. What the hell was wrong with me? I was losing focus in the middle of a case, that wasn’t like me. Not to this degree anyway.
The clerk went behind the desk and said, “How many people, and are they comfortable with sharing rooms?”
I started to answer, but Bernardo and Olaf came into the office. Olaf was almost too tall for the drop ceiling. I had a moment to wonder how it would feel to be so tall that ceilings were too short. It was so not the problem I had.
“Fresh coffee,” the clerk called out cheerfully as he typed on his keyboard. “How many rooms do you need?”
I counted in my head while I sipped the coffee. It was as good as it smelled; yum. “Three, with two beds apiece.”
“Thanks, Ron,” Bernardo called out and went toward the coffee. It made me think better of Bernardo that he knew the clerk’s name. If the clerk had been female I’d have expected it, but that he remembered the man’s name to be friendly made me wonder if some of the flirting from Bernardo was just a level of social enjoyment that I didn’t have with strangers.
“So, room for six,” Ron said, typing on the keyboard.
“Yeah.”
Olaf came to stand near the desk.
Ron gave him a nervous flick of eyes that seemed to take in the top of his bald head that was ever so close to the ceiling tiles. “Coffee machine is over there.”
“No, thank you,” Olaf said, in that deep rumbling voice.
“He doesn’t drink coffee or tea,” I said.
“Good to know,” Ron said, and his effort not to look all the way up to Olaf was almost painful.
“We just drink the blood of our enemies,” Nicky said.
Ron stopped in his typing and looked at Nicky. “What?”
“He’s teasing you,” I said, and glared at Nicky. The glare said, clearly, for him to stop it.
“We have two rooms upstairs near your original rooms, and one downstairs. Is that okay?”
“We need to be close to Anita’s room,” Nicky said.
“Anita, oh, you mean Marshal Blake.”
“Yes,” Nicky said.
Ron typed some more. “I’m sorry, that’s the best we have until someone checks out.”
Lisandro was near the door, looking out and drinking the yummy coffee. Bernardo trailed over to join us. He seemed to be enjoying the coffee, though he’d added enough cream to make it tan, probably added sugar, too. I thought about calling him a pussy, but decided it wasn’t worth it, I’d actually started adding cream and sugar to some coffee myself. Never throw stones if you think they’re going to come back and hit you.
A wave of dizziness rolled over me. I steadied myself against the desk and Nicky grabbed my arm. “Are you all right?”
“Dizzy,” I said. My knees began to slide out from under me and the coffee spilled down the side of the desk. Nicky caught me. “Anita!”
Lisandro collapsed. His empty coffee cup rolled across the floor. I thought, Oh shit, the coffee, but I couldn’t seem to form the words out loud. I tried to reach for a gun, but I couldn’t make my arms move enough. Nicky was holding all my weight in one arm, tucking me against his body, because he had his gun out; so did Olaf.
Bernardo collapsed to the floor with his gun in his hand. The damned coffee spilled about half of a cup into the worn carpet.
Ron, the clerk, was holding his hands out from his body, “I didn’t know . . .” Olaf shot him in the chest. The shot was like an explosion. I fought to focus through the dizzy, tilting world, and had a moment to see the door behind the desk open black and empty, but somehow I knew it wasn’t empty. The black cloak and white mask were clear for a second as it moved in a blur so that it wasn’t there when Olaf and Nicky fired.
I heard the bell on the door, and the last thing I saw before the dizziness ate the rest of the world was a blurring wave of black cloaks coming toward us. My last clear thought was, Please, God, let that be the drug, and not their real speed.