Skin Trade(132)

“Officer,” Edward said in his Ted voice, and even managed a smile.

“Marshal,” the uniform said. He’d put his gun up, but the holster was unclipped. “I’m going to check on the radio. Nothing personal.”

“If I saw people with this much firepower, I’d check, too,” Edward said, still easy and smiling. He so would not have checked; he’d have taken care of it himself, or ignored it as not his problem.

Officer Thomas, according to his nameplate, walked just a little away from us, without turning his back on us. He hit his shoulder mic and spoke quietly into it. He was far enough away that we couldn’t quite hear him, which was fine. He was trying to get someone to vouch for us. As long as he didn’t talk to Undersheriff Shaw, we’d be safe enough.

He made uh-huh noises; just from a distance you could tell he was simply agreeing. He took his hand off his mic and walked toward us. “You check out. Sorry about the misunderstanding.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, and meant it. I was going to have to find someone to give a memo to about the thought that the new law on carrying a small arsenal on our person was going to get us vampire executioners shot.

Edward put his hands down and, still looking pleasant, said, “We could use a ride back to the station, though.”

“No problem,” Thomas said. He took a breath as if he was going to ask something, then stopped himself. I was betting he wanted to ask where our car was, but he didn’t. It’s both a cop and a guy thing to not ask too many questions. Besides, he’d already made me kiss pavement; he probably was going to try for best behavior.

“I call shotgun,” Edward said.

“Fine,” I said.

Something in that one word had let him know I wasn’t happy. We just knew each other too well to hide much of anything. He looked at me, his face half in shadow and half in the light from a distant streetlight.

He called to Thomas, “Give us a minute.” Then it was our turn to step far enough away from the officer to not be overheard.

I wanted to tell Edward about at least part of my dream, and ask what he thought about Bibiana asking about it. How had she known? What did she know? Had Belle Morte changed the dream, or was she in touch with the Vegas tigers? Cats were her animals to call, just like Marmee Noir. But metaphysics like this wasn’t really Edward’s forte. He wouldn’t know more about this than I did. I needed to talk to someone who might. I needed to talk to Jean-Claude, alone.

“You all right?” he asked quietly, his back to Officer Thomas.

“Not sure. I need to ask Jean-Claude some stuff in private, soon.”

“She asked you about your dreams.”

I looked at him and realized that he had caught it and understood more than most. “I had a dream, and it was a doozy.”

He smiled, “A doozy, okay. Can you wait to talk to Jean-Claude, or do you need me to entertain Thomas?”

I thought about that. “Let’s get back to Olaf and Bernardo. Let’s see what’s happening with Paula Chu and the case. I’ll try to put the metaphysics on the back burner for a while.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.”

“Am I sure? Not really, but I’m here with a badge; let’s act like I’m a real marshal and not some freak.”

He touched my shoulder. “Anita, this isn’t like you.”

“Yeah, it is, Edward. I’m wondering if I can do my job, or if the metaphysics is getting too deep for a badge.”

“The metaphysics helps you be better at the job.”

“Sometimes, but we’ve just spent four hours with me in a healing sleep wrapped around a naked weretiger, so that the other cops couldn’t see that my own internal beast had cut me from the inside out. We had to take both you and me off the case while we did it. That’s not good, Edward. Now it’s full dark, and Vittorio is out there. We lost important time because we were trying to hide what I am.”

“Then let’s stop arguing about it and go to the station. Bernardo will catch us up.”

“Don’t you see, Edward, Ted, whatever, that for you and me for the last four hours, healing me, hiding me, was more important than the case. That’s not how cops think.”

“We think just fine, Anita.”

I don’t know what showed on my face, but he grabbed my arm. “Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t tear yourself down.”

“It’s the truth.”

“It’s only the truth if you buy into it. Yeah, we lost four hours, but you’re healed, and we know that Max doesn’t agree with what Bibiana is doing. We know that Victor isn’t happy with his mother and sides with his father. Knowing the politics of a city’s monsters is valuable, Anita.”