Skin Trade(167)

59




WE GOT DRESSED, because strangely, when the ardeur left and the grief left, the desert night was cold. Truth gave me his leather jacket; when I protested, he said, “I don’t really feel the cold like a human.” Duh, I so knew that, but the emotional revelations had shaken me a little. When he held the jacket out to me, I saw his arms. His lower arms had nail marks on them, some bleeding. I’d even managed to bleed the back of his right hand.

“God, Truth, I’m sorry.”

He glanced down at the scratches as if he’d just noticed them, too. “It’s nothing.”

“I’m still sorry I didn’t ask how you felt about nails.”

He gave a small smile. “We didn’t have much time to negotiate.”

“I guess not.”

“I count it as a mark of my service to you and Jean-Claude,” he said.

I flinched a little. “Don’t call it service, that sounds too much like…”

“Don’t make more of what he said than there is to make, Anita,” Wicked said. “He didn’t mean anything by it.”

I let the conversation die because it was all too confusing for me. Truth’s jacket was large enough that my hands kept vanishing in the sleeves, and the bottom of the leather hung down to midthigh. I looked like I was five and playing dress-up in my dad’s clothes, but I was warm. The fashion police could ticket me later.

I called Edward on Truth’s cell phone. Mine was probably in Phoebe Billings’s yard. I hoped Edward had found it. I called to find out where he was, and if I was too late to help him hunt demons.

“Anita,” and he sounded half relieved and half frightened, not something you hear from Edward often.

“Are you okay?”

“I should be asking you that,” and he lowered his voice, as if he were afraid of being overheard. “Last I see, you’re carried off by a vampire, and I let him do it, and it’s an hour and a half later, and you’re not back. I’d think if you had to feed the ardeur, a quickie would have done it.”

I fought not to glance at the two vampires. “Trust me, Edward, it was a quickie. Did I miss it? Was there a demon at Bering’s house?”

“You haven’t missed anything. Did you ever try to get a warrant based on a possible demon being in a house?”

I almost said yes, then had to stop and think about it. “No, actually.”

“Well, we got a judge who thinks that demons are just evil spirits. He’s arguing that demons couldn’t possibly have killed our cops.”

“Normally, he’d be right, but it doesn’t matter. Our warrant of execution should get us in Bering’s house,” I said.

“Shaw didn’t think so, and he’s the undersheriff.”

“Let me guess, Bering is rich, or connected, or something.”

“His family has been a big deal around here for as long as Max has been in charge. He’s the last of the family unless he breeds, which doesn’t seem likely if we can ever get into the house.”

“You can just press the warrant; it’s federal, and that outranks local.”

“I wanted to give you time to get back,” he said.

“Shit, Edward, you didn’t have to delay the investigation because I’m having a metaphysical breakdown.”

“Put it another way, have you seen anyone else but you and me that you’d want backing you against a demon?”

I thought about that. “Lieutenant Grimes and his men are good,” I said.

“They’re some of the best, but I haven’t seen them pray to the angels and have everything glow.”

Oh. “Okay, tell me where you are, and Wicked will drop me nearby.”

He was back at SWAT headquarters. “We’ve had the briefing about Bering’s house. We’re just waiting for the warrant, or for me to push the one we have.”

“My weapons are stashed there; could you change out some things? I didn’t pack with demon in mind.”

“I’ve already repacked for you, and I found your phone in the yard with your weapons. I can list what I packed for you,” he said.

“That’s okay, I trust you to pack for me. Though, frankly, most of the time a demon isn’t solid enough for normal weapons of any kind to work. The rare ones that do get solid enough to attack may only be solid for the second of that attack, so we’ll have to be shooting around each other if it goes bad.”

“See, none of their practitioners knew that, and neither did the priest they’ve got here that’s been blessing our bullets.”

“The priest has been doing what?” I asked.

“You heard right.”