Skin Trade(184)
“I can act as a focus for psychic ability for raising the dead.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can share power with other animators, and combined we can raise more, or older, dead.”
“Really,” he said.
“Yeah, I wrote it up for the magazine The Animator a few years back.”
“Email me the back issue, and I’ll read up on it. Maybe practitioners here can do something similar.”
“Your abilities aren’t very similar.”
“Ours weren’t either.”
“We’re both living vampires, Cannibal; that’s similar enough.”
He glanced at me, and it was a longer look. “The law hasn’t expanded to psychic vampires yet.”
“They don’t want to understand it enough to regulate it.”
He grinned. “Too many politicians would be on the wrong side of it.”
“Probably,” I said.
He gave me that glance again. “You know any?”
“No, just being cynical.”
“You’re good at it.”
“Why thank you, always high praise from a cop.” I had the feeling that he still hadn’t asked all of his questions. I waited in the bright neon silence, punctuated by darkness between the lights, as if the night were thicker anywhere the light didn’t shine. My mood was showing in my head.
He pulled into the big circular drive at the New Taj. I realized I should have called ahead and had some of our people meet us. I’d expected to be dropped off by Edward and the boys, and I would have been safe enough. Now it was just me.
“You want me to walk you up?”
I smiled at him, hand on the door. “I’m a big girl.”
“This vampire has a serious hard-on for you, Anita.”
“You ask all the questions you wanted privacy for?” I asked.
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re blunt?”
“All the damn time.”
He laughed again, but there was an edge of nerves to it. “Do you ever get tempted to feed on more than you should?”
The doorman, or the valet, or someone, was at the door. I waved them off. “What do you mean, Rocco?”
“I can take a memory, Anita. I can take it and erase it from their mind. I did it accidentally a few times. It’s like it becomes my memory, not theirs, and it’s a high. It’s a rush. I think if I let myself, I could take it all, every bad memory they’ve ever had. Maybe more. Maybe I could take everything and leave them blank. I think about how it might feel to take it all.”
“Tempts you, doesn’t it?” I said.
He nodded and wouldn’t look at me.
“Have you ever done it?”
He gave me a look of shock, of horror. “No, of course not. It’d be evil.”
I nodded. “It’s not about being able to do something, Rocco. It’s not even about thinking about doing it. It’s not even about being tempted to go too far.”
“Then what is it about?” he asked.
I looked into that very grown-up, very competent face, and watched the doubt in his eyes. I knew that doubt. “It’s about deciding not to do it. It’s about being tempted but not giving in. It isn’t our abilities that make us evil, Sergeant, it’s giving in to them. Psychic ability isn’t any different from being good with a gun. Just because you could walk into a crowd and take out half of them doesn’t mean you will.”
“I can lock my gun up, Anita. I can’t take this out of me and put it somewhere safe.”
“No, we can’t, so every day, every night, we make the choice to be good guys and not bad guys.”
He looked at me, hands still on the steering wheel. “And that’s your answer: we’re good guys because we don’t do bad things?”
“Isn’t that what a good guy is?” I asked.
“No, a good guy does good things, too.”
“Don’t you do good things every day?”
He frowned. “I try.”
“Rocco, that is all any of us can do. We try. We do our best. We resist temptation. We keep moving.”
“I have to be older than you by a decade; why is it that I’m asking you for advice?”
“First, I think I’m older than I look. Second, I’m the first one you’ve met that you thought might be tempted in the same way. It’s hard when you think you’re the only one, no matter how old you are.”
“That sounds like the voice of experience,” he said.
I nodded. “Sometimes, sometimes I’ve got so much company I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Like that,” and he nodded toward the window. It was Truth and Wicked, patiently waiting for us to finish our conversation. Had they been watching for me, or had they just known I was here? Did I want to ask? Not unless I was ready for the answer.