“Sorry, Marshal,” Sanchez said.
“No harm, no foul,” I said.
He smiled and nodded, but he was embarrassed. I realized that the handshake had been a test not just for me but for all of us. Just as the men would test their bodies in weight training, the gun range, drills, this was a test, too. Could you hide what you were, hand to hand with another psychic? I’d met a lot who couldn’t have done it.
“You need to work at your contact shielding, Arrio,” Rocco said.
“Sorry, Sarge, I will.”
Rocco nodded and moved to the next man. He was Theodoros, very Greek sounding and looking, but he was Santa, though Santa never looked like that when I was a little girl. His hair was straight and as black as Sanchez’s and my own. He was the proverbial tall, dark, and handsome, if you were into jocks. I wondered how in hell he’d earned the nickname “Santa.” It was Spanish for saint, but somehow I didn’t think that’s what they were going for.
Santa didn’t have any trouble shaking my hand and not letting me feel anything but a firm handshake. It would be a point of pride for him and the last man. Sanchez had blown it; they’d work harder because of it.
The last man was also ethnic, but I wasn’t entirely sure what flavor. His short hair was curly enough to be African American, but the skin tone and facial features were not quite that. He, too, was tall, dark, and handsome, but in a different way. His eyes couldn’t decide if they were dark brown or black. They were somewhere in between my dark brown and Rocco’s almost black. But either color, they were framed by strangely short but very, very thick lashes, so that his eyes looked bigger and more delicate than they were, like something edged in black lace.
“Moonus, Moon,” Rocco said.
We smiled; we shook. Rocco motioned me to follow him to the front of the room. We stood in front of the whiteboard. “I’m Cannibal.” Like Spider, Cannibal made me wonder why that name.
“If we’re doing first names and nicknames, then I’m Anita.”
“We heard you had a nickname,” Cannibal said.
I just looked at him, waited for him to say it.
“The Executioner.”
I nodded. “The vampires call me that, yeah.”
Davey called out, “You look a little short to be the Executioner.”
“Everyone looks short to you, Davis,” I said. “What are you, six-four?”
“Six-five,” he said.
“Jesus, most of the human population must look short to you, unless you’re at work.”
They laughed at him, and with me, which was good. The sergeant quieted the laughter with a gesture and said, “We do use nicknames, Marshal; do you want us to use yours?”
I looked at him. “You mean have you guys call me the Executioner, instead of Anita or Blake?”
He nodded.
“No, hell no. First, it’s too long for a call sign. Second, it’s not a name that I’ve ever heard spoken in a happy way.”
“Are you embarrassed by the name?” he asked.
“No, but it’s like Ivan the Terrible. I doubt seriously that anyone ever called him that to his face.”
“The vampires call you that to your face,” and Cannibal said it like he knew for sure. Maybe he did.
I nodded. “Sometimes they do, but it’s mostly Executioner when they’re talking to me. They just leave off the the.”
“We can call you Executioner,” he said.
I sighed. “I’d rather you didn’t, Sergeant. I’ve had too many bad guys call me that while they tried to kill me. They look at the package and call me Executioner to make fun of me. How small, how delicate, how not deadly looking.”
“And after they make fun of you?” he asked, voice serious, eyes studying my face.
I met his gaze. “Then they die, Sergeant, or I wouldn’t be here.”
“I promise never to call you short again,” Davey said.
That broke the serious mood, and I was happy to laugh with everyone else.
“Anita, then, if you go out with us.”
“Whether you let me go with your team depends on how this little test goes, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Lieutenant Grimes spoke from the door, and everyone swiveled to give him attention. It was automatic for them. “There are a lot of psychics in the world, Marshal Blake, but there aren’t many that are powerful enough to be useful and controlled enough to take into a firefight with you. We need to know how good your control is, and exactly what type of psychic you are. Some types of abilities clash, and if you clash with one of the men in this room, we’ll make certain you aren’t put on the same team.”