"How many nights does it run?"
"Two weeks," he said.
"Two weeks, starting today?"
"Yes."
"I don't want to be out here another two weeks," I said.
"Me, either," he said, and this time he sounded tired.
The real trouble with this case for me was that I knew exactly why these victims had been chosen. I even knew what was killing them. The trouble was I couldn't tell anyone but Edward, because if I told the police everything I knew, the killers would come after me and every policeman that I told, and everyone that they told. The Harlequin were the vampire equivalent of police, spies, judge, jury, and executioner. They were also some of the greatest warriors to ever live, or unlive. Some of them were vampires and some of them were wereanimals, which was how they were slicing apart the bodies of the weretigers they were killing across the country. The body at our feet looked like a human man. Before he died he'd been able to shift to a big-ass tiger, but it hadn't helped him against the Harlequin, just as it hadn't helped any of the others. If two people were equally fast, equally strong, but one was better trained at fighting, the better trained one would win. So far, none of the weretigers had been anything but ordinary people who just happened to turn into weretigers.
"We're here to work the scene," Edward said, "so we do."
I sighed, squared my shoulders, and stopped huddling in my thin jacket. "It's partly that we know so much the other police need to know."
"We settled this, Anita. The . . . ones who can't be named - " He glared at me. "I really hate that we can't even say their names out loud. It feels like we're in a Harry Potter book talking about He-Who-Must-Not-B e-Name d."
"You know the deal, Edward; if you mention their name without their invitation they hunt you down and kill you for it. If I told the other police, everyone who said their name would be hunted down and slaughtered. I don't know about you, but these guys are scary good, and they seem to have knowledge of modern forensics."
"They're wearing cloaks, gloves, and hoods that cover their hair, Anita. The outfits that keep them hidden from the other of these . . . guys help them not leave forensic evidence behind."
"Fair enough."
"And the Whatevers that are on your side don't know the faces of the others. They wear masks when they meet, like some terrorist cells, so they can spy on each other if they need to."
"So we have no faces to give them, no names except nicknames, and those match the masks they wear."
"I don't think assassins this good wear Venetian carnival masks in downtown Tacoma, so the nicknames and masks don't help," he said.
"So we know everything and nothing useful," I said.
"If I'd taken the contract to kill the Queen vampire, she'd be dead right now."
"Or you would and I'd be talking to Peter about why he's lost a second dad."
Edward gave me the full weight of his cold gaze. "You know how good I am at my job."
I'd had years of practice meeting that cold gaze. I met it now. "You don't understand, Edward. She's the darkness, the night itself made alive."
"I wouldn't have just blown her body up and called the job done," he said. "Something that supernatural needed magic to kill it for good."
"What - you would have brought a witch along?"
"No, but I would have gone to one and gotten charms, a blessed weapon, something. The mercenaries the vampire council hired to kill her treated her like just another mark and now we're all in the shit because of it."
I couldn't argue with him; he was too right. The Harlequin had been the law of the vampire council in Europe for thousands of years, but their original job had been as bodyguards to their Dark Queen. Half of them had broken with the vampire council and were back to taking orders from the Mother of All Darkness.
"They thought fire would destroy her," I said.
"Would you have assumed that?"
I thought about it. "No."
"What would you have done?"
"I'd have plastered myself with holy items, thrown more holy items on the body so her spirit couldn't leave the body she's in, and taken her head and heart, then I'd have burned it all separately down to ash, and put the ashes of the head, the heart, and the body in different bodies of running water."
"You really think she could come back if you put the ashes in the same body of water?"
I shrugged. "She survived the total destruction by fire of her body and was able to send her spirit out to take over the body of other vampire council members. I wouldn't put anything past her."
"So even if we find Morte d'Amour, the Lover of Death, and destroy him, she'll just jump to another host."
"She can survive as a disembodied spirit, Edward; I'm not sure she can be killed."
"Everything dies, Anita. The universe will die eventually."
"I'm not going to sweat what happens five billion years from now, Edward; the universe can take care of itself. How do we stop them from killing innocent weretiger citizens, and the bigger question, how do we stop her?"
"You're the necromancer, I'm just a humble killer," he said.
"Which means, you don't know either," I said.
"Why doesn't your boyfriend know? Jean-Claude is Master of the City of St. Louis, and what's left of the European power structure is trying to make him head of a new vampire council here in the States. Why aren't the vampires and all the other wereanimals you're hanging out with helping to stop this?"
"The other . . . whatevers are hunting these guys. They'll be traveling as they hear about the bodies, but they're behind us, Edward. We've been first on the ground in the last three cities."