up behind us. "Anita, please don't do that again."
I kept moving toward Olaf and the woman as I said, "Do what?"
"Leave me alone with a beautiful woman who is obviously trying to pick me up."
"You're a big boy," I said. "I thought you could handle it."
"If I fall off the wagon again, my wife will divorce my ass. Help me avoid the temptation."
I would have said it was ironic, his turning to me for help in avoiding the temptation of sex with other women, but we were up with Olaf and the woman. There wasn't time to worry about Lisandro's lack of logic.
Olaf looked at us, still smiling, the pleasant mask hiding everything, but the faintest flash in his eyes. If you didn't know what you were looking at, you'd miss it, and how many women would be looking for serial killer sex in anyone's eyes?
The woman touched his arm again, but he didn't put his hand over hers this time. She noticed the lack of touch and looked at us all. She frowned at me, but seeing my U.S. Marshals jacket she both relaxed and frowned harder. Her hand tightened just a little, squeezing his arm. "Do you have to go to work?"
"I told you I was here to hunt monsters." He smiled while he said it, and lifted her hand off his arm, gently. He held her hand for a moment, lingering. "This is Marshal Anita Blake and her deputies."
The "deputies" part wasn't exactly true, but it wasn't untrue either, so I ignored it and moved on. "Hey," I said, "sorry, Marshal Jefferies, but we have to go hunt bad guys now."
"So you just work together," the woman said, her hand still in his. She seemed to take encouragement from the fact that he was still holding her hand.
I nodded, but he said, "Only because she refuses to date me."
The woman glanced back at him as if to see if he was kidding her. He kept his face very carefully full of wry humor, an expression I'd never seen on his face and a set of emotions that I didn't think he ever felt.
"Then she's a fool," she said, and put her arm around his waist, and he cuddled her against him, tucking her up under his arm. She couldn't see his face anymore, and the charming humor was just gone; one minute he was a flirting man, the next he was Olaf. He let me see in his eyes, his face, that he wasn't thinking anything safe, sane, or consensual. He let the monster show in his face with no hiding. It stopped the breath in my throat, made me hesitate between one step and the next so that I almost stumbled. That one raw look let me know that Olaf hadn't changed at all; if anything he'd been hiding more from me.
Nicky touched my arm and kept me moving, whispering, "Don't let him spook you; that's what he wants."
I nodded and kept walking. He dropped his hand away and let me walk on my own, but he stayed beside me now. Lisandro trailed us both.
"We need to rejoin Marshal Forrester and the others now, Otto," I said; my voice was calm, very calm, trailing down to that emptiness where it would have almost no inflection at all. I was one step away from going to that empty staticky place in my head where I used to go when I killed people. Lately, I didn't have to disassociate to pull the trigger. That probably should have worried me, but it didn't. Olaf worried me. One monster at a time, even if one of them is yourself.
"Time to go, Marshal Jefferies," I said, my voice that low, careful, empty sound.
He was still holding the woman's hand. "She wants to date me."
She was looking from one to the other of us. "Is something going on between you two?"
In unison, he said, "Yes," and I said, "No."
She tried to pull her hand out of his, but he held on. Without looking at her, he said, "She has refused every offer from me." He looked at the woman, and he dredged up one of those pretend smiles again.
She looked a little hesitant, and looked at me. "You're not his exgirlfriend?"
I shook my head. "No."
She smiled up at him. "Great." She even put her other hand on his arm, so she was holding on to him twice. It was sort of the girl version of the double-arm squeeze that some men use