“Peppier?”
“Cops don’t say words like peppier.”
“Sure they don’t.”
We drove some more. I continued studying the photos of the two dead women. I searched for a psychic hit but found none. What kind of a psychic hit, I didn’t know. Hell, I would have taken anything: a face, a name, a distorted image. However, nothing came to me.
“You know a friend of mine,” said Sanchez, as he pulled off onto Los Feliz Boulevard—along with about half of Southern California.
“Oh?”
“Well, he’s not so much a friend but a great admirer of mine.”
I groaned. “Knighthorse.”
“How did you know?”
“Because you two are the cockiest sons-of-bitches I’ve ever met.”
Sanchez chuckled. “Does he know about your...secret?”
“No,” I said. “Which raises a concer...”
Sanchez, perhaps even catching a whiff of my own thoughts, nodded. “I know what you’re going to say: what’s to stop me from telling Knighthorse—or anyone else for that matter—your secret? That is, before you erase my memory.”
“Right,” I said. “For all I know, you could have texted your wife that you’re on a ride-along with a vampire.”
He chuckled. “Ride-along. Funny. But, no, I haven’t texted anyone. Is texted even a word?”
“My kids use it, so that’s good enough for me.”
Sanchez grinned, but then turned somber. “Truth is, I’m damn nervous about having my memory erased. I mean...how much of it will you erase?”
“I can be fairly exact,” I said.
In fact, I had been practicing the technique for the past few months with Allison, or, as I called her, my guinea pig. She didn’t mind being called my guinea pig, and she also didn’t mind helping me practice my various vampiric talents. Mostly, she didn’t mind me feeding on her. In fact, she encouraged it.
Strange girl, yes, but there was a reason for her madness—the more I fed on her, the more her psychic skills developed. The more they developed, the stronger she got. The stronger she got, the more of a pill she became.
Sanchez shot me a look. “How does it work?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s based on autosuggestion.”
“Like hypnotic suggestion?”
“Right.”
“Are you kind of new to all of this?” he asked.
“Being a vampire?”
“Yes.”
“New enough. Turns out, there’s more to it than running around graveyards at night.”
“Do vampires do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But that’s what I always thought. In my ‘before’ life.”