"Why not?" he said.
I opened my mouth, closed it, because I didn't have a good answer. "I don't approve of raising the dead for curiosity's sake. You know how much money I've been offered to raise dead celebrities?"
"I'd still like to know what really happened to Marilyn Monroe," he said.
"When her family comes and asks, maybe I'll do it. But I am not raising the poor woman because a tabloid waved money at our boss."
"Waved a lot of money at our boss," Larry said. "Enough money that he sent Jamison out to try it. He couldn't raise her. Too long dead without a bigger sacrifice."
I shook my head. "Jamison is a weenie."
"Everyone else at Animators Inc. turned it down."
"Including you," I said.
He shrugged. "I might raise her and ask how she died, but not in front of cameras. The poor woman was hounded alive. Dead, she's still being hounded. Doesn't seem fair."
"You're a good guy, Larry."
"Not good enough to know that vampires burn to ash and skeletal remains are human."
"Don't start, Larry. It's just experience. I should have told you before you went out today. Truthfully, you're getting so good at the job, I didn't think to tell you."
"You assumed I knew?" he said.
"Yeah."
"I have noticed the daily lectures have been in short supply lately. I used to take more notes at work with you than I ever did in college."
"Not so many notes lately, huh?" I said.
"No, I hadn't really thought about it, but no." He grinned suddenly and it lit up his eyes, chased away the horrors of the day. For a moment he was the bright-eyed, optimistic kid who had first shown up on my doorstep. "You mean I'm finally learning how to do the job?"
"Yeah," I said, "you are. In fact, if you were quicker on the trigger, I'd say you were good at it. It's just hard to learn everything, Larry. Something comes up and you find out you really don't know what the hell's going on after all."
"You, too?" he said.
"Me, too."
He took a deep breath and let it out. "I've seen you surprised a time or two, Anita. When the monsters get so strange that you don't know what's going either, it usually gets real nasty, real fast."
He was right. I wished he wasn't, because right now I didn't know what the hell was going on. I didn't understand what had happened with Nathaniel. I didn't know how the marks worked with Richard. I didn't know how to find out if Malcolm was still among the undead, or if he'd crossed into that more permanent state of true death. In fact I had so many questions and so few answers that I just wanted to go home. Maybe Larry and I could both take a pain pill and sleep until tomorrow. Surely tomorrow would be a better day. God, I hoped so.
41
The house was still smoking when we got there. Thin greyish wisps of smoke rose from the blackened beams like miniature ghosts. Some trick of the fire had left the high cupola on top of the building intact. The lower stories were gutted and blackened, but the cupola rose like a white beacon above the wreck. It looked like a black-toothed giant had taken a great bite out of the house.
The fire truck took up most of the narrow street. There was a spread of water seeping along the street like a shallow lake. Firefighters waded through the water, rolling up miles of hose over their shoulders. A uniformed police officer stopped us well back from the action.
I eased down my window and flashed my ID. It was a little plastic clip-on card and looked official, but it wasn't a badge. Sometimes the uniforms would let me through, and sometimes they had to go ask permission. Brewster's Law was going around Washington and would give vamp executioners what amounted to federal marshal status. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. It takes a hell of a lot more to make a cop than just a badge, but for me personally I'd love to have had a badge to flash.
"Anna Blake, Larry Kirkland, to see Sergeant Storr."
The officer frowned at the ID. "I'll have to clear this with someone."
I sighed. "Fine, we'll wait here."
The uniform went off in search of Dolph, and we waited.