"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."