I sipped coffee and thought about my next answer, because I couldn't argue with him. He was probably right. "Regardless of how we got where we are, Malcolm, you have several hundred vampires in this city. Jean-Claude let you have them because he thought you were blood-oathing them. We learned in October that you aren't. Which means that the vamps with you are cut off from an awful lot of their potential power. I'm okay with that, I guess. Their choice, if they understand that it is a choice, but no blood oath means that they are not mystically tied to anyone but the vamp that made them. You, I'm told, do the deed, most of the time. Though the church deacons do recruit sometimes."
"How our church is organized is not your concern."
"Yes," I said, "it is."
"Do you serve Jean-Claude now, when you say that, or is it as a federal marshal that you criticize me?" He narrowed those blue eyes. "I do not think the federal government knows or understands enough of vampires to care whether I blood-oath my people."
"Blood-oathing lowers the chance of vamps doing things behind the back of the master."
"Blood-oathing takes away their free will, Ms. Blake."
"Maybe, but I've seen the damage they can do with their free will. A good Master of the City can guarantee that there is almost no crime among his people."
"They are his slaves," Malcolm said.
I shrugged and sat back in my chair. "Are you here to talk about the warrant, or to talk about the deadline Jean-Claude gave your church?"
"Both."
"Jean-Claude has given you and your church members their choices, Malcolm. Either you blood-oath them, or Jean-Claude does. Or they can move to another city to be blood-oathed there, but it has to be done."
"It is a choice of who they would be slaves to, Ms. Blake. It is no choice at all."
"Jean-Claude was generous, Malcolm. By vampire law he could have just killed you and your entire congregation."
"And how would the law, how would you, as a federal marshal, have felt about such slaughter?"
"Are you saying that my being a federal marshal limits Jean-Claude's options?"
"He values your love, Anita, and you would not love a man that could slaughter my followers."
"You don't add yourself to that list - why?"
"You are a legal vampire executioner, Anita. If I broke human law, you would kill me yourself. You would not fault Jean-Claude for doing the same if I broke vampiric law."
"You think I'd just let him kill you?"
"I think you would kill me for him, if you felt justified."
A small part of me wanted to argue, but he was right. I'd been grandfathered in like most of the vamp executioners who had two or more years on the job and could pass the firearms test. The idea was, making us federal marshals was the quickest way to grant us the ability to cross state lines and to control us more. Crossing state lines and having a badge was great; I wasn't sure how controlled we were. Of course, I was the only vampire hunter who was also dating her Master of the City. Most saw it as a conflict of interest. Frankly, so did I, but there wasn't much I could do about it.
"You do not argue with me," Malcolm said.
"I can't decide if you think I'm a civilizing influence on Jean-Claude, or a bad one."
"I saw you once as his victim, Anita. Now I am no longer certain who is the victim, and who the victimizer."
"Should I be offended?"
He just looked at me.
"The last time I was in your church you called me evil, and accused me of black magic. You called Jean-Claude immoral, and me his whore, or something like that."
"You were trying to take away one of my people to be killed with no trial. You shot him to death on the church grounds."
"He was a serial killer. I had an order of execution for everyone involved in those crimes."
"All the vampires, you mean."