Necromancing Nim Read Free Page A

But it left me feeling naked.
    Aside from a dentist’s office, a police station is the worst place ever to be kept waiting. Also like the dentist, there’s not much chance you won’t be kept waiting, so all in all it’s best to have a way to deal with the situation. Unfortunately, I’d come unprepared. I tried a pointed examination of my watch, projecting a distinct I need to be somewhere else air, but nobody seemed interested, except one helpful receptionist type who brought me a donut. It was stale. Obviously, I hadn’t hit on an ideal coping technique. I was left with nothing to do but take in the scenery.
    The Englewood Police Department is much like any other suburban police department. There are places to wait, places to fill out paperwork, places to be intimidated, interrogated or incarcerated. It’s always a little wackier at night. At night, there are more drunks, more vampires and more drunk vampires. The cops who work there after dark are also quite a bit testier, or at least that’s been my experience.
    In lieu of asking someone for a magazine on the off chance they might handcuff me for being annoying, I occupied myself reading the Wanted notices on the wall. There were a good many fanged faces in the group—you’d think Englewood was suffering from a rash of vampire attacks. Except when you actually read the notices, most of the vamps were wanted for tax evasion.
    Finally, I got up, poured myself a cup of coffee from the pot on the counter and sat back to commune with my iPod. The coffee was black and so strong I could barely drink it, and I like strong coffee. What little I managed to choke down tasted like battery acid. With crappy creamer and Splenda.
    By the time they finally got around to me, it was far too late to salvage my evening’s work. Even though I’d expected this, it pissed me off, so when Detective Eric Harrison meandered his way to my chair to start the formalities, I didn’t really care that he was six one and hot. Nor did I want to shake his hand. I did, anyway, but I scowled when I did it. Of course, his general hotness was mitigated by the fact we’d already dated. It hadn’t gone well.
    “Ms. Taylor,” he said to me. A smirk lurked along his mouth. “Come this way.”
    “What’s with the formalities, Eric? And you wrecked my work schedule.” I shook my head. “Colin is gonna kill me.”
    “I can write you a note.” Eric grinned as he pushed open the door to the interrogation room.
    “Gee, thanks.” I trudged in and sat down.
    “You want more coffee?”
    “No, thanks. Not sure I can survive another cup.”
    He chuckled and took a seat across from me. He had green eyes, and both the eyes and the mouth were a bit too big and feminine for what was otherwise a rugged, manly sort of face. The effect was both disarming and ridiculously sexy. Also? Freckles. His looks, as well as his rakish air, had convinced me to say yes last year when he’d asked me out after the last time I’d been dragged to the police station in the middle of the night. A hazard of the job, I supposed. Getting dragged to the police station, not dating hot but annoying cops. Maybe both, actually.
    He folded big, square hands on the table. “So. Tell me what happened.”
    “Why?” Probably not the best way for me to start my formal interrogation.
    Eric narrowed his eyes at me. I have to say I deserved it. “Because I asked you to?”
    “No, I mean why are you doing the interrogating?” He was a Denver cop, not from Englewood. “Why can’t I talk to that nice Officer Wilson who brought me in?”
    His eyes narrowed. “Because it’s my case, not Wilson’s. Now, Ms. Taylor, if you could please tell me what happened?”
    Fair enough. I gave a brief account of my encounter with HDTV Guy and Sebastian’s rescue. Eric nodded and took notes.
    “So you didn’t see where Marcheleto came from?”
    “No. I was kind of occupied with not getting killed. And he just popped in out of nowhere. I told