Necromancing Nim Read Free Page B

the officers at the scene everything else I know. Can I go now?”
    He quirked an eyebrow at me. His relatively good humor seemed to have returned once I started following the right script. “You don’t seem to be showing me the right kind of, you know, fear.” I could tell from his eyes—a little twinkly, like he was flirting—that it was a joke, but Jesus. God save me from alpha males. And, yeah, that was why I quit dating him. Well, part of it.
    “I work for a vampire,” I told him dryly. “Compared to him, you’re relatively un-scary.”
    He shook his head dolefully. “I hate that. I like to be feared. Damn vampires.” And that was the rest of why I quit dating him. Though he hid it fairly well under most circumstances, Eric’s dislike of vampires was more than casual. He was, to put it bluntly, speciesist.
    “Maybe if you get out the thumbscrews.” I glanced at my watch. Colin was going to be pissed. Worse, he was probably going to let Mitch finish my roster for me, and Mitch would just fuck it all up, and then Colin would be pisseder. More pissed. Whatever.
    Eric nodded. “I’ll have to talk to my supervisor. I’m not sure we use thumbscrews anymore.” He looked at his little notebook, then back at me, now painfully earnest. I pictured him with lipstick and had to fight not to smile. He’d make a really pretty girl. A little eyeliner would be damn hot on him, in fact. “I’d really appreciate any help you can give us,” he went on, sober and sincere. “You’re aware this Sebastian Marcheleto is being held under suspicion of murder?”
    I nodded. “It was mentioned. No details to speak of.”
    He perused his notes. “The victim was found in a vampire-safe room downtown at the Brown Palace, drained of blood, with the obvious neck wounds.” The green eyes turned to me again.
    I frowned. Something about the situation felt wrong, and I was sure it wasn’t just because Sebastian had been helpful. “What makes you think it was Marcheleto?”
    Eric didn’t seem pleased with my question. “The room was in his name.”
    I nodded. “He didn’t seem all that surprised when the cops showed up.” I considered, then suddenly blurted, “I don’t think he did it.” It came to me in a sort of blurry gut feeling—nothing I could justify, but I couldn’t argue with it either. And once I’d realized it, I couldn’t stop myself from saying it.
    “Well. Thank you for your professional opinion.” Eric’s voice was laced with sarcasm.
    That blurry gut feeling changed to boiling, acidic anger. I wished I’d accepted his offer of coffee so I could throw it at him. “Take it or leave it,” I snarled. It sounded ridiculous even as I said it. I shouldn’t have bothered—I don’t really have the right kind of face for snarling.
    Eric visibly backed off his increasingly aggressive stance, easing into a more cop-like, neutral demeanor. “Why are you defending him? Wilson said you slapped him.”
    I shrugged, hiding my discomfort. “Misunderstanding.”
    “He said something to you. What was it?” Eric pressed. Maybe I hadn’t hidden that discomfort quite as well as I’d hoped.
    I shrugged again. It probably wouldn’t work any better this time, but hey, worth a shot. “Just stupid vampire shit. ‘I bet you’d make a good dessert,’ that kind of thing—” I broke off, feeling my eyes widen. The pieces had suddenly fallen together in my head. “He can’t have killed her. He was too pale.”
    Eric frowned. “Not following.”
    I didn’t mention that a little more knowledge about vampires in general might help him with his job. It would just lead to a rehash of the argument we’d had during our spectacularly unsuccessful last date. “If he’d fed on her, his skin would have been a more natural color. He was really white—he hadn’t fed in several days, maybe a week.”
    He tapped his pen on the evidence folder. “A week?”
    “Yeah.” That little niggling feeling that had plagued me