'Do you remember the oldest daughter? The one who went away to the army?'

'Vaguely,' Micah said.

'She and Aunt Jody have been living together for about five years.'

'Living together, how?' Micah asked.

'What did you call cutie here? Your live-in partner?'

'His name's Nathaniel,' I said, automatically.

Micah said, 'Yeah.'

'They're living together like that.'

We all looked at one another. Micah said, 'I had no clue.'

'None of us did,' Juliet said.

Aunt Bertie screamed, 'You're bringing up your children with your two catamites!'

'I do not think that word means what she thinks it means,' I said.

'Bertie's gone crazy,' Juliet said.

Essie was hunching in on herself, trying to look like she didn't know any of these people. She muttered, 'I'm so sorry, Mike.'

He patted her arm. 'It's okay, Essie, your parents were never your fault.'

She flashed him adoring blue eyes, and he missed it completely as he watched his mother and aunts fight. Nathaniel looked at me; he hadn't missed it either.

'You contaminated one son,' Bertie yelled. 'Look what he brought home to you! Stop living in sin before you contaminate your other children!'

The three of us, and Dev, all exchanged looks. He said, 'I think they mean Nathaniel, but ...'

Bertie got a handful of Bea's hair and the fight was on. Hospital security arrived as the two sisters got down to some serious hair-pulling, fingernail-using girl fighting. It was kind of embarrassing, not that it was Micah's mom, but that they fought like girls. I'd have to teach Bea how to throw a punch.

CHAPTER 15

Morgues aren't usually my favorite places, but it had been a choice of the morgue or helping Micah talk to the hospital security and police about not having his mom and aunt hauled off to jail. Frankly, I'd have let them take Aunt Bertie if it wouldn't have sent his mom to jail, too. Richard Zeeman's mom, my other almost-mother-in-law, had also had a temper. What was it with the men that I loved having moms who were such ... live wires? Maybe they both liked women just like dear old Mom? In Micah's case, I was a cop like his dad, so he got a two-for-one deal. It was all too weird and Freudian for me.

I stared down at the first plastic-edged corpse and wasn't happier here with the dead than up trying to figure out the living, but I was less confused. I had felt guilty leaving Nathaniel with Micah and the mess of the living, but he couldn't come with me. Dr Rogers had barely gotten the okay from the local cops for me to see the first three victims. Including my boyfriends would have been asking too much, and besides, I didn't want either of them to see the horrors I saw in my job, especially not if this was what would be happening to Rush Callahan. Previews are a bitch. I pushed away that last thought and looked down at the body.

There would be paperwork somewhere that told me her name, maybe even her background. Had she had a family? But I didn't need, or want, any of that right now. The only way to stay sane was to think body, it; depersonalize. Background information got in the way of the pronoun it and made it more a her. Looking down at the body I didn't want it to be a her. I needed it to be a thing. Sometimes I worried that I'd become like some legal serial killer with my victims just rogue vamps and shapeshifters, but moments like this made me understand that my empathy was way too good for me ever to be a serial killer. Most of them saw their victims as things like a lamp, or a chair, or a tree, no more real than that. It was what allowed them to do their crimes with so little remorse. You don't feel bad about beating up a chair or breaking a lamp, right?

I stared down at the body and fought to keep in that Zen mind-set where it was all impersonal and I didn't keep seeing Micah's dad in the hospital bed, or think what this woman must have gone through before she died. I fought to keep all that in the back of my head, because in the front it would stop me from being helpful. I couldn't function if my emotions were fucking me over. Yay, I wasn't becoming some emotionless killing machine. Boo, I was staring down at a partially rotted corpse and all I could think was, What a horrible way to die.

'Dazzle us, Blake,' Detective Rickman said.

Did I mention I had an audience? Dr Rogers and the coroner, Dr Shelley, I'd sort of expected, but I also had Sergeant Gonzales; Rickman; his partner, Detective Conner; Commander Walter Burke; Deputy Al; and Deputy Gutterman. Al was apparently senior officer while Rush was hurt, but I wondered, if we had two of their officers, how many were left on their force to protect and serve while they stayed down here? It was a small-town sheriff's department, it couldn't be that big, but I didn't question Al's use of manpower. He was in charge and he knew his resources.

The audience had been part of what made Rickman not have a hissy fit about me looking at the bodies. Apparently, he was worried I'd mess up the victims or do suspicious magic. I'd run into officers like him before. Some were ultrareligious, so they thought I was evil, but others just had the same problem with me they had with all female cops, or with a federal cop of any kind butting into their case. I was a woman, a female cop, a godless user of magic, and a Fed so many reasons for other cops to hate me. The fact that this many different flavors of police were cooperating was rare and good to see. I had a feeling it was Sheriff Rush Callahan's good rep and work that made them all willing to band together. Normally police fought over jurisdiction like dogs over the last meaty bone. It was better than it had been years ago, but it was still a general rule that cops didn't like to share, except when they wanted to pass the buck so that a messy or boring case was someone else's problem. This case was messy, but it wasn't boring, and one of their own was hurt, so it was personal, but more than that, solve a case like this and it could make your reputation. Fail at solving it and it could break you. I wasn't big on failing or breaking.

Though with this many people in the room it was damn near claustrophobic. I felt like I had a wall looming up behind me that kept bending closer. It was actually Dr Shelley who finally turned around and said, 'Gentlemen, you were allowed to observe, not to breathe down our necks. Now, everybody take two big steps back.' She pushed her glasses back up on her nose with the back of her gloved hand and glared at them when they didn't move. 'This is my part of the crime, my domain; you're here because I let you be here. If you don't give us some room to work, then I'll clear the room, is that understood? Now step the hell away from us.'

I liked her. The men exchanged glances as if waiting to see who would back up first. It was Gonzales who stepped back first, followed by Burke, then the deputies, and finally Rickman. Maybe it wasn't just me he didn't like, or maybe it was all women?

'Thank you, gentlemen,' she said in a voice that held no grudge. She turned back to me and Dr Rogers. 'Marshal Blake, now that we can move without bumping into people, do you have any questions?'

Rickman piped up. 'We want to know what she sees that we didn't, not just information that you've already given us.'

Shelley turned around, and I didn't have to see her eyes to know she was giving him her cold look. It was a good look, and we'd all seen it a few times already. It was a look that reminded you of that teacher in elementary school who could make thirty kids go silent with a glance, except this look was more hostile.

Rickman took the full weight and gave his own defiant look back; we'd seen that a few times, too. 'If you feed her information, Sheila, we won't know if she's really an asset to this case or just another Fed to get in our way.'

'This is my morgue, Ricky. I run it the way the way I see fit.' Her voice was very cold, but the fact that he'd used her first name made me wonder if they'd had more than a working relationship once. Of course, maybe he just wanted to point out that her name was Sheila Shelley. He probably didn't get to use names that were almost as bad as his own Ricky Rickman very often.

'She's supposed to be some hotshot zombie expert; let her prove it,' he said, undaunted.

'I can raise zombies from the grave,' I said. 'Can anyone else in this room do that?'

There was silence and a couple of nervous looks.

'Was I not supposed to remind everybody that I raise the dead? Sorry, but it's a psychic gift. I'd exchange it for something else if I could, but it doesn't work that way. I make zombies rise from the dead the way some people are left-handed or have the recessive genes for blue eyes. It's just the way it is; I raised my first one when I was fourteen, so yeah, that makes me a zombie expert, Detective Rickman.'

'Then like I said, dazzle us, Blake.'

'Get out of my morgue,' Dr Shelley said.

'Now, Sheila,' he said.

'Stop using my first name as if that will make us buddies, Detective. You have an issue with women in authority, you always have, and apparently you always will.' She turned to me. 'I'm sorry, Marshal, it's nothing personal, he's always like this.'

'How did he make detective this young if he's always this big a pain in the ass?' I asked.

'Unfortunately, when he gets his head out of his ass he's a really good detective. He solved some big cases early and saved lives by catching the monsters early. I mean murderers, not your kind of monster,' she said.

I nodded, that I appreciated the difference.

She pointed a gloved finger at Rickman. 'But right now you are being childish and unhelpful. Sheriff Callahan has helped everyone in this room do their jobs better. He's saved lives literally and by simply helping all of us do ours. He never grabs credit, but we all know we owe him. Now, we are all going to let the marshal here do her job and respect her expertise with the preternatural, but more than that I hear she's engaged to Callahan's son and that means she deserves respect on that account, too, and you, Ricky, will by God give it to her for one of those three reasons. I don't care which one you pick, but choose one and give her the same credit you'd give a man with the same badge, the same reputation, and the same connection to a wounded officer that we all respect and owe.'

I fought the urge to applaud. Rickman finally looked embarrassed; good to know he could be. The other officers looked shamefaced, too, as if the lecture were somehow contagious, or as if Rickman had made them all look bad. Either way, Rickman shut up and the rest of them were on their best behavior as if to make up for him.

'Zombies, when they do bite, usually just bite down like a person. The first male victim's shoulder is torn, savaged, more like a wereanimal or a vampire.'