It was Barbie. Only someone truly witless would think stake puns the height of repartee.

'Just the time of night for a little viper-on-a-spit,' said the Slayer, lifting Nico's deadweight so that her legs dangled. 'This really should be you, Frenchie. By the way, I don't think you've met Simon's brother, Sidney. Frenchie, Sidney. Sidney, hellbitch creature of the night fit only to be impaled and left to rot in the light of the sun. That's the formalities out of the way.'

She threw Nico away, sliding the dead girl off Sidney the Stake. The new-born, mould already on her startled face, flopped off the porch and fell into the yard.

Genevieve, still shocked by the passing, almost turned to ice. Nico had been in her mind, just barely and with tiny fingers, and her death was a wrench. She thought her skull might be leaking.

'They don't cotton much to trespassers down Texas way,' said Barbie, in a bad cowboy accent. 'Nor in Beverly Hills, neither.'

Genevieve doubted the Sawyers knew Barbie was here.

'Next time, the Overlooker says I can do you too. I'm wishing and hoping and praying you ignore the warning. You'd look so fine on the end of a pole, Frenchie.'

An engine revved, like a signal. Barbie was bounding away, with deerlike elegance.

Genevieve followed.

She rounded the corner of the Sawyer house and saw Barbie climbing into a sleek black Jaguar. In the driver's seat was a man wearing a tweed hunting jacket with matching bondage hood. He glanced backwards as he drove off.

The sports car had vanity plates. OVRLKER1.

Gravel flew as the car sped off down the drive.

'What's all this consarned ruckus?' shouted someone, from the house.

Genevieve turned and saw an American gothic family group on the porch. Blotch-faced teenage boy, bosomy but slack-eyed girl in a polka-dot dress, stern patriarch in a dusty black suit, and hulking elder son in a stained apron and crude leather mask. Only the elder generation was missing, and Genevieve was sure they were up in rocking chairs on the third storey, peeking through the slatted blinds.

'That a dead'n?' asked the patriarch, nodding at Nico.

She conceded that it was.

'True dead'n?'

'Yes,' she said, throat catching.

'What a shame and a waste,' said Mr Sawyer, in a tone that made Genevieve think he wasn't referring to a life but to flesh and blood that was highly saleable.

'Shall I call the Sheriff, Paw?' asked the girl.

Mr Sawyer nodded, gravely.

Genevieve knew what was coming next.

14.

'There's just one thing I don't understand, miss.'

'Lieutenant, if there was "just one thing" I didn't understand, I'd be a very happy old lady. At the moment, I can't think of "just one thing" I do understand.'

The detective smiled craggily.

'You're a vampire, miss. Like this dead girl, this, ah, Nico.'

Orson Welles had lent her a crow-black umbrella, which she was using as a parasol.

'And this Barbie, who again nobody else saw, was, ah, a living person?'

'Warm.'

'Warm, yes. That's the expression. That's what you call us.'

'It's not offensive.'

'That's not how I take it, miss. No, what I'm wondering is: aren't vampires supposed to be faster than the warm, harder to catch hold of in a tussle?'

'Nico was a new-born, and weakened. She'd lost some blood.'

'That's one for the books.'

'Not any more.'

The detective scratched his head, lit cigar-end dangerously near his hair. 'So I hear. It's called "drac" on the streets. I have friends on the Narco Squad. They say it's worse than heroin.'

'Where is this going, Lieutenant?'

He shut his notebook and pinned her with his eye.

'You could have, ah, taken Miss Nico? If you got into a fight with her?'

'I didn't.'

'But you could have.'

'I could have killed the Kennedys and Sanford White, but I didn't.'

'Those are closed cases, as far as I'm concerned. This is open.'

'I gave you the number plate.'

'Yes, miss. OVRLKER1. A Jaguar.'

'Even if it's a fake plate, there can't be that many English sports cars in Los Angeles.'

'There are, ah, one thousand, seven hundred and twenty-two registered Jaguars. Luxury vehicles are popular in this city, in some parts of it. Not all the same model.'

'I don't know the model. I don't follow cars. I just know it was a Jaguar. It had the cat on the bonnet, the hood.'

'Bonnet? That's the English expression, isn't it?'

'I lived in England for a long time.'

With an Englishman. The detective's sharpness reminded her of Charles, with a witness or a suspect.

Suspect.

He had rattled the number of Jaguars in Greater Los Angeles off the top of his head, with no glance at the prop notebook. Gears were turning in his mind.

'It was a black car,' she said. 'That should make it easier to find.'

'Most automobiles look black at night. Even red ones.'

'Not to me, Lieutenant.'

Uniforms were off grilling the Sawyers. Someone was even talking with Welles, who had let slip that Genevieve was working for him. Since the client had himself blown confidentiality, she was in an awkward position; Welles still didn't want it known what exactly she was doing for him.

'I think we can let you go now, miss,' said the detective.

She had been on the point of presenting him her wrists for the cuffs.

'There isn't "just one more thing" you want to ask?'

'No. I'm done. Unless there's anything you want to say.'

She didn't think so.

'Then you can go. Thank you, miss.'

She turned away, knowing it would come, like a hand on her shoulder or around her heart.

'There is one thing, though. Not a question. More like a circumstance, something that has to be raised. I'm afraid I owe you an apology.'

She turned back.

'It's just that I had to check you out, you know. Run you through the books. As a witness, yesterday. Purely routine.'

Her umbrella seemed heavier.

'I may have got you in trouble with the state licensing board. They had all your details correctly, but it seems that every time anyone looked at your licence renewal application, they misread the date. As a European, you don't write an open four. It's easy to mistake a four for a nine. They thought you were born in 1916. Wondered when you'd be retiring, in fact. Had you down as a game old girl.'

'Lieutenant, I am a game old girl.'

'They didn't pull your licence, exactly. This is really embarrassing and I'm truly sorry to have been the cause of it, but they want to, ah, review your circumstances. There aren't any other vampires licensed as private investigators in the State of California, and there's no decision on whether a legally dead person can hold a licence.'

'I never died. I'm not legally dead.'

'They're trying to get your paperwork from, ah, France.'

She looked up at the sky, momentarily hoping to burn out her eyes. Even if her original records existed, they'd be so old as to be protected historical documents. Photostats would not be coming over the wire from her homeland.

'Again, miss, I'm truly sorry.'

She just wanted to get inside her trailer and sleep the day away.

'Do you have your licence with you?'

'In the car,' she said, dully.

'I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to surrender it,' said the detective. 'And that until the legalities are settled, you cease to operate as a private investigator in the State of California.'

15.

At sunset she woke to another limbo, with one of her rare headaches. She was used to knowing what she was doing that night, and the next night, if not specifically then at least generally. Now, she wasn't sure what she could do.

Genevieve wasn't a detective any more, not legally. Welles had not paid her off, but if she continued working on John Alucard for him she'd be breaking the law. Not a particularly important one, in her opinion... but vampires lived in such a twilight world that it was best to pay taxes on time and not park in tow-away zones. After all, this was what happened when she drew attention to herself.

She had two other ongoing investigations, neither promising. She should make contact with her clients, a law firm and an Orange County mother, and explain the situation. In both cases, she hadn't turned up any results and so would not in all conscience be able to charge a fee. She didn't even have that much Welles could use.

Money would start to be a problem around Valentine's Day. The licensing board might have sorted it out by then.

(In some alternate universe.) She should call Beth Davenport, her lawyer, to start filing appeals and lodging complaints. That would cost, but anything else was just giving up.

Two people were truly dead. That bothered her too.

She sat at her tiny desk by a slatted window, considering her telephone. She had forgotten to switch her answering machine on before turning in, and any calls that might have come today were lost. She had never done that before.

Should she re-record her outgoing message, stating that she was (temporarily?) out of business? The longer she was off the bus, the harder it would be to get back on.

On TV, suspended cops, disbarred private eyes and innocent men on the run never dropped the case. And this was Southern California, where the TV came from.

She decided to compromise. She wouldn't work Alucard, which was what Welles had been paying her for. But, as a concerned - indeed, involved - citizen, no law said she couldn't use her talents unpaid to go after the slayer.

Since this was a police case, word of her status should have filtered down to her LAPD contacts but might not yet have reached outlying agencies. She called Officer Baker, a contact in the Highway Patrol, and wheedled a little to get him to run a licence plate for her.