Affliction

11

Juliet and Al took us up in the elevator so we didn't have to ask where to go or what we were doing. Al said, 'You got your badge with you?'

'You know I do; I have to,' I said.

'Maybe put it where the other cops can see it.'

'Won't that make them think Anita has come to butt in on the case, just like Rickman fears?' Micah asked.

'Some of them are going to think that anyway, but cops like other cops, and you being the son of one and the boyfriend of another will make them like you better. It'll make them like you all better.'

The elevator stopped, doors still shut.

'You think we'll need the extra likeability?' I asked.

'You might,' he said.

I looked at him, wondering what I was missing, but Al was on our side, and he had the flavor of the local cops and I didn't, so I paid attention. The doors opened, we stepped out of the elevator, and I dropped the men's hands long enough to move the little walletlike badge cover to the front of my belted skirt, so the badge was visible. I'd have preferred the lanyard that I used at home to display my badge, but I hadn't brought that badge, or the lanyard. Silly me, I hadn't thought I'd need it.

Juliet and Al took us down a short hallway, turned a corner, and half a dozen cops pushed away from the walls, or just turned like magic toward us. One, cops keep their eye on movement, because it can be bad guys. Two, Nicky looked like a bad guy, and Dev looked like a large, physical smart aleck; either one was the kind of person that most cops learn to keep an eye on. With the two of them behind us attracting the cops' attention, it was like being invisible, a magician's trick of misdirection, or maybe they just couldn't see Micah and me behind Al and Juliet? Nathaniel was tall enough that some of him had to be visible.

There were actually only two people in the hallway who I knew for certain weren't cops. They were a man and a woman, a couple if I was betting. The woman was wearing a black polyester pantsuit that had fit twenty pounds ago. The white button-down blouse with its little ruffled collar didn't help. Her glasses were large and black framed so they dominated her face. Her hair was shortish and going from brunette to a tired gray. She'd also brushed her curls out in an attempt to straighten them, and it gave her hair the consistency of wool. When you have hair as curly as mine and Micah's you can never, ever brush your hair. It breaks the curl and makes a mess of it. Jean-Claude, with his only slightly less curly hair, had taught me that. The woman had to be over fifty; you'd think somewhere someone would have taught her how curly hair works. Her only jewelry was a silver cross and a lapel pin in the shape of a crosier, the shepherd's crook that is supposed to mean that a bishop or above is a guardian of his flock, when it's carried in the life-size version. I'd never seen one as a pin.

'Aunt Bertie,' Juliet called out, and went toward the woman, who had flashed an unfriendly look past her to Micah and me. Maybe I was being paranoid about that whole 'me' thing, but fundamentalists of several flavors had hated me on sight; why should Aunt Bertie be different?

It meant that the man with her was probably Uncle Jamie. He was at least five-nine, but he seemed shorter because he was carrying his weight from chest to groin, with only his legs still thin. The legs gave an echo of what he must once have looked like. I knew women who took pride in their legs staying thin, even with the rest of the weight up top. I wondered if men thought the same thing; I'd just be worried about heart attacks.

The man was wearing glasses almost identical to the woman's, but his suit fit better than hers, which probably meant he'd been at his present weight for longer. I just kept thinking I hoped there wasn't any heart disease in the family.

Juliet and Deputy Al tried to intercede for Micah with the pair, but they were having none of it. He was not going to get to see his father without passing through them first. Oh, joy.

Juliet tried, calling out, 'I thought you guys were down in the cafeteria making sure everyone got some dinner.'

Aunt Bertie said, 'I told you we wanted to go with you to meet Mike at the airport, and you snuck off.'

'I didn't sneak off, but I told you they had people with them and there wouldn't be room for you and Uncle Jamie.'

'And how did you know there would be extra people with him?' she asked in a voice that was unpleasant, strident.

Uncle Jamie was in front of us. He had a lapel pin that I thought for a second was a tiny, silver candy cane, then realized it was another crosier. Al stepped back with a shrug and a look of mute apology to Micah.

'So, the prodigal son returns,' Uncle Jamie said.

'I just came to see my father,' Micah said. He let go of my hand and took a step in front as if he wanted to make sure he was taking the brunt of it, or maybe he thought holding hands was a way of cowering? I'd ask him later, maybe.

Nathaniel and I kept on holding hands. It made me feel better and since I couldn't shoot Micah's aunt and uncle for being rude, it gave me something to do with my hands.

'Who are these people with you?' And Uncle Jamie managed to make people sound as if what he meant was fuckers, but was too polite to say it.

Micah introduced Nicky and Dev first.

Jamie eyed them up and down like he was thinking of buying them and didn't think much of the sale. 'What are they?'

'People,' Micah said, his voice cold.

'Are they unnatural?' he asked.

Unnatural? 'Wow,' I said softly. It hadn't even occurred to me that Micah's being a shapeshifter would be a problem with his family. I'd only worried about the sex part. Stupid me.

'Yes, just like me,' Micah said.

There was a sort of movement, or sigh, in all the police in the hallway. The uniforms, and the two in street clothes, all reacted almost like grass in a meadow when the wind stirs it. I wasn't sure if they were reacting to the growing unpleasantness or if they didn't like that at least three of us were 'unnatural.' We were in one of the handful of states where if someone killed Micah, or Dev, or Nicky, all they had to do was say they had feared for their life, and if the blood test on the dead body came back positive for lycanthropy, it would qualify as self-defense, without a trial or anything. If you had witnesses who said the shooting had been unprovoked you could be up on charges, but if the only other witness besides the shooter was conveniently dead, then it was a clean kill. I hadn't thought what that might mean for my men. My stomach tightened, my shoulders tensing, as I thought about that for everyone I'd brought with me. I was so used to the local police who worked with me seeing my boyfriends as people that I hadn't thought that not all police would be as understanding. That really had been stupid and careless.

I looked at the policemen in the hallway. Two of them were in a uniform like Al's, but the rest were a mix of different uniforms and two were in street clothes. They were all armed, and all had that cop look in their faces as they looked at Micah, Nicky, and Dev for threat evaluation. Was there a time in my career when I would have done the same thing? You hear someone is a wereanimal and you just automatically assume they're dangerous, right? Well, yeah. The cops in the hallway had just been told that Micah and two big, obviously physical, armed men were all faster, stronger, and harder to kill than any of them. I tried to see it from their point of view, but I just couldn't. The men in question meant too much to me for me to be okay with the evaluating looks from the cops. I knew that if anything went wrong they would probably shoot first and ask questions later. There'd been a time in my life when I might have done the same thing.

'Everybody take a deep breath,' I said, my voice calm but clear. 'I'm Marshal Anita Blake and the men who you're sizing up right now are with me.'

'We know who you are,' an older guy in a state trooper uniform said, and he didn't sound thrilled.

'The other beasts are with you in what way?' Jamie asked what the cops probably wanted to ask anyway, so they let him. Except for the beast part, I'd give the police the benefit of the doubt on that.

'First, don't ever call them beasts again,' Micah said.

'That's what they are,' he said, and he raised his hand and pointed at Micah. 'Just like you are.' His silver crosier winked in the light.

'Oh, God, you're wearing the shepherd's crook. Please tell me that the two of you didn't become Shepherds of the Flock?' Micah sounded disgusted.

I thought, The nut jobs on the news, but I didn't say it out loud. They were his relatives and I'd do my best not to make things worse, but the Shepherds were a new zealot group that went around to victims of preternatural attacks and tried to 'save' them by telling new lycanthropes they were now animals without souls and new vampires that they were demon-inhabited corpses, so becoming one of those made you an agent of the devil.

'We are here to be guardians for the victims of the beasts and demons,' Jamie said, which was a big yes.

'Sheriff Callahan wasn't bitten by a shapeshifter or a vampire,' Al said, 'so you shouldn't be up here.'

'We're Rush's family. We have every right to be here,' Jamie said.

'Then be here as family, not as Shepherds,' Al said.

'We're here to protect Rush, in case the monster that attacked him comes back,' Aunt Bertie said.

'Leave that to the police,' Al said.

'Not when the police consort with devil worshippers and soulless beasts. You cannot use the devil to protect you from the devil.'

I moved up beside Micah. 'Who are you calling a devil worshipper?' Nathaniel came with me, because he wouldn't let go of my hand. In fact, he had a double grip on my arm now, as if he thought I'd do something unfortunate.

'Don't feel bad, Anita, he just called his own nephew a soulless beast,' Micah said, and now his voice held an edge of anger. The first trickle of power slithered across my skin, raising the hair on the arm closest to him. He had the best control of any shapeshifter I'd ever been around, and sometimes he'd flare power to back down another shapeshifter, like I'd tried to do with Nilda at the airplane, but somehow I didn't think this flare-up was on purpose. His aunt and uncle couldn't feel the burst of power, and if they had it would only have confirmed their fears.

'Easy,' I said softly.

He whispered, 'I need a minute.'

He needed a minute to regain his iron control. I did the only thing I could think to do: draw their 'fire.' 'How dare you call your own nephew a soulless beast, you narrow-minded, poor excuse for a Christian.'

'How dare you question my Christianity, you devil-worshipping, evil-'

'That's enough, Jamie,' Al said, and tried to step between us.

'I'm Christian,' I said, 'and my cross glows just fine. When's the last time you bet your faith against something that could tear your face off?'

Nathaniel's grip on my arm tightened enough to almost hurt. I hadn't meant to step closer to Uncle Jamie, but religious bigots like him pissed me off. The ones who were so sure they were right were usually the most un-Christian of all.

Micah's energy was almost back to normal. The fact that he was having this much trouble getting to normal said just how angry and upset he was, and it wasn't just the crackpot aunt and uncle who were making him raw. His dad was in the room and they were delaying him with their bigotry that masqueraded as religion.

'She's Micah's fiancee,' Juliet said, 'and that alone should make you talk like a civilized human being to her.'

Aunt Bertie pushed up beside her husband and Juliet. 'Are you his fiancee, or is it Beatrice's fancy way of saying you're shacking up together?'

Oh, good, they were going to hate the sex part, too. 'Shacking up together?' I said.

'That's what I said,' Bertie said, and her face looked smug.

'It's just I haven't heard that phrase since I was a little girl; I didn't know anybody still used it.'

She blushed, as if I'd embarrassed her. Interesting, because I had not begun to embarrass Aunt Bertie.

'Are you his fiancee, or living in sin?'

'She could be both,' Juliet said, 'the way I was with Ben.'

'Just because Ben married you when he could get the milk for free doesn't mean it wasn't a sin.'

'Milk for free?' I asked. 'Are you guys for real?'

Jamie gave me a look of utter disdain. 'When a man can get what he wants from a woman, he uses her until he's done with her, and then he abandons her for the next woman who will open her legs for him.'

Nathaniel's hands tightened desperately on my arm, but it was Micah who stepped up beside us and said, 'I am ashamed that you are the kind of man who would fuck a woman and then abandon her, Uncle Jamie.'

'What?' Jamie said, and looked at Micah. 'I would never-'

'You just said that if a man can get sex before marriage, he uses the woman and then abandons her for the next woman.'

'Yes, that's why you marry first and show your commitment before God.'

'I love Anita and I would never abandon her for another woman. I don't need God to tell me that would be wrong, and I'm deeply ashamed that if you hadn't married Aunt Bertie first that you would have fucked her for a while and then abandoned her.'

'I never would ... I did not say that!'

Aunt Bertie yelled, 'How dare you! Apologize to your uncle! He is the best man I have ever known and he would never do such a thing.'

'And Anita is the best woman I have ever known, and she would never abandon me just because she could get all the sex she wanted without marrying me. She loves me for more than just sex, don't you, sweetheart?' he asked.

I don't think he'd ever called me sweetheart, but I said the only thing I could say: 'Yes, I love you for way more than just the mind-blowing sex.'

He smiled at me, and then he took off the sunglasses that he'd put back on in the lights of the hospital. He let his aunt and uncle see his leopard eyes. They backed up, gasping. Then Aunt Bertie yelled, 'His eyes! He's starting to shift! Oh, my God, help us!'

The police in the hallway knew about his eyes, so they didn't go for their weapons, but Aunt Bertie didn't know they wouldn't. She'd been willing to get Micah killed.

Al said, 'His eyes are stuck in animal form, Bertie. He's not changing.'

She and Jamie kept backing up. She turned to the other officers. 'Protect us.'

'Deputy Gutterman told us about Mike Callahan's eyes being leopard,' the older state trooper said. 'You don't need to be protected from Rush's son, your nephew.' In other circumstances he might have half-agreed with their attitude, but he'd understood, just like I had, that she'd been willing to get her own nephew shot in the hallway outside his dying father's hospital room. None of the police who had witnessed it were going to like either of them now. Some lines you did not cross, and they'd just crossed several.

Micah took my free hand in his, and I said, 'You aren't shepherds, you're sheep. The first hint of threat and you run for protection to the real shepherds, the police.'

The older statie said, 'We're not shepherds, Marshal Blake, we're sheepdogs.' He grinned, and it was more a flash of teeth, like baring fangs, than amusement.

I nodded, because I knew the essay. It was from 'On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs,' from Lt. Col. David Grossman's book On Combat. 'We live to protect the flock, and confront the wolf,' I said.

He nodded and gave that flash of teeth again. It left his eyes cold. 'We do that. I'm Commander Walter Burke, Marshal Blake, and I'm sorry to meet you and Mr Callahan under the circumstances.'

'Me, too,' I said.

He turned to Aunt Bertie and Uncle Jamie. 'Now, some of these nice officers are going to escort you down to the rest of the family.'

'We can't let them see Rush by themselves. He's already been attacked by one monster,' Bertie said.

Commander Burke let out a deep breath and said, 'Deputy Gutterman, Corporal Price, escort these two downstairs to the family lounge. If they resist, charge them with assaulting a police officer.'

'You wouldn't dare,' Jamie said.

Burke turned and let Jamie see his eyes, his face, his attitude, and like a good sheep the other man backed down. 'You're leaving this boy alone to see his father, one way or the other. It's your choice whether you do it in the family lounge or in the back of a police car.'

It was all I could do not to say out loud, Choose wisely.

They chose wisely and went with the nice police officers to the family lounge, which meant we'd be seeing them later. That was going to suck.

Burke looked at us. 'I'm sorry that your relatives are going to make this harder than it already is, Mr Callahan, Marshal Blake.' He glanced at Nathaniel's hand in mine.

'Mr Graison,' I said.

'Mr Graison,' he said. He looked at Nicky and Dev behind us. 'I'm sorry you can't come to visit your father in the hospital without bodyguards, but if that's your aunt and uncle, I'd hate like hell to see what strangers would do.'

Micah nodded. 'Thank you, Commander Burke. I appreciate that.'

'You're the son of a good cop and engaged to a U.S. Marshal; that makes you family. Now go see your father, and I am sorry that you had to come home to this.'

I wondered if he meant Rush Callahan being hurt or the crazy aunt and uncle? I guess it didn't matter; either way, not everyone in Colorado hated us. Good to know.

12

Micah had told me his dad was five foot six, but he looked smaller in the hospital bed. His hair was auburn, but whereas Nathaniel's hair was a rich brown with red undertones that sometimes you noticed and sometimes you didn't, Rush Callahan's hair was more dark red with brown undertones in it. I wondered if he'd say he had red hair? I hoped he'd wake up enough for me to ask. Right now, his face held that slackness that only heavy drugs can give it; even sleep doesn't smooth out the face in quite the same way as heavy-duty painkillers. His skin was pasty pale, so that the few freckles he had stood out like brown ink spots, but underneath the much lighter skin tone and hair the bone structure was Micah's. Micah was so delicate for a man that I'd just assumed he looked like his mother, but he didn't. He looked like his dad. The biggest difference, other than the faint lines around the eyes and across the forehead, was the mouth. Micah's lips were fuller, more kissable looking. His father had thinner lips, more traditionally Caucasian male. I realized that almost every man in my life had full lips. I guess we all have preferences in partners that we aren't even aware of ourselves. Micah's father's hair was almost as curly as Micah's, though cut a lot shorter. But his dad's reddish auburn curls haloed around his face in a thick circle. His curl was looser than Micah's, or mine, but it was curlier than Cousin Juliet's. She was waiting out in the hallway. She'd wanted to give Micah some privacy, and she'd said out loud that she'd try to head off any relatives so the privacy would last longer. I think she wanted Micah to have a few minutes before he had to deal with any more awfulness from his family. Uncle Jamie and Aunt Bertie had been enough for one visit, though we'd probably be seeing them again, unfortunately.

Micah said, 'That's weird.'

There were so many possibilities for weirdness in that moment that it felt odd to ask, 'What's weird?' But sometimes you have to ask the obvious question.

'Mom used to help him with his hair, but once they divorced he cut it short because he couldn't deal with the curls. I haven't seen his hair like this since the year I was twelve. He must have a new girlfriend, or something, and I've never even met her.' The sorrow in his voice was nearly touchable, but since I couldn't touch his sadness I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him. His arm came around me almost automatically, his eyes staring down at the man in the bed. He'd put his sunglasses in their slim case that rode in the breast pocket of his suit jacket the way other people carried reading glasses. He stared down at his father with eyes that would be a stranger's eyes in his son's face. Like the mystery girlfriend who helped with curls, there would be a lot of catching up to do. I prayed that they'd get the chance to share all of it.

The room was dim, most of the light from the glow of one lamp near the bed. The drapes were drawn against the night, and the small beep of the monitors that let the nurses' station know Mr Callahan was still alive seemed loud in the silence.

Nathaniel came up behind us and put his hand on Micah's shoulder, because there wasn't room for both of us to hug him at once. Micah put up his free hand to cover Nathaniel's hand. There are pains too deep for words, but there's touch to say what words can't.

'Can you both smell it?' Micah asked.

Neither of us had to ask what he meant. Even with my human nose I could smell it: sickly sweet, but with a sourness underneath, so sweet seems the wrong word, but rotting flesh does have a sweet undertone to the smell of it. I'd spent most of my adult life smelling it at crime scenes and zombie raisings, though oddly the zombies that I raised didn't smell as bad as some. The amount of smell seemed to get worse the lower the power level of your animator. My early zombies had looked rotted, but they hadn't smelled that way. I'd seen other zombies raised that smelled as bad as a real corpse. The white sheet was raised on a framework so that it didn't touch Rush Callahan's body, like they do with some burn victims. Whatever wound was underneath that white, untouched dome of sheet had a faint scent of rot, like a preview of the corpse to come.

I swallowed hard; my throat was tight, and it wasn't because I was going to be sick. I'd smelled much worse. It was almost as if Micah were keeping such tight control on himself that someone had to cry for him. But damned if it was going to be me; I was here to be strong for him, not to be the first one to cry. I would not be this much of a girl, damn it!

Standing in that room with the smell of death already there, I hugged him tighter, because I didn't know what else to do. He rested his face against my hair and hugged me back. Nathaniel came in at our back, wrapping his free arm around me so that he could cuddle himself against Micah's back and touch us both.

There was a soft but authoritative knock on the door. It opened without our saying Come in, and in came a tall, thin man in a long white coat. He flashed a professional smile as he came through, cheerful and empty of meaning, because it makes people feel better when you smile. I knew the smile, because I had a client smile, too, and it meant about as much. You smile, because if you don't people worry more. He was a doctor, and people worried enough around him, so he smiled.

'I'm Dr Rogers; you must be Mike.' He held his hand out toward us, but mainly at Micah. He looked enough like his dad that there was no guesswork between him and Nathaniel.

'Micah. I haven't been Mike in a decade.' He let go of us enough to shake Dr Rogers's hand.

He turned to us, and I said, 'Anita Blake.'

Nathaniel shook his hand, too, and said, 'Nathaniel Graison.'

Rogers nodded and said, 'I'm glad you got here.'

Micah gave him very serious eyes. 'My mother told Anita that it was only a matter of time; is that true?'

'We've slowed the disease, but we have no way of curing it. I'm sorry.'

Micah nodded, looked at the floor, and reached back for our hands. I gave him my left hand, and Nathaniel hugged him on the other side, like I'd been doing when Rogers entered the room. The doctor's gaze flicked to the two men and me, then back up to the men. I thought he was going to say something unfortunate, but he was all professional.

'How long?' Micah asked.

'I can't answer that for certain.'

'Guess.'

'Excuse me?' Rogers asked.

'Guess, give me an estimate how long my father has,' Micah said.

Rogers shook his head. 'I'm not comfortable doing that.'

'All right, then tell me what you're doing to treat my father.'

Rogers was comfortable discussing that. There had been a few cases on the Eastern Seaboard that were similar, but not identical. 'Those patients died within hours, but I used their protocols on our patients here and it slowed the spread of the ... infection.'

'Is it an infection?' Micah asked.

'Yes.' He sounded very sure.

'What kind of infection is it?'

'It's close to necrotizing fasciitis, and we've treated it the same way, with removal of the necrotic tissue, massive antibiotics, and time in a hyperbaric chamber.'

'How much ... tissue have you removed?' Micah asked.

'As little as necessary.'

'That's not an answer, that's an evasion.'

'If you insist I can show you the wound, but I wouldn't recommend it.'

'Why not?' Micah asked.

'It won't change anything and it won't help anything. It's just an unnecessary visual for you.'

Micah shook his head. 'I need to know what you've done to my father.'

'I haven't done anything to him, except the best I could under the circumstances.'

Micah let out a slow, even breath.

I said, 'This isn't my father, but you're scaring me. Where was the bite?'

'His left arm.'

'Does he still have his arm?' Micah asked.

Dr Rogers made a face. 'Yes, but if we can't get it stopped we may try amputation, though honestly I think it will just slow it down, not stop it.'

'Did you try amputation with any of the other victims?' I asked.

'Yes, but either we didn't do it soon enough, or once the infection is in the body it hits the bloodstream almost immediately and that takes it throughout the body.'

'I have to see,' Micah said.

Dr Rogers didn't understand immediately, but I did, and Nathaniel did, because he said, 'Micah means he needs to see the wound.'

'Really, I wouldn't ...'

'Would you really not look if it were your father?' Micah asked, studying the doctor's face. 'I'm betting you would insist on seeing it.'

'I'm a doctor; I would want to see it from a professional standpoint, to understand what was happening.'

'I'm not a doctor, and I'm hoping that what I'm imagining is worse than what you'll show me, but either way I need to see.'

Rogers made a soft, exasperated sound. He got fresh rubber gloves out of a little box that was beside the bed and walked to the far side of the bed with its tented sheet. 'Anything touching the wound site seems to be extremely painful, so we raised the sheet above it.'

'Like for a burn,' I said.

'For some burns, yes,' he said. He unhooked the sheet from the metal framework and looked across the bed at us. 'I honestly don't recommend this.'

'Please, Dr Rogers, I just need to see,' Micah said, his voice low and even. He had a death grip on my hand, and I assumed on Nathaniel's, too.

The doctor didn't argue again, just pulled back the sheet enough for us to see the left arm and part of the chest. I couldn't tell what the original bite had been like, because flesh was missing from the outer part of the lower left arm in a neat oval almost as big as both my fists side by side. The wound placement let me know what had happened. Sheriff Callahan had been attacked and he'd put his left arm up to defend himself and something had bitten him. I had my own share of defensive wounds like that, but none as deep. Even if he lived, I wasn't sure how much use he'd have of the arm. It was an awful lot of muscle and ligament to lose.

Micah's hand tensed around mine, his eyes narrowed, but other than that he showed nothing. His stress sang down his arm into his hand, but it showed almost nowhere else. God, he had such control in that moment. It was impressive and made me proud that he was mine.

He started to say something, swallowed hard, tried again, and just shook his head. I hoped I was about to ask the questions he wanted to ask. 'The edges of the wound look darker than they should, and there's discoloration in the wound itself; is that from the treatment?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'It's starting to rot again,' Micah said, his voice sort of hollow.

'Yes, there are some bacteria in the mix that we've never seen before and they're not responding to the antibiotics.' He started refitting the sheet back over the framework without asking if we were done looking. Micah didn't say anything, so I let it go.

He looked at me and there was such pain buried in the green-gold depths of his eyes. In a voice that was only a little thicker than it should have been, he said, 'Ask.'

'Ask what?' I said.

'Anything you want to know.'

'Not as your girlfriend, but as me?' I asked.

He nodded.

I raised an eyebrow, but I wasn't going to question it. I wanted to know what the hell was going on. 'Okay,' I said, 'what attacked Sheriff Callahan?'

'We're not sure.'

'I heard it was a flesh-eating zombie.'

'Someone's been talking,' Rogers said.

'I am a U.S. Marshal with the Preternatural Division. This is kind of what I do.'

'The local police were worried you'd do just that and take the case away from them.'

'I don't want to take anything away from anyone, but I also don't want people to hoard information between different police agencies. That's a good way to keep the case from being solved and guarantee more victims.'

There was a faint flinching around his eyes when I said that. The other victims had been bad, for Rogers to react like that. If Micah's dad hadn't been the latest it would have been interesting, but now ... it was scary and interesting.

'You don't want other people hurt like my dad,' Micah said, and I knew he'd seen the flinching, too, and that he'd used 'my dad' deliberately. We both wanted more information and we'd sensed an opening; we'd double-team Rogers. Individually, Micah and I could be relentless, even ruthless; together we were more.

'Of course not,' Rogers said.

'Then help us,' I said.

'You are police, but right now you are the fiancee of a patient's son. That means that you are a civilian, as the police like to say.'

I had a thought. 'Has someone been treating you like a civilian and hoarding information from you, too?'

He looked away from us for a moment. I was betting he was both working to control his expression and debating what to say, or how much to say.

I felt Micah tense beside me, and I touched him, letting him know we needed to wait. This was the first tipping point, and it could lead to spilling all the information we needed, or to nothing; if we rushed it Rogers would clam up, I was almost a hundred percent certain of that. It was like hunting; you needed to be patient and move carefully or you'd step on a stick or a rock and scare the game away.

Nathaniel moved slightly beside us, but I didn't warn him. I trusted him to let us work and not to push.

He looked from one to the other of us, then looked at me and Micah, very hard. It was a good look, not a cop look, but maybe a doctor look. He was looking at us as if we were a mystery illness and he was trying to decide if he could figure out what we really were. 'Are you really his fiancee, or even his girlfriend, or is that just an excuse to butt in on this case, because the local cops would never have asked you in? One of the other doctors suggested you come in for a consult, because no one knows zombies like you do, and you would have thought she asked them to invite the devil in to help. They seem convinced you'll take over.'

'First, I am Micah's girlfriend and lover. Fiancee is a little harder, because you read the papers, see the news, and you know I'm also dating our Master of the City. I can't marry everybody.'

Dr Rogers looked at Nathaniel standing with us but being so quiet. 'And who are you, Mr Graison? I wouldn't normally pry, but if I help these two then the local police may make my life harder, and before I risk that I want to know who I'm talking to and why.'

'Who do you think I could be that would hurt you with the local police?' Nathaniel asked.

Rogers shook his head. 'No, we're not playing the game where questions get answered by questions. Answer my question, or we are done.'

'Do I look like a cop?' Nathaniel asked.

'No, but neither did Mike here, until he started asking questions and then the energy coming off Marshal Blake and Mr Callahan was very similar. I know he's the son of a cop, so maybe he learned it by osmosis, but your energy feels like hers, too, somehow, and I want to know why.'

Just from his asking the question I knew that Rogers was psychically gifted. He was probably an amazing diagnostician, one of those doctors who came up with leaps of intuition that were right about mystery illness and treatment. It could be luck, but in that moment I was pretty certain it was more than that. He wasn't just seeming to look right through us; in a way he was. It made me feel better that he was treating Micah's dad, but it also meant we couldn't play him. He'd feel the lie, the games, and he'd shut us out. Truth was our only option.

'You must be an amazing diagnostician,' Micah said, making the same logic leap that I had.

Rogers frowned at him, eyes narrowing. 'I am, but flattery is not a good idea on your part.'

'Tell him the truth, Nathaniel,' I said.

Nathaniel moved up and put an arm around both of us. We both put an arm around his waist, so that the three of us faced the doctor entwined. 'The three of us live together and have for nearly three years. I'm an exotic dancer at Guilty Pleasures and a wereleopard just like Micah.'

'That explains why your energy feels like Mr Callahan's, but not Marshal Blake's.'

'I'm their Nimir-Ra,' I said, 'their leopard queen. It's on record that I carry multiple strains of lycanthropy; one of them is leopard.'

'I read the paper that Dr Nelson did on you. You are a medical anomaly. One, multiple strains of lycanthropy, which is impossible since one strain protects you from all other diseases including lycanthropy. Two, you don't change shape. You have all the symptoms and many of the benefits, but you don't shift. I heard the military was very interested in that.'

'So the rumors say; no one's talked to me,' I said.

'Rumors,' he said, softly.

I nodded. 'Yes, rumors.'

'Maybe you're as good as you think you are, Marshal Blake, but I have to live here with the local police after you go home. I'd like someone's okay for talking to you about this.'

'Federal badge means I don't have to have an okay to see the bodies.'

'And talk like that is why the other cops don't like you, Marshal.'

'I'm not here to be liked, I'm here to get things done.'

'I thought you were here to be with Mike and his family.'

'I am, but I'm a cop and no one knows zombies like I do. It would be a bad use of resources for me not to at least consult.'

'I'll ask our local guys about you seeing the bodies in the morgue. Beyond that, talk to the cops.'

I started to try to persuade him to talk now, but the door opened without a knock. I turned automatically, giving myself room to draw my gun if I needed to; I hadn't done it for the doctor, but the last few minutes had made me tense, and I gave in to that tension. Logically I knew that nothing would get through Nicky and Dev at the door, or the cops outside, that I needed to shoot, but sometimes it's not about logic, it's about habit. I was habitually paranoid, like most police.

'I'll let you talk to your brother,' Dr Rogers said, and he left, passing the man who was Micah's brother.