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smile was forced—it was clear the barb was genuine, and not at all a joke.
     
    "What is
with
you these—" I began, forgetting all about Alonzo, Sophie, bare feet, only to be interrupted when Detective Nick came back into the room.
     
    "Thanks," he said cheerfully. "I was in the stakeout van half the day—no time to take a—oh." He slowed down. "Hi, Betsy."
     
    I stifled a groan. Nick was a whole new problem, his own subset, you could say. I'd known him before I died. I'd bitten him right after I'd died, and it had driven him nuts. Literally crazy. Sinclair had had to step in with a bit of vampire mojo to make him all right. The official line was: Nick never knew I died, didn't know we were all vampires.
     
    But we all wondered if he was going along with the party line, or fooling us. Normally I'd think nobody could get past Tina's bullshit radar, but Nick was a cop. They paid him to lie.
     
    And Jessica had decided to
date
him. Because, you know, my life wasn't stressful enough.
     
    He held out his hand, and I clamped on it and escorted him to the parlor door. "Great to see you again." I had no intention of introducing him to Alonzo, the Amazing Spanish Killer Vampire. "Guess you two want to get to your date, huh?"
     
    "Actually…" Jessica began with a mischievous glint in her eyes.
     
    "Well," Nick said as I hustled him out, "the show starts at ten, so we thought we'd stay and visit for a few…"
     
    "Right, don't want to miss it, have some popcorn for me, bye!" I hollered as he practically went sprawling into the hallway. Jessica rolled her eyes at me and followed. "See you later!"
     
    Much later.
     
    "That was—" Tina said, stopped, and put a hand over her mouth so I wouldn't see she was fighting a grin.
     
    "Efficient," Alonzo suggested.
     
    "You hush. You're still on my list, chum."
     
    "Oh, Majesty." He clasped his heart like a player in a bad opera. "I would gladly cross seven raging oceans to be on any list you might have."
     
    "Are you trying to pick me up?" I asked irritably, "or overthrow me?"
     
    "Can we not do both, darling Majesty?"
     
    "Say that now," Marc said cheerfully. As usual, he was clueless—or didn't care. He just loved the whole vampire politics thing. It was a lot more interesting than his day job, saving lives.
     
    "Don't you have some patients to intubate downtown?" I asked him pointedly. "Or some dates to fondle uptown?"
     
    "If I did, do you think I'd be here?" Damn. So reasonable, and the truth besides. He looked at Eric and Alonzo again. "So tell me about the show. Where did you see Dorothy? Did she look fabulous? She did, didn't she?"
     
    "I was there for other reasons," Sinclair said. "I must admit I paid little attention to the stage goings-on."
     
    Marc groaned and covered his eyes. His hair was growing out—he'd been shaved bald when I first met him—and his scalp was almost entirely black now, with an interesting white streak above his left eyebrow. His green eyes were shaded with long black lashes—guys always got the good eyelashes—and he was dressed in the scrubs he'd worn to work. They made him look doctor-like and professional, which was good, because he was actually a few years younger than I was, and sometimes patients had a hard time taking him seriously.
     
    They should see him now, bouncing on the couch and grilling an undead Spaniard about somebody named Dorothy.
     
    "As I was saying, it was in New York City," Alonzo said, smiling as Marc sighed and squealed like a bobby-soxer. " 'La Vie en Rose.' Could it have been… 1950? Yes, I think so."
     
    "Oh, man, this totally makes my night. It was a shit night to put it mildly. I'm on my third set of scrubs."
     
    "Oh, a lot of patients?"
     
    "Bus crash. A lot of DOTS. Just really a downer."
     
    "DOTS?" Alonzo asked.
     
    "Dead on the Spot," Sinclair and I answered in unison. Thanks to Marc, we were up on all the medical slang.
     
    "That sucks," I continued. "Maybe you should skip work for a