“So, who’s filling Octavia’s position?” Nina asked slowly.
I looked up curiously. “I don’t know. Blakely Grimshaw, I think.”
It may have been the fresh pint of blood coursing through her frozen veins, but Nina’s face seemed to go from everyday pale to fire engine red. Her nostrils flared and she fisted her hands, squeezing the remains of the blood bag mercilessly until blood bubbled around the straw she had shoved into it. “That’s just like a man. Blakely is, what? A hundred? A hundred and five? And she always wears those stupid little tank tops so she can show off those fake melons of hers.”
Alex leaned down and lowered his voice. “Vampires can have fake boobs?”
I shrugged and wound a noodle into my mouth, relieved that the subject had been changed. “News to me.”
“Ugh! I can’t believe the nerve of that man! What even qualifies that little twit to take over for Octavia? Octavia was brilliant.”
“I thought you hated her,” Vlad mumbled.
“Did you want Octavia’s position?” I asked Nina.
She rolled her glazed eyes. “No.” She drew out the word. “Of course not. I wouldn’t be caught dead again doing that.” She flicked her hand distastefully.
“So?”
She plopped out her lower lip. “I would have liked to have been asked.”
“You’re impossible,” I groaned.
“It’s what makes me lovable.” She grinned.
“Okay,” Alex said, eyes raking from Nina to me. “What makes Dixon think that it was a werewolf who murdered this victim?”
“The brutality,” I said, my voice suddenly a hoarse whisper.
“Like the Sutro Point murders.”
“That bad?” Nina asked, apparently no longer pissed.
I nodded while the images of those women crept back into my mind. I shifted in my seat, feeling suddenly sick, suddenly bargaining with God, Buddha, or whoever else was listening to help me keep my kung pao down—and keep Sampson out of the picture.
“Well, if there was a great deal of brutality, the only other race with the power to remove the head of a vampire is the werewolf.” Vlad cocked his head, a slight appreciative grin playing on his bloody lips. “Although Buffy the Vampire Slayer got in a few lucky chops.”
“I can’t believe you, of all people, watch that,” Nina said.
One of Vlad’s ink-black eyebrows quirked and all the humor drained from his face. “It’s official Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement research.”
Nina rolled her eyes. “And I volunteer at the Red Cross for the cookies and juice.”
“They do have good cookies,” I mumbled to my plate.
“So, other than—” Alex began.
“Kill theory,” Vlad supplied.
“Other than kill theory, there is no other evidence that this woman was killed by a werewolf?” Alex said.
“I really don’t see what else it could have been,” Vlad said, crumbling his empty blood bag.
I knew Nina was staring at me; I could feel her eyes burning a hole through my temple. “That’s not entirely true,” I said to my chow mein.
“What’s that?” Alex asked.
I glanced up. “Well, there are other demons that are powerful. And, it wouldn’t really make sense for a werewolf to go after a vampire. Werewolves kill to feed, so they go after meat and blood. They hunt by smell. Vampires don’t have a smell.”
“You’re welcome,” Nina said with pride.
“But humans have a smell?” Alex asked with raised eyebrows.
“A powerful one.” Vlad’s eyes were hooded and dark, and his lips snaked up into a sly grin.
“You just ate,” I warned him.
“So, basically, there’s a good chance that the murders we’re looking at—human and vampire—aren’t connected.”
“Right,” I said, completely uncertain of what I was proving.
“No,” Vlad said at the same time. “They’re definitely connected.”
“So, we’re exactly nowhere closer to where we were pre-dinner,” Alex said, raking a hand through his hair. “Hey, Lawson, can you come up after work tomorrow, and maybe we can get an angle on this thing?”
I nodded, not really hearing what Alex was saying due to the loud, uncomfortable buzzing in my head.
We all jumped when the Christmas wreath that was circling my sword finally flopped to the ground, the top cut cleanly by the blade.
Alex had just left and I was scrubbing errant grains of rice off the kitchen table when Nina came up beside me.
“Here,” she said, handing me a package.
“What’s this?”
“A ShamWow. Like a chamois, only . . . wowier. Whisks water away like nobody’s business. I ordered it—”
“From QVC?”
“You’ll thank me. It’s a total life-saver. And the price was right.”
“We really need to get you out of this apartment. Why don’t you go down to Poe’s or something?”
Nina slumped at the table. “No one’s around. With heat like this, most of us took off or headed underground. I’m so insidiously bored. But try the ShamWow.”