Page 185 of White Wolf

“We–” she started.

“I’m here, I’m here,” Harvey announced, bustling into the room with her kit and an assistant. She froze. “Baskin, are you touching the body?”

Trina snatched her hand back. “No.” She stood, putting some distance between herself and the corpse –but it isn’t a corpse, a voice in the back of her mind shouted.Not yet. Not really.

Harvey set down her kit slowly, expression betrayed. “Okaaay.”

“Let us know what you find.” Trina walked out of the room, heart beating hard in her throat, and heard Lanny follow her.

Several of the photogs glanced at her as she passed through the kitchen; one of the uniforms opened his mouth to ask something.

She kept going, straight out into the hall, where, thankfully, the neighbor and paramedic had cleared out, leaving it empty.

She put her hand to her throat, felt the clamminess of her skin, the leaping of her pulse. Too late she realized it was the same hand she’d used to touch Jamie Anderson, and reached down to wipe her palm on her pants leg.

“Okay,” Lanny said, blowing out a breath, looking as composed as a person in their current situation could: which was to saynot very. “Dead guy with a big bite mark on his neck. Which looks a lot like the bite mark we saw on your boy Sasha’s neck. Who’s currently roommates with the only dude we know who bites chunks out of people. Not exactly smelling like a coincidence.”

“You aren’t honestly saying he killed Chad Edwards?”Killedbeing a loose term at this point.

Lanny shrugged. He affected disinterest, but he was crazy at the edges, his eyes too wide, too white. “We won’t know for sure until the lab results come back – we gotta swab him and print him, by the way – but it’s looking that way, yeah.”

She took a step into his personal space and dropped her voice. “He’s not the only vam – the only one. You know he’s not.”

“So says him.”

She glared at him and he glared back. They both breathed through open mouths, chests heaving under the awful weight of what they now knew. Nikita was her family – and in some way she guessed that meant she loved him, in the way she loved all her relatives, even if only a little – but the impossibility of his existence, his youth, hisfangsstill terrified her. Just like Lanny’s spiral into defeat terrified her. Loving someone didn’t mean they stopped being able to scare you, after all.

She was almost overcome by the sudden, stupid urge to kiss him.

She shoved it down and turned away from him, took another ragged breath. “I’m calling Sasha,” she said. “We can’t handle this on our own.”

Lanny didn’t agree with her – but he didn’t argue. She guessed that was something.

40

ROMANOV

The sun was coming up, red-gold over the building tops, pigeons swarming for breakfast crumbs. Jamie Anderson’s (dead?) body had been taken to the morgue, the apartment had been dusted, printed, swabbed, and turned upside down. Harvey had shot them odd looks and taken her crew with her back to the morgue. The CSIs had loaded their gear and trundled off in their van to the lab. The roommate’s boyfriend had come and collected a bag of her clothes and toiletries.

“We’ll seal it up,” Lanny told Officer Dubois, taking the tape from him. “We’re gonna have a specialist come in to consult.”

And they did.

Trina was dead on her feet and running on fumes when Sasha showed up just after seven, a giant paper Starbucks cup in one hand, a carrier with two more swinging at his side from the other. He was dressed in a loose black t-shirt and painted-on black skinny jeans with ripped knees tucked into combat boots. He looked every bit the nineteen-year-old, too-long shaggy hair, aviator shades and all.

His smile was sincere and brilliant, though. “Good morning!” He held out the cardboard drink caddy. “I didn’t know what you like, so I got you both black with cream and sugar.”

“Thank God.” Trina took it from him with a grateful sigh, passing Lanny a cup before taking a deep swig from the other. Oh, wow,a lotof sugar. “Thanks for coming.”

Lanny frowned down at his coffee like it might bite and said nothing.

“Oh sure,” Sasha said, pushing his shades up into his hair. His blue eyes almost seemed to glow in the dim hallway as they flicked toward the apartment door. His smile faded, replaced by a thoughtful look. “I could smell him in the lobby.”

“You could?” Her heart gave a little bump of alarm. “Do you…recognize him? It’s ahim?”

“A male, yes. A vampire. Also yes.” He sipped his coffee. “Not fresh–”

“About five hours ago,” she said.

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