Page 37 of Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 29)

“It was dark by the time the firefighters arrived, right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Sunlight was gone, why would the vampire catch on fire again?”

He frowned, then looked back at the video. The firefighters were on screen now. It took a few minutes, but one of them helped Mona out into the hallway and her hands were empty now; apparently one of them had taken the fire extinguisher from her in the room. She looked as dazed and blank as she had in the room when I’d seen her in person.

“Is Ms.Castel normally that calm under pressure?” Dolph asked.

“No, I mean she’s not bad, but I totally underestimated her.”

“She didn’t have much affect in the room when I saw her, is that normal for her?” I asked.

“Affect?”

“Her face is blank, not much expression, is that her norm?”

“No, no, she’s like the rest of us, I guess.”

“She doesn’t have any preexisting medical issues that you’re aware of?” I asked.

“No, why would you ask that?”

“Captain Storr called me in late and I just wanted to know if someone had checked her out. She seems shocky to me.”

“The firefighter paramedics checked her out,” Dolph said.

“Okay,” I said.

“Mona’s all right, right?” The manager looked up at all of us from his chair. He seemed genuinely concerned; good for him.

“She’s fine,” Dolph said.

The manager looked at me then, and I smiled and said, “I just wanted to be a hundred percent sure she’d gotten some attention, that’s all, but we’re good.”

“You can stop the video now,” Dolph said.

“Thanks for letting us see the video,” McKinnon said.

I smiled and just tried to look pleasant while we left the tiny room and looked for someplace we wouldn’t be overheard while we discussed the idea that maybe our heroine was actually our murderer.

10

THERE IS NOway that a human being smelled smoke through a closed door in an outer hallway before the room’s smoke detector sounded,” McKinnon said.

I leaned against the empty room’s dresser and agreed. “Maybe a wererat would smell it, but I don’t know enough about the sensitivity of smoke detectors to make that call.”

“Why not just shapeshifters, why wererats specifically?” Dolph asked.

“Rats have one of the best noses in the animal kingdom, better than dogs,” I said.

Dolph made a note.

“Well, I don’t know much about shapeshifters, but a human being did not beat the smoke detector,” McKinnon said.

“She got the fire extinguisher and then entered the room,” I said.

“That’s why she knocked and announced herself first,” McKinnon said.

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