“Yeah, yeah, no discriminating on basis of race, religion, or lack of being human, or something like that.”

“I know that other cops say that I’m sleeping my way to all the information, and I do sleep with the monsters. I can’t deny that, but the idea that the only skill set I have is sex is just jealousy.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Most of the preternatural branch is male. They actually have a lower percentage of female marshals than the regular branch. Men don’t want to admit that a little bitty girl is kicking their asses in the field. They need me not to be better at their job than they are, and the only way they can explain my having the highest number of executions in the entire service is to tell themselves that if they were a woman and could sleep their way to the top it would make all the difference.”

“You are a little bitty thing. You look dainty as my youngest daughter. I’ve read your cases. I know what you’ve managed to kill. You’ve been called in on cases where the first marshals were hospitalized, or killed outright. You, Marshal Forrester, Marshal Spotted-Horse, and Marshal Jefferies are the go-to guys for cleaning up the mess.”

The “Otto Jefferies” identity was to Olaf what “Ted Forrester” was to Edward. Olaf was scarier than Edward, though, because among the mercenary stuff his hobby was being a serial killer. He’d promised Edward and some part of some government that he wouldn’t do his hobby on American soil. It was one of the ways he kept his day job helping train some uber-secret unit. His victims of choice were petite dark-haired women. He seemed to have a crush on me now, and had flat-out told me he’d be willing to try for normal sex with me, or at least sex that didn’t involve my being tortured and dead. Edward wanted me to encourage the attraction, because it was the closest to healthy Olaf had ever been around a woman, but we both agreed that the line between being Olaf’s serial killer girlfriend as we killed vampires together, and triggering his own serial killer needs toward me, was probably a thin one. Bernardo Spotted-Horse, like me, just had one name, our real names. Neither of us had ever made a living doing things as harsh as Edward and Olaf.