I tried, but I sucked at these games. “I know men who prefer your body type to mine.”

“Bullshit,” she said, and was ready to be angry.

“I hang around with a lot of older vampires. They don’t like the really thin girls. They like women to look like women, not preadolescent boys with boobs sort of stuck on as an afterthought.”

“You don’t look like that,” she said, her voice a little less angry, but still not friendly.

“Neither do you. We both look nice and curvy the way God intended grown-up women to look.”

She thought about it and then grinned at me. It lit her whole face up, and I knew we’d be okay. “Ain’t that the truth. But that booty is not white-girl booty.”

“I’m told I look like my mother, except paler. She was Hispanic.”

“That explains it. I knew you were too round in the right places to be white bread.” She laid out her clothes in a neat line on the bedspread, and then said, “What do you mean, ‘told you’ you look like your mother?”

“She died when I was eight.”

“I’m sorry.” And she sounded like she meant it. In fact, there was an awkward pause as we each unpacked on our side of the room. I had the bed nearest the bathroom and farthest from the door. We hadn’t discussed it; I’d just entered the room first.

“It’s okay,” I said, “it was a long time ago.”

“What about your dad?”

“German, as in his was the first generation born in this country.”

“What does he think of you being a marshal and vampire hunter?” she asked, as she dumped her clothes in a pile on the bed and began to sort them.