“He’s okay with it. My stepmother, Judith, on the other hand, doesn’t like it much.” I must have smiled because Laila laughed, a deep, throaty laugh. It was dark, and sensual like Guinness in a glass. It was a good laugh.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve been my mom’s despair since I could walk. My dad’s a football coach and I just wanted to be like my brothers and my dad.”

“No sisters?”

“One and she’s the girl.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a stepsister; she was the girl. I went hunting with my dad.”

“No brothers?”

“One half brother, but he’s a little too gentle for hunting. I was my dad’s only boy.” I made quote marks in the air with my fingers.

She laughed again. “I was always competing with my brothers and losing. They’re six feet and up like my dad. I’m short like Mama.”

“I’ve always been the smallest kid in class.”

“I’m not the smallest, just not as tall as I wanted to be.”

“So, does your dad like your job?”

“He’s proud of me.”

“Mine, too,” I said. “He just worries.”

“Yeah, mine, too.” She looked at me sort of sideways and then said, “They talk about you in the training. Anita Blake, the first female vampire executioner. You still have the highest kill count of any marshal.”

“I’ve been doing it longer,” I said.

“There’s only eight of you from the early days,” she said.

“There were more of us than that,” I said.

“They either retired early like your friend Manny Rodriguez, or they . . .” She was suddenly very interested in getting her clothes in a drawer. “Is it okay if I take the top drawer?”

“Fine, you’re taller.”

She smiled, a little nervous around the edges. “It’s okay, Karlton,” I said. “I know the mortality rate was high when the vampire executioners first started serving warrants.”

She put her clothes in the drawer, closed it, and then looked at me, sort of sideways, again. “Why did the mortality rate among the executioners go up after the warrant system was put in place? The books all say it went up, way up, but it doesn’t explain why.”