“It means, how many vampires have you executed?”

“Four,” she said, and it was a little defensive.

“Hunted them down and killed them, or morgue stakings where they’re chained to a gurney and unconscious while you do it?”

“Morgue, why?”

“Talk to me after you’ve killed some of them awake, while they’re begging for their lives.”

“They beg for their lives? I thought they’d just attack.”

“Not always; sometimes they’re scared and they beg, just like anybody else.”

“But they’re vampires, they’re monsters.”

“According to the law we uphold they’re legal citizens of this country, not monsters.”

She studied my face. I don’t know what she saw there, or wanted to see, but she finally frowned. I think a blank face wasn’t what she’d been hoping to see. “So you really do believe that they’re people.”

I nodded.

“You believe they’re people, but you still kill them.”

I nodded again.

“If you really believe that, then it would be like me killing Joe Blow down the block. It would be like me putting a stake through a regular person’s heart.”

“Yeah,” I said.

She frowned and turned back to unpacking. “I don’t know if I could do my job if I thought of them as people.”

“It does seem a conflict of interest,” I said. I began debating on where to put the weapons I’d want easy access to, just in case. Knowing that the Harlequin might be planning to try to kidnap or kill me made me more than normally interested in being well armed.

“Can I say something without you taking it wrong?” she asked, and sat on the edge of her bed.

I stopped with one gun and two knives laid out on the bed. “Probably not, but say it anyway.”

She frowned again, putting that little pucker between her eyes. If she didn’t stop frowning so much she’d have lines there before too many years. “I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with you.”