My cell phone rang as I was digging out my keys for the back door. The music had changed again; now it was “Wild Boys” by Duran Duran. Nathaniel found it amusing that I couldn’t figure out how to program my own ring tone, so he changed it periodically without warning. Apparently, this was my default ring tone now. Boys.

“Blake here.”

The voice on the other end of the phone stopped me dead in the parking lot. “Anita, it’s Edward.”

Edward was an assassin who specialized in killing monsters because humans had become too easy. As Ted Forrester he was a U.S. Marshal and fellow vampire executioner. By any name he was one of the most efficient killers I’d ever met. “What’s wrong, Edward?”

“Nothing on my end, but I hear you’re having a hell of an interesting time.”

I stood there in the summer’s heat, keys dangling from my hand, and was scared. “What are you talking about, Edward?”

“Tell me you were going to call and have me meet you in Vegas. Tell me you weren’t going to hunt this one without inviting me to come play.”

“How the hell did you know about it?” Once upon a time, not that long ago, if anyone died, especially spectacularly, Edward was a good bet for it. I had a moment to wonder if he knew more about Vegas than I did.

“I’m a U.S. Marshal, too, remember?”

“Yeah, but I only found out less than an hour ago. How did you rate a call, and from whom?”

“They killed one of our own, Anita. Cops take that hard.” In one sentence he’d said our own and then talked about the police like he wasn’t one. Edward was like me; we had a badge, but sometimes we didn’t quite fit.

“How did you find out about it, Edward?”

“You sound suspicious.”

“Don’t fuck with me, just talk to me.”

He took in a deep breath, let it out. “Fair enough. I live in New Mexico, remember? It isn’t that far from Nevada. They’ll probably call up all the western-state executioners.”