My phone rang that old-fashioned brrriiinngg; I jumped and gave a little squeak. Shit, I was really going to have to find a new main ring tone; this one always made me jump. Nathaniel wisely turned his laugh into a cough. He and Jean-Claude both thought it was cute. Micah thought I should change my ring tone.

I got the phone off its charger in the center console and said, “Blake here, what’s up?” I sounded angry, which was what I usually sounded like when I was scared.

“Did I call at a bad time?” It was Manny.

“No, no, it’s great. I need to talk to you.”

“I’ve known you too long, Anita, what’s wrong?” Manny had been the one who took me on my first vampire hunt, taught me how to stake them and cut off a human head. He had held my hand while I lost pieces of myself learning the ropes of our shared job. He’d helped me refine my zombie-raising ritual, because he raised the dead, too.

“Personal stuff.”

“Jean-Claude treating you badly?” He asked it in that way that older men do, when they feel protective and fatherly toward you.

“No, he’s great, but sometimes the bad parts of my job make the good parts of my life hard to deal with, you know?” That was the truth, and so obscure that it was almost a lie. But Manny took it for what it was: all the truth he was getting.

“I hated it when Rosita made me give up hunting vampires, but my life works better without it. You could just raise the dead, Anita. I know that neither one of us can give that up.”

“Not without raising the dead by accident,” I said. We’d shared stories of our powers affecting the dead by accident. My first had been my dog. His had been a toddler cousin. What did they both have in common? A lot of emotion from us, and for me, I wanted my dog back, so she came back. The college prof who committed suicide and showed up at my dorm room had been harder for me to understand, but good little Catholic that I had once been, I hadn’t wanted him to spend eternity in hell, so . . . another chance to repent.

“Yes, the power will come out one way or another, but hunting monsters isn’t your magic. You could give that up.”

Manny didn’t know anything about the Mother of All Darkness, or the Father of the Dawn, or . . . so much. Rosita had asked me to swear that I wouldn’t involve her husband in any more vampire hunts after he’d nearly died in the last one we’d done together. He still did some of the morgue executions where the vampire was dead to the world and chained down with holy items, but even that made Rosita nervous. He’d been over fifty on that last hunt, and Rosita had said, “He’s too old for this now. Leave my old man alone, and let him live to see his grandchildren.”

What could I say? I did what she asked, and I lost my mentor, my teacher, and my partner in the undead business. Some of my worst injuries had been after I lost Manny at my back. He’d been older, not an old man, but he was currently planning his oldest daughter’s wedding and if he’d stayed at my side he might have missed it.

“Anita, are you okay?”

“I’m sorry, Manny, did you say something?”

“It’s not like you to lose track. Something has shaken you bad.”

“Yeah, it has, and that’s why I called.” I glanced at Nathaniel. It was an ongoing police investigation, but what was I supposed to do, ask him to put his hands over his ears and go la, la, la? Of course, come to that Manny wasn’t a marshal either. When he took himself out of the vampire-hunting business he missed his chance to be grandfathered into the preternatural marshal program. I loved Nathaniel, but I wasn’t supposed to talk about ongoing police investigations with him, and certainly the FBI wouldn’t appreciate me oversharing with my lover.

“If I can help, you know I will.”

“I know that, Manny, I’m just debating how much I can share with you since you don’t have a badge.” I realized it was too blunt even as I said it, but I had used up a lot of my control already tonight. It didn’t bode well for raising the dead later.

“Is it just me that doesn’t have a badge, or are you with Jean-Claude?”

“I left him back in town to go to his job. We’re a working couple; we can’t spend every waking minute together.” Again it sounded grumpy, but I didn’t care; I was tired of Manny’s issues with Jean-Claude. It wasn’t personal exactly, but Manny didn’t like my dating a vampire. He’d been the one who taught me that they weren’t just people with fangs; they were monsters. The trouble was that I’d learned that wasn’t true and Manny still believed it. It was ironic that he’d stopped killing vampires but still hated them in that racist sort of way, while I’d gone on to execute dozens more and I thought of them as people.

Nathaniel glanced over at me and cocked his head to one side. It meant a question, like what?

“Then if you can’t talk to me about the case, why call me at all?” Manny asked.

“True.” I sighed, and then tried to snake my way through what I needed to share, and what I felt I should hold back. I also didn’t want to give away Manny’s secrets, not even to Nathaniel, not because I didn’t trust my sweetie, but because it wasn’t my secret, and if the police ever found out Manny’s secrets he could go to jail, or if he got the wrong judge he could be executed within a matter of weeks, or days. Some of the things he’d done when he was with Dominga Salvador fell under the magical malfeasance laws, which meant any death caused was grounds for automatic execution, none of that years-on-death-row shit. The laws had been designed to keep the human public safe from beings with so much power there was no way to keep them in jail without risking more death. Manny wasn’t that dangerous, but the law is enforced the way the law is written; it’s not about true justice, it’s about interpretation of the law and who has the best lawyer. Cynical, yes, but the longer I was in law enforcement the more I knew that cynical was often just the truth.