"Don't let her make you into a killer."
And just like that our little family feud, Larry's and mine, was suddenly very public. The silence was so thick you could have spread it on bread, but you wouldn't have wanted to eat it. Everyone was straining to hear now, because everyone likes gossip, even cops.
Brice said, "Last I checked, Kirkland, our job description says we execute the monsters. That makes us killers, legal and all, but we're supposed to kill things, Marshal Kirkland; it's our job."
"I know my job," Larry said, voice tight.
Brice smiled a little more, and ran his hand through his well-cut hair; it was an aw-shucks movement. It made him look harmless and charming. I wondered if it was on purpose, or just a habit.
"Well now, I can't speak to that yet, but I know that Blake still has the highest kill count of any Marshal in the service. I know that every officer I've spoken to would take her as backup in a firefight. Even the ones who hate her personal life with a vengeance would still take her into a shoot-out and trust her to keep them alive. If there's higher praise from one officer to another, I don't know it."
If Larry followed both the guy and cop rules, he would let it go, but part of the problem was that he didn't follow those unspoken rules. "Are you saying that people don't trust me to keep them safe?"
"I'm just trying to go get some food with two fellow officers; anything else is what you're thinking, not what I'm saying. I just complimented Marshal Blake. I didn't say a damn thing about you." Brice was still smiling a little, still all aw-shucks-ma'am in his demeanor, but there was something harder now, some hint of steel underneath that handsome nice-guy exterior.
Zerbrowski said, "Come on, Brice, I'm starving."
He turned and looked at Zerbrowski, and there was a smile again, but his eyes held more. He wanted out of this conversation with Larry, but if he couldn't get out of it, he'd finish it. That one look and I knew that Larry should shut the f**k up, before he made it impossible for him and Brice to ever be friends. They wouldn't be enemies, but if Larry forced it, they'd never be more than coworkers - hostile coworkers.
Brice started walking toward us, and Larry let him go, but he gave me the hard look, not the man's back as he walked away. Why was everything always my fault?
Brice caught up to us and moved past us, saying quietly, "Let's go before Kirkland says something I'm going to regret." And just like that, Brice was with Zerbrowski and me.
Chapter Fourteen
WHEN WE GOT to my Jeep, Zerbrowski riding shotgun beside me and Brice in the backseat, I said, "Not that I'm not flattered that you came to my defense, but what's going on, Brice?"
"Thank you, Blake, and you, too, Zerbrowski, for not saying you didn't know what the hell I was talking about, and that you didn't want me to go eat with you."
Zerbrowski turned in the seat as far as the seat belt would allow. "You're welcome to eat with us. After putting Kirkland in his place you can sit by us any time, but why did you want to eat with us this bad? I mean, I know we're charming and all, but with all the offers you've got for dinner and more, why us?"
I glanced back in the darkened car quick enough to catch Brice smiling. He leaned between the seats and I realized he wasn't buckled in. "Buckle up," I said.
"What?" he asked.
"Seat belt. I'm pretty fanatical about it, buckle up."
"It's hard to talk from back here," he said.
"I can stop this car and turn it around," I said.
"Is she joking?" Brice asked.
"No," Zerbrowski said.
Brice frowned, but slid back and buckled himself in for safety. "Okay, now what?"
"Yeah, I'd rather see your face while we talk, but my mom died in a car crash, so seat belts make me feel better."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"It was a long time ago," I said, pulling out into traffic.
"Doesn't mean it stops hurting," he said.
I used the rearview mirror to glance back, and he was looking at me as if he knew I'd be looking. I looked back at the road. "You lose someone?"
"Yes." He said it soft, and didn't offer to elaborate.
I let it go, but I knew that his loss was more recent than mine. You get better at talking about it casually after a decade or two.
Zerbrowski said, "So, how'd we get to be your pick of dinner dates?" We'd go back to talking about something less painful, by the guy rules. Girl rules are different, they poke at things; guys do not.
"Well, first off, I meant what I said back there. Even officers who don't approve of your lifestyle choices would still take you as backup over Kirkland, or most anyone else. They'd say how you're bad for shacking up with vampires and wereleopards, but in a firefight they'd take your vampire-loving, furry-fucking ass over most anyone else's."
"Did they actually say 'furry-fucking'?" I asked.
He laughed. "Not exactly."
"So you want to learn the ways of the force from Anita," Zerbrowski said.
"Somethin' like that," he agreed.
"Do you have a preference on food?" I asked.
"I've been on the job for eight years."
"Which means you're just glad to have a chance to sit down and get a hot meal, whatever it is, right?" I asked.
"Yes, ma'am." Again, I caught that lopsided grin in the mirror, before I went back to looking at traffic.
"Let's go to Jimmy's," Zerbrowski said.
I nodded. "Works for me." I took a right at the next light and we were there. I found a parking spot, turned off the motor, unbuckled my seat belt. Everyone else followed suit.
Brice said, "Can we talk in the car for a minute?"
Zerbrowski and I exchanged glances, then nodded, and turned in our seats so we could see him more plainly. I thought we were about to find out how we got to be Brice's dinner dates.
"I do want to learn the job from you and not Kirkland, but I didn't expect to have Detective Arnet be so... persistent in her attempts to..."
"Date you," I offered.
He nodded.
"It's not just her," I said. "You are at the top of the female officer and female employee who-can-date-the-new-guy-on-the-force-first pool."
"I'd gathered that," he said, but he was looking at his hands. He had his fingers tangled together, almost clenched. We were about to get to something he didn't like.
"Smith thought he was the hot new thing until you showed up," Zerbrowski said.
"He's dating someone seriously, isn't he?" Brice asked.
"Yes," I said, "but that doesn't always stop some women." In my head, I added, It didn't stop Arnet from pursuing Nathaniel, but I didn't say it out loud. It sounded petty out loud; in my head it didn't sound as bad.
"No, it doesn't," Brice said, and he was looking at his hands where they held on to each other between his jean-clad thighs.
"You married?" Zerbrowski asked.
He shook his head, then looked up, and I saw a look in his face, something serious and unhappy.
"What's wrong, Brice?" I asked.
"Rumor says that some of your boyfriends are... bisexual?"
I gave him a not entirely friendly look. "A couple, but most are more just heteroflexible."
"Heteroflexible?" He made it a question.
I shrugged. "Nathaniel explained the term to me. He's one of my boyfriends. He explained that it means someone who is predominantly heterosexual, but has an exception with one or two people of the same sex, or someone who will cross the line, like at a party occasionally."
"I've never heard the term," Brice said.
I shrugged again. "Like I said, my boyfriend explained it to me." What I didn't add out loud was that the new label was one that fitted me now; there was a girl in among all my boys now. Her name was Jade, and we'd rescued her from a sadistic master vampire that had abused her for centuries. She'd been his tiger to call, and now she was mine; my black tiger, my Black Jade, which was what her Chinese name translated to. I honestly tried not to think about the whole thing much. When I was with her, I felt protective, and God knew she was fragile from centuries of being basically an abused wife of the vampire that had been her master, but to say I wasn't entirely comfortable with having a woman in my bed was an understatement of gigantic proportions.
"Most people think bisexual is just g*y-light," Brice said, "but heteroflexible..." He shook his head, smiling.