Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(26)

“I thought they weren’t supposed to move while they burned,” she said in a distant voice, almost like she hadn’t meant to say it out loud. She was definitely going into some kind of shock or postemergency slump. Had an EMT or some medical someone looked her over?

“Most of the time they don’t move, they just burn,” I said.

She blinked and looked at me with her big, brown eyes showing too much white around the edges.

“It moved, it reached out all fire and black bones and it still grabbed for me.”

“While you put it out with the fire extinguisher,” I said.

“Before.”

“Before?” I asked.

She nodded.

“The opened drapes caught the last sunlight of the day; when the sun set the vampire woke for the night,” I said.

“He was all burning, flames, and he still moved, screamed. It was awful.”

“You didn’t put the fire out to save the hotel, you put the vampire out because he came alive while he was on fire,” I said.

She nodded. “He was burning alive. I know he’s dead, but he didn’t seem dead when he cried out in pain. He seemed alive, but he’s dead now, they told me he’s really dead.”

“He’s really dead now,” I said.

“I didn’t know they felt pain like that,” she said.

“Yeah, vampires feel pain just like we do.”

“If it had been in the morning like in New York, would he have felt pain?”

“No, the vampire would have been dead for the day, no pain, no waking up.”

“But that room doesn’t get morning light, so it couldn’t be then.”

Something about the way she said it seemed odd, or maybe I was seeing motive where there was just a normal person dealing with a very abnormal event? I needed another officer here to help me figure out which it was before I formed the wrong conclusions. I didn’t interrogate many regular humans, and I knew that vampires and shapeshifters can react very differently from human normal.

The first had centuries or decades longer than most humans to control their expressions and body language. The second could smell fear and anger, and no matter how you controlled your body you couldn’t control the autonomic nervous system. It betrayed you to a shapeshifter’s nose, or their and a vampire’s superior hearing. They both knew the second your pulse rate sped up, sometimes before you did.

I stared at the woman sitting quietly on the bed, the wad of Kleenex forgotten in her hand as she stared at the wall. She was pale, and lightly dewed with sweat; both could be signs of shock. I needed to know if anyone with more medical knowledge than I had had given her a once-over. For all I knew she could have an underlying medical condition. Shit, I just wasn’t used to dealing with normal people. Cops didn’t count, no first responder did; they didn’t react normally to emergencies any more than vampires or shapeshifters did.

“Would the vampire have attacked me if it hadn’t died first?” she asked.

“I don’t know, you were putting out the fire, so you were trying to help him.”

“I didn’t close the drapes,” she said.

“You did the best you could.”

She nodded as if that made sense to her.

I got my phone out and texted Dolph without making a big deal out of it to Mona. I had a moment of trying to decide what to text, but settled for Need you in room with the maid. Something’s not right.

“Do I know you?” Mona asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

She frowned harder at me.

I eased farther into the open doorway so I could see the hallway better and still have a sense of the woman on the bed. I was relieved to see Officer Kay Beecher striding down the hallway like she had a purpose. I saw Dolph come out of the room behind her; he was so much taller that I could watch both of them at the same time without having to choose whom to look at.

Kay came up with a smile and a thank you. Dolph just behind her was blank-faced serious. The officer actually turned back toward him, as if she thought she was in trouble for leaving her post to me. I spoke before she could get herself in unnecessary trouble. “Kay, glad you’re here. Mona, Officer Kay is back, you okay with her for a few minutes? I’ll be right back.” I even smiled when I said it.

Mona nodded, looked at Kay as if she’d never seen her, then went back to staring at the wall. It didn’t look that fascinating to me, just a hotel wall with a chest of drawers and a television set and a mirror. The usual generic hotel arrangement, but then I realized I was wrong; the mirror took up more of the wall than normal. Most cheaper rooms put the mirror on the back of the bathroom door or on the closet’s sliding doors. Most hotels would have put a painting there. Mona wasn’t staring at the wall; she was staring at herself. She was staring as if she didn’t quite recognize herself; maybe it was shock or maybe it was something else.

Dolph was waiting for me in the hallway when I stepped back out. His face was neutral, waiting.

He knew I wouldn’t have contacted him without a good reason. I just walked past him a little way down the hall closer to the crime scene with its huddle of people hurrying in and out. I stopped short of it so that no one would overhear us.

“Talk to me, Anita,” Dolph said.

I told him what Mona had said.

“That’s not much,” he said.