All Together Dead

either.
    If Eric didn’t know how to pick a term for what I was to him, I was equally stumped. “Do you need something?” I asked him in a voice that warned him I wasn’t in the mood for any double entendres.
    “What did you find out today?” he asked, all business, and the starch ran out of me in a stream.
    “You go on,” I told Barry, who didn’t need telling twice.
    Eric looked around for a safe place to talk, didn’t see one. The lobby was busy with vampires who were going to the judicial proceedings, or chatting, or flirting. “Come,” he said, not as rudely as it sounds, and we went to the elevators and up to his room. Eric was on the ninth floor, which covered a much larger area than the queen’s. There were twenty rooms on nine, at least. There was a lot more traffic, too; we passed quite a few vamps on the way to Eric’s room, which he told me he was sharing with Pam.
    I was a little curious about seeing a regular vampire room, since I’d seen only the living room of the queen’s suite. I was disappointed to find that aside from the traveling coffins, it looked quite ordinary. Of course, that was kind of a big “aside.” Pam’s and Eric’s coffins were resting on fancy trestles covered with fake hieroglyphics in gilt on black-painted wood, which gave them a neat atmospheric touch. There were two double beds, too, and a very compact bathroom. Both towels were hung up, which I could see because the door was open. Eric had never hung up his towels when he lived with me, so I was willing to bet that Pam had folded them and hung them on the rack. It seemed oddly domestic. Pam had probably picked up for Eric for over a century. Good God. I hadn’t even managed two weeks.
    What with the coffins and the beds, the room was a bit crowded, and I wondered what the lower echelon vamps had to put up with, say, on floor twelve. Could you arrange coffins in a bunk configuration? But I was just waffling, trying not to think about being alone with Eric. We sat down, Eric on one bed and I on another, and he leaned forward. “Tell me,” he said.
    “Well, it’s not good,” I said, just to put him on the right track.
    His face darkened, the blond brows drawing in to meet, his mouth turning down.
    “We did find an archery range that Kyle Perkins visited. You were right about that. Barry went with me to be nice, and I really appreciated it,” I said, getting my opening credits in. “To condense the whole afternoon, we found the right range at our third stop, and the gal behind the counter said we could look at the security tape from the night Kyle visited. I thought we might see someone we knew coming in with him. But she wanted us to come back at the end of her shift, seven o’clock.” I paused to take a deep breath. Eric’s face didn’t change at all. “We came back at the appointed time, and she was dead, murdered, in the store. I went past her to look in the office, and the tapes had been burned.”
    “Killed how?”
    “She’d been stabbed, and the knife was left in her chest, and the killer or someone with him had thrown up food. Also, a guy who worked at the store was killed, but I didn’t check him out to see how.”
    “Ah.” Eric considered this. “Anything else?”
    “No,” I said, and got to my feet to leave.
    “Barry was angry with you,” he observed.
    “Yeah, he was, but he’ll get over it.”
    “What’s his problem?”
    “He doesn’t think I handled the…He doesn’t think we should’ve left. Or…I don’t know. He thinks I was unfeeling.”
    “I think you did exceptionally well.”
    “Well, great !” Then I clamped down on myself. “Sorry,” I said. “I know you meant to compliment me. I’m not feeling all that good about her dying. Or leaving her. Even if it was the practical thing to do.”
    “You’re second-guessing yourself.”
    “Yes.”
    A knock at the door. Since Eric didn’t shift himself, I got up to answer it. I didn’t think it was a sexist thing; it was a status thing. I was definitely the lower dog in the room.
    Completely and totally not to my surprise, the knocker was Bill. That just made my day complete. I stood aside to let him enter. Darn if I was going to ask Eric if I should let him in.
    Bill looked me up and down, I guess to check that my clothes were in order, then strode by me without a word. I rolled my eyes at his back. Then I had a brilliant idea: instead of turning back into the room for further discussion, I stepped out of