Deaths Excellent Vacation

ladies from Shreveport?”
    “We are.”
    “There’s a lot going on here tonight,” he said. “You going to try out after you talk to Michael? I’m in charge of the tryouts.” He was proud of that. “Just come right to this door when you’re ready.” He pointed at a door to the right that had a hand- lettered sheet of typing paper taped to it. Straggly letters spelled DANCERS IN HERE.
    We didn’t say anything to that, and he cast a glance back at us that I couldn’t read.
    “Let me see if the boss is ready,” Mohawk said.
    When he’d knocked and been admitted through a door on the left, Pam said, “I can’t believe they let someone so deficient answer the door. In fact, I can’t believe anyone bothered to turn him. I think he’s slow.”
    Mohawk popped back out of the door as quickly as he’d popped in.
    “He’s ready for you,” he said, which I found an ominous way to put it.
    Pam and I followed his sweeping gesture, which led into an unexpectedly luxurious office. Michael believed in treating himself well. The room was carpeted in dark blue and topped with a lovely Persian-style rug in cream, blue, and red. The furniture was dark and polished. The contrast with the bare corridor was almost painful.
    Michael himself was a short, broad blond with a distinct Slavic look. Russian, maybe. A dull throb underlay all the polish of his office, and I realized the throb, which I’d been aware of since I entered the building, was the sound of the music playing in the club. The bass was turned up all the way. It was impossible to tell what the song was, not that the lyrics were the point.
    “Ladies, be seated, please,” Michael said. He gestured toward the two very impressive guest chairs in front of his desk. He had a heavy accent and a bad suit. He was smoking. It smelled just as bad when a vampire did it. Of course, he wouldn’t suffer any consequences. An open bottle of Royalty Blended was on the desk by the ashtray. “This is my associate, Rudy,” Michael told us.
    Rudy was standing behind Michael. He was the human I’d come to read. He was slim and black-haired, with an extensively scarred face. He looked as if he was eighteen, but I figured he was at least ten years older than that. He gave off a very strange mental signature. Maybe he wasn’t completely human. Everyone I know has a brain pattern: Humans have one kind, weres of all sorts have another, fairies are opaque but identifiable, and vampires leave a sort of void. Rudy didn’t fall into any of those categories.
    “You can leave,” Michael said to Mohawk, his voice contemptuous. “Go back to organize the tryouts. We’ll be there soon.” Mohawk backed out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him. The noise level abruptly dropped, thank God. The boss’s office was soundproofed. But the drumbeat was pulsing in my head, and I swore I could feel it through my feet even if I couldn’t hear it any longer.
    “Please let me offer you a drink,” Michael said, smiling at both of us. Rudy decided to smile, too. His teeth were very sharp; in fact, they were pointed. Okay, half-human at most. I was suddenly and deeply frightened. The last time I’d seen teeth like that, they’d bitten bits out of me.
    “You’ve never met anyone like Rudy?” Michael asked. He was looking directly at me.
    I’m good at schooling my face. Telepaths learn that lesson early in life, or they don’t survive, is my guess. How had he known?
    “I sense your pulse speeding up,” Michael said charmingly, and I knew I didn’t like him at all. “Rudy is a rarity, aren’t you, my darling one?”
    Rudy smiled again. It was just as bad the second time.
    “Half human and half what?” Pam said. “Elf, I suppose. The teeth are a giveaway.”
    “I’ve seen teeth like that before,” I said, “on fairies who’d filed them to look that way.”
    “Mine are natural,” said Rudy. His voice was surprisingly deep and smooth. “What can I get you to drink?”
    “Some blood, please,” Pam said. She loosened her coat and leaned back in the chair.
    “Nothing for me, thank you.” I didn’t want to drink anything Rudy had touched. I hoped the human-elf hybrid would leave the room to get Pam’s drink, but instead he turned and bent down to a little refrigerator to extricate a bottle of Royalty Blended, a premium drink that mixed synthetic blood with a large dash of the real blood of certified royalty. He popped the top off the bottle and put it in a