Definitely Dead

crawfish etouffee? Or we could go bowling.”
    My great-uncle had been an avid bowler. I could see his feet, in their bowling shoes, right in front of me. I shuddered. “Don’t know how.”
    “We could go to a hockey game.”
    “That might be fun.”
    “We could cook together in your kitchen, and then watch a movie on your DVD.”
    “Better put that one on a back burner.” That sounded a little too personal for a first date, not that I’ve had that much experience with first dates. But I know that proximity to a bedroom is never a good idea unless you’re sure you wouldn’t mind if the flow of the evening took you in that direction.
    “We could go see The Producers. That’s coming to the Strand.”
    “Really?” Okay, I was excited now. Shreveport’s restored Strand Theater hosted traveling stage productions ranging from plays to ballet. I’d never seen a real play before. Wouldn’t that be awfully expensive? Surely he wouldn’t have suggested it if he couldn’t afford it. “Could we?”
    He nodded, pleased at my reaction. “I can make the reservations for this weekend. What about your work schedule?”
    “I’m off Friday night,” I said happily. “And, um, I’ll be glad to chip in for my ticket.”
    “I invited you. My treat,” Quinn said firmly. I could read from his thoughts that he thought it was surprising that I had offered. And touching. Hmmm. I didn’t like that. “Okay then. It’s settled. When I get back to my laptop, I’ll order the tickets online. I know there are some good ones left, because I was checking out our options before I drove over.”
    Naturally, I began to wonder about appropriate clothes. But I stowed that away for later. “Quinn, where do you actually live?”
    “I have a house outside Memphis.”
    “Oh,” I said, thinking that seemed a long way away for a dating relationship.
    “I’m partner in a company called Special Events. We’re a sort of secret offshoot of Extreme(ly Elegant) Events. You’ve seen the logo, I know. E(E)E?” He made the parentheses with his fingers. I nodded. E(E)E did a lot of very fancy event designing nationally. “There are four partners who work full-time for Special Events, and we each employ a few people full- or part-time. Since we travel a lot, we have places we use all over the country; some of them are just rooms in houses of friends or associates, and some of them are real apartments. The place I stay in this area is in Shreveport, a guesthouse in back of the mansion of a shifter.”
    I’d learned a lot about him in two minutes flat. “So you put on events in the supernatural world, like the contest for packmaster.” That had been a dangerous job and one requiring a lot of specialized paraphernalia. “But what else is there to do? A packmaster’s contest can only come up every so now and then. How much do you have to travel? What other special events can you stage?”
    “I generally handle the Southeast, Georgia across to Texas.” He sat forward in his chair, his big hands resting on his knees. “Tennessee south through Florida. In those states, if you want to stage a fight for packmaster, or a rite of ascension for a shaman or witch, or a vampire hierarchal wedding—and you want to do it right, with all the trimmings—you come to me.”
    I remembered the extraordinary pictures in Alfred Cumberland’s photo gallery. “So there’s enough of that to keep you busy?”
    “Oh, yes,” he said. “Of course, some of it is seasonal. Vamps get married in the winter, since the nights are so much longer. I did a hierarchal wedding in New Orleans in January, this past year. And then, some of the occasions are tied to the Wiccan calendar. Or to puberty.”
    I couldn’t begin to imagine the ceremonies he arranged, but a description would have to wait for another occasion. “And you have three partners who do this full-time, too? I’m sorry. I’m just grilling you, seems like. But this is such an interesting way to make a living.”
    “I’m glad you think so. You gotta have a lot of people skills, and you gotta have a mind for details and organization.”
    “You have to be really, really, tough,” I murmured, adding my own thought.
    He smiled, a slow smile. “No problem there.”
    Yep, didn’t seem as though toughness was a problem for Quinn.
    “And you have to be good at sizing up people, so you can steer clients in the right direction, leave them happy with the job you’ve done,” he said.
    “Can you