IF I'D BEEN on my own, or just with another Preternatural Branch Marshal, I could have gone home, but working with SWAT meant that I had to give my version of events, since we had wounded officers.
I sat at the little table, huddled over my umpteenth cup of really bad coffee, feeling the dried blood on my pants crinkle as I shifted my weight in the hard metal chair. Two men in nice clean suits sat across from me, asking the same questions for the dozenth time. I was beginning to resent them, just a little.
Detective Preston said, "How did Officer Hermes get his leg broken?"
I raised my eyes from the tabletop to look at him. He was tall, thin, balding, and wore glasses that were too small and round for his long angular face. "Are you asking the same questions over and over because you think you'll wear me down and I'll tell a different story, or do you guys just have nothing better to do?"
I rubbed my fingers across my eyes. They felt gritty, and I was tired.
"Ms. Blake..."
I looked up then, and I knew it wasn't a friendly look. "Marshal, it's Marshal Blake, and the fact that you keep forgetting that is either deliberate, or you're just an asshole; which is it? Is it a tactic, or are you just rude?"
"Marshal Blake, we need to understand what happened so we can keep it from happening again."
The second detective cleared his throat. We both looked at him. He was older, heavier, as if he hadn't seen the inside of a gym in a decade or more. His white hair was cut short and precise to his soft face. "What I don't understand, Marshal, is how you moved fast enough and with enough force to break the ribs on both Marshal Brice and Officer Hermes, and break Hermes's leg? Why did you attack your own men?"
I shook my head. "You know the answer to all of that."
"Humor me."
"No," I said.
They both sort of stiffened in their chairs. Owens, the shorter, rounder one, smiled. "Now, Marshal Blake, it's just procedure."
"Maybe, but it's not my procedure." I pushed back my chair and stood up.
"Sit back down," Preston said.
"No, I am a federal officer, so you guys aren't the boss of me. If I were SWAT, I might have to sit here and take this, but I'm not, so I don't. I've answered all the questions, and the answers aren't going to change, so..." I waved at them and started for the door.
"If you ever want to work with SWAT again, you will sit here as long as we want you to sit here, and you'll answer any question we ask," Preston said.
I shook my head, and smiled.
"I fail to see the humor," Owens said.
"Last I heard, Brice and Hermes are both going to heal up just fine."
Preston stood up, using that tall, gangly height to look down on me. I so didn't care. "Hermes is over six feet tall, and you shoved him into a wall, left a fucking imprint of his body, and shoved a vampire halfway through the wall by throwing Hermes into her. That's not standard operating procedure, Blake. We want to understand what happened."
"You have my blood tests somewhere. I'm sure that'll help you figure it all out."
"You carry six different kinds of lycanthropy, but you don't shapeshift, which is a medical impossibility."
"Yeah, I'm just a medical marvel, and I'm taking my marvelous ass home."
"Which home?" Owens said.
I looked at him, eyes narrowing. "What?"
"Your house, or the Circus of the Damned and the Master of the City of St. Louis; which home are you going to tonight?"
"Circus of the Damned tonight, not that it's any of your business."
"Why there tonight?" he asked.
I was tired, or I wouldn't have answered. "Because we're scheduled to sleep there tonight."
"Who are we?" Owens asked, and something about the way he said it made me suspect that it was my personal life more than my professional life they were after.
I shook my head. "I don't owe you my personal life, Detective Owens."
"There are people on the force who believe your personal life compromises your loyalties."
"No one who's ever put their shoulder next to mine and gone into a dangerous situation with me questions my loyalty. No one who went in to that house today with me questions my loyalty, and frankly that's all I care about it."
"We can recommend that you are too dangerous and unpredictable to work with SWAT here in St. Louis," Owens said.
I shook my head, shrugged. It was easier to do now that I wasn't in the vest and all the weapons. "You're going to do whatever the fuck you want to do. Nothing I say will make a damn bit of difference. You've obviously decided to use my sexual orientation against me." I said it that way deliberately; I knew the rules, too.
"We haven't questioned your sexual orientation, Marshal Blake," Owens said.
"I'm polyamorous, which means loving more than one person, and what I heard was you saying that the fact that I wasn't white-bread, missionary-position monogamous compromised my loyalty. Isn't that what they used to say about homosexual officers, too?"
"It's not the number of men you live with that we object to, it's that they're all wereanimals and vampires," Preston said.
"So, you're discriminating against my boyfriends because they have a disease?"
Owens touched Preston's arm. "We aren't discriminating against anyone, Marshal Blake."
"So, you aren't prejudiced against vampires or wereanimals?" I asked.
"Of course not, that would be illegal," Owens said. He pulled on Preston's arm until the taller man sat down.
I stayed standing. "Good to know that you aren't prejudiced on the basis of illness, or sexual orientation."
"Poly-whatsit isn't a sexual orientation; it's a lifestyle choice," Preston said.
"Funny, I thought it was my sexual orientation, but if you're a psychologist with a background in sexuality, by all means, you're right."
"You know full well I'm not," Preston said, and the first hint of real anger was creeping into his voice. If I kept poking at him, maybe I could get him to yell and that would be on the video, too.
"I have no idea what your areas of professional expertise are, Detective Preston. I thought since you were speaking like an expert about my sex life, you must know something I don't."
"I did not say a damn thing about your sex life."
"I'm sorry, I thought you did."
"You know damn well I didn't."
"No," I said, and gave him the full unhappiness in my eyes, and the beginnings of anger in my cold, controlled voice, "no, I don't know that at all. In fact, I thought I heard both of you question my loyalty to my badge and my service, because I'm sleeping with monsters, and that must mean I'm a monster, too."
"We never said that," Owens said.
"Funny," I said, "because that's what I heard. If that's not what you meant, then please, enlighten me. Tell me what you actually meant, gentlemen. Tell me what I misunderstood in this conversation."
I stood there and looked at them. Preston glared at me, but it was Owens who said, "We would never question your home life, your sex life, or imply that people who suffer from lycanthropy, or vampirism, are less worthy of the rights and privileges accorded to everyone in this country."
"When you run for office, let me know, so I won't vote for you," I said.
He looked surprised. "I'm not running for office."
"Huh, usually when someone talks like a politician they're running for something," I said.
He flushed, angry at last. "You can go, Marshal. In fact, maybe you better go."
"Happy to," I said, and I left them to be angry together, and probably still angry with me. They could recommend that I not be allowed to go out with SWAT anymore, but it would be just that, a recommendation, and the other officers didn't like these guys any better than I did. They could recommend all they wanted; they could go to hell for all I cared. I was going home.