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by the cruiser, looking at the human and letting his blood-ardor grow. Idiot.
    Rat was rubbing his lower neck in invitation. God, it had started already. By sunup, they’d all think she was in the market to build up the IOUs necessary to reach the lower basement and she’d be mobbed. Imagining the coming innuendos, suggestions, and unwanted offers, Ivy stifled a sigh. Like the pheromones weren’t bad enough already? Maybe she should start a rumor she had an STD.
    “The ambulance crew,” the vampire was saying. “Tia and me to get him out. He was crying over her as usual. A neighbor called it in as a domestic disturbance. Third one this month, but when it got quiet, she got scared and made the call.”
    Frowning, Ivy took a last breath of clean night air, and stepped into the hall. Not too many people to confuse things, and Rat knew not to touch anything. The room would be as clean as could be expected. And she wasn’t going to sully it.
    The tang of blood strengthened, and after slipping on the blue booties, she bent to duck under the tape across the open door. She stopped inside, taking in someone else’s life: low ceilings, matted carpet, old drapes, new couch, big but cheap TV, even cheaper stereo, and hundreds of CDs. There were self-framed pictures of people on the walls and arranged on the pressboard entertainment shelves. The feminine touches were spotty, like paint splatters. The victim hadn’t lived here very long.
    Ivy breathed deeply, tasting the anger left in the air, invisible signposts that would fade with the sun. Blue booties scuffing, she followed the scent of blood to the bathroom. A red handprint gripped the rim of the toilet, and there were several smears on the tub and curtain. Someone had cut his scalp on the tub. The pink bulb gave an unreal cast, and Ivy shut off the exhaust fan with the end of her wax pencil, making a mental note to tell Rat that she had.
    The soft hum stopped. In the new silence, she heard the soft conversation and laugh track of a sitcom coming from a nearby apartment. Art’s satisfied voice filtered in from the hallway, and Ivy’s blood pressure rose. Rat had said the man had strangled his wife. She’d seen worse. And though he hadn’t said where they found the body, an almost palpable anger flowed over the bedroom’s doorjamb, broken about the latch with newly painted-over cracks.
    Ivy touched the hidden damage with a finger. The bedroom had the same mix of careless bachelor and young woman trying to decorate with little money to spend. Cheap frilly pillows, pink lace draped over ugly lampshades, dust thick on the metal blinds that were never opened. No blood but for smears, and they were likely the suspect’s. Pretty clothes in pink and white were strewn on the bed and floor, and the closet was empty. She had tried to leave. A black TV was in the corner, the remote broken on the floor under a dent in the wall smelling of plaster. On the carpet was Rat’s card and a Polaroid of the woman, askew on the floor by the bed.
    Forcing her jaw to unclench, Ivy pulled the air deep into her, reading the room as if the last few hours of emotion had painted the air in watercolors. Any vampire could.
    The man in the car had hurt the woman, terrified her, beat her up, and her magic hadn’t stopped him. She had died here, and the heady scents of her fear and his anger started a disturbing and not entirely unwelcome bloodlust in Ivy’s gut. Her fingertips ached, and her throat seemed to swell.
    The sound of Art’s scuffing steps cut painfully through her wide-open senses. A thrill of adrenaline built and vanished. Eyes half lidded, she turned, finding a seductive tilt to her hips. Art’s eyes were almost fully dilated. Clearly the fear of the man outside and its echo still vibrating through the room were tugging on his instincts. Maybe this was why he continued to work homicide. Pretty man couldn’t get his fangs wet without a little help, maybe?
    “Ivy,” he said, his voice