“It’s cute when you try to be deep,” Nicky said.

“Actually it’s a good point, but for right now if the hospital looks for brain activity on the victims and doesn’t find any, then they’re probably dead,” I said.

Dev gave Nicky a look that said, See, I was right. Nicky frowned back at him. I noticed that Sheridan was watching the interchange more than Pearson.

“Where did you read this new study?” Kaazim asked.

“I’m on a list for science and medical articles about vampires, zombies, wereanimals, and preternatural research in general. It’s like an old-fashioned clipping service except it comes on the computer and doesn’t kill trees unless I print something.”

“That’s my partner, always trying to improve herself,” Edward said, so dryly that I couldn’t tell if he meant it or was wanting to be far more sarcastic than Ted would be.

“I talked to the couple that owns this house personally, Marshals. Less than two weeks ago they were in wanting—no, demanding—that we work harder to help locate their missing daughter.” Pearson’s pleasant but unreadable cop face crumbled around the edges, and I got a glimpse in his brown eyes of how much pain this was causing him. It was just a moment, but it was enough to let me sympathize.

“Are the parents at the hospital, or here?” I asked.

“Mr. Brady is at the hospital along with his parents and the youngest daughter. Mrs. Brady is here along with the daughter we couldn’t find and the daughter’s best friend.”

“It’s always hard when you knew them before they became vampires.”

“Have you known people before and after?” he asked.

I nodded.

“It’s always harder to kill someone that you knew,” Edward said, and there was none of Ted’s happy down-home charm in that sentence.

Pearson looked at him. “Have you killed all the people you knew once they became vampires?”

“They were trying to kill me at the time,” Edward said.

“When people first become vampires, the bloodlust is so powerful that they will attack anyone. They just want food, and that means fresh blood,” I said.

“Is that why we found the daughter here with her family?” Sheridan asked.

“No,” Edward said, “you found her here because some of them remember enough of their humanity to go home. They can be drawn to places they knew well in life, and it’s easier to persuade family to get close so they can feed.”

“Also they can enter their own homes without being invited in first,” I said.

Edward nodded. “I told them that vampires can’t enter a private residence unless invited.”

I added, “So any private house or building that they were invited into when alive they can still enter as a vampire, unless someone who owns the building revokes the invitation.”

“How do you revoke an invitation?” Sheridan asked.

“You say, ‘I revoke my invitation.’”

“Really, that formal?”

“I don’t know. I’ve literally only done it by saying those words.” I looked at Jake and Kaazim. “Gentlemen, does it work without the phrase?”

“Telling them to get out and that they are no longer welcome in your home would work,” Jake said.

“Simply telling them, ‘You are no longer welcome,’ or ‘You are no longer my guest,’ works as well,” Kaazim said.

“Unless they lived in the house in life,” Jake added.

Kaazim agreed. “That does make it more complicated.”

“It seems like there are a lot more rules to vampires than we knew,” Sheridan said.

“Yeah, there are rules,” I said.

“We need to know all the rules,” Pearson said, “but right now I would like the Marshals to accompany us to look at the victims.”

“If they have fangs, Superintendent, they aren’t victims. They’re vampires,” I said.

“I talked to Helena Brady for the first time a month ago, and then two weeks ago. I’ve been looking at the picture of her daughter Katie for weeks hoping we’d find her alive. Her best friend is Sinead Royce. When she went missing just after Katie, we didn’t think it was vampires; we thought we had a child abductor that knew the girls. We thought it was a child molester, or a stalker, or anything but vampires, and now they’re all lying in there dead, or undead, but whatever they are, something did that to them. Something drank Katie Brady’s blood and turned her into this, and that makes her a victim, Marshal Blake.”

“Yes, of course it does, but . . .” Edward grabbed my arm and stopped me. He was one of the handful of people on the planet who could grab me and tell me to stop, and I’d stop. I looked up at him, waiting for an explanation.

“One step at a time; let’s see what there is to see first.”

“Sure, Ted, whatever you say.”

Kaazim and Jake had been so helpful that Pearson let all four of them stay by the door with only one uniformed officer standing by to make sure they didn’t touch anything. We were all inside the crime scene, which was more than I thought we’d get, and if the vampires in the next room rose early we had at least four people within earshot who would be more than just humanly helpful. If I didn’t piss Pearson off completely, we were part of the investigation at last. I didn’t want to piss the Irish detectives off so badly that I got put back on a plane for home, but I had a bad feeling that they were going to try to treat the vampires like people with fangs. That would be a mistake; eventually it would be a fatal mistake for someone.