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Chapter 1

I'D WORKED MY share of serial killer cases, but none of the killers had ever mailed hostly, through the plastic bag it rapped in It sat on my desk, on top of the desk blotter, like hundreds of other packages that had been delivered to Ani Raise the Dead for a Killing The head had been packed in ice, for all the world like some employee of the postal service had done it Maybe they had; vampires can be very persuasive, and it was a vae A vampire named Vittorio He'd included a letter with raphy: Anita Blake He wanted me to knoho to thank for htered over ten people in St Louis alone before he fled to parts unknown Well, not unkno, e It had been as, Nevada

Either Vittorio was still there, or it would be another of his disappearing acts Was he in Las Vegas, or had he mailed it froave the information to the police there?

No way to know I could still hear our dayti hysterical in the other room Luckily we had no clients in the office I was about thirty minutes away from my first client of the day, and my appointment had been the first of the day for Animators Inc; lucky Mary could have her breakdohile our business er, Bert, tried to calm her Maybe I should have helped, but I was a US Marshal, and business had to coht have a serial killer in town Happy fucking Monday

I sat down at my desk, the phone in my hand, but didn't dial it I stared at the pictures of other people's families on ling in the drawers, but first Manny Rodriguez brought in his family portrait It was the one that every family seems to have, where people are too serious, and only one or two ood smile Manny looked stiff and uncomfortable in his suit and tie Left to his own devices he always forgot the tie, but Rosita, his wife, as inches taller than he, and more inches wider than his slender forot her way on stuff like that Manny wasn't exactly henpecked, but he wasn't exactly the voice of authority in his house either

Their two girls, Mercedes and Consuela (Connie), were very grown-up, standing tall and straight with their father's delicate build, and their faces so pretty, they shone in the shadow of Rosita's older, heavier face His daughters o when Rosita, "little rose," must have matched her name Their son, Tomas, was still a child, still in elerade now, or fourth? I couldn't remember

The other picture was a pair of photos in one of those hinged frames One picture was of Larry Kirkland and his wife, Detective Ta at each other like they saw so wonderful, all shiny and full of proelica, who had quickly becoel The baby had her father's curls, like an auburn halo around her head He kept his orange-red hair cut so short there were no curls, but Tael's, so that it was auburn It was a little more brown, a little less red, than Nathaniel's auburn hair

Should I bring a picture of Nathaniel and Micah and me in, to put on the desk? I knew that the other animators at Animators Inc had pictures of their families on their desks, too

But, of course, would I need ht a picture ofa picture ofwith, at last count, four oes in the pictures?

I felt nothing about the package onbut a huge, vast emptiness inside me, almost like the silence that er on so this really well, or was I in shock? Hmm, I couldn't tell, which meant it was probably some version of shock Great

I stood up and looked at the head in its plastic wrap and thought, No pictures of my boyfriends, not at work I'd had a handful of clients who had turned out to be bad guys, and girls I didn't want theuys ideas; they find enough awful things to do without giving them clues

No, no personal photos at work Bad idea

I dialed Inforas police force before It was a chance to make new friends, or piss off a whole new set of people; with o either way I didn't do it on purpose, but I did have a tendency to rub people the wrong way Part of it was being a woman in a predo personality

I sat back down, so I couldn't see inside the box I'd already called my local police I wanted forensics to do the box, find some clues, help us catch this bastard Whose head was it, and why did I get the prize? Why send it tosopeople in our town, or did itthat would never, ever, occur to me to think?

There are a lot of good profilers working on serials, but I think theyYou can't really think like these people You just can't You can try You can crawl into their heads so far that you feel like you'll never be clean again, but in the end, unless you are one, you can't really understand whatonly about their own pleasure, their own pathology Serial killers don't help you catch other serial killers unless it helps their agenda Of course, there were people who said that I was a serial killer I still had the highest kill count of all the legal vampire executioners in the United States I'd topped a hundred this year Did it really e anything that I took no sexual pleasure fro I'd thrown up? Did the fact that I'd had an order of execution for most of my kills make them better, less brutal? There were serial killers who had used only poison, which caused alun to wonder exactly what set un to question if to al victims it mattered what my motives were

A woan the process of getting passed up the line to the person who ht be able to tell me whose head I had in the box