She sighed. “I know how it sounds.”

“It sounds like you’re loony tunes,” he told her gleefully, “but who am I to judge? I live with vampires.”

She smiled at him. She liked him, and on short acquaintance, too! Unheard of. “That’s true,” she replied. “So what are you telling the king?”

“That you’re the picture of health, but I have no idea if you’re crazy or not. For what it’s worth, you don’t seem like a drooling psychopath.”

“Aw.”

“Time will tell,” he went on perkily. “Just when I thought it was getting dull around here, too. I mean, how many times can Betsy obsess over her bouquet?”

She didn’t answer him; she was looking at the picture that had popped into her head. “Dr. Spangler,” she said after a few seconds.

“Hon, call me Marc. Dr. Spangler is—no one I know, actually, but it’s weird, anyway.”

She reached out and touched his arm, gently, she thought, but he ow’ed and pulled away. “Youch! Hon, you don’t know your own strength.”

“Call security before you treat your first patient. Have them check his coat pockets. Understand? Because if you don’t…” She was rubbing her temples in anticipation of the headache to follow if he ignored her, not to mention the aggravation of funeral arrangements and Betsy’s hysterics. “If you don’t, your first patient will be your last—stop that!”

He had whipped the stethoscope out and was listening to her heart. She pulled away. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Yup. Did you know your pulse goes way, way up when you’re having one of those visions or whatever?”

“Yes,” she said and escorted him out. “Remember what I said!” she yelled at him and shut the door before he could bug her with more questions.

Chapter 7

And the guy had not one, ladies and gents, but two guns on him! And every other word was the ‘MF’ word. It was like a bad episode of Deadwood.”

It was the wee hours of the next morning, an hour or so away from dawn. Jessica and Betsy were listening, slack-jawed. Tina and Sinclair were hiding their emotions a little better but couldn’t conceal their interest. Antonia yawned, bored.

“A thirty-eight and a forty-five, for the love of Pete! And I’ll tell you what, the minute I’dve tried to Foley him, he would have blown my brains all over the wall. Which would have improved the color scheme, but that’s about it.”

“And Antonia told you this would happen?” Sinclair asked carefully.

“Yes!”

“No,” Antonia said. “I told you to have security check your first patient’s coat. That’s what I saw: them checking his coat. For all I knew, they would have found a pack of Chiclets.”

“You saved him,” Betsy breathed.