There was a sudden flood of matching black polo shirts. They had even choreographed their arrival, with Armstrong in the lead. “Hey, Prehensile Tails got out of jail too.”

“I thought it was Panoramic Toast.” Even Julie had decided to join in.

Earl gave Paranormal Tactical Consulting the once-over. “Well, now it’s obvious why you kids wanted to hit them so bad. They look like assholes.”

That went on for some time as Earl grouped all the newcomers into one of two categories. They were either assholes or all right. Because of his extraordinarily long career, Earl was like an encyclopedia of everyone in the business, and if he didn’t know them personally, they were more likely to fall into the asshole category. For Earl, everyone from the government automatically went into the first bucket until proven otherwise. By the time the lights dimmed we had seen Hunters from fifteen different countries, sometimes more than one team from the same country, with Earl praising one bunch and cursing the next.

My phone buzzed with a text from Milo. Dude. SHOT is awesome. Our ammo mfg is loading our 30 cal silver bullets in 7.62x39 and 300 win mag now! I got free samples and a hat! That simply wasn’t fair.

It took another fifteen minutes for everyone to come in. Many of the latecomers looked hung over and tired, but such was the nature of Vegas. A spotlight turned on over the speaker’s podium and the MC came out wearing a tuxedo. “How long is this going to take?” Earl leaned across me to ask Julie.

She had thoughtfully grabbed a schedule. “Let’s see…Welcome, intros, some announcement from the MCB, a couple of keynote speeches…About two hours. Then the luncheon, then the panels start…And you two had damn well better be attending the ones I’m on. The keynote address is at six.”

Earl and I groaned simultaneously. “I’m gonna need a smoke.” Earl got up to sneak out.

“Bring me back a plate of those little sausages and some cheese balls, would you?” I asked.