“And as for you —” He grabbed her purse, which had been on the floor beside a chair. He held it up to the desk lamp. “What the fuck is this made out of?” He knew damn well. They all had this stuff—purses and wallets and belts, God only knew what else. The skin of the vampire was more delicate even than calfskin . . . probably than human, for that matter.

He emptied the purse on the desk and stuffed the damn thing into the trash can. “If they saw this skin, God only knows what they’d do.”

“I’m not exactly planning to take it with me into some fucking lair. I’m not that stupid.”

“Don’t you understand? Even yet?” He looked from one surprised face to the other. “No. You don’t. So you listen up, children, and you listen close. Something has changed. Big time. We’ve been dealing with something that’s very old and very slow to react, and so far it’s been easy. Like killing big bugs. You surprised ’em all, didn’t you? Token resistance—gnashing teeth, hissing. It was fun! It got to be, anyway. The professionals. Fuck! Fuck us, we’re assholes.”

“Not me,” Charlie said. His face was burning up. His eyes were beads. He was not trained to take abuse, and he did not take it well.

“Not you, little boy. Little, innocent boy. Lemme see your wallet.”

“What the hell for?”

“Lemme see the goddamn thing!”

Charlie held it out. “They use human skin,” he muttered.

Paul emptied it and threw it away with the purse. “Belts, shoes, anything?”

“That stuff is valuable!”

“If they see you with their goddamn skins in your hands, they’re gonna know exactly who you are.”

“They are not going to see us.”

“Listen to me. One of them has gone up to the fifth floor of a hotel, killed one of your peers, and then flown from Bangkok to Paris on a god-for-damned airplane! I’ve seen it and it looked like some damn lady. Very human! So they don’t all spend all their time hiding in lairs, do they? We’re up against something new! Something we know not one damn thing about! They may be as old as damn Methuselah and they may be slow to respond, but they’ve taken a blow to the gut, and they are now responding! So you better watch your backs, because they are strong and they are smart and now they know!”

In the silence that followed, he became acutely aware of the humming of the little electric clock that stood on the table beside the bed. Charlie went to the window. Becky sat staring at her hands. Then she looked up. He saw tears gleaming in the edges of her eyes. He saw, also, that they were not tears of pain or embarrassment, but tears of rage. That was good. He liked that. Let her burn.