“Yeah,” I said. In my head I thought, I’d known one animator who could control them, but he’d been mostly dead himself, so I wasn’t sure it counted.

“There are legends of those who had enough ability to control all undead, even vampires, but Anita is the closest we have to the necromancers of yore. If she can’t control them, then they can’t be controlled.”

“You’re such a brute,” Zerbrowski said.

I shrugged.

“Wait, you said they’re stronger than zombies, who are already stronger than us. Aren’t there any undead that aren’t stronger than humans?”

We both shook our heads. “Though they did some experiments on zombies, and it turns out they may not actually be stronger than people,” I said.

“How so?”

“Zombies just have no stop on using all their strength at once. It’s like how a baby will use everything it has to kick a blanket off, but as you get older you use the effort needed, not all your effort together. Until by the time you’re grown up you sort of forget you have more strength available to you—until an emergency happens.”

“Like grannies lifting cars off their grandkids,” Zerbrowski offered.

“Yeah, like that.”

“So if people knew how to automatically use all our strength, we could be lifting cars all the time?”

“That’s one theory,” I said.

“Remember before you try lifting a car that zombies will also tear their own arms off trying to lift something too heavy for them,” Manny said.

“That’s true. Zombies, just like babies, don’t seem to understand that even if you can lift something, it doesn’t mean your body can handle the load,” I said.

“Hanging around you is like the Discovery Channel for monsters sometimes; I always learn something new.”

The grave diggers had moved in with tools to help loosen the tombstone, but they were gesturing at the backhoe for some reason, even though they weren’t ready for it yet. “What are they doing?” I asked.

“I think they’re trying to use the backhoe to move the tombstone,” Zerbrowski said.

“How can you possibly know that from here?”

“I speak guy hand gestures,” he said with a completely deadpan face.

I might have argued with him, but Domino came back to report that was exactly what they were talking about doing. The tombstone was solid marble and taller than I was, so it was heavy and unwieldy. The two men they’d sent couldn’t lift it by themselves.

“Can I offer that Nicky and I help them, or do you not want them to know that we’re stronger than the average human?”

“Offer. We’re running out of moonlight.”

“Besides, they’ll take one look at Mr. Muscles and totally believe he could lift it by himself,” Zerbrowski said.

I gave him a look. “Mr. Muscles, really?”

He gave a head nod like he was pointing with it. “Look at that silhouette and argue with me if you can.”

I looked where he’d gestured, to find Nicky outlined by the moonlight and the floodlights that the diggers were setting up. Some trick of the light and shadow made his shoulders look even more massive than they already were, so he was proportioned like some cartoon strongman.

“Okay, I see your point.”

“You know me, I try to make my irritating nicknames accurate.” He smiled at me.

I rolled my eyes at him, and he grinned.

“You are incorrigible.”

“It’s one of his charms,” Nicky said as he walked up to us, stepping out of the light show and into the darkness near us so his shoulders were just their normal impressive spread, not the caricature that had made Zerbrowski comment.

As if he’d read my mind, he said, “I still stand by the nickname.”

“What nickname?” Nicky asked.

“Mr. Muscles,” Zerbrowski said, grinning up at him.

Nicky frowned at him, just a little. “I’ve been called worse.”

“You know you’re no fun to tease, right?”

“People have mentioned it before,” Nicky said, face totally serious. It had taken me a little while to realize that Nicky being very serious and pretending not to get Zerbrowski’s jokes was actually his way of teasing the man back. The fact that Zerbrowski hadn’t quite figured out that Nicky was teasing him was part of the joke. I’d never seen anyone else get the better of him when it came to that kind of teasing. That it was Nicky who had figured it out was interesting, and had totally surprised me. I sort of liked that he could surprise me that much.

He surprised me again by leaning over for a kiss. I didn’t do that in front of the police much; it ruined my image as one of the guys. I debated on letting him know it wasn’t okay, but it just seemed wrong to lean away from someone you were in love with, so I kissed him back.

“Well, la-di-da, does Count Dracula know?”

“And this is why I don’t kiss my boyfriends in front of the other cops,” I said, with my hand still on the swell of Nicky’s arm.

“It’s just Zerbrowski,” Nicky said, “he doesn’t count.”

Zerbrowski stared up at him openmouthed for a second, then burst out laughing.

Nicky finally let himself smile at the other man, because just that one dry comment had ruined the deadpan joke. Zerbrowski knew he’d been had and was enjoying the hell out of it.

I asked Nicky if he thought he and Domino could help the grave diggers move the tombstone. He said, “Sure.”

“You’re a man of few words, Muscles, but I like you.”

“I don’t hate you either,” Nicky said, and turned before Zerbrowski could see the smile that went with the words. That set Zerbrowski back on another laughing jag.

The extermination team came up in their shiny silver suits with their hoods under their arms. “Hey, Eddie, Susannah,” I said.

Eddie asked, “What’s so funny?”

For some reason that made Zerbrowski laugh even harder. “Ignore him,” I said. “Thanks for coming down on short notice.”

Eddie smiled. He was broader than when I’d met them six, seven years ago. He was also completely bald now, the gray butch cut gone. “Hey, it beats the heck out of hunting possible wererat infestations in the walls of some family’s house in the city.”

“You know that wererats are the size of large dogs and won’t fit inside a normal wall, right?”

“I know that, and you know that, but the people who get all freaked out and call us for it don’t.”

“We try to tell them the truth, but they never believe us, and their money spends,” Susannah said. She was Eddie’s daughter and must have looked like her mom, because she was a little taller than me, still short, a little more muscled and less thin than when we’d met on her very first night on the job. She’d put on muscle so she could handle the equipment better, and because she’d asked me what I did to make the men respect me more. Easy answer is hit the gym and make sure you can handle yourself physically. Nothing screams weak like not being able to pull your weight on the job.

I smiled back. “I hear that.”

Eddie excused himself to go talk to the grave diggers about what would need to happen if they had to use the flamethrowers. They used what amounted to napalm, so that it burned and kept burning. You really didn’t want to take collateral damage.