SINCE WE WEREN'T a hundred percent certain what had happened in the shower, the guards insisted on turning into a crowd. I pointed out that if the ardeur decided to eat everyone, then guns, knives, and muscle weren't going to help save anyone, but Claudia stuck by her initial plan of more bodies to guard Jean-Claude and me. All she had to throw at the problem was more muscle, so that was what she did. I knew the look on her face. There was no arguing when she looked like that, so I didn't try. I didn't want to use up energy fighting with Claudia. I was saving it up to fight with Asher, and maybe Jean-Claude.
The clothes I'd worn at the crime scene were still dirty, and I was clean, so I borrowed the silk jammie top that Asher was actually wearing under his robe. It was the match to the bottoms that Jean-Claude was wearing; for some reason that bugged me. The top was wonderful sky-blue silk, soft to the skin, but it also hung to my knees, and I had to roll the sleeves up until they formed a doughnut-sized roll around each arm. I looked like I was a little girl borrowing my father's shirt, but it was better than being naked.
I was able to put the wrist sheaths with their knives back on, but the inner pants holster needed, well, pants. I was able to put the shoulder rig on over the shirt, but it was like putting a more complicated front-opening bra across your shoulders. It was on, but it flapped and shifted, without belt loops to attach to. I carried the things that didn't fit, and was happy that my main gear bags were already in the bedroom.
We had so many guards it was hard for all three of us to walk without bumping into one of them. When we got to the door to Jean-Claude's room I told them to all stay outside.
Godofredo said, "I'm sorry, Anita, but Claudia was very clear. At least two of us have to be on the other side of the door and have eyes on you at all times."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because Asher attacked you earlier tonight and put Sin in the hospital, and now Nicky is hurt. Claudia doesn't want any more problems tonight."
"Asher isn't going to hurt me again, and what happened to Nicky isn't anything that a guard could have helped stop. Claudia being in the room with Nicky and me wouldn't have changed a damn thing, except made her and me uncomfortable with her watching me fuck Nicky."
God's eyes widened a bit. He was never quite comfortable when I talked like a guy about sex. "My orders are clear, Anita, I'm sorry."
"And I'm sorry, too," I said, "but no, none of you come inside. It's just us hashing this out."
He started to protest, but I held up a hand, and he stopped in midsyllable. "Last I checked Jean-Claude and I outrank Claudia, so I'm going to throw down a presidential veto. I don't want or need an audience."
"You aren't hard enough on Asher. That's why he gets out of hand."
I nodded. "That's true, but that's in the past."
God frowned at me. "Anita..."
"No, I mean it, Asher doesn't get any more free passes just because I love him... just because Jean-Claude loves him and keeps projecting that onto me."
"I don't believe you," God said.
I turned and looked at the two vampires by the door. Jean-Claude had opened the door, and Asher was standing by him. We all looked at each other.
"Ma petite is correct. There will be no more free passes for mon chardonneret."
"You calling him your goldfinch doesn't exactly makes us believe you," God said.
Domino stepped forward. "Nicky made me promise to stay with you."
"I'm not the one who almost died," I said.
Domino shrugged, brushing his hands through the black-and-white curls again, which I knew was a nervous gesture. His hair was mostly black with white accent curls, showing that he was half white tiger and half black. My only other born tiger that was mixed clan blood, Ethan, also had hair that reflected all his tiger forms. But Domino's hair being mostly black with just a few white curls meant when he'd shifted last he'd been black tiger; if it had been white tiger, then that color would have predominated. Ethan's hair stayed its human color no matter what color of tiger he'd shifted into last. Domino blinked his orange fire-colored eyes at me. Even more than Micah's leopard eyes, Domino's couldn't pass for human, but Domino had been born with his tiger eyes. It was a mark of clan blood to be born with eyes like that, not a punishment like Micah's had been.
"Nicky made me promise that you wouldn't be alone with Asher."
I laughed, but it wasn't a good laugh. "I guess I can't blame him." I looked at Jean-Claude.
"I believe it will be your secrets, not ours, that you may not want Domino to hear."
"I don't even know what that means right now," I said.
"It means let your tiger join us and if you wish him not to hear things, it is your task to make him leave."
I spoke to Domino. "What will you do if I go into the room without you?"
He shook his head. "Did you see what Nicky did to Ares?"
"I did."
Domino looked at me with his fire-colored eyes. The look was eloquent. "I value your safety, Anita, but I really don't want to have to fight Nicky for real." He smiled and shook his head.
"So you're coming in the room with me whether I want you to or not?"
"Anita, Asher cut you up and hurt Sin badly enough that he's in the hospital for the night. Why should your bodyguards trust him alone with anyone?"
It sounded reasonable. I turned back to Asher, still in the doorway. "You going to behave?"
"Nothing I can say will comfort your guards. They will not believe me, and I do not blame them. I have been beyond childish."
"You're always so contrite afterward, but it never lasts, Asher. You do better for a while, and then something pisses you off again, and it's like you forget."
He nodded. "That is fair. I am sorry, truly sorry, but you are right. Apologies that do not lead to better actions are empty things."
"Amen to that," I said.
He bowed his head, all that golden hair spilling around his face. Normally it made me sad that he felt he had to hide the scars that much - it meant he was feeling self-conscious - but tonight it reminded me of Nicky and the way his hair hid his own scars, and it just made me angry at him.
"Fine, Domino can come into the room." I looked at Godofredo. "You can tell Claudia you did what she ordered."
"She wanted two guards in with you."
"Don't push it," I said, and there must have been something in my voice, or in my face, because he literally backed off, hands held sort of out from his body as if he wanted to show that he meant no harm.
"Fine," he said. "As long as you take Domino with you, Claudia won't bitch-slap me."
"More like she'll knock you on your ass," I said.
He smiled, and nodded. "That, too."
I felt a touch on my psychic shielding, the equivalent of a knock. I knew the touch, and dropped shields enough to see Damian. He was still six feet of the whitest skin I'd ever seen on a vampire, because the long hair that spilled over his shoulders was the red of fresh blood, and his eyes the green of grass. He'd been pale when alive, but hundreds of years without sun had paled his skin and let his hair get as red as red could get. I could feel that he had a hand in his, and a thought let me see the woman who was almost as tall as he was at his side. Cardinale's hair was more orangey red and curly to his very straight, but they were both natural redheads, both tall, both slender, though he'd died with muscle over his frame, and she was just model thin, but they were physically very well matched, like a team of beautiful horses chosen because they looked good together.
Damian was manager at Jean-Claude's dance club, Danse Macabre, and Cardinale was one of the dancers. She partnered him for some demonstrations of old dances that had existed when he was alive, but centuries before she was born. She was also one of the taxi dancers, where you paid for the privilege of dancing with a vampire for a song. People loved dancing with the shapeshifters and vampires at Danse Macabre. The club even had a dance master who would work with new customers to teach them the ancient line dances. I'd seen the entire club floor thick with people: human, vampire, shapeshifter, all in neat rows with a hand held here and there, moving to a dance that no one had seen in centuries. It was just plain cool.
Damian let me see the second woman in front of him. She was tiny, shorter than me by inches, short enough that she fit under my arm, when I put my arm across her delicate shoulders. Her shining black hair fell like patent-leather water straight and perfect to her waist. Her uptilted eyes looked brown, but I'd spent enough time looking into them to know they were actually an orange so dark they looked brown. In the right light they were the color of fire when it burns deep into the wood and you think the flame is out, but if you don't douse it with water, it'll flare up and burn the house down. Her Chinese name translated to Black Jade; to me she was just Jade, my Jade. She was my black tiger to call, and the first woman to change me from heterosexual to heteroflexible.
Jade looked frantic, and jerked away from Damian's hand. She started running down the hallway. Damian looked up, as most of us did when we were "seeing" each other in our minds. "Someone told her you were hurt."
"Shit," I said, out loud.
"What's wrong?" God asked.
"Someone told Jade I was hurt. She'll have to see for herself that I'm healed."
"Can't you just tell her mind-to-mind?" God asked.
"She's too scared, and panicking. It makes her head-blind."
"No offense," God said, "but for a ninja assassin super-spy she spooks easy."
Domino said, "You try being abused by a master vampire for centuries and see how you do." His beasts flared enough to raise heat around him like a breath of summer in the cave-cool corridor.
"Hey, no offense," God said.
"None taken," I said, and touched Domino's arm. I was trying to calm him before Jade got here. He was very protective of her. Touching him made the heat of his beasts try to jump to me and call my matching tiger colors, but I understood how to soothe the energy now. Not shut it down, not trap the beasts, but soothe them like you'd pet and cuddle a big kitty. Of course these kitties would have happily torn my body apart so they could be on the outside with their own real fleshy bodies if it had been possible. We'd finally figured out it was Jean-Claude's vampire marks that kept me from being able to shapeshift for real. Modern lycanthropy wasn't contagious to vampires, and I was just too close to being a vampire thanks to his marks, and my own necromancy. Ancient-strain lycanthropy had been contagious to the undead.
"Ease down," I said to Domino.
Jade had paid Domino the highest compliment she had for men; she let him join us in bed. Nathaniel was tolerated in the bed, and Crispin, a white tiger and stripper at Guilty Pleasures, but she seldom slept with me because I kept insisting on all these men being there. Her abuser had been male and it had given her a bad opinion of them; the only thing she disliked more was male vampires. Damian had won her over with tales of his own abuse at the hands of She who made him. His vampire mistress made Jade's master look sane. She'd had to accept that women could abuse, too. Jean-Claude and Asher had enough stories of Belle Morte, and then there'd been the Mother of All Darkness, and Nikolaos the first Master of the City of St. Louis had been one crazy bitch. Crazy didn't discriminate on the basis of gender.
Jean-Claude had won her over by being himself. It had been interesting watching him work to gain her trust. He'd always told me the only woman who ever frustrated his plans was me; watching him charm Jade had made me believe that statement.
Jade came into sight running so fast she was a blur of black and white. I handed the weapons I'd been holding to Domino and then braced. She was small enough and I was strong enough, but running at that speed it was a lot of momentum to stop.
She slowed down enough for me to see the long hair sweeping out behind her, the pale face, eyes frantic, and then she leapt on me like a monkey. Jean-Claude put a hand on my back to help steady me as all that speed and energy leapt into my arms, and stopped. She wrapped her legs around my waist, arms around my neck, and buried her face into my hair and the side of my neck. I put my hands the only place I could to hold her, which was underneath her slender ass. It was the same way Nicky had carried me into the showers. That thought made my stomach clench tight.
She mumbled into my neck, but she was mumbling Chinese. Even after a year, the nuances of the language when muttered into my hair, or neck, escaped me.
I was already making soothing noises to her, but I transferred one hand up to stroke the incredible silkiness of her hair, while the other arm held her weight.
"Jade, sweetie, I can't understand you when you're this upset. Slow down and English, please, dearest, English."
She raised her face up enough to look at me. Her eye makeup was smeared around her eyes, which probably meant I was wearing it on my neck and the blue silk of the shirt.
Her voice came out in a breathy whisper. "They said you were hurt."
"I'm all better; all healed."
She studied my face, serious as a child, as if she thought I might be lying. I'd tried doing that, but found truth worked better than comforting lies. She was way more girly than I would ever be, but liked truth the way that I did, and once lied to, she never forgot. Again, like me.
"Promise," she whispered.
I nodded as solemn as she was. "Promise."
She smiled and her whole face changed from serious beauty to a shining happiness. She glowed, and when someone looks at you like that, what can you do? I kissed her, and she hugged me, wrapping her arms around my neck again, and wriggling happily. I was suddenly glad the shirt hung to my knees; her enthusiastic cuddling had made more than one short skirt ride up and give way too much of a girl-on-girl show for the guards.
"Ma petite, should you and the lovely Jade come inside?" He was holding the door and motioning. Asher was already out of sight in the room.
I sighed, but Jean-Claude was right. Jade would never let me just put her down and tell her to go play elsewhere. I had been the one who rescued her from centuries of abuse, by simply being better at metaphysics than her abuser had been; in effect I'd been the better vampire, so he was still alive. The other Harlequin were hunting him and the few rogues left, but he wasn't dead. Jade believed that if I died her old master would take her over again. I wasn't just her rescuer, I was her continued salvation. We couldn't even tell her that she was wrong, because you weren't supposed to be able to cut the bonds between master and animal to call without killing the old master. But what I knew, and he hadn't, was that part of what made it work was Jade's willingness. She had wanted freedom, and when I offered it, she'd thrown her free will into mine. It's so much easier to rescue prisoners if they want to come with you. I'd offered love and safety, he'd offered hate and fear; who wouldn't choose love?
