"You don't sound very sure," Nathaniel said.
"Jean-Claude made us both bunk over with you and Anita a couple of times. Meng-Die was upset, but not that upset. I thought it was because she knew that we'd be back. That I cared about her enough not to be lured away. Then Requiem turned her down because he thought that was why Anita wouldn't take him as her next pomme de sang." Clay's face showed something
close to pain. "She went ballistic. Jean-Claude rips us out of her bed, forces us to sleep with you, and she's cool about it. Losing Requiem bothered her, more than losing us."
I watched the look in his pale eyes. That had hurt him. He really did care for her. Damn. "Some women, especially of Belle Morte's line, seem to take rejection really badly. You guys had no choice. Jean-Claude said bunk over, and you had to do it. Requiem chose to leave her. That cuts a certain type of woman, or man, real deep."
Clay put those puzzled, pain-filled eyes on me. "You mean it hurt her pride."
I nodded. "Trust me, most master vamps have more than their share."
He shook his head. "I know you're trying to make me feel better, Anita, but what you've just said is that her hurt pride means more to her than whatever she feels for me. Thanks for trying to make me feel better."
"But I failed miserably," I said.
He actually touched me voluntarily, rare for Clay lately; he squeezed my shoulder, very guy. "Yeah, you really suck at this whole comfort thing, but thanks."
He had never been very handsy, but after he bunked over and felt the ardeur rise in the bed, he'd touched me only when he absolutely had to. I think he was afraid to touch me. The hints of the ardeur made Graham chase me harder. The same kind of hints scared Clay. One man's heaven, another man's hell.
"We should introduce ourselves to our guests," Micah said, "and you need to change shoes."
I sighed. "So we're on our own for this little cocktail party." I knelt down, careful of my hose on the stone floor, and took off the jogging shoes.
"I'm afraid so," Clay said.
"Great, just great." I stood up and let Nathaniel slip the first high heel on, then Micah balanced me while Nathaniel did the other shoe. Four-inch heels, what had I been thinking? I never did like cocktail party talk, but that wasn't the problem this time. I could fake small talk if I had to. The problem was that the two masters in the other room had brought along candidates to be my new pomme de sang.
It was my own damn fault. I hadn't chosen from any of the local talent. I had also expressed concern about bringing this many Masters of the City into our territory. It just didn't sound safe to me. So Elinore, one of our new British vamps, had an idea. A wonderfully, awful idea. Since Masters of the City were coming from all over the United States, why didn't we have a sort of contest? The masters could bring some candidates for my new pomme de sang.
I'd said no. In fact, I'd said hell no, but Jean-Claude had pointed out that I could simply turn them all down. That the chances of my finding someone I liked well enough to keep were slim. He had a point. And Elinore was right, it was a way to get all the masters to behave themselves while they were visiting us. I mean, if you're looking at what amounts to your new inlaws, you mind your manners. I couldn't argue with the reasoning, but it meant that I felt like a piece of prize beef. Or would that be cheesecake?
Why was I such a prize? Because I was Jean-Claude's human servant and he was the first American master to become his own sourdre de sang, fountain of blood. Bascially he'd hit the power curve where he was his own bloodline. It was rare, very rare, for any master vamp to hit that level of power, and he was our first in this country. It was a very big deal. We hadn't advertised the fact, but the Vampire High Council over in Europe knew it, and apparently they hadn't kept it entirely secret. We'd gotten a lot of overtures of friendship in the last few weeks. All right, we'd gotten a lot of people trying to align themselves with us. Not the same thing as friendship, actually, but better than the alternatives.
But when I agreed to all of it, I had never dreamt that I'd be doing the first introductions without Jean-Claude on my arm. Shit.
Micah took my arm in his. "It's going to be fine."
Nathaniel hugged me. "We'll help you be charming."
"I'm just not the Cinderella type," I said.
"But you're not Cinderella, Anita, you're the prince. You're Prince Charming."
I stared into Nathaniel's lavender eyes, and felt the first cold hand of fear in my stomach. Me, Prince Charming? There had to be some mistake.
Though I guess if you have to choose between being the woman who is trying to catch the prince's eye, or the prince who doesn't want to be caught, prince is better. Or at least that's what I told myself as Clay led us through the door, and the drapes that formed the walls of the living room.
I let Micah and Nathaniel each take an arm. Yeah, I couldn't get to my weapons fast, but what was waiting for me in the next room wasn't a problem that guns and knives could solve. It was a problem that only diplomacy, witty banter, and sly sedcution could manuevuer us through. We were so screwed without Jean-Claude and Asher.
THE ROOM WAS all gold and white and silver from the drapes to the couch, the love seat, and the two chairs framing the empty white brick of the fireplace. It looked denuded without the picture of Jean-Claude, Asher, and their lost love, Julianna. A picture painted about five hundred years before I was born. Yeah, the wall looked bare, but the room didn't. The room seemed positively drowning in vamps and shapeshifters. I really did not want to play hostess without Jean-Claude. Really, really didn't.
Stepping into the room I gave them the smile I'd learned at work for clients. The smile that was bright and shiny, and only reached my eyes if I pushed hard. I pushed hard, but my hands were literally clutching at Micah and Nathaniel, as if they were die last pieces of wood in the ocean. I finally realized that I was scared. Scared of what? Polite banter, cocktail party talk? Surely not. I mean, no one here was going to try to kill me. Usually if no one tried to kill me, or I didn't have to kill anyone else, it was a good night. So why the major case of nerves?
Micah was introducing us, while I tried to get a handle on this sudden outbreak of rabid shyness. It wasn't like me. I didn't like small talk and parties with strangers, but I wasn't shy.
Clay and Graham took up their posts at our backs. There were more of our guards scattered around the room, but none of them could help us with the part that was scaring me.
Micah leaned in and whispered, "Anita."
I did the long blink, the one that means I'm thinking really hard, and trying not to show it. You have to know what it is to spot it, honest. "Welcome to St. Louis, and I hope our hospitality will be better from this moment on." There, that wasn't horrible. Point for me.
One of the vamps came forward smiling. He wasn't much taller than me, but broad enough through the shoulders that he looked almost misshapen. The way some short bodybuilders do in suits. "We are all Masters of the City here, Ms. Blake; we all know that some business cannot wait for niceties."
He just stood there, waiting, smiling, pleasant. It was my turn to prove that we weren't country bumpkins. To prove that we did indeed know the niceties. I got myself loose from Micah and Nathaniel. I stood on my own two feet and offered him my hand. "Welcome, Augustine, Master of die City of Chicago." Jean-Claude had described everyone to me, so at least I was pretty sure who I was talking to. That was all I was sure about.
Most master vamps tried to be scary, or mysterious, or sexy. This one smiled wide enough to flash fangs, and said, "Auggie. My friends call me Auggie." His hair was short, blond, but still had lots of small, stylized curls to it. The haircut didn't match the suit and the approach.
He took my offered hand gendy in his, as if I were too delicate to touch. Some muscular men do that. Usually it bugged me, but tonight I was okay with it. He turned my hand over and began to raise my wrist to his mouth. I did not raise my own arm. You end up hitting people in the face when you do that. I'd b
een practicing with Jean-Claude and Asher. My hand had to sit passive in his as he raised my wrist toward his moutli. He was a Master of the City and I was just a human servant. If Jean-Claude had been here, it would have been Auggie offering up his wrist, but I was officially outranked, so I got to offer up.
He bowed over my wrist, and raised his eyes to me at die same time. His eyes were a gray so dark tfiey were almost black. But diey were just eyes, and I could meet tliem. Most masters aren't used to humans doing diat. Auggie's eyes widened at it, and I tliink my smile slipped from welcoming to just a little bit arrogant. That I could meet his eyes witli impunity made me feel better, more myself.
His lips curled into a close, secretive smile, not at all the wide grin he'd greeted me with. He laid his lips against my wrist, where the blood runs shallow below the skin. Even then it was just lips on skin, then he kissed my wrist, and a little jolt of power went through my body. It tightened things low and intimate in my body. Tightened them so quick and hard that it caught my breatfi, and made me stumble.
I felt movement at my back, but I shook my head. My voice was breathy, but I said, "No, I'm all right. It's okay." I felt rather tlian saw everyone pull back. I had eyes only for die vampire still hovering over my wrist. I didn't pull away from him. I looked into his eyes, until I saw that they were like the sky when it goes black, just before it falls down and destroys everything you own. But I wasn't just a human servant gaining all my power through my ties to Jean-Claude. I'd come to him with partial immunity7 to vampire gaze, and what I did next was my power, my magic. Necromancy.
I put a little bit of power down my hand, into his skin, like you'd push
someone away who'd invaded your space. I told him, metaphysically, Back off.
He pulled his hand away, dropped that strange gray gaze. His breath came out in a sharp sound. "I apologize if my little push of power caused you discomfort, but I am trying to behave myself, Ms. Blake. Forcing me to show more of my power might not be wise."
He raised his face as he finished, gave me a glimpse of a face that was no longer boyishly handsome, or cute, in an ordinary sort of way. Now his face was simply beautiful. The bone structure more delicate than it had looked a moment ago. The eyes were rimmed with a lace of dark lashes. If I hadn't spent the last few years staring into Jean-Claude's lashes, I'd have said they were the prettiest eyelashes I'd ever seen on a man. Only the color of his eyes remained unchanged. That extraordinary charcoal gray with its shades of black.
I stepped back enough to look him up and down. His body was the same, and not. He was still short, for a man, but the suit fit him better. I'd gone suit shopping with enough men to know expensive when I saw it. It had been made for his body, and when a short man lifts enough weights to get an upper body that broad, it needs to be made to fit. But die suit looked good now, sleek and stylish, rather than fitting oddly.
He'd been using mind games to appear less beautiful and more ordinary. All I'd meant to do was stop him from doing what amounted to metaphysical foreplay. What I'd done instead was strip him of his camouflage.
I shook my head. "I've seen vamps waste energy to make themselves scarier, but never to appear ordinary."
"Yes," a woman's voice said, "why would you hide so much of yourself, Augustine?" I looked at the woman who went with the voice. She sat on the white love seat, tucked in very close to the only other vamp in the room who made my skin tighten when I met his eyes. The man was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and handsome in an ordinary sort of way. After looking into Augustine's face, it wasn't really fair to compare. But I knew who he had to be.
"Welcome, Samuel, Master of the City of Cape Cod. As Jean-Claude's human servant I welcome you and yours to St. Louis."
He stood, and he hadn't had to. He could have made me come to him. His hair was a dark, dark brunette, almost black, but I'd spent too many years staring at my own hair to mistake it for true black. The careless fall of short curls reminded me of Clay's hair. Cut well, but not fussed with. He was taller than Nathaniel, but not by much, maybe five-seven tops. He looked neat and trim, well-built but not obviously muscular in a simple black suit. He wore a nice green T-shirt underneath it. If Jean-Claude had dressed him, it
would have been silk, and closer fitting. The T-shirt, like the suit, hinted, but hid more than it showed. A thin gold chain graced the neck of the shirt. On the end of the chain was a very old coin set in more gold. The coin was one of those ancient pieces they find in shipwrecks sometimes. Or maybe the shipwreck imagery came because I knew what his animal to call was: mermaids. No, really, mermaids. Samuel was unique among now-living vamps in his animal to call.
His wife was one. The man and woman standing behind the love seat had to be merpeople, too. I'd never actually met any of the sea people before.
I fought the urge to look away from the vampire in front of me. I mean, I'd seen vamps, but mermaids, that was new. I offered Samuel my hand. He took it more solidly than Auggie had, like he'd shake hands well. Then he raised my wrist to his mouth. Like Auggie, he rolled his eyes up to gaze at me as he did it. Samuel's eyes were hazel, pale brown with an edge of grayish green around the pupil. The green shirt brought out more of the green, so his eyes were almost an olive green, but they were definitely hazel, not true green. But then I had high standards for true-green eyes.
Samuel's eyes were just eyes, and when he laid a chaste kiss across my wrist it was just a kiss, no extras. I rewarded his restraint with a smile.
"Ah, Samuel, always the gentleman," Auggie said.
"Something you could learn from," said the woman in white, who had to be Samuel's wife, Thea.
"Thea," Samuel said, a slight warning in his tone, but it was very slight. Jean-Claude had warned us all that Samuel's only weakness was his wife. She got her way most of the time, so when dealing with die Master of Cape Cod, you had to negotiate with botli of tliem.
"No, she's right," Auggie said, "you were always a better gentleman trian I."
"Perhaps," Samuel said, "but one does not have to say such tilings out loud." There was an edge of heat in his voice, the first stirrings of anger.
She bowed a body that was inches taller than his, bowed and hid her face. I was betting it was because her face just didn't look sorry enough. Her dress was somewhere between cream and white, and it matched her skin and her hair. She was all whites and creams and pearls. At first glance you might think albino, but then she raised her eyes back up to us botli. Her eyes were black, so black that her pupils were lost in the color of her irises. Her lashes were golden, her eyebrows gold and white.
Muscles played under her thin arms as she stood and smoothed her long dress around her body. Her coloring was odd, but not outside human norms. Her white-blond hair fell to her waist. Her only jewelry was a circlet of silver set with three pearls, the biggest in die middle and two smaller to either
side, surrounded by tiny but brilliant diamonds, so that the light flashed and winked as she moved her head. Her pale neck was smooth and unadorned, with no gill slits. Jean-Claude had told me that when they wished, the maids of the sea—his phrase—could look very human.
"May I present my wife, Leucothea. Thea." He took her by the hand and 4rew her into a low curtsey.
Did I curtsey back? Did I tell her to get up? What should I do? What Could Meng Die have done that was taking Jean-Claude this long to sort out? She was so on my shit list.
Not knowing what else to do I offered her a hand up. She took my hand, raising a softly startled face to me. Her fingers were cool against my skin.
"Are you helping me rise like a queen taking pity on a commoner, or do you acknowledge that I am your superior?"
I helped her to her feet, though she moved like- a dancer and hadn't needed the help. I dropped her hand, and said what I was thinking. When in doubt I usually do. "Okay, truthfully, I'm not sure who outranks who between the two of us. If Jean-Claude had been here then you could offer up to him, but it's me, and I don't mean to be insu
lting, but I'm just not sure who tops who here."
Thea's pale face looked surprised, but Samuel looked pleased.
Auggie laughed an abrupt, very human-sounding laugh, turning me to look at him. "Jean-Claude said you were a breath of fresh air, Anita, but such an honest breeze, I'm not sure we're up to it."
"I like it," Samuel said.
"Only because you are hopeless at deceit," Auggie said.
Samuel gave him a look. "None of us who have risen to Master of the City is without deceit, old friend."
The humor in Auggie's face softened, and faded. I realized that of almost all the other master vamps I'd ever seen, his face was the most mobile, the most expressive. Now it went suddenly blank the way all the old ones could do. "Fair enough, old friend, but you do prefer honesty."
Samuel nodded. "Aye, that I do."
"You like honesty?" I said. "Then you are going to love me."
There were abrupt laughs from at least two different corners of the room. In one of the corners was Fredo, slumping artfully, his black T-shirt a little bulky in places from all the knives he hid on his body. There were other knives out in plain sight, two huge ones on either hip like an old-time gun-slinger. His dark face was set in laughing lines, his black eyes glittering out from the fall of his dark hair.
The other laugh had come from almost die opposite corner. Claudia was
nearly six foot six, the tallest woman I'd ever met, and a serious weight lifter. She made the too-thin Fredo look frail. Her black hair was tied back in its usual tight ponytail. She wore no makeup, and her face was still startling in its beauty. Claudia cared less about looking like a girl than I did. But even with the weight lifting, her body was all woman. Without the extreme height and the muscles, she would have been one of those women who couldn't go anywhere without getting hit on, or at least leered at. She still got the leers, but most men were afraid of her, and they should have been. She would probably be the only other woman carrying a gun tonight. At the moment her face was soft with the laughter that was still bubbling in her throat. She had a nice laugh, deep and throaty. I wasn't sure I'd ever heard her laugh before.
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