[Anita Blake 15] - The Harlequin

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “But how did they know what you’d said?” Nathaniel asked.

  Jean-Claude looked at me, and there was something in that look that made me say, “They’re listening to us.”

  “I fear so.”

  “When was the mask delivered?” Requiem asked.

  Clay was still looking at us, as if waiting for us to throw him a clue. “We’re not sure. I went on break about thirty minutes ago. It must have come while I was off the door.”

  “How long have you been back on the door?” Jean-Claude asked.

  “Maybe five minutes.”

  “They were listening,” Requiem said.

  “They knew what Jean-Claude was going to say,” Byron said, and his voice held more panic than most vampires would have shown. He just couldn’t quite keep all the emotion out of his face and voice.

  “What is going on?” Clay asked.

  “Something big and bad has come to town,” Lisandro said. “They won’t tell us about it, but they’ll expect us to fight it, and die because of it.” His voice sounded bitter.

  “What are the rules about telling our soldiers about…them?” I asked.

  Jean-Claude took in a deep, deep breath, and shook, almost like a bird settling its feathers. “Mutable.”

  “Mutable—oh, it depends.”

  He nodded.

  Then I had a smart idea. “I believe we’d know if someone was listening in on us metaphysically, especially another vampire.”

  “They are very powerful, ma petite.”

  “Lisandro,” I said.

  He came to his version of attention; he gave me all his concentration. There was a demand to his dark eyes. If I widowed his wife, he wanted to know why. I thought he deserved to know why, but first things first. “I need this room swept for bugs.”

  “What kind of bugs?”

  “Anything that would let someone listen to us.”

  “You think they are relying on technology, ma petite?”

  “I don’t believe that any vampire could spy on us like this without our sensing it.”

  “They are very powerful, ma petite.”

  “They are fucking ghosts, lover,” Byron said.

  “Fine, they’re ghosts, but it doesn’t do any harm to look for technology. If the room is clean, then we can blame it on spooky stuff, but let’s look for tech first.”

  Jean-Claude looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. “It would be interesting if they used listening devices.”

  “Did you look for bugs in London?” Nathaniel asked.

  Byron and Requiem exchanged a look, then both shook their heads. “It never occurred to us, duckies. I mean this is the bloody…” Byron licked his lips and stopped himself before saying their name, just in case. “They are ghosts, bogeys, walking nightmares. You don’t expect the bogeyman to need technology.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  “It means that most vampires don’t use technology much. If these guys use it a lot, then it would seem like magic, if you didn’t know what it was.”

  “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Requiem said.

  I nodded.

  He stared at me. “My evening star, you are full of surprises.”

  “I just don’t think like a vampire.”

  “Does Rafael have someone he trusts to clean a room of such things?” Jean-Claude asked.

  “Yes,” Lisandro said.

  “Then do it.”

  “How soon do you need it?”

  “We said we wanted to meet with them a minute or two ago, and the mask arrives with the invitation,” I said.

  “So, like yesterday,” Lisandro said.

  “Or sooner,” I said.

  He nodded. “I’ll make the call.” He hesitated at the door. “I’ll put someone on the door, and I’ll use a phone outside the club.”

  “Good thinking,” I said.

  “It’s what I do.” Then he was gone.

  “Where do you want this?” Clay asked, motioning with the box.

  “Put it on the desk with the other one, I guess.”

  He put it beside the first one. Jean-Claude didn’t seem to want to touch it. I was the one who opened it and found the white mask staring sightless up at me. But this one looked more finished, with gilt musical notes decorating the face. I touched a note and found it was raised above the rest of the mask. The note with it said only, “As you requested.”

  “Is there writing inside the mask?” Jean-Claude asked.

  I lifted it out of the tissue paper. Inside the smooth bow of the mask was writing. “Do not read it out loud, ma petite.”

  I didn’t, I just handed it to him. Inside the mask was written “Circus of the Damned,” and a date that was two days away. The date was written backward with the day first, then the month, then the year like they wrote it in Europe. They’d chosen one of Jean-Claude’s own businesses for the meeting. Was that good, bad, or neither? Did it mean we had home-court advantage, or that they were planning to torch the place? I wanted to ask, but didn’t want our enemies to hear the question. If we did find bugs in this office, we’d have to look everywhere. All the offices, all the businesses, my house, all of it.

  I was praying we found bugs, because the alternative was that these vamps were so good that they could plant psychic bugs inside our brains. You could find and destroy mechanical shit in the rooms; if they were good enough to use magic inside our heads, then we were fucked. We’d die when they wanted us to die, or we’d live, and either way it would be their idea, and not ours. I never thought I’d pray to have our offices turn out to be bugged. Funny, what turns out to be the lesser evil some nights.

  9

  DAWN HAD COME and all the vampires were asnooze in their coffins when I finally got a few minutes to try Edward again. I’d called twice while Lisandro’s experts searched everything. They had found bugs, but not where they were listening to us, like listening posts. Hours of work later and we were clean. We actually got lucky. The bugs weren’t the smallest and latest cutting-edge technology. Which meant they needed to be close to the clubs to hear. Probably something mobile like a van, the experts said. The tech was good, but not the latest and greatest. Which probably meant the Harlequin didn’t know how to hack phone lines and computer systems. Probably. But even the listening devices we found were pretty high tech for a bunch of ancient vampires. Made me wonder what other wonders of modern technology they might be willing to use. Most vamps relied on vampire powers. I wasn’t sure the Harlequin did. In fact, I was betting they didn’t. Ancient vampires and armed with modern shit; it just wasn’t fair.

  I wanted to even those odds, so I was in Jean-Claude’s bathroom with my cell phone, trying one last time to reach Edward.

  I dialed the number, and had almost given up when I heard the phone click over. The voice that answered the phone was thick with sleep. For a second I thought it was Edward, so I said, “Edward?”

  The voice cleared a little and said, “Anita, that you?” The voice was male, but definitely not Edward. Shit.

  Edward was engaged to a widow with two kids. Lately when I wanted to be sure I’d get him the first time, I called Donna’s house, not his. They weren’t officially living together, but he spent more time at her place than at his own. “Hey, Peter, sorry, forgot the time difference.”

  I heard some movement, as if he’d rolled over and taken the phone under the covers with him. “It’s all right. What’s up?” His voice had spent the last year breaking and finally settled into a deeper bass that still startled me sometimes.

  “I just need to talk to Ted,” I said, hoping he hadn’t heard the Edward earlier.

  “It’s okay, Anita,” and he gave a laugh that still held a lazy edge of sleep. “I know who Edward is, but you’re lucky I answered the phone. Mom or Becca would have asked questions.”

  This was the first I knew that any of Edward’s new family knew his se
cret identity. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Peter knowing, or about any of them knowing. They knew what he did, sort of, the legalish parts, but they didn’t really know who Edward was, or at least that’s what I had believed until now.

  I checked my wristwatch, which had gone on along with a robe. I did quick math in my head and said, “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for karate class?”

  “They’re painting the dojo.” he said.

  I would also have asked why he had a phone in his room, but he wasn’t my kid. I mean, sixteen was a little young for your own phone, wasn’t it?

  “I placed first in the karate tournament last Saturday,” he said.

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  “It’s not like real fighting, not like you and Edward do, but it’s still cool.”

  “I’ve never won first place in a martial arts tournament of any kind, Peter. You’re doing good.”

  “But you have a black belt in judo, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re training in other martial arts, right?”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “A tournament is just kid stuff, I know, but Edward says I have to wait until I’m at least old enough to sign up for military service before he’ll take me on anything real.”

  I did not like the sound of that at all. “Eighteen, right.”

  “Yeah”—he sighed so heavily—“two years.” He made two years sound like forever. I guess at sixteen it is.

  I wanted to tell him that there were other lives to live that had nothing to do with fighting, guns, or violence. I wanted to tell him that he couldn’t follow in his almost-stepfather’s footsteps, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t my place to say it, and Peter wouldn’t have listened anyway. I was in the same business as his “dad,” so I was cool, too.

  “Is Ted there?”

  “Anita,” and he sounded chiding, “I know his real name.”

  “Yes, but you’re right, I should never have said Edward when calling this number. It should be Ted until I’m sure who I’m talking to. I’m practicing.”

  He laughed again. I didn’t think I was that funny. “Ted’s here.” I heard that slide of cloth again. “Though at eight on a day we don’t have school, Mom and Ted are probably still in bed.” He must have rolled over to look at a clock.

  “I didn’t mean to call this early,” I said, “I’ll call back later.”

  His voice sobered. “What’s wrong, Anita? You sound all stressed.”

  Great, I couldn’t even control my voice enough to fool a teenage boy. Truth was, I’d finally realized that I wasn’t just asking Edward to come hunt monsters, I was asking him to leave his family to come hunt monsters. Edward used to live to find bad things that could test his skills. He lived to be better, faster, meaner, quicker, more deadly than the monsters he hunted. Then he’d met Donna, and suddenly he had other things to live for. I wasn’t sure he’d ever walk down the aisle with her, but he was the only father the kids had, and the only husband Donna had. Her first husband had been killed by a werewolf. An eight-year-old Peter had picked up his father’s dropped gun and finished off the wounded shapeshifter. He’d saved his family while his father’s body was still twitching on the floor. In some ways Edward fit in just fine. Edward picked Becca up from ballet class, for God’s sake. But…but what if I got him killed? What if I got him killed and Peter and Becca lost another parent because I was too chickenshit to handle my own mess?

  “Anita, Anita, are you there?”

  “Yeah, yeah, Peter, I’m here.”

  “You sound strange, like, scared almost.”

  Peter was too damned perceptive for comfort sometimes. “I just…” Oh, hell, what could I say that would fix this? “Let Edward sleep in, don’t wake them.”

  “Something’s wrong, I can hear it in your voice. You called because you’re in trouble. That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “I’m not in trouble,” I said. In my head, I added, yet.

  Silence on his end of the phone for a heartbeat. “You’re lying to me.” He sounded accusatory.

  “Well, that’s a hell of a thing to say,” I said, with as much indignation as I could muster. I wasn’t lying, not really, I was just fudging the truth. Okay, fudging like double chocolate with three kinds of nuts, but it still wasn’t completely a lie.

  “Your word, your word of honor,” he said in a very serious voice. “Tell me you didn’t call to get Edward’s help with some nasty monster problem.”

  Shit. “You know you’re being a pain in the ass here,” I said.

  “I’m sixteen. I’m supposed to be a pain in the ass, or that’s what Mom says. Give me your word that you’re not lying to me, and I’ll believe you. Give me your word, and I’ll believe everything you’ve said, and I’ll hang up, and you can go back to not being in trouble.”

  “Damn it, Peter.”

  “You won’t give your word and then lie, will you?” His voice held question, and almost wonderment, as if he didn’t quite believe it.

  “No, not as a general rule, no.”

  “Edward said you wouldn’t, but I wasn’t sure I believed him. But you really won’t, will you?”

  “No,” I said. “Happy now?”

  “Yes,” he said, though his voice didn’t sound exactly happy. “Tell me what’s wrong. Why do you need Edward’s help?”

  “I need to talk to Edward, but I won’t tell you why, or what it’s about.”

  “I’m not a baby, Anita.”

  “I know that.”

  “No, you don’t,” he said.

  I sighed. “I don’t think you’re a baby, but you are a kid, Peter. You’re grown-up for sixteen, but I’d like to keep some of the darker shit away from you until you reach at least eighteen. If Edward wants to share with you later, that’s his lookout.”

  “You might as well tell me, Anita. If I ask, he’ll tell me.”

  I hoped he was wrong, but was afraid he was right. “If Edward wants you to know, he’ll tell you, Peter. But I am not going to tell you, and that’s final.”

  “Is it that bad?” he asked, and I heard the first thread of worry.

  Shit, again. I just couldn’t win conversations with Peter. I’d only had a handful of them lately, but he always seemed to talk me into a box. “Get Edward on the phone, Peter, now.”

  “I can handle myself in a fight, Anita. I can help.”

  Shit, shit, and double shit. I was not going to win this conversation. “I’m hanging up now, Peter.”

  “No, Anita, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” And his voice went from that cynical grown-up to an almost childlike panic. The panic had worked better before his voice deepened. “Don’t hang up, please, I’ll get Ted.” The phone hit wood so hard, I had to put the phone away from my ear. He came back on, saying, “Sorry, dropped the phone. I’m getting dressed. I’ll go knock on their door. If it’s bad enough for you to call Edward, then you need to talk to him. I’ll stop being a kid and just get him for you.” He was a little angry with me, but mostly frustrated. He wanted to help. He wanted to grow up. He wanted to fight for real, whatever the hell that meant. What was Edward teaching him? Did I really want to know? No. Would I ask? Yes, unfortunately, yes. God, I did not need another problem on my plate right now. I thought about trying to lie to Edward, say I’d just called up to chat about the latest issue of Mercenaries Quarterly, but if I wasn’t up to lying to Peter, Edward was absolutely out of my weight class.

  10

  I SAT ON the edge of the bathtub, waiting for Edward to come to the phone. I’d insisted on privacy for the phone call, though I’d told Jean-Claude and Micah who I was trying to call. Jean-Claude had said only, “Help would not be unwelcome.” The comment said, clearly, that he was worried. The more worried I realized he was, the more worried I got.

  I heard noise over the phone, movement. The phone was picked up, and I heard Edward’s voice say, “Hang up the other extension, Peter.” A second later he spoke directly into the phone. “Anita
, Peter said you needed help, my kind of help.” His voice was that empty-middle-of-nowhere accent. It was his normal voice; when he was playing Ted Forrester, good ol’ boy, he had a drawl.

  “I didn’t say I needed help,” I said.

  “Then why did you call?”

  “Can’t I just call to chat?”

  He laughed, and the laugh was strangely familiar. I realized it was an echo of Peter’s laugh earlier, or maybe Peter’s laugh was an echo of Edward’s. They weren’t genetically related, I knew that, so what was with the laugh? Imitation, maybe.

  “You would never call me just to chat, Anita. That’s not what we do for each other.” He laughed again, and murmured, “Called to chat,” as if the idea were too ridiculous for words.

  “I do not need you to be condescending, thanks anyway.” I was angry and had no right to be. I’d called him, and it was me I was angry at. I was wishing I hadn’t called—for so many reasons.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, not taking offense. He knew me too well to let a little angry outburst bother him.

  I opened my mouth, closed it, then said, “I’m trying to decide where to start.”

  “Start with the dangerous part.” There, that was Edward, not start at the beginning, but start with the dangerous part.

  “I did call for backup, but I have other backup already. It’s not you, but it’s not a bunch of amateurs either.” I was being honest. The wererats were almost completely ex-military, ex-police, or ex-criminals. Some of the werehyenas were the same flavor of professional. I had help. I shouldn’t have called Edward.

  “You sound like you’re trying to talk yourself out of asking me for help,” he said, and his voice was curious, not worried, just curious.

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Peter answered the phone.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath. “Hang up the phone, Peter,” Edward said.

  “If Anita’s in trouble, I want to know about it.”

  “Hang up the phone,” he said, “and don’t make me ask again.”

  “But…”