He leaned down and laid a gentle kiss on my lips. I kissed him back, letting my body fall in against his, and his arms encircled me and it was like breathing, as if I’d been holding my breath until we kissed.
He pulled away with my lipstick on his lips, but it was a good color for him. He smiled down at me, his eyes sparkling as if he was on the verge of laughter.
“Ma petite.”
That was all, just my nickname, but it seemed to hold years of
I love your
s.
The lights flashed. It was the signal to get to our seats before the curtain went up. J.J. was standing so that Jean-Claude could help me into the seat beside him where she’d been sitting. She smiled and said hi. I told her I was glad she could make it. “I wouldn’t have missed seeing Jason dance again,” she said, and her face lit up as she said his name. She was pretty, always, but in that moment she was beautiful. She had the same spring-blue eyes that Jason had. They both had the soft good looks that sometimes goes with blond, blue-eyed coloring. They looked enough alike to be siblings, but then they shared a common great-great-grandfather. A lot of the kids from their school looked like siblings. Apparently Great-Great-Granddad had been a busy boy.
Something made me turn and look back to Micah and Asher at the head of the aisle. Asher had tried to give Micah the same greeting he’d given me, but Micah had pulled away. Asher sat down laughing as Micah eased past Jean-Claude and me to sit on my other side by J.J. Jean-Claude patted Micah’s back, as if saying,
It’s all right
. In private Jean-Claude and Micah greeted each other pretty intimately, but Micah had made it clear that he wasn’t food for everyone. Asher had taken it as a challenge to see if he could seduce Micah, and when that hadn’t worked, he seemed intent on embarrassing him. I loved Asher, but he had a sadistic streak in him that I wasn’t always crazy about.
If he didn’t stop pushing, he was going to be on Micah’s shit list permanently. I wasn’t sure what to do about the rising tension between the two men, but something was going to have to be done before Asher pushed my Nimir-Raj far enough to do something unpleasant. Micah and Jean-Claude had tried to rip each other’s throats out the first time they’d met. If Jean-Claude and I couldn’t get Asher to tone it down, Micah would take care of it; we just might not like how he did it. He wasn’t homophobic, he just didn’t want to donate blood to Asher, and the other man seemed to have taken the rejection badly.
Micah was tense beside me, his face striving for neutral but showing anger if you knew where to look for it. I covered his hand with mine. He was stiff and unyielding and then he relaxed into my hand. He finally gave me a small smile, but his reaction in public let me know that Asher was very close to pushing him too far.
I glanced at Jean-Claude to see if he’d seen it. He was watching the stage as if nothing untoward had happened. Had he not noticed, or was he trying to ignore the problem for a little longer? I needed some backup here, not the old ostrich-hiding-in-the-sand routine. But if Jean-Claude had a soft spot, it was Asher, and okay, maybe me. We both got away with things that he probably should have put a stop to long before he did.
Wicked was looking at me. He’d seen and understood the problem. Both the problem between Asher and Micah, and the fact that Jean-Claude seemed to be ignoring it. I was pretty sure that Wicked and Truth would back my play if I could come up with one that wouldn’t destroy our happy little apple cart.
The trouble was, in vampire land I was Jean-Claude’s human servant, and Asher was a master vampire with enough power to have his own territory. He stayed as Jean-Claude’s second-in-command because he loved us and didn’t want to be without, but it meant that my position of authority was a little shaky.
I was a vampire executioner, but I wouldn’t kill Asher, and he knew that. So my threat was gone. I was a necromancer and could control the undead, not just zombies, but lots of undead, including some vampires. But I knew that if I got out my major mojo and controlled Asher like that he’d never forgive me. And once I had that much control over someone, sometimes it didn’t go away, and that had become completely disturbing to me.
Monica came hurrying up the opposite side of the aisle. The one that made more people have to move their legs or stand up. The side that was farthest away from all of us who were supposed to be part of her group. It was very Monica. She’d apparently made a serious play for Asher and been rebuffed. She’d given him a wide-ish berth since then.
She smiled and waved at all of us as she sat down beside J.J. There was still one seat saved with us.
The lights flashed again and Vivian was at the head of the aisle by Asher. He and Jean-Claude stood, so I did, too. Micah was already on his feet. Vivian was petite enough that we probably could have stayed in our seats, but the older vampires often reacted to women as if bustles had never gone out of fashion, and if they could be gentlemen then so could I.
She brushed past me with a hurried, “Sorry I’m late.”
“You’re not late,” Micah said.
I added, “You’re just on time.” That earned me a small smile. Nothing could really make Vivian less than beautiful, but there was tightness around her eyes and mouth, worry lines on that beautiful skin. Her skin was that shade of coffee with enough cream to make it almost white. She was technically African American, but it was by way of Ireland, and that showed a lot from the thick, nearly straight hair to the pale gray-blue eyes. She was one of the wereleopards in our pard. I’d had to rescue her from a very bad man once. He had done terrible things to her. I’d killed him in the end, but revenge only makes things all better in the movies. In real life, once the villain is dead the trauma lives on inside the victims.
She was here to watch her live-in boyfriend, Stephen, onstage. She spoke to J.J. as she sat down on the other side of Monica. Vivian slipped her coat off, and the moment I saw the dress I knew why she was running late. She’d gone home from her job as administrative assistant at an insurance agency to change. The dress was a little slip of nothing, black with a beading of bronze and gold beads so that it shimmered as she moved. Seeing J.J. and Vivian in their party dresses made me half wish I’d changed for the show, but I’d have been truly late. I could have taken something to work to change into, but in all honesty it hadn’t occurred to me until just that moment. Oh, well.
Micah leaned in and whispered, “You look great.”
I whispered back, “Was it that obvious?”
“To me,” he said, and squeezed my hand. I squeezed back and we shared that smile that was mainly just for us. Nathaniel was the only one who got to share that smile sometimes, and he wasn’t here because he was going to be onstage.
Jean-Claude’s hand touched the edge of mine, and I took the hint, leaning my head against his shoulder and taking his hand. He had been a ladies’ man for centuries and he swore that I was the first woman to make him feel a bit insecure. I tended to be hard on the egos of a certain kind of men. The ones who normally swept women off their feet had never moved me much, because I’d always felt that if they swept me off my feet they’d practiced on a lot of women before me, and would practice more with women after me. I’d rarely been wrong on that. Besides, the normal sweep-you-off-your-feet tricks often left me puzzled. I still wasn’t sure if I should apologize to Jean-Claude for throwing his game off this badly, or take a certain pride in it.
There was a part of me that still believed if I’d fallen into his arms easily he’d have wooed me, won me, and left me for other game by now. Was that unfair, my own insecurities talking, or just truth?
His hand was warm in mine. That meant he’d fed on someone. It had been a willing blood donor. Women, especially, lined up to feed him. In fact, one of the reasons I’d spent the last few weeks going through a stack of photographs and DVDs with some help from the other men had been that we needed more regular food. Other vampire and wereanimal groups across the country had sent in applications for some of their people to join us. The DVDs had been everything from flat-out porn to strangely awkward dating tapes. It was like the old idea of an arranged marriage, though this was more an arranged mistress, sort of. The groups hoped it would give them a stronger tie to our power base, and it might.
They’d been sending candidates to Jean-Claude for a while, and he had politely turned them all down. This last batch came addressed to me, personally. They seemed to feel that Jean-Claude had turned everyone down for fear of pissing me off, and there might be something to that, so I’d sat down and watched. I’d had Nathaniel and Micah help some, and Jason, but none of the vampires. I hadn’t done that on purpose, but . . .
Who had Jean-Claude fed on? For a second I wanted to ask, and then I let it go. I didn’t really want to know. Taking blood was entirely too close to foreplay for the vampires of his bloodline. Of course, he shared me with a lot of other men, so my being jealous of him taking blood from some other woman seemed childish and unfair. But just because it’s childish and unfair doesn’t mean it isn’t the way I felt. Stupid, but true.
The lights went down and I was saved from having to think too hard as the curtain rose. I got to sit in the dark holding the hands of two of the men I loved most. It wasn’t a bad way to start the weekend. I noticed Monica watching us. Was it envy on her face, or anger? I turned back to the stage and left Monica to get her face back to its usual polite I-like-you expression. Usually I liked the truth from everyone around me, but I’d make an exception for her. I knew not to trust her, so she could pretend to like me, and I’d pretend to like her. It wasn’t friendship, but it was an understanding.
The music came up; I hugged Micah and Jean-Claude to me, and watched Asher holding Jean-Claude’s other hand. Even in the Bible Belt, when the lights dimmed you could still hold hands.
THE FIRST GROUP out was the two-year-old class. Five little girls in pink tights with sparkly itty-bitty tutus walked onstage holding hands in a line. The audience did a group “Awww.” They were almost illegally cute. The dance teacher was at the front of the stage, visible to the audience and the wide-eyed little girls.
The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovsky’s
Nutcracker
filled the air. It was one of the few classical pieces I knew well enough to name. The teacher began to move her arms. Most of the tiny girls followed her, but one of them just stared off at the audience with huge, fear-filled eyes. Were the toddlers good? No. But at that age it’s not about being a prodigy, it’s about showing up and being too cute for words. I wasn’t much for babies, older was definitely better, but even I couldn’t deny they were nearly painfully adorable.
Micah began to rub his thumb over my hand. Jean-Claude was still against my other hand. The tots trooped off, holding hands again, to rousing applause, and then it was Matthew’s turn. I heard Monica tell J.J., “Usually they have to combine the two- and three-year-olds, but they had enough this year to have two classes.” Interesting, but my hearing it meant Monica was talking too loud. She had a certain desire to be noticed.
The little girls I’d seen earlier in their clown tutus came trooping out, with Matthew in the middle in his boy costume. They were holding hands just like the last group, and the dance instructor was at the bottom of the stage visible to the children and the audience. I wondered how old you’d have to be for the teacher to hide.
The music was still from the
Nutcracker
, but it was one of the songs for the dolls that danced in the first act. I couldn’t remember which dance this was, just vaguely where it came from in the ballet. Little arms went up in near unison, and then they danced. Not all the girls danced, they moved, but Matthew and two of the little girls danced. It wasn’t smooth, or perfect, but it was real. They did what the teacher did with smiling faces, but as they continued Matthew lost his smile, his concentration visible on his small face. I watched him do some of the moves I’d seen him practice at our house, with Nathaniel and Jason working on his moves with him.
I leaned into Micah and whispered, “Is it stupid to say he’s good?”
Jean-Claude leaned into us and whispered, “
Non, ma petite
, he has a certain flair, does Matthew.”
The music stopped, and the children took hands and bowed. The applause was a little more heartfelt this time, or so it seemed to me. It’s not every day you see someone that young display the beginnings of true talent. When they were offstage Asher leaned over all of us to speak to Monica. “He is good, your boy.”
She beamed at him, and she had every right to be proud. Micah congratulated her, too. J.J. said, “For three he’s amazing.”
I spoke in her and Monica’s direction. “I hope that Jason and Nathaniel got to see it; I’ve been watching them work with him.”
“Matthew has really enjoyed his time with his uncles,” Monica said.
I pulled back a little, because I didn’t like the whole
Uncle Nathaniel
and
Uncle Jason
thing, and I had put a stop to
Aunt Anita
. Matthew had given us his own version of nicknames; Natty, Jason-Jason, and ’Nita for me. Jean-Claude was more Gene-Clod. Asher was the closest to getting his whole name. We’d been seeing a lot of Matthew lately.
The music came back up and the next group of little girls, slightly older, came out. And there was a lot of that in the next hour and change. Older girls, sometimes the same girls, because we got to see them do ballet, jazz, and modern, even a couple of tap dances. I liked dance, and it was no reflection on the kids, but my will to live began to seep away by about the fifth group of sequined children.
I had been warned that the dance school didn’t allow anyone to grab their kids and leave until every last student had had their chance onstage. I just hadn’t understood what that meant.
In between acts I leaned over J.J. to Monica and asked, “How long is the show?”
“Last year it was four hours,” she said.
I gave her wide, horror-filled eyes. She giggled. I sat back in my seat and exchanged a look with Micah. He said, “Nathaniel and Jason will be up soon.”
Wicked leaned back from the seat in front of us and whispered, “Did you say four hours?”
I nodded. He looked pained as he turned back to give his attention to the stage, though I knew as security he was actually aware of a lot more than the performance. He’d be aware of things that I would miss, and so would Truth behind us.
Jean-Claude raised my hand up and laid a kiss on the back of it. He was smiling at me in that trying-not-to-laugh way. I glared at him and then caught Asher giving me the same look. I rolled my eyes at both of them and settled back in my seat.
I fell into a sort of daze, and then Micah raised the open program in his other hand in front of my face. I had to blink to read it. Jason Schuyler was listed as accompanying senior student Alicia Snyder. He’d said that the men were really just mobile props so the senior girls could have a wider choice of dances for their last hurrah before going off to college. “We’re just there to make the girls look good, and tote and fetch them.”
When I’d asked, “Then why do it?” he’d looked at me as if I’d said something silly. Jason had been in dance and theater all the way into college; apparently it was just some sort of dance thing that I wasn’t going to understand, but it made sense to him and to the other men that he’d talked into doing it. It had been Jean-Claude and Jason’s idea to make the exotic dancers at Guilty Pleasures, and the less exotic dancers at Danse Macabre, two of Jean-Claude’s clubs, learn to really dance. Jason and Nathaniel had been working with them and the teachers at the school all summer. It was the most men that the senior girls had ever had access to for partners, and most of them had taken our men up on the offer.
The ballerina with Jason was actually shorter than he was, and since he was only an inch taller than me, she was tiny in her black proverbial ballerina outfit with white tights and a flash of sparkle in her bound hair. He’d tied his own longish blond hair back in a tight, smooth ponytail so that it gave the illusion of being short. He wore an outfit that matched hers and I realized I’d never seen Jason in black before. They both looked elegant. Jason was usually smiling, joking, and one of my best friends. He was a lover as well. He was cute and even handsome, but I’d never realized that he could be elegant and beautiful. The music began and I saw instantly why she’d wanted him to partner her. I knew Jason moved well, even danced well, and I’d seen some of the practices, but I hadn’t seen much of him with the girl. I’d never seen him move like this in dance.
He had the grace both of his years of dance training and of being a werewolf. All the wereanimals moved well, as if it came with the disease in their veins. He didn’t have a lot to do but hold her en pointe and help her twirl and do some lifts, and finally lift her completely over his head one-handed and carry her rainbowed body across the stage to bring her in a heart-stopping drop to be caught an inch above the floor with her body still graceful and taut in his arms.
The last move made the entire audience gasp. There was a moment of dead silence and then thunderous applause. J.J. leaned over and said, “That moment of silence is worth more than the applause afterward. It means you’ve nailed it.” She was clapping as she spoke, and when the audience actually rose to their feet we joined them.
The girl curtseyed and was given a bouquet of roses by one of the earlier students still in costume. They kissed cheeks and then the ballerina took two of the long-stemmed roses out of her bouquet and handed them to Jason. He came forward, took the roses, kissed her hand, and then she insisted on bringing him forward so they bowed together. I didn’t need anyone to explain to me that Alicia was showing that she knew she could not have wowed the audience without Jason’s help.
He was beaming, eyes glowing, even as his chest still rose and fell from the effort of lifting and throwing her, and making it all look pretty and effortless.
J.J. said, “I don’t envy who goes next.”
I agreed and was glad it was a senior girl by herself. I didn’t want to see one of our own guys compete with what we’d just seen. It seemed like a damned hard act to follow.
The senior girl was good, but she wasn’t as good, and I sympathized that here at her last performance she had to know she wasn’t going to nail it. I think that would feel bad.
But the next senior girl had Nathaniel Graison listed as her partner, and I actually found myself leaning forward on my seat. It was no longer about just the performance but how Nathaniel would feel after seeing Jason onstage. They were best friends and not competitive in that typical guy way, but still, Nathaniel was my other live-in sweetie and I was a little worried. Nathaniel, unlike Jason, had never been in dance class other than with Jason taking him. He’d been on the streets before age ten, and it had gone downhill from there. Nathaniel had been a prostitute, porn star, still was an exotic dancer, so he’d performed before, but not like this.
Micah’s hand was tense in mine, and we exchanged a glance. Micah said out loud, “He’ll be fine.” But simply by his saying that, I knew he was worried, too. I realized it was more than just being in love with Nathaniel; because of his horrendous childhood we felt almost parentally anxious. It sounded stupid, but he’d never had a chance to be one of the little toddlers in their costumes seeing the parents smile. He’d missed so much as a child, and in a way this was him trying to experience some of what he’d missed. He hadn’t expressed any stage fright about tonight. It was all just my nerves and Micah’s apparently.
Nathaniel entered the stage hand in hand with his ballerina. The girl wore a filmy white gown around her white leotard so that it had the look of white and silver rags, elegant rags, and moved around her as though it were breathing. He wore white tights but his shirt was of rougher material and loose around his upper body, even open at the neck. His shoulders looked amazingly broad, and the rest of him looked even better in the white tights, but that might have just been me. His ankle-length auburn hair was up in a bun at the nape of his neck. The ballerina’s blond hair was cut short and flattened around her face like lace. From this far out in the audience his lavender eyes looked blue.
The music began and though it was ballet it was a very different kind. Jason and his ballerina had been about physical movement in space; they’d been flashy and technically great, but now we saw the difference. This ballerina and Nathaniel told a story. I didn’t know the music and didn’t need to, because they told the story with their bodies, their faces, and their hands. It was graceful and beautiful and they acted. It wasn’t just dance, it was theatre.
It was a tale of lovers lost and found, and of some great tragedy. Nathaniel held her, but it was soft holding, as if their bodies melted into each other, and their gaze made the audience watch their hands as they rose above their heads so that those entwining arms, hands, fingers, seemed terribly important.
I’d known Nathaniel could dance, but as I hadn’t known Jason could be elegant, I hadn’t realized Nathaniel could do this. It was both amazing and wonderful, and made me feel the loss of what he might have been in his life if things had been different. Of course, he was only twenty-two. It wasn’t like it was too late for him to change jobs. But it felt odd thinking that, as if Nathaniel not working at Guilty Pleasures would change things, as if the man I was watching swoon and dance onstage would be someone else if he did this every night.
He lay down on the stage and his hair began to unroll from the bun, but it was too sudden a change and I realized as she collapsed on top of him that the hair was part of the show, the emotion. His hair spilled out around them across the pale wood stage and something about the lights hitting it, or the color of gel used, turned all that auburn hair to red so it was as if they both lay in a pool of thick blood. She made one last futile gesture with her pale arms, and again something about the lighting put her in a pale, white glow so she looked almost translucent. It was a neat trick with the lights, her glowing and ethereal while Nathaniel lay in the richer reds so it was all death and violence and transcendence and beautiful.
There was another of those breathless silences as the lights faded so we wouldn’t see them leave the stage. And then the audience was on its feet again, and it was wonderful.
“Oh my God,” I said, as I stood there and clapped along with everyone else. Micah beside me was shaking his head. I wondered if he’d been thinking the same things that I’d been thinking.
Jean-Claude beside me said, “Our kitten has become a cat.”
I leaned around Micah to J.J. “Tell me if I’m just in love with him, or was that amazing.”
She nodded. “That was really good. With more time and work it could be amazing.”
Another bouquet of roses was brought out for the ballerina. She tore her bouquet in half and handed it to Nathaniel, and made him bow with her.
Monica leaned around J.J. and said, low, but not so low that J.J. wouldn’t hear, “And to think you get to take that home and play with it.”
I must have turned pretty abruptly, and what I was about to say wasn’t friendly, but Micah grabbed my arm and blocked my view of her. The look on his face was enough. It made me count to ten. But while I counted J.J. said, “You’re going to take that from her?”
I looked at Micah. He said, “No, but easy.”
I nodded. Jean-Claude leaned in to it all and said, “Is something wrong?”
I leaned over everyone. “Nathaniel is not an
it
, okay.”
She made a little push-away gesture, but there was something in her face that let me know she’d baited me. The only question was, why?
Vivian on the other side of her had been utterly quiet through all of it. She was standing and applauding, but she wasn’t looking at us. It was almost like she wasn’t really here.