“TONIGHT MORTE D’AMOUR hit Atlanta. Tomorrow night he’ll hit another city,” Jake said.
“How many other Masters of the City are descended from his bloodline?” I asked.
“A few.”
“Either share your information, Jake, or get out of my face.”
“We can save the other descendants of Morte d’Amour in this country, Anita.”
“How?” I asked.
“Pick one of my kittens,” he said.
“You know, you calling them kittens doesn’t help.”
He smiled. “Sorry. Does it help to know that they’re all older than Cynric from Vegas?”
“He’s legal,” I said, deciding that a frontal assault was the best defense.
“I heard through the grapevine that you were bothered doing anyone under eighteen. If I heard wrong, I’m sorry.”
I sighed. “No, you’re right. It’s not just the age. It’s the level of innocence. My life isn’t about innocence. I prefer someone who knows his way around.”
“A sadder-but-wiser girl for you, huh?” Nicky said.
We both looked at him. “Are you quoting
The Music Man
at me?”
If it had been anyone else I’d have said he looked embarrassed. He gave that shallow shrug around all that muscle again. “What, I can’t like musicals?”
I blinked at him. “I sort of had you pegged for death metal, or club mixes.”
He grinned. “I like club mixes, but you can’t dance to most death metal. Silas was into that.”
“You’ve been with us a year. I didn’t know you liked to dance.”
“You don’t like to dance. You will dance for Nathaniel, Micah, and Jean-Claude, even Jason or Asher, but you don’t enjoy it. My primary emotions seem to be about pleasing you. It makes me anxious if I feel like you’re unhappy with me. Asking you to dance would make you uncomfortable, which would make me anxious. It’s so not worth it.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I looked at Jake. “Do you know much about this whole Bride phenomenon?”
“I’ve seen it. It’s really rare. It only shows up in bloodlines descended from the Father of the Day, like Belle Morte or the Dragon.”
“So it’s a power that Mommie Dark doesn’t have?” I asked.
He nodded. “The Sweet Dark isn’t into long-term relationships, really. Brides can be treated pretty badly by their grooms, but often the vampire who makes them feels responsible for them and it does become more like a group marriage, albeit with a one-sided power structure.”
“Is there a limit to how many Brides I can make?” I asked.
“It’s usually limited only by resources. How much blood you can harvest in an area determines how many vampires you can have before they begin to starve.”
“What’s the biggest number you’ve seen?”
“Twelve,” he said.
I gave him wide eyes. He studied my face. “You’re delaying meeting the weretigers; why?”
“I know this is going to sound churlish, or childish, or just stupid, but I don’t know how to go down to your tigers and pick one to sleep with when I haven’t even introduced myself.”
“There’s a reason that most vampires who have Brides are men,” he said.
“And that would be?” I asked.
“Women complicate things.”
Nicky made a sound that he turned into a cough, but I was pretty sure it started as a laugh. “You got something to say, Nicky?” I asked.
He caught his breath, face shining a little too much with his “cough.” “Nope.”
“Fine, if I were a guy I’d just march down there and pick someone. I get it.”
“Why don’t you have Jean-Claude help you pick?” Jake suggested.
It wasn’t a bad idea. I tended to pick low-power wereanimals and vampires to bond with, with a few rare exceptions like Micah. Jean-Claude could always be trusted to pick the wereanimal or necromancer most likely to up his power level, and if we were going to add someone else to our bed then it might as well pack a power punch to offset the embarrassment. My embarrassment, never Jean-Claude’s.
THE WERETIGERS WERE in the living room, but the rest of us were in Jean-Claude’s bedroom. I was sitting in one of the chairs by the fireplace. I was drinking coffee and watching the men in my life discuss how to pick the next man. Jean-Claude was in the other chair. Nathaniel was sitting curled by the fireplace, sipping tea and watching everything. Damian, Asher, and Micah were moving around the room as they talked.
Richard was still in wolf form, so his part of the discussion was sitting beside the chair and watching. I kept the coffee mug in one hand, but the other was on the ruff of his neck fur. He was warm and alive under my hand. His cinnamon fur was rougher than most dogs’, but the pulse and beat of him seemed closer to his skin than it would in a dog. Most wolves are about the size of a German shepherd, but Richard was like most werewolves; his wolf form was somewhere between a mastiff and a Great Dane in bulk and height. No modern-day wolf was ever this big. It should have been comforting to touch him the way it was comforting to touch a dog, but it wasn’t. Because this “dog” watched the other men talk, his bright amber eyes moving back and forth following the conversation in a way that no dog, or wolf, would, could, or would want to. Dog just wouldn’t care.
“Anita.” It was Micah leaning over me.
I stared up into his chartreuse eyes, blinking. “I’m sorry, what?”
He touched my face. “Your skin is cooler than it should be. You’re shocky.” He laid the back of his hand on my forehead. “Did something happen with Jake that you aren’t telling us?”
“Not with Jake, no,” I said, and my voice sounded distant.
He knelt and looked at me. The wolf turned and looked at me with too much “person” in his eyes. With Micah kneeling and the wolf sitting, the wolf was taller, but neither set of eyes was human.
Jean-Claude looked past us to someone behind my chair. “Nicky, did Anita do more with the police than talk to them on the phone?”
“I don’t know how to answer that,” Nicky said.
“Just answer it,” Micah said, gazing past me to the other man.
“Anita has to tell me to answer it,” he said.
“
Ma petite
, did you forbid Nicky to tell us something?”
Micah took the hand in my lap in both his hands. I didn’t remember when I’d stopped touching the wolf’s fur. Richard put that huge head next to mine and sniffed above my skin. “Anita, did you tell Nicky not to tell us something?”
I shook my head.
“Nicky,” Jean-Claude said, “is she lying?”
“Yes,” he said.
I turned too fast and Micah had to grab my coffee or I’d have spilled it. I glared at Nicky. “I didn’t tell you not to tell them.”
“You told me not to mention the police work to anyone, that it was an ongoing investigation and that I couldn’t share the information with anyone.”
I thought about it. “I didn’t mean . . . it is . . . I mean.” I couldn’t seem to organize my thoughts.
Micah touched my face and made me look at him. “Tell Nicky he can tell us anything we need to know.”
I nodded.
“You have to say it out loud,” Micah said.
“You can tell the people in this room what happened,” I said.
Nicky and Damian both told about the crime scene video, because when I had said Nicky could tell everyone, I hadn’t included his name so it freed them both up to talk. But it was when Nicky started talking about everything that had happened on the phone that Micah held my hand tighter, and Richard laid his head on my lap, eyes rolled up like a dog will do, though there was too much in those eyes. I laid my free hand on top of his big furry skull, but I realized that dogs weren’t comforting just because of the fur and the cuteness, but because there was no demand to them. The eyes in Richard’s wolf face demanded too much.
Jean-Claude cupped my face in his hands, raising me up so I gazed into those blue eyes. “And you were going to flirt with the new weretigers and take one to your bed with no time between these horrible events?”
I just looked up at him.
He kissed my forehead and laid his face against mine. “
Ma petite, ma petite
, you give yourself no time.”
I drew back so I could look into his face. “There isn’t any time to give. We need to do this now, right?” I started getting angry and I wasn’t even sure why. I stood up, pulling free of all of them. I strode to the middle of the room and stared at them all, and in that moment I hated them. I wanted to lash out. I wanted to hurt something. I knew it wasn’t rational. I knew it wasn’t fair. But the anger needed to go somewhere.
Nathaniel stood up, holding his hands out empty as if to prove he was unarmed. He’d put on a pair of jogging shorts, shoes, and a muscle tank top. His hair was back in a tight braid. It was what he wore when he worked out.
“You need to run, or hit the heavy bag. You need to get this out, not keep it in.”
“One workout isn’t going to fix this!” I yelled it at him.
“No, but it will help. The anger has to go somewhere. I’d rather it not go into a fight with us, and until you get it worked out somehow we can’t put you in a room with new wereanimals.” His face was so gentle as he moved toward me. He moved cautiously, the way you do with jumpers on ledges and wild animals when you don’t have a gun. Was I that horrible? Had I taught him to be that afraid of me? The answer, obviously, was yes.
My eyes burned and my throat was tight, but I didn’t want to cry again. I’d already cried and it had helped, but not enough. I’d cried for Haven, for Noel, for what I had to do. For almost losing the man who was walking toward me so carefully. I was nodding over and over.
Nathaniel took my hand and started leading me toward the door. “I’ll take her to work out. You guys choose which of the tigers you like best, but I think Micah should choose.”
“Why, because he’s your lover, or because he’s your Nimir-Raj?” Asher asked.
“No, because Jean-Claude seems to be attracted to difficult people—powerful, but with heavy issues. We don’t have time, or energy, to add another heavy-issue person to our group. I’d just pick the most dominant; it’s what I’m mostly attracted to. Damian just wants another girl so badly. He’s weirded out by how many guys Anita already has in her bed, so he’d pick the only girl. Asher said it earlier, that he’d like another man who isn’t so heterosexual, but a man who likes mostly men won’t move Anita. Nicky will be with us guarding, and his biggest thing is pleasing Anita anyway, so his opinion is her opinion. Even if Richard were in human form he and Anita don’t seem to like the same people, or don’t want to admit that they do. So he won’t want anyone. Anita’s last two choices have both been sociopaths or close to it.” He squeezed my hand as he said it, but I couldn’t argue with him, so I didn’t try. “Micah is the only one of us who seems to pick well, and with less agenda. He’s never brought anyone into our pard who was crazy or bad, or difficult. He makes sure that every new member works with us. That’s what we need. Someone who works with us, not against us. So you guys meet with the new weretigers; Anita doesn’t need to be there, and neither do I. I give my vote and Anita’s vote to Micah, if she agrees.”
He looked at me, and I nodded. “I trust Micah.”
Nicky said, “I’ll go with them, but Nathaniel’s right. My vote, if I get one, goes to Micah. He doesn’t let his issues get in his way like the rest of us do.”
“Jason gave his vote to me,” Jean-Claude said, “because he cares about nothing today as much as J.J. and her new attraction with the swanmane.”
I’d forgotten about Jason and his sweetie in all this. I said, “Are they all right?”
“J. J. and Bianca are besotted with each other from the
ardeur
last night. I believe it will pass in time, but for now Jason is not entirely welcome in his own bed.”
“If it had been any of the swanmanes besides Bianca,” Nathaniel said, “they’d have shared with Jason just fine, but Bianca was treated badly by the old swan king. It’s left her afraid to have sex with a man.”
I sighed and moved in against his body, so he held me. “I didn’t mean to fuck up Jason’s chance at happiness.”
Nathaniel hugged me and said, “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You helped keep us alive,” Asher said, “you and Jean-Claude and all your magic. The blame goes to the Mother of All Darkness and Morte d’Amour, and to no one else.”
I pressed my face against the sweet warmth of Nathaniel’s neck and said, “I’ll try to believe that.” I pulled away and started for the door, his hand still in mine. “Get me out of here.”
Micah called after me, “I love you. I love you both.”
Nathaniel flashed him that brilliant smile and said, “I love you, too.” I said the words, but I didn’t feel them. The anger was fading and the only thing left behind was numbness. I wanted to be in exercise clothes and sweating before the numbness changed to something more painful.
We went out the door with Nicky behind us. Fredo and Bram were on the door. “How’s Claudia?”
“We felt your energy, Anita. You healed her, all of them.”
“We’re going to work out,” Nathaniel said.
“You want to work on your knife fighting again, Anita?” he said.
“Sure,” I said.
“After she’s run and hit the heavy bag,” Nathaniel said.
“After all that, she’ll be too tired to fight well.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Nathaniel looked at me. “And if you fight before the run and the bag work, what will happen to the practice fight?”
I looked away, frowned, and then met that lavender gaze. It was very direct. “I’ll turn it into a real fight.”
Nathaniel nodded. “Sweat first, fight later, then.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Just yes, sir,” said Fredo, “no arguing?”
“Not today,” I said.
“Okay, now I’m glad we didn’t fight first.”
I looked at him. “Why?”
“Because if you don’t want to argue, the anger will have to go somewhere, and I’d really prefer it not be carved into my skin.”
“You think I’ve gotten good enough to win a knife fight with you?” I asked.
“No, but I won’t want to hurt you, and if you don’t have the same restraint with me, you are good enough to cut me.”
“Do I say thanks for the compliment, or get pissed that you think I’d lose it enough to cut you for real?”
“Take the compliment,” Nicky said. “I’ve never heard Fredo admit that anyone else could hurt him with a blade.”
I took the compliment. “Thanks, Fredo.”
“No problem. You’ve got a real talent for blade work, Anita.”
“I like edged weapons.”
“Most people are afraid of them.”
“I’m not most people,” I said.
“And that is the fucking truth,” Nicky said. Normally, I’d have gotten mad about that last comment, but today I just let it stand. If it was true, why should it make me mad?