the way. We aimed our guns at them in unison. “We’ll just say you jumped us,” I said. “With all the dead cops in this town, they’ll buy it.”
“Anita Blake, so good of you to visit my little family.”
I didn’t even turn around. “Hi, Max. Thanks for the hospitality.” Then I screamed at the men blocking the door. “Move, or bleed!”
Max’s voice. “Move out of the marshals’ way. She’s a federal cop; you don’t mess with the Feds. It’s bad for business.”
The tigers at the door looked to another part of the room. They were looking at Bibiana.
“I am master of this city, and I say get the fuck out of the marshals’ way.” His voice had gone ugly with rage.
The weretigers moved, a little.
“Keep going,” I said, and we waited for them to move well away from the door. As they moved, I moved sort of with them, so I had my back to Edward and my empty hand on his back, so I could feel his movement and still watch the room. Edward would know that left him the door and the room beyond.
He opened the door with an audible click, and we eased through it. I looked away from the weretigers long enough to see Max in a doorway on the other side of the big bed. He was dressed in 1940s gangster chic, mostly bald, tall, but solid. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you’d say
“Thanks, Max,” I said.
“Tell Jean-Claude that I know the rules.”
“I’ll do that.” And Edward was through the door, and my hand on him took me with him. We were into the other room; all we had to do was get the door shut.
Bibiana had to have the last word. “You have slept with my son. Tell me, what did you dream?”
The question was so odd that it made me stumble at the doorway. “Anita,” Edward said.
“It’s okay,” I said. I concentrated on the gun in my hand and watching the room. I kicked the door shut behind us, and we were suddenly in the dimness and noise of the club beyond.
Edward moved up beside me, both putting his arm around me and lowering my gun hand down to my side. He leaned over and whisper-shouted into my ear, “Ease down.”
The club was crowded, mostly with men at the tables and stages. The only women were the waitresses and the dancers.
Edward started leading me through the crowd. He slipped into that half-drunk-boyfriend-who-brought-my- girlfriend-to-the-strip-club act like someone had turned a switch. He was suddenly a good ol’ boy who was having a good ol’ time. The best I could do was not look too uncomfortable under his arm and try not to let anyone bump the gun in my hand. Though no one noticed the guns once we were away from the door, or they pretended they didn’t. I’d noticed that a black gun against black jeans in a dark club was pretty invisible.
I was still trying to keep the door in my peripheral vision, though I was pretty sure that neither Max nor Bibiana would want to mess up the front of the club. They’d hide the dirty laundry.
What had she meant about my dreams? I pushed the thought away and tried to push that itchy feeling between my shoulder blades away, too. I wanted to sprint for the far door, but we were pretending, and that means you blend in, so I pretended to help my drunk boyfriend through the crowd. Though I knew that Edward was watching everything and would go from this act to action in the blink of an eye.
A hand came out of nowhere and tried to grope my breasts. I had grabbed his wrist and twisted before I’d had time to think.
“Hey,” he said, and his face had that soft, confused look of the very drunk.
Edward leaned over my head, leering drunkenly, “Mine,” he yelled.
“Sure, man, sure,” the drunk said, as if it had been Edward who’d protected my honor and not me. Maybe if I shot the drunk he’d look at me as if I were a real person, but that would probably be overkill for one attempted grope. It wasn’t the grope, though, it was the attitude that the women weren’t real; none of us in the club were truly people to most of this crowd. I’d seen it with the female customers at Guilty Pleasures and how they treated the male strippers. Dancers weren’t quite the same as real people, or you’d never be able to act like you do at a club. It was probably one of the reasons I had never been comfortable at one of them; even before I was dating a stripper, I never forgot that everyone was real.
We stopped at the little bar/gift shop area and bought me a T-shirt. It was white and had
“Nice fit.” This from one of the dancers who was wearing a short robe and, since it was open, proving that it was all she was wearing. She had short brown hair and an open, pretty face, like the high school sweetheart that everyone’s supposed to have but never does.
“Thanks,” I said. If the T-shirt had fit any tighter across my chest it would have ripped like the Incredible Hulk’s pants.
She moved closer, stroking her hand down my side, not exactly touching my chest, but the edge of it all. “Come to the stage, I’ll give you a lap dance for free.” She gave a smile that managed to contain both innocent friendliness and the promise of something evil, hidden in the quirk of that one dimple and deep in those hazel eyes.
Edward drew me into his body with a slightly sloppy movement and grinned at the woman. “Sorry, but we gotta go. But next time, I’d love to watch.”
She smiled at him, bright, lovely, and empty as a lightbulb. I had a smile like that for difficult customers. She switched to flirting with him, putting an arm as far as she could with the backpack in her way. “Promise.”
“Oh, yeah,” and he laughed.
The dancer leaned in and whispered, “Ask for Brianna. I’m here six nights a week after six.”
I nodded. “I’ll remember.”
Her hand lingered down my arm until we actually held fingertips, as Edward pulled me toward the outer door. We got outside, and Edward kept up his drunk act for half a block; then he straightened and we could walk normally. “I know you attract wereanimals and the undead, but now human women. What was that all about?”
“Let’s find a dark alley and you give me all my weapons. I’ll re-arm and explain.”
We did what I suggested. It was the part of town that had a lot of dark alleys. He handed me the first layer of holster, and the re-arming began. “If you can get a female customer to shed some clothes while you’re playing with her, the men love it. You can make a lot of money.”
“The old lesbian fantasy,” he said.
“Yep.” I had the Browning’s holster with its extra ammo, and the big knife down the spine settled in place. My backpack next, tightened enough so it didn’t move around.
“She seemed to like you better than she liked me,” he said.
“You noticed that, too.” I had the MP5 dug out of the backpack, where it didn’t quite fit, and on the tactical sling around me. “I’ve seen it with some male dancers; even the straightest of them can get pretty disgusted with the way the female customers act. I imagine it’s the same for the women with the male customers. If your experiences are bad enough, it can turn you a little bisexual.”
“Interesting; does that go for some of the men in your life?”
“I think the sexuality of the men in my life was set before anyone of them started working as strippers. Besides, only Nathaniel and Jason actually strip, and Jason is just our friend in bed.”
“What about Jean-Claude?”
“He doesn’t strip anymore.”
“He does get on stage, Anita. I’ve seen him offering kisses for money.”
That was a fairly recent act of his, and the question made me look at Edward. “When were you in the club to see his act?”
He stepped out into just enough light that I could see that smile. The one he used when he knew something I wanted to know, but he wasn’t going to tell me.
“Are you spying on us?”
“Not exactly.”
