“I do trust you,” I said.
“But still you push; still you test your boundaries.”
I shrugged. “Sorry, didn’t really mean to.”
“You didn’t, and you did,
I shrugged again. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
“Yes, yes I can,” he said.
“I love you, too, Jean-Claude,” I said.
He closed down the link between us, shut his metaphysical door hard and tight. He’d thought of something, and if I pushed, he might have told me, but I’d learned that when Jean-Claude told me I didn’t want to know something, he was usually right. Ignorance isn’t bliss, but neither is knowledge. Sometimes you just know more, but it doesn’t make you any happier.
I heard someone behind me, and turned to find Zerbrowski in the mouth of the alley. “He see it on the news?”
“What?” I asked.
“The bodies,” he said.
I blinked at him, trying to bring myself solidly back into my own head, my own body. I pressed my fingertips against the cold, rough brick, and it helped.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “Sure.”
“I called Katie, too,” he said.
“She saw it on the news,” I said.
“No, but the kids did.”
I gave him a sympathetic face. “I’m sorry, Zerbrowski, that must be hard.”
“The news is showing all the bodies with sheets and shit over it, and they said that two officers had been killed, but they never release the names until the families are notified, which is great, but it’s hell on everyone else’s families,” he said.
I thought about it, but most of my “boyfriends” could feel me alive, or they’d feel if I died, just as I’d feel it if they died. But I was shielding like a son of a bitch to keep them out of my head. I’d made it clear that all of them were supposed to stay out of my head while I was working a crime scene. I did my best to make sure that ongoing investigations weren’t shared with any of them. It took real work to stay separate enough to keep secrets from each other, but I had to do it, not just to keep the police work confidential, but because they didn’t need to see the horrors I saw on the job. I didn’t want, or need, to share that part of my job. Sometimes when I had nightmares, they got glimpses of it if we were sleeping next to each other. When I was working on a really violent case, some of my lovers started sleeping elsewhere. I didn’t really blame them, though I found that I did take brownie points away from the ones who hid. I preferred the people in my life who could take all of me, not just parts.
Did I need to call home? Probably. Shit.
“What’s that look on your face?” Zerbrowski said.
“I let Jean-Claude know, but I didn’t tell him to tell the others.”
“Won’t he do that automatically?”
“Not necessarily; the older vampires aren’t always big for sharing information.”
“We need you to come talk to these vampires right now, but if you want to call one of your other guys, make it quick.”
“Thanks, Zerbrowski,” I said.
“Yeah, might want to call the boyfriend most likely to tell everyone else next time.”
“That’d be Micah,” I said, and was already fishing for my phone.
“Say hi to Mr. Callahan for me.”
“Will do,” I said, and had my phone out.
“You didn’t have your phone out before,” Zerbrowski said.
I looked at the phone in my hand as if it had just appeared there. I realized in the dimness he’d assumed I was talking on it already. If I’d thought, I could have hidden the fact that I wasn’t using a phone the first time.
He shook his head, waved a hand. “I don’t want to know, because if I actually knew for sure you could talk to Jean-Claude without using a phone, that would sort of compromise the integrity of our crime scene. Just use a phone from now on, okay?”
I nodded, held it up in my hand. “You got it.” I hit Micah’s number on my favorite’s list, and the phone dialed him for me. He was a wereleopard, not a vampire; wereanimals tended to think more like modern people. You’d think it would be the other way around, but it wasn’t. Vampires weren’t human, or animals; they were vampires, and no matter how much I loved Jean-Claude, I knew that was the truth.
8
MICAH’S RING TONE was “Stray Cat Strut,” by Stray Cats; Nathaniel had put it on when he went wild giving nearly everyone personal ring tones on my new phone. It wasn’t a perfect ring for Micah, but I hadn’t found anything I liked better yet, so I’d left it.
His business answer was always, “Micah Callahan here.” Tonight, to me, it was, “Anita,” and there was relief in his voice, and then he recovered his tone and was businessier when he said, “I didn’t expect a call this early. You can’t be done with the crime scene.”
That relief at the beginning and his quick matter-of-fact recovery made me start with an apology that no amount of criticism, or whining, could have gotten from me. “I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier, but I knew that you guys would know I wasn’t one of the dead officers.” I regretted using the word
I could picture him at his end of the phone, his chartreuse eyes, green and gold, depending on the light. Leopard eyes, because a very bad man had forced him to stay in animal form until he couldn’t come all the way back to human. If his deep brown curls were loose, and not back in a ponytail or braid, he’d be pushing them behind his ear so the phone could set better. He was my size, the shortest man in my life, with the delicate frame to go with it, but he’d put muscle over that fragile-seeming body, and like me he made the most of what he had.
“Nathaniel would have let me know if you were hurt,” he said, and his voice wasn’t as calm now. There was a slight tremor in it. He had moved in with me at the same time Nathaniel did, so we’d been a happy little threesome the entire two years we’d been together. Micah was my Nimir-Raj, leopard king to my Nimir-Ra, leopard queen, and we had an amazing metaphysical connection, but Nathaniel was my leopard to call, just as if I were a real vampire, which meant that if I died, there was a very real chance that he’d die with me. It didn’t work as much the other way, because animals to call and human servants, in my case a vampire servant, were meant to feed the master vampire energy, strength, which meant the vampire would feed on the servant’s energy first to stay alive longer. It was the way the system was set up, and in fact when Nathaniel almost died from a gunshot wound, I hadn’t been that hurt. If I died, though, Micah would almost surely lose us both. I hadn’t thought until this moment how that must make him feel. I was a coldhearted idiot. Fuck.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“For what?” he asked, and he sounded genuinely puzzled.
I shook my head, knew he couldn’t see it, and tried again. He did not need me to say out loud what I’d just thought; one, he already knew it, and two, that I’d only just now figured it out would probably not earn me any couple brownie points.
“Ignore me; I just wanted to make sure you told everyone that I’m okay.”
“Of course.” He still sounded a little puzzled, and finally said, “Do you have a few minutes to talk to Cynric?”
“Maybe; why him in particular?”
“He saw the special report on the news. You standing surrounded by bodies. He’s scared for you now, for you and Nathaniel.”
My insight was new enough that I understood that last part. Nathaniel and Cynric were close, maybe because
