Owens said.
I shook my head, shrugged. It was easier to do now that I wasn’t in the vest and all the weapons. “You’re going to do whatever the fuck you want to do. Nothing I say will make a damn bit of difference. You’ve obviously decided to use my sexual orientation against me.” I said it that way deliberately; I knew the rules, too.
“We haven’t questioned your sexual orientation, Marshal Blake,” Owens said.
“I’m polyamorous, which means loving more than one person, and what I heard was you saying that the fact that I wasn’t white-bread, missionary-position monogamous compromised my loyalty. Isn’t that what they used to say about homosexual officers, too?”
“It’s not the number of men you live with that we object to, it’s that they’re all wereanimals and vampires,” Preston said.
“So, you’re discriminating against my boyfriends because they have a disease?”
Owens touched Preston’s arm. “We aren’t discriminating against anyone, Marshal Blake.”
“So, you aren’t prejudiced against vampires or wereanimals?” I asked.
“Of course not, that would be illegal,” Owens said. He pulled on Preston’s arm until the taller man sat down.
I stayed standing. “Good to know that you aren’t prejudiced on the basis of illness, or sexual orientation.”
“Poly-whatsit isn’t a sexual orientation; it’s a lifestyle choice,” Preston said.
“Funny, I thought it was my sexual orientation, but if you’re a psychologist with a background in sexuality, by all means, you’re right.”
“You know full well I’m not,” Preston said, and the first hint of real anger was creeping into his voice. If I kept poking at him, maybe I could get him to yell and that would be on the video, too.
“I have no idea what your areas of professional expertise are, Detective Preston. I thought since you were speaking like an expert about my sex life, you must know something I don’t.”
“I did not say a damn thing about your sex life.”
“I’m sorry, I thought you did.”
“You know damn well I didn’t.”
“No,” I said, and gave him the full unhappiness in my eyes, and the beginnings of anger in my cold, controlled voice, “no, I don’t know that at all. In fact, I thought I heard both of you question my loyalty to my badge and my service, because I’m sleeping with monsters, and that must mean I’m a monster, too.”
“We never said that,” Owens said.
“Funny,” I said, “because that’s what I heard. If that’s not what you meant, then please, enlighten me. Tell me what you actually meant, gentlemen. Tell me what I misunderstood in this conversation.”
I stood there and looked at them. Preston glared at me, but it was Owens who said, “We would never question your home life, your sex life, or imply that people who suffer from lycanthropy, or vampirism, are less worthy of the rights and privileges accorded to everyone in this country.”
“When you run for office, let me know, so I won’t vote for you,” I said.
He looked surprised. “I’m not running for office.”
“Huh, usually when someone talks like a politician they’re running for something,” I said.
He flushed, angry at last. “You can go, Marshal. In fact, maybe you better go.”
“Happy to,” I said, and I left them to be angry together, and probably still angry with me. They could recommend that I not be allowed to go out with SWAT anymore, but it would be just that, a recommendation, and the other officers didn’t like these guys any better than I did. They could recommend all they wanted; they could go to hell for all I cared. I was going home.
29
WHAT I WANTED was a shower, a good cuddle, food, good sex, and sleep. What I got was two of my lovers arguing so loudly that I could hear it through the curtains that made up the living room walls in the underground of the Circus of the Damned. Nicky was behind me carrying one of my equipment bags; Claudia had the other bag. She was taller than Nicky by inches, one of the tallest people I’d ever met, and definitely the tallest woman. Her long black hair was back in its usual high, tight ponytail. It left her face dark and bare, and strikingly beautiful. It wasn’t the beauty of dainty female things, but one of strength and high, sculpted cheekbones. She was a knockout with not a touch of makeup, dressed in the black pants and black tank top of the guards’ unofficial uniform. The shoulders and arms that showed were muscled and ripped, so that doing the smallest motion made her arms flex and ripple with muscle. Nicky was broader through the shoulders, but Claudia didn’t look small beside him. She looked tall, strong, and dangerous. The shoulder holster and guns were almost not necessary, like an extra rose on top of your birthday cake when the icing was already thick and deep. The fact that she was a wererat, which made her faster and stronger than I was, meant looks were totally accurate. Claudia was dangerous, but she was on our side, so it was all good. Besides, she had a conscience, unlike Nicky, who had to borrow mine. A conscience will get in the way of you being as deadly as you could be.
We stood just inside the heavy, dungeon-looking door that led into the underground. The gauzy curtains started just feet inside the doorway. The gold, crimson, and silver of the cloth was a bright surprise after the bare stone of the entryway and the long stairs that led to the door. I stood there looking at the pretty curtains and didn’t want to go any farther. If Nathaniel and Micah hadn’t already been staying here for the night, I might have turned around and gone back up the stairs and home.
We could all hear Mephistopheles and Asher arguing. Asher was upset that Devil, Dev, Mephistopheles’ nickname, wanted to sleep with someone else. Then I heard the voice of Kelly, one of the other female guards: “Stop it, both of you, it’s over, okay? I won’t sleep with him, Asher; he’s yours, all yours.”
“I have a right to sleep with women,” Dev said. “That was our agreement.”
“Asher may have agreed you could sleep with women, but he’s going to cause you so much grief about it that you won’t be able to do it.”
“Kelly…”
“No, Dev, sorry. You’re cute, but no one’s cute enough for this kind of grief; besides, I don’t poach other people’s men, and you definitely belong to Asher, or you wouldn’t put up with this.”
Mephistopheles’ voice: “I’m bisexual, not homosexual; that means I like women, too. I’m not giving them up, not even for you.”
“It’s all been a lie, then.” Asher’s voice, and his voice held despair and anger like hot ashes against the skin. His voice held negative emotions the way Jean-Claude’s could hold sex and love.
My heart dropped into my stomach, so that it hurt from chest to gut. They call it a broken heart, but it’s not your heart that breaks, it’s more like your insides are carved out from chest to gut, so you feel hollow. I loved Asher, but I was also beginning to hate him just a little. This insecure, almost insane jealousy of his was driving us all crazy.
The curtains were jerked apart and Kelly strode through. She was only a few inches taller than me, long yellow hair back in a high, tight braid; the black T-shirt and black jeans were a little too harsh for her coloring, making her look as if the fight had paled her out with anger, but I knew that wasn’t it. Kelly didn’t pale out; she flushed when she was angry enough.
She snarled her words, a trickle of her inner lioness growling through them. “They are so yours, Anita. I don’t know how the hell you put up with all of them.”
“The sex is really good,” I said, and shrugged.
She shook her head, making her long, tight braid bounce. “There isn’t a sex trick in the book that could make me put up with this level of shit from anybody.”
I said the only truth I had. “Love makes you do stupid things.”
She looked at me. “You love them all? How can you love them all?”
I thought about it. I thought about trying to explain that I loved them, but not all the same kind of love, but I sure as hell knew it was more than just lust, or friendship. “Yeah, apparently, I do.”
She waved a hand sort of vaguely in the air, as if erasing something I couldn’t see. “Well, I’m not touching another one of your men. They are way too complex for me. None of them know how to just fuck and leave it
