“And I’m sorry, too,” I said, “but no, none of you come inside. It’s just us hashing this out.”
He started to protest, but I held up a hand, and he stopped in midsyllable. “Last I checked Jean-Claude and I outrank Claudia, so I’m going to throw down a presidential veto. I don’t want or need an audience.”
“You aren’t hard enough on Asher. That’s why he gets out of hand.”
I nodded. “That’s true, but that’s in the past.”
God frowned at me. “Anita…”
“No, I mean it, Asher doesn’t get any more free passes just because I love him… just because Jean-Claude loves him and keeps projecting that onto me.”
“I don’t believe you,” God said.
I turned and looked at the two vampires by the door. Jean-Claude had opened the door, and Asher was standing by him. We all looked at each other.
“
“You calling him your goldfinch doesn’t exactly makes us believe you,” God said.
Domino stepped forward. “Nicky made me promise to stay with you.”
“I’m not the one who almost died,” I said.
Domino shrugged, brushing his hands through the black-and-white curls again, which I knew was a nervous gesture. His hair was mostly black with white accent curls, showing that he was half white tiger and half black. My only other born tiger that was mixed clan blood, Ethan, also had hair that reflected all his tiger forms. But Domino’s hair being mostly black with just a few white curls meant when he’d shifted last he’d been black tiger; if it had been white tiger, then that color would have predominated. Ethan’s hair stayed its human color no matter what color of tiger he’d shifted into last. Domino blinked his orange fire-colored eyes at me. Even more than Micah’s leopard eyes, Domino’s couldn’t pass for human, but Domino had been born with his tiger eyes. It was a mark of clan blood to be born with eyes like that, not a punishment like Micah’s had been.
“Nicky made me promise that you wouldn’t be alone with Asher.”
I laughed, but it wasn’t a good laugh. “I guess I can’t blame him.” I looked at Jean-Claude.
“I believe it will be your secrets, not ours, that you may not want Domino to hear.”
“I don’t even know what that means right now,” I said.
“It means let your tiger join us and if you wish him not to hear things, it is your task to make him leave.”
I spoke to Domino. “What will you do if I go into the room without you?”
He shook his head. “Did you see what Nicky did to Ares?”
“I did.”
Domino looked at me with his fire-colored eyes. The look was eloquent. “I value your safety, Anita, but I really don’t want to have to fight Nicky for real.” He smiled and shook his head.
“So you’re coming in the room with me whether I want you to or not?”
“Anita, Asher cut you up and hurt Sin badly enough that he’s in the hospital for the night. Why should your bodyguards trust him alone with anyone?”
It sounded reasonable. I turned back to Asher, still in the doorway. “You going to behave?”
“Nothing I can say will comfort your guards. They will not believe me, and I do not blame them. I have been beyond childish.”
“You’re always so contrite afterward, but it never lasts, Asher. You do better for a while, and then something pisses you off again, and it’s like you forget.”
He nodded. “That is fair. I am sorry, truly sorry, but you are right. Apologies that do not lead to better actions are empty things.”
“Amen to that,” I said.
He bowed his head, all that golden hair spilling around his face. Normally it made me sad that he felt he had to hide the scars that much-it meant he was feeling self-conscious-but tonight it reminded me of Nicky and the way his hair hid his own scars, and it just made me angry at him.
“Fine, Domino can come into the room.” I looked at Godofredo. “You can tell Claudia you did what she ordered.”
“She wanted two guards in with you.”
“Don’t push it,” I said, and there must have been something in my voice, or in my face, because he literally backed off, hands held sort of out from his body as if he wanted to show that he meant no harm.
“Fine,” he said. “As long as you take Domino with you, Claudia won’t bitch-slap me.”
“More like she’ll knock you on your ass,” I said.
He smiled, and nodded. “That, too.”
I felt a touch on my psychic shielding, the equivalent of a knock. I knew the touch, and dropped shields enough to see Damian. He was still six feet of the whitest skin I’d ever seen on a vampire, because the long hair that spilled over his shoulders was the red of fresh blood, and his eyes the green of grass. He’d been pale when alive, but hundreds of years without sun had paled his skin and let his hair get as red as red could get. I could feel that he had a hand in his, and a thought let me see the woman who was almost as tall as he was at his side. Cardinale’s hair was more orangey red and curly to his very straight, but they were both natural redheads, both tall, both slender, though he’d died with muscle over his frame, and she was just model thin, but they were physically very well matched, like a team of beautiful horses chosen because they looked good together.
Damian was manager at Jean-Claude’s dance club, Danse Macabre, and Cardinale was one of the dancers. She partnered him for some demonstrations of old dances that had existed when he was alive, but centuries before she was born. She was also one of the taxi dancers, where you paid for the privilege of dancing with a vampire for a song. People loved dancing with the shapeshifters and vampires at Danse Macabre. The club even had a dance master who would work with new customers to teach them the ancient line dances. I’d seen the entire club floor thick with people: human, vampire, shapeshifter, all in neat rows with a hand held here and there, moving to a dance that no one had seen in centuries. It was just plain cool.
Damian let me see the second woman in front of him. She was tiny, shorter than me by inches, short enough that she fit under my arm, when I put my arm across her delicate shoulders. Her shining black hair fell like patent- leather water straight and perfect to her waist. Her uptilted eyes looked brown, but I’d spent enough time looking into them to know they were actually an orange so dark they looked brown. In the right light they were the color of fire when it burns deep into the wood and you think the flame is out, but if you don’t douse it with water, it’ll flare up and burn the house down. Her Chinese name translated to Black Jade; to me she was just Jade, my Jade. She was my black tiger to call, and the first woman to change me from heterosexual to heteroflexible.
Jade looked frantic, and jerked away from Damian’s hand. She started running down the hallway. Damian looked up, as most of us did when we were “seeing” each other in our minds. “Someone told her you were hurt.”
“Shit,” I said, out loud.
“What’s wrong?” God asked.
“Someone told Jade I was hurt. She’ll have to see for herself that I’m healed.”
“Can’t you just tell her mind-to-mind?” God asked.
“She’s too scared, and panicking. It makes her head-blind.”
“No offense,” God said, “but for a ninja assassin super-spy she spooks easy.”
Domino said, “You try being abused by a master vampire for centuries and see how you do.” His beasts flared enough to raise heat around him like a breath of summer in the cave-cool corridor.
“Hey, no offense,” God said.
“None taken,” I said, and touched Domino’s arm. I was trying to calm him before Jade got here. He was very protective of her. Touching him made the heat of his beasts try to jump to me and call my matching tiger colors, but I understood how to soothe the energy now. Not shut it down, not trap the beasts, but soothe them like you’d pet and cuddle a big kitty. Of course these kitties would have happily torn my body apart so they could be on the outside with their own real fleshy bodies if it had been possible. We’d finally figured out it was Jean-Claude’s vampire marks that kept me from being able to shapeshift for real. Modern lycanthropy wasn’t contagious to vampires, and I was just too close to being a vampire thanks to his marks, and my own necromancy. Ancient-strain lycanthropy had been contagious to the undead.
“Ease down,” I said to Domino.
