Лорел Гамильтон - Dead Ice

“I know you hated him, and I know you killed him because he was trying to kill you, but he wasn’t all bad. Almost no one is all bad; that’s part of what makes it so hard in therapy. There are so few true villains, just other screwed-up people who pass the damage on. He took care of me, better than anyone had for a long time. Gabriel got me off the streets, cleaned me up, and trained me how to act at fancy hotels, nice restaurants, the kind of places where people take escorts, not whores. Jean-Claude helped him tutor me on the social graces, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

He grinned suddenly, as he merged into a long line of cars waiting to exit. “When Gabriel first introduced me to Jean-Claude I thought I was there to sleep with him, and instead I was there to audition for going onstage at Guilty Pleasures. I thought I knew how to take my clothes off onstage, but Jean-Claude showed me the difference between shaking the moneymaker to the music and getting naked onstage, as opposed to a true striptease. I can still hear him: ‘One is an art, and the other is cheap and tawdry, and nothing cheap dances on my stage.’ God, Jean-Claude was so elegant in everything he did. I’d never seen anyone like him.”

“He is pretty unique,” I said.

Nathaniel laughed. “He was always a perfect gentleman with all the dancers. He said he couldn’t be a good manager if he played favorites, so first he taught me how to be elegantly sexy onstage and then he taught me which fork to use, and not to tuck my napkin into my shirt collar.”

I laughed. “I never knew that Jean-Claude took that much interest in Gabriel’s wereleopards.”

“He didn’t usually, but I wasn’t just one of Gabriel’s wereleopards, I was one of Jean-Claude’s dancers, and he always looked after his people, as much as he could. The power structure limited him while Raina and Gabriel were alive.”

Raina had been the old Lupa, head lady werewolf of the local pack. Technically I still had the job, but only because the Ulfric, or wolf king, Richard Zeeman, hadn’t chosen a new mate who was a real werewolf. I was still the pack’s Bolverk, doer of evil deeds, and would kill pack members if it had to be done for the safety of others. When a wereanimal went rogue, the body count could add up quick; really all I didn’t do as Bolverk that I did do as a legal executioner was wait for the rogue to kill people. I could do a preventive strike out of the sight of the other cops. I hadn’t actually had to kill anyone who wasn’t trying to kill me or someone else yet, and hoped the trend continued.

Nathaniel took the exit, and the darkness was more complete as we went on smaller streets and there were fewer cars. “One of my regular customers was rich, really rich, and it was old money, which meant he couldn’t afford to have people find out I was a hooker. He wanted to take me places besides a hotel room and to the kind of dinners where you have more silverware than you ever imagined anyone needing at one place setting. It wasn’t just using the right spoon, or fork, either, but a whole different way of acting and interacting with the people while you’re at that kind of dinner. Gabriel’s background wasn’t that different from mine, just a street kid who fought his way to management, so he asked Jean-Claude’s advice, and I got etiquette lessons.”

I tried to picture Jean-Claude giving a teenage Nathaniel Miss Manners lessons, and I could picture it. He’d taken me through the confusing silverware lesson so I could eat the kind of meals he’d have eaten if he’d been able to consume solid food. I carried three of his vampire marks, which meant he could taste food through me if he concentrated. We’d had dates where he watched me eat, just so he could taste the food along with me. I guess if I hadn’t been able to eat a steak in over six hundred years I’d be pretty excited, too.

My phone rang that old-fashioned brrriiinngg ; I jumped and gave a little squeak. Shit, I was really going to have to find a new main ring tone; this one always made me jump. Nathaniel wisely turned his laugh into a cough. He and Jean-Claude both thought it was cute. Micah thought I should change my ring tone.

I got the phone off its charger in the center console and said, “Blake here, what’s up?” I sounded angry, which was what I usually sounded like when I was scared.

“Did I call at a bad time?” It was Manny.

“No, no, it’s great. I need to talk to you.”

“I’ve known you too long, Anita, what’s wrong?” Manny had been the one who took me on my first vampire hunt, taught me how to stake them and cut off a human head. He had held my hand while I lost pieces of myself learning the ropes of our shared job. He’d helped me refine my zombie-raising ritual, because he raised the dead, too.

“Personal stuff.”

“Jean-Claude treating you badly?” He asked it in that way that older men do, when they feel protective and fatherly toward you.

“No, he’s great, but sometimes the bad parts of my job make the good parts of my life hard to deal with, you know?” That was the truth, and so obscure that it was almost a lie. But Manny took it for what it was: all the truth he was getting.

“I hated it when Rosita made me give up hunting vampires, but my life works better without it. You could just raise the dead, Anita. I know that neither one of us can give that up.”

“Not without raising the dead by accident,” I said. We’d shared stories of our powers affecting the dead by accident. My first had been my dog. His had been a toddler cousin. What did they both have in common? A lot of emotion from us, and for me, I wanted my dog back, so she came back. The college prof who committed suicide and showed up at my dorm room had been harder for me to understand, but good little Catholic that I had once been, I hadn’t wanted him to spend eternity in hell, so . . . another chance to repent.

“Yes, the power will come out one way or another, but hunting monsters isn’t your magic. You could give that up.”

Manny didn’t know anything about the Mother of All Darkness, or the Father of the Dawn, or . . . so much. Rosita had asked me to swear that I wouldn’t involve her husband in any more vampire hunts after he’d nearly died in the last one we’d done together. He still did some of the morgue executions where the vampire was dead to the world and chained down with holy items, but even that made Rosita nervous. He’d been over fifty on that last hunt, and Rosita had said, “He’s too old for this now. Leave my old man alone, and let him live to see his grandchildren.”

What could I say? I did what she asked, and I lost my mentor, my teacher, and my partner in the undead business. Some of my worst injuries had been after I lost Manny at my back. He’d been older, not an old man, but he was currently planning his oldest daughter’s wedding and if he’d stayed at my side he might have missed it.

“Anita, are you okay?”

“I’m sorry, Manny, did you say something?”

“It’s not like you to lose track. Something has shaken you bad.”

“Yeah, it has, and that’s why I called.” I glanced at Nathaniel. It was an ongoing police investigation, but what was I supposed to do, ask him to put his hands over his ears and go la, la, la ? Of course, come to that Manny wasn’t a marshal either. When he took himself out of the vampire-hunting business he missed his chance to be grandfathered into the preternatural marshal program. I loved Nathaniel, but I wasn’t supposed to talk about ongoing police investigations with him, and certainly the FBI wouldn’t appreciate me oversharing with my lover.

“If I can help, you know I will.”

“I know that, Manny, I’m just debating how much I can share with you since you don’t have a badge.” I realized it was too blunt even as I said it, but I had used up a lot of my control already tonight. It didn’t bode well for raising the dead later.