training class is coming in soon, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Might make sense to do a test order on some autoloaders.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Rhage braced his hip against the table as V bent down and cracked the triangle into pieces. As the colored balls rolled all over the place, Rhage shook his head.
“You see that elephant gun Evale had at Brownswick?”
Those diamond eyes lifted. “Fuck, yeah. We need to get us one of those, true.”
“Just on principle. Think of the target practice.”
“Yeah, we could strap a small car to Lassiter’s back and make him run around by the pool—”
“Hey,” the fallen angel called out from one of the sofas. “I’m in here, assholes.”
Rhage glanced over at the guy. “You’re awake, huh.”
The blond-and-black bastard sat up and yawned, stretching his arms over his head. “Time for my shift to start. Shit! I’m late. Gotta go.”
As Rhage and V watched the angel take off at a dead run, both of them cursed.
“You know,” Rhage muttered, “it’s getting really hard to hate him.”
“Just think of Punky Brewster. Everything will recalibrate.” Vishous prowled around the table, his massive body moving like a panther in his leathers and his muscle shirt. “And fuck me, I never thought I’d know that show.”
V made quick work of things, all kinds of pockets getting filled—but he flubbed it three strokes later.
“Hollywood? My brother, it’s all you.”
Rhage tried to refocus, but he just couldn’t get Bitty off his mind. After a moment, he looked across the green felt, and was glad that all of the doggen were in the kitchen and dining room—and that most of the other brothers hadn’t arrived home quite yet.
And hey, he was always glad when Lassiter left a room.
“What,” V said. “And do I need to light up first.”
“You ever…” Rhage cleared his throat. “You ever think about having a kid, V?”
“No. Why?”
As the guy stared back, it was as if Rhage had asked him whether or not he needed a new toaster. Some laundry done. An oil change.
“You don’t ever wonder what it would be like to be a father?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“No.” Vishous shrugged. “Not sure why you’re asking.”
“There’ve been some kids, you know, coming into this household.”
“So?”
“That doesn’t affect you at all?” When V shook his head, Rhage frowned. “What about Doc Jane? Does she want them?”
“Okay, first, she can’t have any. And second, she’s never mentioned it to me. Ever. She’s mated to her job—hell, her idea of a romantic birthday present is a new autoclave. And I fucking love that about her.”
“But what if she changed her mind?”
“She won’t.”
“How do you know that?” As V just blinked a couple of times, Rhage waved his hand. “Sorry. None of that’s my fucking business.”
“Is this why you got problems with your Mary? And don’t play. It’s been obvious—she want kids?”
“No. No, nothing like that.” Rhage rubbed the tip of his cue with his thumb, transferring the bright blue chalk to the pad of his finger. “I just was wondering. You know, hypothetically. About other people.”
“Look, I don’t mean to be dismissive, but come on—I have a godawful relationship with my mother and had a sadist for a sire. That mother/father business has only ever had bad connotations for me. Besides, I’m about as nurturing as a sawed-off—isn’t that the way the saying goes?”
“Like I said, I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“You gonna play now?”
Rhage shifted his weight from shitkicker to shitkicker. “I got one other thing to ask you, actually.”
THIRTY-FOUR
The last thing Mary did before she left for the day was go to her office and check Facebook on her computer.
Like if she fired the URL up on something other than her phone, the search would give her a different result.
“Okay, let’s do this,” she muttered as she signed on.
As the machine came to life, she got a front-and-center of the closed, vampires-only group she was looking for—because it had been the last thing she’d been on before she’d gone downstairs to wait for Rhage earlier in the evening.
Hitting refresh, she waited for the Internet connection to show her any new posts, and ended up tilting her head back and looking at the ceiling. Bitty was moving around in her attic room, and Mary fought the urge to go and try to talk to her. But no, it was time to go home, and the girl was tired. Also, Mary had an almost superstitious notion that for once, the pair of them had parted on a relatively optimistic note: Bitty was ready for ice cream after nightfall