I looked at Claudia. "How strong is Sin compared to the rest?"
She shrugged. "He's clan tiger, so that's a step up in metaphysics, but I'd say he's one of the least powerful of your tigers. The only one weaker is Jade, and I think her problem is she's afraid of the power."
I thought about the only woman tied to me metaphysically. She was tinier than me, fit under my arm like I did with most of my men. She was all pale skin, and long black hair, with those big brown eyes that uptilted in her face. She always made me think of words like delicate, dainty, and not a lot of women made me think that.
"She was her vampire master's punching bag for centuries; it makes her think like a victim."
"She's got these wicked skills when she practices by herself," Nicky said, "but when we try to put her in the sparring ring, she freezes."
"He made her into his victim," I said.
"But she's got these ninja skills, and I'm not making a racist remark on that; all the Harlequin are beyond special-forces good at some things. They're like movie ninjas, almost magical."
"Her master trained her up like the rest of the Harlequin, but he abused her so badly that she had the skills but never got to use them," Claudia said. "As if he crippled her at the same time he trained her."
"Accurate, I think."
"Why would the Harlequin waste all that training?" Claudia asked.
"I still wish you would not all say that word so casually," Jean-Claude said.
"The Harlequin aren't the bodyguards of Marmee Noir anymore. They work for us now, Jean-Claude," I said.
"And you were right to have me change the law about mentioning their name. It was excessive for that to be a death sentence."
"Excessive, you think?" I asked.
He smiled at me. "But they are still the greatest warriors, assassins, and spies that have ever been known," he said.
"Yeah, but they should never have been forced to hunt someone down and kill them for just saying the Harlequin."
"The Mother of All Darkness was the ruler of the Vampire Council for thousands of years, ma petite. She was the first vampire, the creator of our culture and most of our laws. She was beyond queen or empress to us. She was our dark goddess."
"We killed the Mother of All Darkness; that means we get to change her crazy-pants laws."
"The queen is dead, long live the king," Nicky said.
I looked at him.
He shrugged as much as all that muscle would let him. "It's what all the vampires and older wereanimals are saying. You killed her, so you get the spoils by wereanimal society rules, but you're Jean-Claude's human servant, so he gets credit for it by vampire law."
"I know the vampires consider me just an extension of Jean-Claude's power, like a gun, or a bomb."
"I do not think of you that way, ma petite, you know that."
I leaned into the hug, putting my head on his chest. There was no reassuring heartbeat against my ear. His heart beat more than most vampires' did, but it didn't have to beat, and it didn't beat all the time, and it certainly beat slower than human or wereanimal normal. I hugged him tighter, because I missed the beat of his heart. I preferred furry to vampires, still. I loved Jean-Claude and a few other vampires, but I bedded a lot more wereanimals than vampires; there was a reason for that.
"I fed on a human tonight at the club, not one of our wereanimals, and I have not been near enough to you for your presence to warm me."
"We'll fix that," I said, with my head tucked against the ruffles of his shirt. The ruffles and lace were never as soft as they looked, but tonight I didn't care. He'd actually stopped wearing as many of his signature shirts because I didn't like the stiffness of the cloth. But tonight I didn't care; I just wanted him close to me.
He held me close and whispered, "Yes, we can fix that."
"I have to clean up first. I'm still all sweaty and stuff from the crime scene." I realized he was wearing a white shirt and I might have dried blood on me. It made me draw back and look at the front of him.
"What is wrong, ma petite?"
"I may have dried blood and things on me, and you're wearing white."
He drew me back into his arms. "I would rather hold you close than