says you're not supposed to understand love; if it made complete sense, it wouldn't be love."
"That sounds illogical and absolutely true," I said.
"Illogical and true; sounds about right for love," Dolph said, and he'd hung up.
By the time I knew that everyone was safe and no bombs were anywhere we had looked, dawn had come and gone by hours. I felt Jean-Claude die for the day, and knew that meant Asher had gone before him, because he wasn't powerful enough to stay awake as long as Jean-Claude. They did better in the underground, but the sun came up and the vampires went down, that was just the way it worked. I felt Jean-Claude curl up around the other man, and knew I would find them in the bed together. I didn't like sleeping with vampires once they went cold for the day, so I'd be bunking with Micah and Nathaniel in our room, and maybe Sin, if he was there and not in a hospital bed.
Claudia and I were walking down the midway of the Circus. This close to dawn it was closed tight. One of the things that had made it so hard to search was this section with its booths shuttered tight. There were the usual fairway games, but the stuffed toy prizes hanging from the eaves of the little shopfronts ran high to bats, black cats, Frankenstein's monsters, and strangely cuddly mummies with the glimpses of dead skin through the fuzzy wrappings played for comedy instead of scares. There was scarier stuff from some shops: fake shrunken heads on a stick, monster eyeballs in plastic jars, and a booth that put fake scars and wounds on you. I could smell the sweetness of the cotton candy, the cinnamon of the elephant ears and bear claws booth, renamed "monster ears" and "werewolf claws," and the funnel cakes that always smelled like your grandmother's kitchen was supposed to smell, but never had.
I liked walking the Circus after it was closed. I think it appealed to the little girl in me who had always wondered what happened when the fair closed down. I knew now that it was just like any other job for most of the people. They cleaned up, did prep for the next day, and closed down, but when you're little, the traveling carnival is magical, a mysterious world that you only get to visit. There'd been a time when the midway here seemed ominous; now it seemed homey. If I walked through here, it was usually after closing and I was going to bed: home.
Claudia's phone sounded, and she walked a little away from me to take it. I gave her the privacy. The wererats were primarily our guards in town, but they had business out of town, and it was strictly a don't-ask, don't-tell policy. I carried a badge; I did not need to know details about their mercenary jobs.
She came back to me with a look on her face that I couldn't read, but it wasn't a good look.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Mephistopheles is sitting against the wall in the living room, crying," she said.
"Crap," I said.
"You don't even need to ask why, do you?" she said.
"No."
"So it's true you are sending Asher away for what he did last night?"
I nodded.
"About damn time," she said.
"You really don't like him, do you?"
"He's your lover, not mine, Anita. I wouldn't put up with his emotional blackmail shit."
"We're sort of through with it, too," I said. I started walking toward the far door and the entrance to the underground. She fell into step beside me.
"It was Graham on the phone." He was one of the few werewolf guards we had, and since he knew nothing about explosives, he'd been kept downstairs to guard the sleeping. He was better at being a bouncer at the clubs than a gun-toting bodyguard.
I shrugged. "So?"
"He called me, to find you, to send to Mephistopheles. If Jean-Claude had been awake for the night, he'd have still sent me to find you."
I could see the door to the underground now. Tonight it had two of the black-dressed guards on it. Usually there were guards only on the inside in the little room behind the doors, but tonight and for the next little bit we were going to put guards on the door. We were going to beef up our security everywhere, hoping to discourage the crazy.
"Dev is my tiger to call."
"It's not that, Anita. Micah is traveling more for the Coalition. Nathaniel takes care