mean that part.’
He laughed again and then said, ‘One other thought. If we are doing this, then you need to tell Richard, or Jean-Claude does, before he hears it from somewhere else.’
I hung my head. ‘Damn it, he’s an ex.’
‘An ex who you still have sex with occasionally, and who Asher lets top him in the dungeon, and who Jean-Claude and you, and sometimes Asher, all have sex with.’
‘He doesn’t have sex with the men.’
‘You mean he doesn’t have genital contact with them.’
I looked at him. ‘Wow, that is what I meant, but that just … that was blunt of you.’
He smiled. ‘I think if we’re going to do this for real, we’ll need to be blunt.’
‘I’d love to argue with you, but I think I’d just sound stupid, so I’ll pass.’
‘I’ll be honest: I’d love to marry you legally and have Nathaniel be a part of the ceremony like husband one and husband two, but Jean-Claude has to be a part of it, and probably the legal part.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘First, his ego won’t let it be anyone else. He’s reasonable, ruthlessly practically, but like all the old vampires he’s also arrogant. He’s the first vampire king of America, and you are his queen.’
‘I’m your queen, too.’
‘Yes, but the shapeshifters are used to taking second place to the vampires in the power structure. They’ll think it’s normal that the legal spouse is Jean-Claude. The vampires have made peace with the thought that Jean-Claude looks the other way because he gets to sleep with all of us, too. They’re a lot happier now that Envy has become one of Jean-Claude’s regular lovers.’
‘I can’t sleep with everybody every night, and he does really prefer women to men, unless it’s Asher.’
‘He’d totally do Richard if our Ulfric would be okay with it,’ Micah said.
‘Not happening,’ I said.
‘I know.’
‘You said once that you thought you’d have to sleep with Jean-Claude to be my leopard king, and you were relieved to find out it wasn’t true, but you would have done it.’
‘I would have done anything to save my people from Chimera, and Jean-Claude is not a fate worse than death,’ he said, and smiled.
‘No, no, he’s not,’ I said, and smiled back.
‘I think I can eat something now,’ Micah said.
‘Good, I’ll try some soup.’
‘The lycanthropy keeps any of us from catching viruses, so you can’t be sick.’
I didn’t want to tell him it was the smell of his father’s sickness that had reminded me of the smell of rotting corpses, so I said, ‘I think something at lunch didn’t agree with me.’
He accepted that, and for all I knew it might be true. We got food, and I started to get coffee, but the smell made my stomach roll again. I got water and soup. I also texted Edward to see if how he was feeling, because if there had been something wrong with the food then he’d be hit worse, because he didn’t have the lycanthropy helping him stay healthy.
Edward was fine. I ate half my soup and was so done. I’d told Micah that I wanted to question Little Henry. Micah rushed his food so he could go back up with me and back up to his dad. Though we did stop off at the gift shop and get me a little travel toothbrush set. I did a quick oral cleanup in the bathroom and when Micah kissed me good-bye it was as thorough a kiss as you would ever want to do in public view of a hallway full of cops.
They gave us both good-natured ribbing about it. ‘Get a room, Blake.’ ‘Another Callahan ladies’ man, it figures.’ The cops couldn’t seem to decide which of us was the coworker to be teased and which of us was the ‘girl.’
He and Bram went back into his father’s room. Nicky and I went in search of Henry Crawford’s doctor. I wanted to know if they’d found any fang marks on him, or any injuries at all. He’d looked unharmed, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been; not every kind of harm leaves marks.
69
Henry Crawford wasn’t that hurt and normally wouldn’t have been on the same floor as Rush Callahan, but putting him a room just down the hallway from Micah’s dad meant that all the cops hanging out there could help watch Henry’s room, since vampires did have a habit of coming back for humans they’d singled out. Wolves will take the weakest in a herd, the easiest to kill. Though wolves