it was just humor. ‘I do not need it. I am king and you are both my queen and my general. One who leads the charge from the front and always will. You know our guards’ strengths and weaknesses better than I, because you practice and work out with them. You have quite shamed me and some of the older vampires into exercising more.’
‘Most vampires can’t gain muscle; the body at death is what it is, unchanging.’
‘But I can, and my vampires can.’
‘One of the rebel vampires said it’s because you take power from them.’
‘That helps me be powerful, oui, but I believe it is more that my ties to our wereanimals are more intimate. I accept their warm power more as an equal instead of the master/slave relationship that most older masters had.’
‘Yeah, none of this treating the wereanimals like pets and property on our watch.’
‘It is one of the bones of contention with some of the older vampires.’
‘Yeah, they can just suck it up; the wereanimals are flocking to us because of the more equal rights stance.’
‘It is impossible to make everyone happy, so in the end we make ourselves happy and do what we can for others. I want no slaves in my kingdom.’
‘Agreed,’ I said.
‘I must hang up to make the plane ready for you,’ he said.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You are delaying. Why?’
I had to think about it for a minute, and then I gave him the out-loud, honest answer that once I would have died before admitting. ‘I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to talk to you again, and I’ll miss you.’
‘That makes me happier than I can say, my love. You have quite surprised and pleased me.’
‘If I don’t say it enough, Jean-Claude, I love you. I love seeing your face across the table while we eat, and watching you root at Cynric’s football games, and watching you read bedtime stories to Matthew when he stays with us, and a thousand surprising things, all of it, it’s you, and I love you.’
‘You will make me cry.’
‘A smart friend told me that it’s okay to cry; sometimes you’re so happy it spills out your eyes.’
‘Jason, Nathaniel, or Micah?’ he asked.
‘One of them,’ I said with a smile.
‘Smart friends indeed. We must go and do our tasks, ma petite. Je t’aime, au revoir, until we meet again.’
‘I love you, too, and see you soon.’ I hung up before I could get any sillier or more romantic. But a little bit of squirming embarrassment was totally worth it for the happiness in his voice. If we’d dropped our metaphysical shields we could have felt every breath and emotion, even some thoughts of each other, but it was still good to say the words and to hear them. No matter how weird and magical we might be, having the people you love tell you they love you and mean it … it never goes out of style. Since we’re made in God’s image, this must be from Him, so even God must need an ‘atta boy,’ an out-loud, in-your-head ‘Thank you, great job on that sunset, and the platypus was a brilliant fun idea.’ Maybe that’s why we’re supposed to pray the way we do, because without it God would be lonely. Sometimes I thought my friends who were Wiccan had something with this whole God and Goddess thing. If people worked better paired up and in love, and we were made in God’s image, then logically it seemed like God needed a Goddess. As I got happier in my own love life, I’d started wondering if God was lonely without His Goddess. Maybe I was hanging around with too many pagans?
I said a prayer of gratitude for my own happiness, and a prayer for Micah’s dad, and let God go back to taking care of His love life as He saw fit. I called Fredo to arrange the guards and shook my head at my own weirdly romantic religious thoughts; so girly, to wonder if God needed a Wife. That was above my faith pay grade. Picking out dangerous men to guard our backs, that I understood.
4
Micah texted me that he’d called Nathaniel to pack for us so he could meet us at the airport. I let him know I’d gotten his message and called the other third of our couple. Nathaniel answered on the second ring.
‘Hey, Anita.’
‘Hey, pussycat.’ No, most men wouldn’t have liked that as a nickname, but he wasn’t most men. ‘Micah told