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him to do; are you going to do less?”

I sighed. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m just not the exhibitionist that—oh, hell, Micah. I’m just not comfortable mostly nude in front of a roomful of strangers.”

“I’m sorry for that, but we need to play to our strengths. Those are sex, psychic ability so strong they won’t know what hit them, and bluntness. The dress is sexy, and blunt.” He smiled. “Honey, it’s you. I’ll go help the other men with our guests. Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

He kissed my cheek again, gave Jean-Claude a look I couldn’t quite understand, and went back down the hallway to our guests. And just like that, I stopped protesting. Micah’s attitude brought home more than anything else could have that modesty was no longer a virtue. It was the proverbial midnight, and the clock was striking. Whatever we were going to do before that last strike, we had about six hours to do it.

45

THE SLIP HADN’T worked with the dress, so I wore it with just the nice black bra and panties under it. The shoes were three-and-a-half-inch heels, a little wider than spikes, thank God, but with panels on the closed-toe heels that were silver, clear, clear black, and ended up being mostly clear like the dress, so that the silver heels were the thing you noticed most about the shoes. Meng Die had produced a pair of thigh-highs from her bag so that the shoes weren’t rubbing as I walked. With the sheer dress, the sheer black hose just seemed to make it all lingerie, but it beat the hell out of having blisters before I’d walked a few yards, which was what the shoes promised without hose.

Cardinal had applied makeup in a record speed. She even had a mirror so I could see that she’d made my eyes large and exotic; the lipstick was a red so deep and rich that it was going to be distracting just to watch me talk. Of course, my breasts might distract any heterosexual man in the room from ever seeing my face. There was way too much yummy mounded goodness going on in front of me for me to be entirely comfortable meeting a roomful of strangers, but I hadn’t protested anymore. Micah had made his point. I kept my mouth shut and just let the two women do their jobs. Besides, the dress didn’t hide a damn thing, so my breasts being obvious should have been the least of my worries. One of the interesting side effects of the dress being see-through was that every vampire bite was very visible. So were the scars I’d gotten in the line of duty, but the bites were actually more attention-getting. They were fresh, after all. The fact that I’d started wearing thongs since I found some that were actually comfortable meant that my ass was bare, though at least the front was well covered with black lace. I had other thongs that were pretty much nudity with decoration. That would have been worse, or that’s what I told myself.

I’d divided my weapons among Nicky, Wicked, and Truth. They’d rotate around me and Jean-Claude. The only jewelry I had left was the gold chain with the charm on it. I felt very underdressed without the weapons or my cross. But since Jean-Claude might have to pull out some serious vampire powers to help me tame the tigers, a holy object that would start to glow seemed like a bad idea.

The gold tigers and Jake himself were going to stay out of sight until we’d done the tigers, because we were pretty certain there’d be spies among them. Since even the Harlequin never saw all of them unmasked, not everyone knew what the others looked like, so Jake had a high-percentage chance of not knowing the bare face of the spies. It was one of the things that made the Harlequin so effective even to each other.

The big dining room had begun life as a speakeasy, back when Prohibition was the law of the land. It was a huge natural cavern with gas lamps in the walls, giving a soft, warm glow to everything. The big table had been moved to one side of the room and had candles on it, so that the only light in the big cave came from gas and candles. There was enough light to see everything, but it was soft-edged and there were lots of shadows, as if the flames that lit the room