Dead Ice (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,81

accidentally mind-roll some human audience member.”

“Did something happen at the club tonight?” I asked.

“Yes, and no, as in it went according to plan. My voice bespelled the audience, but it was the manner in which the women reacted to me when I walked among them as host. It just seemed . . . different.”

“So did you do that to Lita on purpose?” I asked, looking at the woman who was still motionless behind him.

“I meant to see what my touch and gaze could do without any added power, oui. She is a wereanimal, which should give her more immunity than a pure human, and she is an animal that I have no tie to, which should have helped her resist me, but as you see . . .” He used our clasped hands to motion at her.

“Have you actually mind-fucked her?” I asked.

“It would appear so.” He didn’t sound happy about it, though.

“If you’ve rolled her past a certain point, then you can’t undo it,” I said.

He sighed, which he didn’t always do, since he didn’t always breathe. “I will have to be most cautious at the clubs.”

“Cautious?” Kelly said. “You barely touched her, and look at her. I’ve seen you onstage, Jean-Claude; you touch the audience more than that.” She motioned at Lita with the hand that wasn’t holding a gun. She’d put the AR on her own shoulder like an awkward purse.

As if she’d heard her name, Lita took a long shuddering breath, and blinked. She looked confused, and then she saw Jean-Claude. “You son of a bitch, you fucking son of a bitch, you rolled me like some kind of human tourist!”

Jean-Claude smiled. “She remembers what I did, that’s good.”

Lita’s hands were in fists at her side. “You bastard, how is that good?”

“It means he didn’t mind-fuck you,” I said.

“The hell he didn’t!”

“If he had, you wouldn’t remember that he’d done anything to you. You’d have just woken up and remembered whatever happened just before he touched your face, or maybe not even remember that he’d even spoken to you.”

“So you mean the fact that Lita remembers what Jean-Claude did means he didn’t actually roll her?” Kelly asked.

“Oui.”

Lita shook her head. “No, no, I was helpless, fucking helpless, and you’re saying that wasn’t mind-fucking me?”

“No,” I said, “it wasn’t.”

Lita began to curse, first in English and then in Spanish in a long nervous torrent. She turned to Kelly. “Get me out of here, away from them both.”

“I’ll take you to Claudia,” Kelly said, and led the other woman toward the long curtain. Dino raised it for them. “Ladies.”

Kelly turned just before going through the curtains. “I’d noticed that I’m having a harder time ignoring you, and you aren’t supposed to have the ability to call lions either. You might want to ask some of the other wereanimals and see if they’ve noticed it, too.”

“I will do that, and thank you for telling me.”

She nodded. “Now that I know you weren’t doing it on purpose, I figure you needed to know.”

Dino let the drapes fall back in place.

“You may go with them, Dino,” Jean-Claude said.

Dino glanced at me.

“Go on, Lita may need someone to comfort her,” I said.

He grinned at me. “You are the best wingman ever, Anita.” He let the drapes fall shut behind him, whistling softly under his breath.

“I feel I have missed much today,” Jean-Claude said.

“Dino and Lita have a fuck-buddy date after work tonight,” I said.

“Fuck buddy, I dislike the term,” Jean-Claude said.

“Me, too, but fuck date sounds worse,” I said.

Nicky chuckled.

We both looked at him. “What?” I asked.

“You two, the great incubus and succubus eating the souls of little vampires and wereanimals out through their dicks, and you both think the term fuck buddy is crass.”

We both frowned at him.

“Oh, come on, that’s funny.”

Jean-Claude started laughing first and eventually so did I. It was funny, but the fact that Jean-Claude’s powers of seduction were growing wasn’t. How was that going to work with the weretigers tonight? Hell, how would it work with the rest of us? That thought was so not funny I stopped laughing. Jean-Claude even sexier than before? We were all so screwed, maybe literally.

19

LEFT TO HIS own devices Jean-Claude would have made the small get-together with the weretigers something formal, with more jewelry; left to my own devices it probably would have been a backyard barbecue. So we compromised. We didn’t dress up, or add jewelry, unless we wanted to, and most of us were in our work clothes. Everyone