don’t do women. I don’t know who you expect Jade Flower’s reporting to . . .” (Of course I did, and that would be the king, but it didn’t seem tactful to say “I know your business,” just then.) “But if they’ve done any homework, that’s just a fact about me.”
“Perhaps you had sex with Andre, then,” she said calmly. “And you let me watch.”
I thought of several questions, the first one being, “Is that the usual procedure with you?” followed by, “It’s not okay to misplace a bracelet, but okay to bump pelvises with someone else?” But I clamped my mouth shut. If someone were holding a gun to my head, I’d actually have to vote for having sex with the queen rather than with Andre, no matter what my gender preference, because Andre creeped me out big-time. But if we were just pretending . . .
In a businesslike way, Andre removed his tie, folded it, put it in his pocket, and undid a few shirt buttons. He beckoned to me with a crook of his fingers. I approached him warily. He took me in his arms and held me close, pressed against him, and bent his head to my neck. For a second I thought he was going to bite, and I had a flare of absolute panic, but instead he inhaled. That’s a deliberate act for a vampire.
“Put your mouth on my neck,” he said, after another long whiff of me. “Your lipstick will transfer.”
I did as he told me. He was cold as ice. This was like . . . well, this was just weird. I thought of the picture-taking session with Claude; I’d spent a lot of time lately pretending to have sex.
“I love the smell of fairy. Do you think she knows she has fairy blood?” he asked Sophie-Anne, while I was in the process of transferring my lipstick.
My head snapped back then. I stared right into his eyes, and he stared right back at me. He was still holding me, and I understood that he was ensuring I would smell like him and he would smell like me, as if we’d actually done the deed. He definitely wasn’t up for the real thing, which was a relief.
“I what?” I hadn’t heard him correctly, I was sure. “I have what?”
“He has a nose for it,” the queen said. “My Andre.” She looked faintly proud.
“I was hanging around with my friend Claudine earlier in the day,” I said. “She’s a fairy. That’s where the smell is coming from.” I really must need to shower.
“You permit?” Andre asked, and without waiting for an answer, he jabbed my wounded arm with a fingernail, right above the bandage.
“Yow!” I said in protest.
He let a little blood trickle onto his finger, and he put it in his mouth. He rolled it around, as if it were a sip of wine, and at last he said, “No, this smell of fairy is not from association. It’s in your blood.” Andre looked at me in a way that was meant to tell me that his words made it a done deal. “You have a little streak of fairy. Maybe your grandmother or your grandfather was half-fey?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” I said, knowing I sounded stupid, but not knowing what else to say. “If any of my grandparents were other than a hundred percent human, they didn’t pass that information along.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” the queen said, matter-of-factly. “Most humans of fairy descent hide the fact, because they don’t really believe it. They prefer to think their parents are mad.” She shrugged. Inexplicable! “But that blood would explain why you have supernatural suitors and not human admirers.”
“I don’t have human admirers because I don’t want ’em,” I said, definitely piqued. “I can read their minds, and that just knocks them out of the running. If they’re not put off from the get-go by my reputation for weirdness,” I added, back into my too-much-honesty groove.
“It’s a sad comment on humans that none of them are tolerable to one who can read their minds,” the queen said.
I guess that was the final word on the value of mind-reading ability. I decided it would be better to stop the conversation. I had a lot to think about.
We went down the stairs, Andre leading, the queen next, and me trailing behind. Andre had insisted I take off my shoes and my earrings so it could be inferred that I had undressed and then just slipped