ravish you from the sight of your nakedness." He sounded like I'd insulted him. Since he was an old vampire, that I could hear that much emotion in his voice meant one of two things: either he allowed me to hear the emotion, or he was so upset he couldn't control himself.
I compromised. I raised the gown and kept the sheet over my lower extremities.
"I am not an animal, Anita; I can bear your nakedness without being affected." The anger and disdain were so thick in his voice that I knew it was lack of control.
"I never doubt your control, Requiem, but there's no way to be nude in front of you and have it be casual. I need to just look at my body and see what's wrong and right with the wound. I don't want to make a big deal out of it, or a romantic deal out of it."
"Would it not be a big deal if Jean-Claude were here in my stead?"
"Jean-Claude would concentrate on business and worry about the romance later."
"Is he that cold?"
"He's that practical," I said. "I like that in a man."
"I know you do not like me, my evening star." Again the emotion was thick on the ground.
I did the only thing I could: I ignored him. Once I saw my stomach it wasn't that hard to ignore him. I had pinkish scars where she'd clawed me open. It was weeks' worth of healing. I ran my hands over the skin, and it felt smoother, almost as if the shininess of it could be a texture. "How many hours?" I asked.
"It is now nine o'clock in the evening."
"Ten hours." I said it soft, like I didn't believe it.
"About that, yes."
"All this healing in ten hours?"
"It would seem so," he said. There was still a thread of anger to his voice, but it was less.
"How?"
"Should I quote to you, 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Or should I simply say I do not know?"
"The 'I don't know' would be fine, but at least I know you're quoting from Hamlet. Now tell me, what's been happening while I slept?"
He glided to the bedside, a slight smile curving his lips. "Your friends slew a member of the Harlequin while she slept. Though the tall one, Olaf, or Otto, complained that she was dead when they arrived. He wanted her to be squirming when they cut her up."
I shivered and put my gown back in place. I tried to ignore the whole creepy Olaf thing and concentrate on business. "There should have been two members dead."
"You admit it," he said. "You admit that you sent them to slay members of the Harlequin."
"Admit it, hell, yes."
"Jean-Claude is locked in arguments with the council, even now, on whether the Harlequin are within their rights to slay us all for what you have done."
"If they don't give a black mask first, but they kill, not in self-defense, then it's a death sentence for them."
"Who told you that?"
I debated on whether to admit it, but finally shrugged and said, "Belle Morte."
"When has our beautiful death spoken to you?"
"She came to me in a vision."
"When?"
"When the three of us were dying. She helped feed me enough energy to come back and keep us all alive."
"Why would she help Jean-Claude?"
If it had been Jean-Claude, I'd have told the truth, all of it, but it wasn't. Requiem was, well, being his usual weird self. I wasn't certain that Belle would want her reasoning blabbed around. "Why does Belle do anything?"
"You are lying. She told you her reason."
Great, he knew I was lying. "The shapeshifters say that I don't smell like I'm lying anymore; my respiration rate doesn't even change."
"I am not smelling or listening to your body, Anita. I simply feel the lie. Why do you not tell me the truth?"
"I'll tell Jean-Claude, and if he says it's okay to tell everyone, then I will."
"So you will keep secrets from me."
"You know, Requiem, we have a lot of bad shit happening, and you seem more interested in your own hurt feelings than in the life-and-death stuff."
He nodded. "I feel raw tonight, undone. I have felt that way since earlier in Jean-Claude's office."
"We were being messed with then," I said.
"But there is no holy object that I can wear, my evening star, no refuge that I can take from what the Harlequin have done to me."
"Are they messing with you now?"
"No, but they showed me