I shook my head. "I just don't think the council would send out some amateur with a gun. They've got enough daytime muscle to do the job without hiring outsiders."
"Then who?" Jamil asked.
I shook my head again. "I wish I knew."
Ronnie came back into the living room. We all watched her as she made her shaky way back to the couch. She sat down, eyes red-rimmed from crying and other things. Louie brought her a glass of water. She sipped it very slowly and looked at me. I expected her to talk about the dead man. Maybe to accuse me of being a horrible friend. But she'd decided to ignore the dead body and work on the live ones.
"If you had slept with Richard when you first started dating, all this pain could have been avoided."
"You're so sure of that," I said. I let Ronnie change the subject. She needed something else to concentrate on. I'd have preferred the topic to be something besides my love life, but... I owed her.
"Yes," she said, "the way you look at him, Anita. The way he looks at you when he's not being cruel. Yeah, I'm sure."
Part of me agreed with her, part of me. . . "There'd still be Jean-Claude."
She made an impatient sound. "I know you. If you'd had sex with Richard first, you still wouldn't be sleeping with that damn vampire. You think sex is a commitment."
I sighed. We'd had this talk before. "Sex should mean something, Ronnie."
"I agree," she said. "But if I had your scruples, I'd still just be holding hands with Louie. We're having a wonderful time."
"But where is it going?"
She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the couch. "Anna, you make your life harder than it has to be." She opened her eyes and moved just her head so she could look at me and still slump. "Why can't a relationship just be what it is? Why does everything with you have to be so damn serious?"
I folded my arms over my stomach and stared at her. If I thought I was going to stare her down, I was wrong. I looked away first. "It is serious or should be."
"Why?" she said.
I was finally reduced to shrugging. If I hadn't been ha**ng s*x with a vampire out of wedlock, I'd have had some moral high ground to stand on. As it was, I had nothing to fight back with. I'd been virtuous for so long, but when I lost it, I lost it big time. From celibacy to f**king the undead. If I'd still been Catholic, it would have been enough to get me excommunicated. Of course, being an Animator was enough to get me excommunicated. Lucky for me I was Protestant.
"You want some advice from your Auntie Ronnie?"
That made me smile, a small smile, but it was better than nothing. "What advice?"
"Go upstairs and join that man in the shower."
I looked at her, suitably scandalized. The fact that I'd been pretty much fantasizing about doing just that not ten minutes ago only made it more embarrassing. "You saw him in the kitchen, Ronnie. I don't think he's in a co-ed shower sort of mood."
A look came into her eyes that suddenly made me feel young or maybe naive. "You strip off and surprise him, and he won't kick you out. You don't get that kind of anger without heat. He wants you as badly as you want him. Just give into it, girlfriend."
I shook my head.
She sighed. "Why not?"
"A thousand things, but mainly, Jean-Claude."
"Dump him," she said.
I laughed. "Yeah, right."
"Is he really that good? So good that you couldn't give him up?"
I thought about that for a minute and didn't know what to say. It finally boiled down to one thing, and I said it out loud. "I'm not sure there are enough white roses in the world to make me forget Richard." I held up a hand before she could interrupt. "But I'm not sure there are enough cozy afternoons in all eternity to make me forget Jean-Claude."
She sat up straight on the couch, staring at me. A look almost of sorrow filled her eyes. "You mean that, don't you?"
"Yeah," I said.