She turned to Asher with that radiance still suffusing her face. "Our mistress does not understand why you left her, Asher."
I did. I think everyone in the room did, except maybe for Angelito and the girl who was still standing on the other side of the couch where Musette had put her.
"Look at the painting of me as Vulcan, Musette, see what our mistress thinks of me."
Musette didn't bother to look behind her. She gave that Gallic shrug that meant everything and nothing.
"Anita does not see me that way," he said.
"Jean-Claude cannot look at you without seeing what was lost," she said.
"The time when you could speak for me, Musette, is long past. You do not know my heart, or my mind, you never truly did," Jean-Claude said.
She turned to him. "Are you truly telling me that you would touch him, as he is now? Be careful how you answer, Jean-Claude, know that our mistress has seen deep into your heart and mind. You may lie to me, but never to her."
Jean-Claude was quiet for a time, but finally he told the truth. "We are not currently together in that way."
"See, you refuse to touch him, as she refuses to touch him."
I loosened Damian's arms enough so I could move more easily. "Not exactly," I said, "sorry, but it's my fault that they aren't a couple."
She turned to me. "What do you mean, servant?"
"You know, even if I was, like a maid, I know enough about polite society to know that you don't call a maid, simply, maid. You don't call a servant, servant, not unless you truly have never interacted with servants." I folded my arms across my stomach, looking puzzled on purpose. Damian's hands stayed lightly on my shoulders. "Is that it, Musette? Are you not an aristocrat, after all? Is it all pretend, and you simply don't know any better?"
Jean-Claude gave me a look that she couldn't see.
"How dare you!" Musette said.
"Then prove you are noble, address me at least like someone who has truly had servants."
She opened her mouth to argue, then she seemed to hear something that I couldn't hear. She let out a long breath. "As you like, Blake, then."
"Blake is fine," I said, "and what I mean is that I'm not entirely comfortable with this bisexual thing. I won't share Jean-Claude with another woman, and definitely not with a man."
Musette did that head to the side movement again, as if she'd spied the worm she intended to eat. "Very good, then Asher has no tie to any of you. He is merely your second."
I looked from one vampire to another, only Jason looked as confused as I felt. The vamps were acting like a trap had been sprung, and I didn't see it yet. "What's going on?" I asked.
Musette laughed, and it wasn't anywhere near as good a laugh as Jean-Claude or Asher were capable of. It was just a laugh, a vaguely unpleasant one, at that. "I am within my rights to ask for him as my gift for tonight," she said.
"Wait," I said, and Damian's hands tried to pull me back in against him, but I wasn't moving this time. "I thought you agreed with Belle that Asher isn't pretty enough to have sex with anymore."
"Whoever said anything about sex?" Musette asked.
Now I really was puzzled. "Why else would you want him for the night?"
She laughed then, head back, very unladylike, a bray of sound like a hound baying. I hadn't said anything that funny, had I?
Jean-Claude's quiet voice came into the silence that followed that laugh. "Musette's interests run to pain more than sex, ma petite."
I looked at him. "You don't mean dominance and submission where you have safe words, do you?"
"There is no word in any language that I have ever heard screamed that would dissuade Musette from her pleasures."
I licked my suddenly dry lips. They lie about that moisturizing lipstick. Your lips still dry out when you get scared. "Let me test my understanding. If Asher was your lover, or mine, or anyone's, then he'd be safe from her?"
"Non, ma petite,Asher would only be safe if he belonged to you, or me. Lesser powers cannot protect those they love."