Jean-Claude stood, drawing me to my feet. Damian moved as I moved. Jason, too. "We have rooms prepared for all of you. You will be escorted to them, then we will leave guards outside your doors, for the protection of all concerned."
Bobby Lee was still holding his gun nice and steady on the vamps. "Anita?" he made my name a question.
"I don't want them wandering around without guards on them, so yeah, sounds like a good idea to me. You guys able to stick around that long?"
"Honey-child, I would follow you to the ends of the earth. 'Course we can." He laid the southern accent on thick enough to walk across.
"Thanks, Bobby."
"Our pleasure."
"Meng Die, Faust, you know the way to the rooms, show our guards where to go." Meng Die was lovely, delicate, with perfectly straight black hair cut just above her shoulders; her skin was like pale porcelain. She would have looked like a perfect China doll if she hadn't liked wearing skintight black leather most of the time. The leather sort of ruined the image. She was a Master Vampire, and her animal to call, I'd been surprised to learn, was the wolf. Strangely, this didn't make her any more attractive to the wolves or me. She was just too damn unfriendly.
Faust was not much taller than Meng Die, but he didn't make you think delicate, just short. He was cheerfully attractive--like the boy next door if he happened to be a vampire--and had dyed his hair a dark wine-burgundy. His eyes were the color of new pennies as if the brown had a touch of fresh blood in it. He was a Master Vampire but not strong enough to ever be Master of the City, or at least not hold on to it. A weak Master of the City is usually a dead one.
Meng Die and Faust led the way through the drapes and the far corridor beyond. Musette's vamps went next. The wererats and the werehyenas brought up the rear. The drapes swished closed behind them. We were left alone with our thoughts. I hoped everyone else's thoughts were more useful than mine, because all I could think was that Belle wouldn't like being given her hat and shown the door. She'd find a way to make us eat the insult, if she could. Maybe she couldn't, but she was over two thousand years old, according to Jean-Claude. You didn't survive that long without knowing things, things that would make your enemies run screaming. The council member we'd killed had been able to cause earthquakes simply by thinking about it. I was pretty sure Belle had her own special tricks. I just hadn't seen them yet.
10
Less than an hour later Jean-Claude and I were in his room, alone. Damian was one of the guards outside our door. We'd split our vamps up among the wereanimals so that, hopefully, the bad vampires couldn't use mind tricks on the wereanimals without the vamps knowing it. We'd done the best we could do, which had actually been pretty damned good. The ardeurwas still in hiding. I wasn't questioning it, just grateful.
Jean-Claude's large four-poster bed was draped in blue silk, mounded with pillows in at least three vibrant shades of blue. He traded the drapes and pillows to match whatever color the sheets were, so I knew without looking that the sheets would be blue silk. Jean-Claude did not do white sheets, no matter what they were made out of.
He was sitting in the room's only chair, slumped down, hands crossed over his stomach. I was sitting on the rug that he'd put beside the bed. The rug was actually fur, thick and soft, and somehow just by touch you knew it had once been alive. We'd both been strangely reluctant to go to bed. I think we were both afraid the ardeurwould rise, and we weren't ready for it.
"Let me test my understanding," I said.
Jean-Claude looked at me, moving only his eyes.
"Tomorrow night, if Asher is still nobody's, will they be within their rights to ask for him?"
"Not as they did tonight, no, you have made that impossible now, unless they can take him by force."
I shook my head. "I've been around enough vamp politics to know that if you stop them from doing one thing, they'll do something else, not because they want to, but because it will cause you pain."
He frowned at me.
I sighed. "Let me try that again. Here's the deal, what are they within their rights to ask from us, while they're here?"
"Hunting rights, or willing donors, lovers--the basic needs to be met."
"Sex is a basic need?"
He just looked at me.
"Sorry, sorry. So I understand the willing donor part, they've got to eat. But the lovers, what does that mean, exactly?"
"It would be declasse to demand lovers for the servants, so Musette's lady's maid and butler are not to be worried over. The two children are special cases. The girl is physically too young, she does not think of such things. The boy is a problem. Bartolome was precocious, which is why Belle sent Musette to take him."
I stared at him. "Please, tell me that Musette never had sex with the kid?"
He seemed suddenly tired, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips. "Do you wish the truth, or a more pleasant lie?"
"The truth, I guess."
"Belle Morte can smell sexual appetite, it is one of her gifts. Bartolome may look like a child, but he does not think like one, nor did he when he was human and a true boy of eleven going on twelve. He was the heir to a great fortune. Belle wanted to control that fortune. He was also notorious in an age when noble sons were allowed almost any indiscretion with women who were not of noble blood."
"Explain that," I said.