"Non."
"Will she try for a . . . what? Submissive?"
"Oui."
"Can we just refuse?"
"Oui."
"Can we make the 'no' stick?"
He opened his eyes and looked down at me. "I believe so, but to say absolutely would be too close to a lie."
I shook my head. "If Musette left tonight, and returned in three months, would we have less ground to stand on?"
"She will not leave, ma petite."
"No, that's not what I mean. What I mean is, if she had come in three months after good faith negotiations had gone through, would I still have been allowed to get away with what I did tonight? Or would we have faced the council's wrath?"
"We would have chosen a victim for Musette, or chosen a lover for her, or both before she arrived. It would have been settled and not a surprise."
"You know most human guests don't expect their hosts to supply them with sex partners."
"Nor do most of the bloodlines that descend from the council, but Belle's line is built upon sex, and it has become custom to offer any of Belle's line sex when they visit you. It is assumed that we all carry a touch of her succubus within us."
"That's not true," I said.
"Non, but no one of her line has ever wished to dissuade others of the lie."
I smiled, thought about laughing, and was too tired. "We can keep Willie and Hannah safe because they've got to be in charge of the two clubs. We've already negotiated that our businesses are not to be disrupted by the visit," I said.
"Belle was always one to keep her mind on where the money was coming from, so yes, Willie is my manager for The Laughing Corpse, and Hannah is temporary manager of Danse Macabre. The two weakest of my flock are safe away."
"Damian is my vampire servant, I'm your human servant, you're Master of the City, Jason is your pomme de sang,Nathaniel is my pomme de sang,Micah is my lover and my Nimir-Raj, Richard is Ulfric, and the bodyguards can't guard our bodies if they're screwing other people."
"We have made everyone as safe as we can, ma petite."
"There's one name that's conspicuously absent from that list, Jean-Claude."
"Three actually, ma petite,four if you count Gretchen."
"Gretchen is crazy, Jean-Claude. You got a special pass for her from Belle because she's still ill, right?" Gretchen had tried to kill me once, as punishment, she got locked up in a coffin for a while. The isolation had driven her even crazier.
"Oui,Gretchen will keep to her room for Musette's visit, but that does not protect Meng Die or Faust."
"Faust likes men, and to my knowledge nobody in Musette's party is g*y, right?"
"Oui,but that is not always a barrier."
"We laid down the law tonight, that no one was to be hurt again. Forcing someone to have sex with a partner they find repugnant is a form of rape, and thus it's harm."
He looked at me, surprised. "Ma petite,you are becoming devious."
I shook my head. "Nope, just practical. So Faust is safe, because he only likes men and none of Musette's men likes men. Torture is out, because that's just harm."
"Meng Die will fascinate Bartolome."
"But again, Meng Die doesn't like children, so Bartolome would have to rape her to get his way with her, thus . . ."