That made me smile, that he was trying to make me feel better when his life was about to break apart. "It's okay, Larry. I'll see if the flight has some empty seats. If not I'll get a later flight, but I'll go."
"All my files on the case are at Animators, Inc. I'd stopped by the office to get them and load up the briefcase when Tammy called. I think my briefcase is just sitting on the floor in our office. I got all the files in it. The agent in charge is..." And he hesitated. "I can't remember. Oh, hell, Anita, I can't remember." He was panicking again.
"It's okay, Larry. I'll find it. I'll call the Feds and tell them there's been a change of cast."
"Bert's going to be pissed," Larry said. "Your rates are almost four times what mine are for a zombie raising."
"We can't change the price in midcontract," I said.
"No"--and he almost laughed--"but Bert is going to be pissed that we didn't try."
I laughed, because he was right. Bert had been our boss, but he'd been reduced to business manager because all the animators at Animators, Inc., had gotten together and staged a palace coup. We'd offered him business manager or nothing. He'd taken it when he realized his income wouldn't be affected.
"I'll get the files from the office. I'll get a flight. I'll be there. You just take care of yourself and Tammy."
"Thanks, Anita. I don't know what I... I've got to go--the doctor's here." And he was gone.
I handed the phone to Nathaniel, who placed it gently in the cradle.
"How bad is it?" Micah said.
I shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think Larry knows, not really." I started to crawl out of the covers and the nest of warmth that their bodies made.
"Where are you going?" Micah asked.
"I've got a plane to schedule and files to find."
"Are you thinking of going out of town on a plane by yourself?" Micah asked. He was sitting up, knees tucked to his chest, arms encircling them.
I looked back at him from the foot of the bed. "Yeah."
"When will you be back?"
"Tomorrow, or the day after."
"Then you need to book at least two seats on the plane."
It took me a moment to understand what he meant. I raised the dead and was a legal vampire executioner. That's what the police knew for certain. I was a federal marshal because all the vamp executioners who could pass the firearms test had been grandfathered in so that the executioners could both have more powers and be better regulated. Or that was the idea. But I was also the human servant of Jean-Claude, the master vampire of St. Louis. Through ties to Jean-Claude I'd inherited some abilities. One of those abilities was the ardeur. It was as if sex were food, and if I didn't eat enough I got sick.
That wasn't so bad, but I could also hurt anyone that I was metaphysically tied to. Not just hurt, but potentially drain them of life. Or the ardeur could simply choose someone at random to feed from. Which meant the ardeur raised and chose a victim. I didn't always have a lot of choice in who it chose. Ick.
So I fed from my boyfriends and a few friends. You couldn't feed off the same person all the time, because you could accidentally love him to death. Jean-Claude held the ardeur and had had to feed it for centuries, but my version was a little different from his, or maybe I just wasn't as good at controlling it yet. I was working on it, but my control wasn't perfect, and it would be a bad thing to lose control on an airplane full of strangers. Or in a van full of federal agents.
"What am I going to do?" I asked. "I cannot take my boyfriend on a federal case."
"You aren't going as a federal marshal, not really," Micah said. "It's your skills as an animator that they want, so say that I'm your assistant. They won't know any different."
"Why do you get to go?" Nathaniel asked. He lay back on the pillows, the sheets just barely covering his nakedness.
"Because she fed on you last," Micah said. He moved enough to touch Nathaniel's shoulder. "I can feed her more often than you can without passing out or getting sick."
"Because you're the Nimir-Raj and I'm just a regular wereleopard." There was a moment of sullenness in his voice, and then he sighed. "I don't mean to be a problem, but I've never stayed here with both of you gone."
Micah and I looked at each other and had one of those moments. We'd all been living together for about six months. But he and Nathaniel had both moved in at the same time. I'd never dated either of them alone, not really. I mean I'd gone out with them individually, and sex wasn't always a group activity, but the sleeping arrangements were.
Micah and I both had a certain need for personal time, alone time, but Nathaniel didn't. He didn't much like being alone.
"Do you want to stay at Jean-Claude's place while we're gone?" I asked.