Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #27) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,136

my time thinking I’d already become a monster and the other half fighting not to make it a reality. I was a little conflicted about some of my supernatural abilities. Maybe Jocelyn was more than a little conflicted about having sex with Bobby?

“Bobby says you spent the evening together,” Newman said, voice gentle.

“Well, he’s a liar!”

“I know you went out with friends, and Bobby stayed home.”

“Then you know I did not spend all night with him. You know he’s lying.” Jocelyn looked up at Newman with those big brown eyes, giving him the full impact of that lovely face, willing him to believe her.

“So you didn’t see him change into his leopard form before you left the house?”

“No, I shut the door to my room so I wouldn’t have to see anything across the hall.”

“It must be hard with the rooms right across from each other,” I said.

Jocelyn looked at me then, giving me the full weight of her eyes, the face. She knew the effect she had on people. Nothing wrong with that. I was marrying someone who knew it, too.

“I was hoping to get a job and an apartment of my own, but now I don’t know what’s going to happen.” The loss and confusion filled her eyes before she looked down at her lap.

“Did you know Bobby planned to turn into his leopard that night?” Newman asked.

She shook her head without looking up. “It was the dark of the moon. He never changed form then.”

“Any idea why he decided to change that night?” Newman asked, as if asking why Bobby had decided to change clothes instead of skins.

Jocelyn stared at her hands as they plucked at the white sheet. “I think so. I’m afraid so.” Her voice was almost a whisper. The anger was fading into something else, but since I didn’t feed on any other emotion, I couldn’t tell what she was feeling.

“He told you his fantasy, didn’t he?” she asked, voice somehow small, as if she didn’t want to say her words too loud, because doing so would make them bigger, more real.

“He told us about your relationship,” Newman said.

Jocelyn looked up then, tears shining in her eyes, but the anger was back blazing so that her brown eyes looked almost black like dark water glistening in sunlight as the first tear trailed down her cheek. “The only relationship I have with Bobby is as brother and sister.”

“I’m sorry, Jocelyn. Bobby says it was a little bit more than that,” Newman said, and he sounded almost apologetic.

“He wanted it to be more, but I said no.”

“Bobby says that the two of you aren’t genetically related and that Ray only adopted Bobby and not you, so you’re not even legally brother and sister.”

She threw her hands up in the air, more tears trailing down her face from those angry eyes. “Bobby’s my brother. He told me all that stuff about not being related, but I was only five when my mom married his uncle. To me they are my dad and my big brother.”

“So you and Bobby never had sex?”

She looked disgusted. “No, I would never . . . That’s a horrible thing to say, and I told Bobby that. I told him I was going to tell Dad.”

“You planned on telling Ray?” Newman asked.

“I told him. He was shocked, but he said he’d talk to Bobby and get him to leave me alone.”

“You told Ray the night he died that Bobby was wanting to date you?” Newman asked.

“Yes. Dad said he’d talk to Bobby after I left for the night.” She started to cry in earnest. “Don’t you see? It’s all my fault.”

“How is it your fault?”

“Dad must have confronted Bobby and told him to leave me alone, that I didn’t feel that way about him, and he went crazy and killed Dad.” She hid her face in her hands. The nails were that pale-pink-and-white French that always looked weird to me, like something you’d do for a wedding but not for real life.

Newman glanced at me as if for help, so I took the hint and said, “Bobby says he proposed, and you told him that you had to see him change into his leopard before you’d know if you’d be comfortable with it.”

She looked up with tears drying on her face, but no new ones. Her voice finally held the angry scorn that I’d felt roll off of her earlier. “That’s ridiculous. I’ve lived with his leopard for ten years. I don’t have