Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(103)

“If I could have done it differently in time for you to still do the fourth mark tonight before dawn I would have, but you’re a rip-the-bandage-off type of person, you always have been, nothing else works with you.”

I nodded because he was absolutely right on that. I took another deep breath, stood up, and reached my hand out to Jean-Claude, and the other a little slower to Richard. Jean-Claude took my hand immediately with a relieved smile; Richard hesitated, then took the other one. That rush of power as we all touched each other felt like it should blow my hair back from my face.

“Let’s do this.”

“Are you sure, ma petite?”

“That it’s a good idea, no; that we can’t leave the door open for Deimos to walk through tomorrow night, absolutely fucking yes.” I led them toward the far curtains. Ethan and Nicky got ahead to open them for the three of us to go through. Truth, Wicked, Rodina, Ru, and Jake fell into step behind us.

They came to protect us in case there were more enemies hidden somewhere, but there was no one in the underground of the Circus for them to fight. There was just the three of us, the two men that I’d loved first, longest, hated, feared, too many emotions to list. Jean-Claude’s hand was cool in mine, as if even the blood he’d taken from Richard earlier had gone to defend us. The fourth mark required him to take blood, so that was fine. Richard’s hand was warm in mine, and he was still gorgeous, and he’d really tried tonight in that beyond-perfect-apology sort of way, but it still felt wrong to be about to get in the shower and bind ourselves even deeper to him. One night of good behavior didn’t fix years of bad. I believed he had changed, but such drastic changes weren’t usually sustainable over time.

People gradually reverted back to their “normal.” I had to fight against myself not to revert back to the patterns that left me isolated and miserable. I understood how hard it was to fight the good fight, when old habits, comfortable habits, whispered sweet nothings and tried to destroy your happiness all over again. Could Richard sustain it? Was he strong enough to live his truth outside the Circus, or had he come back only partway? Would he stay closeted both as human and as straight, and would that be enough for Jean-Claude?

“Ma petite, we can hear you.”

“Shit,” I said.

“I understand your doubts, Anita,” Richard said. “You’ve earned them, or I’ve given them to you.

I’ve already informed the head of my department that I’m a werewolf.”

I stumbled, because I tried to stop but Jean-Claude kept leading us onward. “Ma petite, questions can be answered as we move toward the showers.”

I kept walking while I said, “What did the head of your department say?”

“He was surprised, but so far I’ve still got a job. I have my doctorate now, so if I get fired I’m more employable somewhere else. I told him how American citizens are signing themselves into government safe houses with promises of being let out once they have control of their Therianthropy, but because they’re never taught any control they never get out, and people have signed their children in without realizing they’d never see them again.”

“If he’s head of your department I’m assuming he’s a biologist and a teacher; how could he not know all this?”

“He believed the government lies that they let out shapeshifters once they can control their beasts.

He did know about the children signed in by parents and then they disappear. That’s been all over the news since the school here has been so successful. I told him I wanted to help more with kids in other states both as a teacher and to show them that they can have a good life, that testing hot for Therianthropy wasn’t the end for them. He understood that, even agreed with it.”

“You helped us come up with some of the plans for the school here in Missouri,” a woman’s voice said from farther down the hallway. I turned to find Angel stalking down the hallway dressed in a red nightie that just emphasized all her luscious curves. She was one of the few shapeshifters I knew who preferred to sleep in nightclothes—the fact that her choices ran very high to lingerie was just a bonus.

With her hair finally gone back to its natural pale blond she looked more like a 1950s sex symbol than the next victim in a 1970s vampire movie.

“You look good enough to eat,” I said.

“Delectable,” Jean-Claude said.

“I was going to say something polite and businessy, but I can’t remember what it was now,”

Richard said.

Angel gave us the smile that went with the outfit. She liked attention paid to her when she was dressed in her daytime rockabilly Goth, or lingerie like now. If she was wearing business attire as a social worker she dressed so conservatively that it was like she was in hiding. “Congratulations on your doctorate, Richard.”

He looked startled, as if he hadn’t expected her to talk to him first. “Um, thank you.”

“You hadn’t gotten it the last time we spoke,” she added, and though her smile and body language said sexy as hell, her voice could have been in a business meeting. She did that at will, and seemingly without effort, so she could be doing God knew what on the other end of the phone, but you’d never know it by her voice.

“No, I hadn’t.”

“I don’t blame you for waiting to come out until you got it,” she said, one hand on her hip. “It was hard enough to get my master’s in social work. I wouldn’t have wanted to get kicked out of the