Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(13)

I didn’t even try to hide my smile, but I did add, “The boots are actually the most conservative part of the outfit, you won’t have a problem with them.”

“You’d take Ted with you, but you don’t want to leave me on my own,” Peter said.

“I really do need Ted to have his fitting. I need something about this damn wedding to go right.”

“If this is where you need me more, I’ll stay,” Edward said.

“Thank you.”

The seamstress looked at me. “The makeup artist is waiting for you with the clothes that Jean-Claude picked out for tonight.”

“Oh,” I said, “I’ll come back after the crime scene to change.”

She raised an eyebrow at me over her horn-rimmed glasses. “The makeup and hair will take some time, Ms. Blake.”

“Are you trying on your wedding dress today?” Edward asked.

“No, it’s for the date tonight. Jean-Claude wanted me to match his outfit tonight like it’s prom or something,” I said, and couldn’t hide my discomfort at having to get all dressed up.

“Nathaniel has been so excited about helping Jean-Claude put the new act together,” Peter said.

“And they’ve kept it a surprise from me, I won’t even know what color he’s wearing until I see my dress for tonight.”

“I know you have to go be a cop now, but now I want to see the date dress,” Peter said, smiling.

“I’m sorry that I have the date tonight and can’t be there to see you working out with everyone,” I said.

“We came at the last minute,” Edward said. “You can’t cancel a date night this big because our schedule opened up suddenly.”

“Mom would be wicked pissed if you canceled on her like that,” Peter said.

Edward gave a small smile. “Donna would never forgive me if she had professional hair and makeup planned, and then I canceled for less than life and death.”

“If Mom went to this much trouble for a date with you, even life and death wouldn’t be an acceptable excuse,” Peter said.

Edward grinned. “You’re right.”

“I was hoping to see you in all your finery here, since I cannot be at Guilty Pleasures tonight,”

Asher said.

I looked at Asher. “You’re ringmaster at the Circus of the Damned, can’t be in two places at once, and I need you to finish your fitting as best man today, too.”

“That is why I am here,” he said.

“I also need you to be okay with Ted and Peter. I need you to not take what we just discussed and be all pissy and bitter at them. I need you to get along.”

Asher got this look on his face that I knew, so I added, “And you’re not allowed to flirt with them or be obnoxious in that way either.”

“Do you know me so well?”

“I share a lot of Jean-Claude’s memories, so yeah, I do.”

Then he got a look on his face that I hadn’t seen much, it was more from a memory of Jean-Claude than my own. He looked lost. “What am I to do if I cannot be cruel or flirtatious?”

I realized with a start that he was serious. “Asher, there is more to you than just that.”

“Is there? As the medication and therapy strip away all the broken thinking I am left unsure of who I am. I know that sounds ridiculous after almost seven hundred years, but I don’t know how to behave if I’m not sick with jealousy. It’s as if all of me was the obsessive negative thoughts.”

“You are more than just your illness, Asher.”

“Am I?”

“Is that why you don’t discipline Kane, because he’s the last part of your illness?” Peter asked.

Asher looked at him, careful to only let him see the perfect half of his face. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe worrying about Kane gives you something to obsess over now that your own obsessive thoughts are gone?”

“I . . . I had not thought about it like that.”

Edward said, “Giving up an obsession is hard. Giving up one that is made from your own obsessive-compulsive thoughts would be even harder. You are stronger than you let us see or you wouldn’t have been brave enough to do it.”

“Do you truly believe that?” Asher asked, again glancing at him through a fall of hair and perfect face.

Edward nodded. “I do.”

Asher ran his hands down his shirt, which was a gesture similar to one that Jean-Claude had; it was a sign of nerves. “Thank you.”

“When you first give up your obsession your life loses focus. You have to decide if you’re still you, or someone else, becoming someone else,” Edward said.

It was all I could do not to ask him what obsession he had given up, because this was more insight into his past than I’d ever had, at least about his emotional landscape. He was my best friend and we’d known each other for ten years, but Edward knew how to keep a secret.

Asher said, “I feel empty like a seashell washed up on the shore, beautiful but hollow with whatever creature lived inside me gone.”

“It will take time to fill yourself back up,” Edward said.

“Yeah,” Peter said, “it’s sort of like being fourteen again when you don’t know who you are or what you’ll be when you grow up.”