“What does that mean?” Olaf asked.
“It means that Anita let me know she thinks I’m cute, so my ego is secure.”
Olaf was frowning from one to the other of us. “I don’t understand.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Edward said, with a sigh. “Who plays what role?”
“Whoever I pick for a lover may have to do more than hold hands to convince Bibiana that it would be rude to offer up one of her tigers.”
“So not Olaf,” Edward said.
“And not you,” I said.
“I weird you out,” Olaf said. “I understand that, but why not Ted?”
“Pretending is too close to doing, and it would make me feel funny the next time I visited his family.” That was actually the truth.
Bernardo leaned forward, smiling. “Does that mean that I’m the lucky guy?”
I scowled at him. “I’m giving you another chance to play my boyfriend; don’t make me regret it.”
“Hey, it wasn’t you who ended up being forced to strip half naked at gunpoint last time.” He wasn’t teasing when he said it.
“Why did they want you to strip?” Olaf asked.
“They asked me a trick question, to see if he really was my lover.”
“What question?”
“Whether I was circumcised,” Bernardo said, and now he had a touch of amusement in his voice. “They wanted to see if her answer was the right one.”
“Was it?” Edward asked.
“Yes.”
“How did you know whether he was circumcised?” Olaf asked, and he actually sounded indignant.
I undid my seatbelt and turned in my seat. “Stop it, just stop it. You haven’t earned the right to sound jealous or hurt.”
Olaf scowled at me.
“Sonny and Spider are watching us argue,” Edward said.
I’d forgotten that the two policemen were trailing us. That was beyond careless. “Great, fine, but I mean it, Olaf. I’m flattered that you want to try to date me like a normal guy, but a normal guy doesn’t get jealous before he’s even kissed a girl.”
“Not true,” Edward and Bernardo said together.
“What?” I asked.
They exchanged a look, then Edward said, “I had a crush on a girl, the first serious one. I never kissed her, or even held her hand, but I was jealous of every boy who got near her.”
I tried to picture a young, insecure Edward and couldn’t, but it was nice to know that once he’d been a boy. Sometimes it felt like Edward had sprung full grown from the head of some violent deity, like a vicious version of Athena.
“I’ve been jealous of women who were dating good friends. You don’t poach from good friends, but sometimes it cuts you up to watch them be cute together.”
“Anita and I thought you would poach,” Olaf said.
“Hey, just because I like women doesn’t mean I have no scruples. No friends’ serious girlfriends, and no wives of people I like.”
“Good to know you have scruples.” I tried for sarcasm and succeeded.
“Hey,” Bernardo said, “what’s the old saying about glass houses, Anita?”
“I don’t do husbands.”
“I don’t do vampires,” he said.
Point for him. Out loud, I said, “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“I don’t like sleeping with anyone who can bespell me with their eyes. It’s too hard to remember not to gaze.”
“So it’s not morality but practicality.”
“That, and sometimes there’s a moisture problem.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they’re dead, Anita, and dead women need lubricant.”
“Stop, just stop, before I get visual to go with that.” Then I added, before I had time to think about it, “That’s not true of the female vampires I know.” I knew it was true, knew it through Jean-Claude’s and Asher’s memories that they’d shared with me metaphysically. Knew it through Belle herself visiting my dreams.
“And how do you know that the female vampires you’ve met don’t need lubricant?” he asked.
I tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t raise more questions and couldn’t come up with one.
“You are blushing.” Olaf didn’t sound happy.
“Oh, please tell me that the visual I’ve got in my head is true,” Bernardo said, and he sounded very happy. In fact, he was grinning ear to ear.
Edward was looking at me over the lowered rims of his sunglasses. “I haven’t heard any rumors about you and the female vampires.”
“Maybe you can all just wait outside and I’ll talk to the tigers alone.” I got out of the car, into the dimness of the parking garage.
Sonny and Spider got out of their SUV, but I didn’t want to talk to any more men. I slammed the door and started for the spot marked Elevator. I heard the doors opening and shutting. If I got to the elevator first, I was going up to the casino without them. Maybe it wasn’t the smart thing to do, but the thought of Edward watching the doors close without him gave me a certain shallow satisfaction. Maybe he understood that I’d had enough teasing, because he hurried to catch up with me in front of the elevator.
“Going up by yourself would be stupid, and that is something you aren’t,” he said, and sounded angry.
“I’m tired of explaining myself to you or anyone else.”
“I’ve sent Bernardo and Olaf to talk to SWAT, so you can talk to me. Is there something else I should know?”
“No,” I said.
“Liar,” he said.
I glared at him. “I thought it was just Ted who fantasized about lesbians.”
“You’re Jean-Claude’s human servant; how closely tied are you metaphysically, Anita?”
And just like that, he’d guessed what I didn’t want to tell them.
“I’ve never been to St. Louis,” Bernardo said, from just behind us. “What female vamps does Jean-Claude have?”
“They didn’t seem to like Anita enough to sleep with her,” Olaf said.
The doors opened, and I said, “One more word about this topic and I’m getting in this elevator by myself.”
“Touchy,” Bernardo said.
“Drop it,” Edward said, “both of you.”
They dropped it, and we all got in the elevator. Bernardo was smiling all over himself. Olaf was scowling. Edward’s face had gone to unreadable. I leaned against the back wall and fought to find an expression that wouldn’t make it worse. Was it better that two of them thought I’d been with another woman than that I shared detailed memories with vampires? Yeah, it was. It would have been even better if Edward had believed it.
27
OLAF WAS WILLING to throw his leather over everything, but Edward passed out the dark windbreakers with U.S. Marshal on them to all of us. “If this is a social visit, won’t this be the wrong message?” Bernardo asked.
“The new law makes it almost impossible for any of us to pass for civilians,” Edward said. “We can’t enter a casino packing this much firepower without badges showing. The first time they see us on the security cameras, they’ll think something bad is happening.”
We couldn’t argue with that, actually. It took us a few minutes to get jackets over our clothes so that most of the weapons were hidden. I was really going to have to remember to pack my own nifty dark blue windbreaker next time. I always remembered the weapons and the badges, but I did keep forgetting some of the other stuff. Olaf slid everything out of sight in his leather jacket. “It is invisible under this jacket.”
“You don’t like having a badge, do you, big guy?” Bernardo asked, as he fluffed the jacket over all of his own weapons.
“I like some of it, but I don’t like the jacket.”
I had to take the backpack off, and just slid the MP5 on its sling so it was under the jacket, and put the backpack on over the jacket. The MP5 was the thing most likely to freak the mundanes and the casino security.
Edward had replaced his own Heckler amp; Koch MP5 with the new FN P90. It was very science fiction looking, but he swore once I fired it, I’d trade in my MP5. He’d said the same thing about the mini-Uzi that had been the gun that the MP5 had replaced for me, so I didn’t argue. Edward knew more about guns than I ever would.