Anita Blake 24 - Dead Ice (6 page)

She didn’t say anything, just sat there holding it all in, because I’d been grumpy about it earlier, but now I understood more. I smiled at her. “Just say it, or you’re going to hurt yourself holding it in.”

She smiled even more brilliantly. It filled her whole face with something close to laughter, and it helped chase away some of the sadness I was feeling after seeing the video, too. Happiness is as contagious as sorrow.

“I thought you had that fabulous engagement ring that was on the news.”

“Jean-Claude knows me, and he knew I’d want to help pick out a ring I’m expected to wear for the rest of my life. The ring on the video was a loaner with a possibility to buy.”

Brent raised his hand, as if he needed permission to join the conversation. “I saw the ring on the news; what woman wouldn’t keep that hunk of ice?”

I grinned, and let myself try to explain, not because I had to, but because I liked the atmosphere in the room better. I didn’t want to be the one who brought the mood down again; this was better. “I asked him if he actually wanted me to wear the ring every day, and he said, preferably. I can’t wear that hunk of ice to this job, or to raise zombies. The diamond on the top alone would poke holes through any crime scene gloves, if the ring would even fit into most gloves.”

Manning’s smile had faded a little. “Sad, but true.”

I wanted her to smile again, so I said the truth. “Jean-Claude said, ‘I would prefer that you wear the symbol of my love every day.’” I left off the “
ma petite
” that went at the end of almost every sentence he said to me. It was French for “my little one,” or literally, “my little.”

Manning’s smile brightened again.

Zerbrowski said, “Aww, ain’t that romantic.”

“So we’re having rings made that I can wear every day.” I didn’t add that we were also negotiating on a set of rings that were the bright, shiny, audacious equivalent of the ring he’d given me in the videoed engagement. He wanted us to have rings for dressy occasions that showed off his wealth. Most master vampires come from nobility, or at least centuries when nobility flaunted it if they had it; not to drench yourself in jewels and rich clothes meant you were poor. Jean-Claude had to be the king, and that meant we needed something worthy of a king and his queen. I was incredibly uncomfortable with some of the rings we’d looked at in this category, but he’d finally convinced me that it was a necessary thing. I could never envision wearing a ring like that without being terrified I’d lose a stone, or damage it in some way. I felt like a small dog dressed up in clothes; they walk very stiffly, because they just don’t feel like themselves anymore. It may look good, but a dog would still rather be chasing squirrels. You can’t do that in little doggie booties and a tutu.

“You are a very lucky woman,” she said, and she meant it. It made me wonder if there was a Mr. Manning back home. A lot of cops don’t wear wedding bands to work, so the fact that her finger was empty didn’t prove anything.

“Thank you. I’m still a little amazed that Jean-Claude is my fiancé.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I’d sort of given up on the idea of marrying anyone, and he’s just so gorgeous. On the attractive scale I feel like a three who somehow landed a twenty bazillion.” I grinned as I said it, but I meant it.

Manning narrowed her eyes at me. “Every beautiful woman knows just how beautiful she is, and you are not a three.”

“Try standing next to Jean-Claude and see how high up the pretty scale you feel.”

She laughed then. “Okay, I’ll give you that one. He just seems perfect.”

I nodded. “He’s close, and I so don’t feel perfect.”

“You’re only human, and he’s not.”

I nodded again. “Well, there is that,” I said.

I got to leave with everyone still smiling, though Zerbrowski was watching me a little too closely. He knew I’d told the truth about the jeweler, but he was also pretty certain that I’d thought of something about the case I hadn’t shared. He trusted me enough to let me get away with it tonight, but by tomorrow he’d ask. So after the jeweler appointment and the zombie I had to raise later tonight at my other job, I’d need to call Manny Rodriguez, friend and coworker at Animators Inc., and remind him of a time in his life when he’d been one of the bad guys.

T
HE CIRCUS OF
the Damned had revitalized an older warehouse district, because one wildly successful business will attract more new businesses and customers. I sometimes wondered what would have happened to this section of St. Louis if Jean-Claude hadn’t opened the Circus here. It would probably be like some other sections of the old warehouse district, the kind of place where the police will only come in groups. The huge building towered over the area like a big brother that kept all the bullies away. The three dancing clowns on top were frozen in the fading light. If you looked closely you’d notice the clowns all had fangs, and their multicolored outfits seemed more garish without darkness to soften them, so maybe it was a weird older brother, but it still kept the neighborhood safe and had brought the whole area more upscale.

I had no trouble finding parking right out front because it was hours from opening. An hour before dusk and I’d have had to park in the employees’ parking lot out back. I walked past the big carnival posters that covered the front of the building. Posters twenty feet high proclaimed,
The Lamia, half snake, half woman!
, showing a garish but accurate image of Melanie, her long black hair swept discreetly over her very human breasts. The image didn’t do justice to the multicolored scales of her tail, or how dangerous her venom was; I’d have deported her back to Greece, but Jean-Claude knew a moneymaker when he saw it, and he’d been right. Melanie had behaved herself since I’d freed her of the big bad vampire that had been her master.
See the Skinless, Formless Monster!
was a florid drawing of a Nuckelavee, which wasn’t some kind of Lovecraftian horror, but a fairy from the British Isles that wasn’t fit for much other work than a sideshow. I mean, if you’re a skinless, near formless creature, what job can you possibly have? “Do you want fries with that” shouldn’t be followed by uncontrolled screaming from the customers.
Zombies Rise from the Grave!
I had gotten Jean-Claude to stop the nightly zombie raising in the small makeshift cemetery in the carnival midway, but so many customers had complained that he’d overridden me and started it again. We had agreed to stay out of the business side of each other’s life as much as possible. The poster on the left-hand side of the door showed a male figure dressed somewhere between the Phantom of the Opera and a sexy circus ringmaster:
Asher, Master Vampire and Ring Master!
Then I was at the doors, and other posters marched down the other side of the entrance showing some of the other acts and delights that awaited the customers inside. I debated on whether to knock, in case someone was close enough to open it, or use my key. I had keys to the front door and to the back door, the employee entrance, which is what I usually used. I tried to remember the last time I’d come in the front and couldn’t. I usually was here after dark¸ which meant the crowds were so massive I didn’t want to deal with it.

Now, the street out front was completely empty except for me. I knew that someone inside had seen me from the very top floor, because the guards kept watch over all entrances. There was even a sniper lookout, though we were short a sniper lately, because we’d lost one of our own. Ares had been a good guy, and for a werehyena he’d been excellent. We still had a few people who could use a sniper rifle, but no one as good as Ares. I wished I hadn’t had to kill him.

If the building had been less massive they could have had someone at the front doors to let me in by now, but I didn’t have to wait forever and a day for someone to open the door anymore. I put my key in the lock and felt that satisfying
click
. I liked having a key. I stepped through and made sure the door locked behind me, though honestly a lot of our potential bad guys wouldn’t have much trouble breaking the door down, or tearing a new one in the wall somewhere. We’d hear them, and we had enough guards with enough muscle and firepower to kill them dead before they got very far, but locked doors were more for the casual passerby who was curious to see the Circus during the daylight when all the vampires were in their coffins. If they only knew how many vampires could walk around inside here without waiting for sundown, they’d either be thrilled or never sleep well again. It depended on which side of the preternatural citizen movement they were on. Whether vampires should have been declared “alive” and full citizens of the United States of America was one of the big debates ranking right up there with gun rights and abortion. In a way all of them are about life and death—defining what life is, and what it isn’t, and how far we’ll go to protect, or take, it.

I stood there in the huge, echoing dimness of the empty Circus and just enjoyed the quiet of the place. The first time I’d come here during this time of day when everything was closed had been when Nikolaos was still Master of the City and Jean-Claude had just been one of her flunkies. I’d come to kill her and all the bad little vampires and henchmen who had threatened me and my friends. I’d done a good job of it, too. Now I stood there listening, almost feeling the silence of the closed carnival midway that stretched the length of the building. The booths where you could win giant toy bats, or vampire and werewolf dolls and other themed toys, were all shuttered or draped with canvas. It really was a midway complete with rides, but there was no smell of dust and heat. It was cleaner, neater than any real traveling carnival could ever be, but that was very Jean-Claude. He liked to take things that were messy and make them prettier, run smoother, the illusion of perfection so close to perfect that most people couldn’t tell the difference. Only his romantic relationships were big, messy, brawling things, because he only fell in love with difficult people, and yes, I was so counting myself on that list of difficult lovers. Truth was truth.

I walked between the closed food stalls, where the faint smell of corn dogs, popcorn, funnel cakes, and cotton candy seemed to linger like aromatic ghosts. There was one tent in the middle of the midway—once it would have been called the freak show, but now it was the hallway of oddities, though even that some had complained about. They wanted to see the half-man, half-whatever, but they wanted it to be politically correct, because if you were all PC about it then looking didn’t make you a bad person. Lately, people seemed to think that morality was the same thing as being politically correct, and it wasn’t. Some of the most deeply moral people I knew were least politically correct, because they actually worried about good and evil, not just what they were told was good or bad.

Some well-meaning citizens had gotten freak shows closed down, but all the people who had protested and felt morally superior about it had other jobs. They could go out in the world and be “normal”; the “freaks” that they’d put out of work didn’t always have that option. Sometimes the freak show is your only option, and sometimes it’s the only place where you feel safe and okay. I really wish the “normal” people would leave us freaks alone and stop trying to save us. We get by, we take care of each other, and the people who cost the freaks their jobs didn’t give them employment, or a place to stay, or a family to be a part of; they just destroyed their world and felt morally superior for doing it.

I’d seen my first ghost at age ten; by age fourteen I’d accidentally raised dead animals, including my childhood dog, Jenny. My dad had contacted my grandmother Flores and she’d trained me just enough not to have roadkill follow me home, or my dead pet crawl into bed with me. She’d worried I would grow up to become not just an animator, as in to give life, but a necromancer, which usually meant you’d gone evil. Vampires used to kill necromancers when they found them, because we have the potential to have power over all the dead, including them. I’d slipped through the cracks because I was Jean-Claude’s human servant and because there hadn’t been a full-fledged necromancer in a thousand years. I was one of the freaks; I just hadn’t embraced it the first time I walked into the Circus of the Damned.

I turned to the left and the biggest tent, which took up nearly a quarter of this part of the warehouse interior. The tent was white-and-red striped and gave the illusion that it had just been put up that day by some roustabouts, but it was permanent, only coming down when the tent material needed to be made fresh and bright again. The ticket booth at the entrance was empty like everything else, but even if it hadn’t been I’d have gotten in for free. I was engaged to the owner.

The tent flap was down over the doorway so I couldn’t see inside, but I saw the canvas twitch a second before it started moving up. I drew my gun in an automatic motion; it was held two-handed and pointed at the ground before I had time to talk myself out of it. I had it pointed at the ground because I couldn’t see on the other side of the canvas. You don’t point at anything unless you know what or who you’re pointing at, because once you point, then you aim, and then you shoot. Shooting means killing it. For all I knew it could be Jean-Claude on the other side—unlikely, but still, everyone in here was either a lover, a friend, or at least that guy I don’t hate.

The hand that moved the canvas was a lot darker than Jean-Claude’s, and I wasn’t surprised when Socrates looked through the opening. He was tall, but not too broad; he didn’t like doing the serious weight lifting some of the guards did. He’d recently cut his hair so short that my own would have had no curl left, which meant almost shaved, but his hair still had curl to it. He glanced down at the gun in my hands and smiled. “I like that you’re that cautious.”

I relaxed my shoulders a little and gave him the ultimate praise; I took my eyes off him while I moved my suit jacket out of the way and holstered my gun. “Some people call it paranoid.”

“They’ve never been a cop,” he said.