[Anita Blake Collection] - Strange Candy (24 page)

“I'm fine where I am.” I leaned against the wall, my arms crossed under my breasts, which put my hand comfortably close to the gun under
my arm. I wouldn't really shoot Jean-Claude, but the gun being close made me feel better. It was like a small, lumpy security blanket. Besides, I never went anywhere after dark unarmed.

His smile was amused and condescending. “I do not think the wall will fall down if you cease to lean against it.”

“We need to figure out who the vamp is that's been doing Amy Mackenzie.”

“You said you had pictures of the girl. May I see them?” The smile had faded round the edges, but his eyes still held that amusement, faint and condescending, which he used as a mask to hide things.

I sighed and reached into the pocket of my leather coat. I held the two pictures out toward him. He held his hand out for them but made no move to come to me.

“I won't bite,
ma petite
.”

“Only because I won't let you,” I said.

He gave that graceful shrug that meant everything and nothing. “True, but still I will not ravish you because you stand a few feet in front of me.”

He was right. I was being silly, but I could taste my pulse in my throat as I walked toward him, the new leather coat sighing around me, the way new leather always does. It was a replacement coat for one that a vampire had ripped off me. I held the pictures out to him, and he had to lean forward to take them from me. I even sat down in the chair in front of the desk while he looked at them. We could be civilized about this. Of course we could. But I couldn't stop looking at the way his bare shoulders gleamed against the scarlet cloth, the way the high collar made his hair a pure blackness almost as dark as mine. His lips looked redder than I remembered them, as if he were wearing a light lipstick, and I wouldn't have put it past him. But he didn't need makeup to be beautiful, he just simply was.

He spoke without looking up from the pictures. “I do not recognize her, but then she could come here occasionally and I would have no reason
to.” He looked up, meeting my eyes, catching me staring at his bare shoulders. The look in those eyes said he knew exactly what I'd been looking at. The look was enough to make me blush, and I hated that.

My voice came out angry, and I was pleased. Anger is better than embarrassment any day. “You said on the phone that you could help.”

He laid the pictures on his desk and clasped his hands back in his lap. The placement of his hands was utterly polite, but they also framed a certain area of anatomy, and the satin was very tight, and I could tell that other things were tight as well.

It made me blush again, and it made me angrier, just like old times. I'd have liked to be a smart alec and say something like,
That looked uncomfortable
, but I didn't want to admit that I'd noticed, so out of options that were polite, I stood up and turned away.

“None of my vampires would dare bring over anyone without my permission,” he said.

That made me turn around. “What do you mean?”

“I have ordered a…how will you say…hiring freeze, until that nasty bill in Washington is defeated.”

“
Hiring freeze
,” I said. “You mean none of your vamps can make more of you until Senator Brewster's law goes down in flames?”

“Exactement.”

“So you're sure that none of your vamps is doing this?” I said.

“They would not risk the punishment.”

“So you can't help me. Damn it, Jean-Claude, you could have told me that over the phone.”

“I called Malcolm while you were en route,” he said.

Malcolm was the head of the Church of Eternal Life, the vampire church. It was the only church I'd ever been in that had no holy objects displayed whatsoever; even the stained glass was abstract art. “Because if it's not one of your vamps, then it's one of his,” I said.

“Oui.”

Truthfully, I had just assumed it was one of Jean-Claude's vampires
because the church was very strict on when you brought your human followers over to the dead side, and the church also checked backgrounds thoroughly. “The girl's friend said she'd met the vampire at a club.”

“Can you not go to church and go to a club on the weekends?”

I nodded. “Okay, you've made your point. What did Malcolm say?”

“That he would contact all his followers and give strict orders that this vampire and the girl are to be found.”

“They'll need the picture,” I said. My beeper went off, and I jumped. Shit. I checked the number and it was Ronnie's cell phone.

“Can I use your phone?”

“Whatever I have is yours,
ma petite
.” He looked at the black phone sitting on the black desk and stood to one side so I could walk around the desk without him leaning over me. Considerate of him, which probably meant he was going to do something else even more irritating.

Ronnie answered on the first ring. “Anita?”

“It's me, what's up?”

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Your detective friend convinced Barbara that if Amy got herself killed, she'd be charged with conspiracy to commit murder.”

“I don't think Zerbrowski could make that stick.”

“Barbara thinks he can.”

“What did she tell you?”

“The vampire's name is Bill Stucker.” She spelled the last name for me.

“A vamp with a last name. He has to be really new,” I said. The only other vamp I'd ever met with a last name had been dead less than a month.

“Don't know if he's old or new, just his name.”

“She have an address for him?”

“No, and Zerbrowski pushed her pretty hard. She says she's never been there, and I believe her.”

“Okay, tell Zerbrowski thanks. I'll see you Saturday at the gym.”

“Wouldn't miss it,” she said.

“Oh, and thanks to you, too, Ronnie.”

“Always happy to save someone from the monsters, which reminds me, are you with you-know-who?”

“If you mean Jean-Claude, yes, I am.”

“Get out of there as soon as you can,” she said.

“You're not my mother, Ronnie.”

“No, just your friend.”

“Good night, Ronnie.”

“Don't stay,” she said.

I hung up. Ronnie was one of my very bestest friends, but her attitude toward Jean-Claude was beginning to get on my nerves, mainly because I agreed with her. I always hated being in the wrong.

“The name Bill Stucker mean anything to you?” I asked Jean-Claude.

“No, but I will call Malcolm and see if it means something to him.”

I handed him the phone receiver and stepped back out of the way, i.e., out of touching distance. His side of the conversation consisted mainly of giving the name and saying “Of course” and “Yes.” He handed the phone to me. “Malcolm wishes to speak to you.”

I took the phone, and Jean-Claude actually moved away and gave me some room. “Ms. Blake, I am sorry for anything my church brethren may have done. He is in our computer with his address. I will have a deacon at his doorstep within minutes.”

“Give me the address and I'll go down and check on the girl.”

“That will not be necessary. The church sister that is attending to this was a nurse before she came over.”

“I'm not sure what Amy Mackenzie needs is another vampire, no matter how well-meaning. Let me have the address.”

“And I don't believe that my vampire needs the Executioner shooting down his door.”

“I can give the name to the police. They'll find his address, and they'll knock on his door, and they may not be as polite as I would be.”

“Now that last is hard to imagine.”

I think he was making fun of me. “Give me the address, Malcolm.” Anger was tightening across my shoulders, making me want to rotate my neck and try to clear it.

“Wait a moment.” He put me on hold.

I looked at Jean-Claude and let the anger into my voice. “He put me on hold.”

Jean-Claude had sat down in the chair that I'd vacated; he smiled, shrugged, trying to stay neutral. Probably wise of him. When I'm angry I have a tendency to spread it around, even over people who don't deserve it. I'm trying to cut down on my bad habits, but some habits are easier to break than others. My temper was one of the hard ones.

“Ms. Blake, that was the emergency line. The girl is alive, but barely; they are rushing her to the hospital. We are not sure if she will make it. We will turn Bill over to the police if she dies, I give you my word on that.”

I had to take his word, because he was a centuries-old vampire and if you could ever get them to give their oath, they'd keep it.

“What hospital, so I can call her mom?”

He told me. I hung up and called Amy's mother. One hysterical phone call later I got to hang up and now it was my turn to sit on the edge of the desk and look down at him.

My feet didn't touch the ground and that made it hard to look graceful. But then I'd never tried to compete with Jean-Claude on gracefulness; some battles are made to be lost.

“There was a time,
ma petite
, that you would have insisted on riding to the rescue yourself, questioning the girl's friend, and refusing to bring in the police at all.”

“If I thought threatening Barbara with violence or shooting her would have made her talk, I'd be perfect for the job. But I'm not going to shoot, or hurt, an eighteen-year-old girl who's trying to help her best friend save her leg, if not her life. Zerbrowski could threaten her with the law, jail time; I can't do that.”

“And you never threaten anything that you cannot or will not do,” he said, softly.

“No, I don't.”

We looked at each other. He at ease in the straight-backed chair, his ankle propped on the opposite knee, fingers steepled in front of his face so that what I mostly saw of him were those extraordinary eyes, huge, a blue so dark it treaded the edge of being black, but you never doubted his eyes were pure, unadulterated blue, like ocean water where it runs achingly deep and cold.

Ronnie was right, I should leave, but I didn't want to leave. I wanted to stay. I wanted to run my hands over his shirt, to caress the naked surprise of those shoulders. And because I wanted it so badly, I hopped off the desk, and said, “Thanks for your help.”

“I am always willing to be of assistance,
ma petite
.”

I could have walked wide past his chair, but that would be insulting to both of us. I just had to walk by the chair and out the door. Simple. I was almost past the chair, almost behind him, when he spoke, “Would you have ever called me if you hadn't needed to save some human?” His voice was as ordinary as it ever got. He wasn't trying to use vampire tricks to make the words more than they were and that stopped me. An honest question was harder to turn my back on than a seductive trick.

I sighed and turned back to find him staring straight at me. Looking full into his face from less than two feet away made me have to catch my breath. “You know why I'm staying away.”

He twisted in the chair, putting one arm on the back of it, showing that flash of bare shoulder again. “I know that you find it difficult to control the powers of the vampire marks when we are together. It was something that should have bound us closer, not thrust us farther apart.” Again his voice was as carefully neutral as he could make it.

I shook my head. “I've got to go.”

He turned in the chair so that he leaned both arms on the back, his chin resting on his hands, his hair framing all that red cloth, that pale flesh,
those drowning eyes. Less than two feet apart, almost close enough that if I reached a hand out I could have touched him. I swallowed so hard it almost hurt. I balled my hands into fists, because I could feel the memory of his skin against my hands. All I had to do was close that distance, but I knew if I did, that I wouldn't be leaving, not for a while anyway.

My voice came out breathy. “I should go.”

“So you said.”

I should have turned and walked out, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it. Didn't want to do it. I wanted to stay. My body was tight with need; wet with it, just at the sight of him fully clothed, leaning on a chair. Damn it, why wasn't I walking away? But I wasn't reaching for him either; I got points for that. Sometimes you get points for just standing your ground.

Jean-Claude stood, very slowly, as if afraid I'd bolt, but I didn't. I stood there, my heart in my throat, my eyes a little wide, afraid, eager, wanting.

He stood inches away from me, staring down, but still not touching, hands at his sides, face neutral. He raised one hand, very slowly upward, and even that small movement sent his fingertips gliding along my leather coat. When I didn't pull away, he held the edge of the leather in his fingertips inside the open edge of the coat at the level of my waist. He began to slide his hand upward, above my waist, my stomach, then the back of his fingers brushed over my breasts, not hesitating, moving upward to the collar of the coat, but that one quick brush had tightened my body, stopped my breath in my throat.