“You may dress like one of the boys, but you always have really nice underthings,” Cardinal said. “We counted on that.”
“The guards could not have shopped for lingerie,” Meng Die said, standing up with the shoes in one hand and the dress in the other.
“Hurry, Anita,” Cardinal said.
I didn’t want to hurry. I didn’t like the dress.
Micah kissed me on the cheek. He was dressed in a tailored black suit, except it was made of soft black leather. His shirt was white and made his summer tan look very dark. The collar of it was open to expose the bite marks on his neck. The idea was that we would all show the vampire bites to demonstrate that Jean-Claude kept the best stuff for himself. It was a way of emphasizing he was still master, even though a lot of the metaphysical stuff with the tigers would seem to come mostly from me.
“You’re okay with this?” I asked.
“Anita, after last night and what happened in Atlanta, I’d wear the dress myself if it would help us be safe.” Jean-Claude looked at me, and there was something of weight, and sorrow, and just him, that made me take his hand.
“If I really thought the dress would help us be safe, I wouldn’t mind.”
Micah kissed me. “Anita, have I ever asked you to just do something?”
I thought about it and shook my head.
“I’m asking now.” He looked sad.
“Did I miss something? Has something else happened?”
“Anita, it’s afternoon. We have about six hours until full dark. Whatever we are going to do with the tigers, we need it done before dark.”
“But Europe isn’t on the same daylight schedule,” I said.
“If they are underground, ma petite, the council does not sleep much. They await our darkness, not their own,” Jean-Claude said.
“Richard is in the other room wearing a hell of a lot less than I am. He’s sucked it up and is playing host while the rest of us are in here holding your hand. You’re about to throw a fit because the dress is sheer. Anita, honey”—and he took my hands in his—“Richard is doing what we need him to do; are you going to do less?”
I sighed. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m just not the exhibitionist that—oh, hell, Micah. I’m just not comfortable mostly nude in front of a roomful of strangers.”
“I’m sorry for that, but we need to play to our strengths. Those are sex, psychic ability so strong they won’t know what hit them, and bluntness. The dress is sexy, and blunt.” He smiled. “Honey, it’s you. I’ll go help the other men with our guests. Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
He kissed my cheek again, gave Jean-Claude a look I couldn’t quite understand, and went back down the hallway to our guests. And just like that, I stopped protesting. Micah’s attitude brought home more than anything else could have that modesty was no longer a virtue. It was the proverbial midnight, and the clock was striking. Whatever we were going to do before that last strike, we had about six hours to do it.
45
THE SLIP HADN’T worked with the dress, so I wore it with just the nice black bra and panties under it. The shoes were three-and-a-half-inch heels, a little wider than spikes, thank God, but with panels on the closed-toe heels that were silver, clear, clear black, and ended up being mostly clear like the dress, so that the silver heels were the thing you noticed most about the shoes. Meng Die had produced a pair of thigh-highs from her bag so that the shoes weren’t rubbing as I walked. With the sheer dress, the sheer black hose just seemed to make it all lingerie, but it beat the hell out of having blisters before I’d walked a few yards, which was what the shoes promised without hose.
Cardinal had applied makeup in a record speed. She even had a mirror so I could see that she’d made my eyes large and exotic; the lipstick was a red so deep and rich that it was going to be distracting just to watch me talk. Of course, my breasts might distract any heterosexual man in the room from ever seeing my face. There was way too much yummy mounded goodness going on in front of me for me to be entirely comfortable meeting a roomful of strangers, but I hadn’t protested anymore. Micah had made his point. I kept my mouth shut and just let the two women do their jobs. Besides, the dress didn’t hide a damn thing, so my breasts being obvious should have been the least of my worries. One of the interesting side effects of the dress being see-through was that every vampire bite was very visible. So were the scars I’d gotten in the line of duty, but the bites were actually more attention-getting. They were fresh, after all. The fact that I’d started wearing thongs since I found some that were actually comfortable meant that my ass was bare, though at least the front was well covered with black lace. I had other thongs that were pretty much nudity with decoration. That would have been worse, or that’s what I told myself.
I’d divided my weapons among Nicky, Wicked, and Truth. They’d rotate around me and Jean-Claude. The only jewelry I had left was the gold chain with the charm on it. I felt very underdressed without the weapons or my cross. But since Jean-Claude might have to pull out some serious vampire powers to help me tame the tigers, a holy object that would start to glow seemed like a bad idea.
The gold tigers and Jake himself were going to stay out of sight until we’d done the tigers, because we were pretty certain there’d be spies among them. Since even the Harlequin never saw all of them unmasked, not everyone knew what the others looked like, so Jake had a high-percentage chance of not knowing the bare face of the spies. It was one of the things that made the Harlequin so effective even to each other.
The big dining room had begun life as a speakeasy, back when Prohibition was the law of the land. It was a huge natural cavern with gas lamps in the walls, giving a soft, warm glow to everything. The big table had been moved to one side of the room and had candles on it, so that the only light in the big cave came from gas and candles. There was enough light to see everything, but it was soft-edged and there were lots of shadows, as if the flames that lit the room filled it with both light and darkness.
Except for the light and shadows it was a cocktail party, with everyone standing around sipping drinks, eating hors d’oeuvres, and chatting. I hated cocktail-party small talk mainly because I’d always sucked at it, but all the men in my life seemed really good at it. As long as Jean-Claude or Micah or Nathaniel or Asher or Jason was on my arm they took the conversation and I just smiled and nodded. That I could do.
Damian and I were both almost equally bad at this kind of thing, so he kept Cardinal on his arm, and we waved at each other.
I was on Jean-Claude’s arm when we met Victor, weretiger and son of the Master of Las Vegas and the white tiger queen, Bibiana. Victor was still tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome with his short white hair carefully cut, looking as if someone styled it one hair at a time. His suit was expensive and tailored, and looked almost as good on him as Micah’s had on him, but in very different ways. Victor was built more like Richard. Victor’s tiger eyes were a rich, deep blue, bluer than Crispin’s. I liked Victor’s eyes; in fact my white tigress liked everything about him. He took my hand when I offered it, and the moment he touched me I wished he hadn’t. His power breathed along my skin in a warm wash. It made it hard to breathe for a moment, and I watched his eyes go a little wider. His breath came out in a shaking line as he let go of my hand. It took visible effort for him to stop touching me.
He laughed, and that shook, too. “Is it my imagination or are you even more captivating now than you were a year ago?”
“Thank you, and I don’t know.” The white tiger inside me wanted to touch him. I took a step forward without realizing it. Victor actually backed up a step, before he caught himself.
“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” A woman came to lean against him in a possessive way that some girlfriends have. My white tiger didn’t like it, and I had a moment to fight the instinct to mark him as some sort of territory. I’d met him twice, and slept with him twice, and had sex only one of those times. I had no right to mark him as mine, but wasn’t I supposed to do exactly that? Shit, I didn’t know.