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16
I DON'T KNOW what would have happened. Something bad, almost certainly, but help came. "You guys are all being assholes." It was Claudia.
Everyone turned to look at her.
"How dare you make this about some macho ego shit. Can't you see she's scared?" She gestured in my direction. "Ulfric, if you think a baby will make her give up the police work and the execution work, or the zombie raising, you're wrong. Do you see a baby fitting into Anita's life? Are you going to quit work and stay home and play nanny, because Anita sure isn't."
We all looked at Richard. He was scowling at her.
"Well," she said, "are you? Are you willing to completely disrupt your life if it's yours?"
He scowled harder. "I don't know," he said, finally.
"I will." Nathaniel's voice, turning us all back to him. "I'm already the wife, why not the mother?"
"Have you ever taken care of a baby?" Claudia asked.
He shrugged. "No."
"I had four younger brothers, trust me, it's harder than it looks."
"I will," Micah said. "Whatever Anita wants, or needs."
"Stop being perfect," Richard said.
"You work days, Richard," Nathaniel said, "and you work a regular weekday. I can make more part-time at Guilty Pleasures than any teacher's salary I've ever heard of."
"So you'd be a good provider," Richard said, and his voice was full of scorn.
Nathaniel smiled, and shook his head. "Anita provides for herself just fine. She doesn't need my money. What I meant was that dropping my work hours down won't affect my job that much. It would ruin yours."
Richard didn't want to be mollified. He wanted to be angry, so he turned to Micah. "And what about you? You work as many hours as Anita does."
"I would need more help running the hotline and the coalition. We would have nearly a year to train someone to help me, or even replace me, if that's what was needed."
"It can't be your baby," Richard said.
"Genetically, no."
"What does that mean, genetically?"
"It means that just because it's not blood of my blood doesn't mean it's not mine. Ours."
"Yours and Anita's," and the words singed along my skin. So much power, so much anger, it actually hurt.
"No," Micah said, "Anita's and Nathaniel's, and Jean-Claude's, and Asher's and Damian's and yours, and mine. Leaving a little bit of sperm behind doesn't make you a father. It's what you do afterward, Richard."
"You can't bring up a baby with seven fathers."
"Call it what you like," Micah said, "but the only two men in this room able to totally disrupt their lives if there is a baby are Nathaniel and me." He looked at Jean-Claude. "Or am I wrong?"
Jean-Claude smiled at him. "No, mon chat, you are not. I do not believe that a baby could spend all its time in the underground of the Circus of the Damned and be"--he seemed to search for a word--"well-balanced. Visits, oui, many visits, but the world I have built here is not"--again he searched for a word--"conducive to the upbringing of small children."
"I'm a small child," came a small sweet voice from behind us. Apparently we'd all been so caught up that we hadn't heard the approach of the tiny girl. Of course, Valentina was a vampire, and the undead are quiet bastards.
Her dark hair curled just below her ears. She'd cut it recently, to look more modern. Her face was round, and soft, not long past being a baby. She was five, and would always be five, at least physically. She was wearing a red dress with white tights, and little white patent leather shoes. When she came to us she'd worn nothing designed after 1800. She still wouldn't wear pants or shorts, because it wasn't ladylike, but she had arrived in the twentieth century, at least in fashion. She blinked large dark eyes at us, her face perfectly innocent. At Belle's court she had tortured people for information, for punishment, and because she enjoyed it, Jean-Claude told me that all the child vampires go mad eventually. It was why it was against their laws to bring anyone over before puberty.
Valentina had been made by a pedophile who happened to be a vampire. He had been given an isolated territory, and there he had made his own special playmates for almost fifty years before someone discovered what he was doing. Valentina had been one of the lucky ones. He'd brought her over, but hadn't made her one of his brides, yet. Most of his "brides" and "grooms" had to be destroyed. Too mad, too savage, for anything else. That one of "her" vampires had done such things was one of her few things that Belle Morte seemed to feel guilty about.
"Yes," Jean-Claude said, "of course you are. You are our petite fleur." He moved forward as if he would herd her out of earshot of the grown-up talk. She may have looked five, but she was over three hundred years old. The body was a child's, the mind was not. But unless we were careful, most of us had a tendency to treat her like she looked, not like she thought.
She turned that tiny face to mine, with those solemn eyes. "Are you going to have a baby?"
"Maybe," I said.
She smiled, flashing fangs as delicate as needles. "I would have someone to play with."
Jean-Claude started to take her hand, then hesitated in midgesture. He had suffered at Valentina's hands more than once. He never truly forgot she was a monster. He said, "Where is Bartolome? He's supposed to be watching you today, isn't he?"
