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Officer Maric must have heard, because he said, “This is ridiculous, I know who you are and you’re the victim here, not the perp.”
Nicky turned us both toward him, guiding me with his hand on my arm. Maric had the handcuff key ready to go. I should have asked if he was going to get in trouble, but he was a grown-up cop and could make his own decisions; besides, I wanted my hands free. I wanted to touch Jean-Claude to see for myself that he wasn’t hurt. Sometimes seeing isn’t enough; I needed to touch something to believe it was real. Maybe that was the fear talking, because underneath all the bravery was the thought over and over that they’d tried to throw holy water on Jean-Claude. I had the memory of Wicked’s face, him screaming. I wasn’t afraid of my family anymore. If Jean-Claudewas all right, then it didn’t matter. I had to face the Wicked Truth injured protecting us, their beauty scarred maybe forever. They wanted to see me before they’d go to the hospital. What comfort could I give them? Ethan whispered through my head,Hurry. The cuffs came off and I fought the urge to rub them; never let them see they’d hurt you. That was the rule, right?
16
Ethan met usat the door with my shoes, which I let him help me put on now that my hands were free to catch me in case I fell. I put my hand on his shoulder as he knelt down and slipped the shoes on. I was staring at the wreck of the restaurant. Tables were overturned. Paramedics were clustered around two different areas; there were more uniformed cops inside, and a lot more of our black-shirted security guards. They must have come in while my view had been limited to Linley’s shoes. A little bit more tension eased as I recognized familiar and trusted faces.
“It’s like the prince inCinderella,” a woman’s voice said. I turned to find Judith standing nearby.
“What?” I asked, as Ethan stood up from helping me with my shoes, which gave me a clue what she was talking about.
I wanted to yell at her, that this wasn’t a fairy tale, and why would she say that, but I saw the fear in her eyes, the tightness around the smile, the way she was hugging herself. She was trying to lighten the mood to make me feel better. It wasn’t the right way to soothe me, but she was trying. She’d left my dad wherever he was in the crowd to come and try to make me feel better. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t understand she was doing it all wrong, and I wasn’t a child to yell at her for not being the mother I wanted.
“They told me that Wicked and Truth won’t go to the hospital until they’ve talked to me.”
The tightness around her eyes and mouth deepened. She looked her age for a second even under all the great makeup. Her eyes were shiny not with power, but with tears. She nodded a little too rapidly, then pointed toward the cluster in the middle of the room. Andria came to stand beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders.
“They’re asking for you,” Andria said, and her makeup was smeared as if she’d been rubbing at it. Her dress looked…wet. What had been happening while I was trapped outside?
“We poured water over the wounds, tried to rinse the holy water out. Dad said treat it like any other caustic substance that wasn’t water reactive, but be prepared, Anita,” Andria said.
“Dad helped do first aid on them?”
She nodded.
“Your father wouldn’t stand there and let them suffer if he could help,” Judith said.
I didn’t believe that, in fact I thought he’d use the holy water burning their flesh as more proof that vampires were demonic monsters. I didn’t say it out loud, because maybe it wasn’t true, and I would not be the one who made things worse again tonight. So I nodded at her, and Ethan and Nicky moved me forward through the crowd, but our security started to collect around us like particles attracted to us, so we moved in a cluster of black-clothed people by the time we got to Jean-Claude.
He’d lost his jacket somewhere, so that all I could see was the royal blue shirt with its round collar that seemed to frame his face so that his eyes were even bluer. I stared at his face, as perfect and impossibly beautiful as ever. My chest and throat were suddenly tight, my eyes burning. I knew as soon as he held me the tears would flow and there wasn’t anything I could do about it, and for once I didn’t care if I cried with other cops around.
Ethan stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “You can’t touch him until you’ve showered the holy water off.”
That stopped me dead in my tracks. I stared across the room at Jean-Claude; my face must have shown the horror I felt at the thought of accidentally doing to him what I’d done to the vampire that attacked us, except I wouldn’t have put my arm into his throat, I’d have kissed him. Jesus.
“It’s okay, Anita,” Ethan said, “you’ll shower and be fine.”
Jean-Claude was walking toward us. I hadn’t realized I was backing up away from him until I smacked into Nicky. He held me and whispered, “We won’t let you accidentally hurt anyone.”
I had to crane my neck straight up to see his face. He kissed my forehead because that was the most he could reach at that angle. He meant it to be reassuring but now all I could think of…“You and Ethan will both need to shower because you’ve touched me.”
Nicky grinned down at me. “Showering together isn’t a hardship.” For once I didn’t smile back, because I felt like Typhoid Mary; everything I touched was contaminated for any vampire.
“Ma petite.”
I looked to his voice and there he was, standing just out of reach of me. Kaazim and Jake stepped between us, as if they were afraid we’d forget and touch each other. They didn’t have to worry about me; I was afraid to touch Jean-Claude or any other vampire until I’d cleaned off the remnants of the holy water.
“This is unnecessary,” Jean-Claude said.
Jake turned his white, brown-haired, average-looking self toward Jean-Claude. Kaazim turned his dark, black-haired, only-average-in-the-Middle-East self toward me. “We know how drawn you are to each other,” Kaazim said, and his voice held more of his original accent than normal, which meant he was more emotionally overwrought than his calm demeanor was showing.
“I think we can resist until I know I’m not a danger to Jean-Claude.”
“I’m sure you can,” Jake said, peering over Kaazim’s head at me.They both had brown eyes, but Jake’s eyes were a medium brown like most things about him. He was the perfect spy anywhere white was the main physical appearance. Kaazim’s eyes were a brown so dark they looked black unless the light was a lot stronger than the restaurant lights. I thought of him as exotic, and Jake as bland, but that was my preconceived idea of what normal was; in other parts of the world Jake would have been the exotic standout and Kaazim the norm.
“But we will be more cautious than we have been with safety for both of you,” Kaazim said, and something about the way he said it made me ask, “What does that mean exactly?”
Jake answered, “It means that there will be at least four bodyguards apiece for our king and queen from now on.”
