48

THE HARLEQUIN'S GOLD tiger went back to his master. Jake and Jade stayed with us. Jake joined us in the gym like all the good guards. Jade joined us in the gym, too, but she's not a guard. She can fight and she's fearsomely good, but the centuries of abuse have left her with a victim's mentality, and that doesn't make a good guard. Maybe I can introduce her to Richard's therapist?

Cynric, who wants to be called Cyn, pronounced Sin, stayed in St. Louis. He's the only blue tiger we have and we need him close to us. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but unless I want to divide the female blue tiger from her master, who she also loves, Cyn is the only one we have to bind to us. He's hitting the gym, and we're looking at enrolling him in his last year of high school. When I realized he was a junior I was totally creeped, but he's legal, and his guardians Max and Bibiana did what they had to do to make his stay with us legally okay. I'm still working on my issues with it all. But one problem at a time.

They found the Master of Atlanta by using the cadaver dogs like I'd suggested. They fried him with an exterminator team and it made international news. He'd slaughtered another dozen people before they tracked him down. The few vampires that survived his death are in need of a new Master of the City. Jean-Claude and I are debating on who to send. Meng Die wants it to be her. She's friendlier to me since we helped her up her power level. What she actually said was, "When you dance with the devil, it might as well be a devil who can give you your own corner of hell to rule." Not a rousing endorsement, but it'll do.

Richard has continued to be okay. I learned that the three men who tried to kill him were dead. I'd assumed the guards that we sent to rescue him had killed them, but they'd only helped dispose of the bodies. Richard as his wolf had hunted them through the woods and killed them. Jean-Claude  and I held him one night while he cried about that. He didn't cry about killing them so much as about how much he enjoyed killing them. In our ways, all three of us worry that we will be the monster.

It turned out that the effects of the ardeur and some of the odd pairings wore off. We offered every woman not on birth control a morning-after pill. I was thankful once again that I was on the pill. Condoms for me were an extra protection - not my only one. J.J. is back in New York, but she's also back to being in love only with Jason. Bianca, the swanmane, is a little unhappy about that, but it's not the ardeur that makes her miss J.J. She just liked J. J., and who could blame her?

Jake helped us hunt Padma, Master of Beasts. It wasn't that hard to break the Mother's hold on him. Jake thinks it worked so well because my power is similar to his. I'm not so sure. It was too easy, as the old saying goes. But we took our victory, and the Dragon and the Traveller are sending people of their line to St. Louis, so if the Mother does try to take them over we can have a leg up on breaking them free. We can't find the Morte d'Amour. He still carries Marmee Noir inside him, but he's stopped trying to take us over. If I didn't know better I'd say he, and she, were afraid of us. He took over another of his descendants in Europe. The vampires killed nearly seventy people before they were stopped by the army. Countries where vampires are still illegal don't have legal vampire executioners. They usually call in what amounts to the National Guard.

Some tigers of every color stayed with us. We have enough blood donors that most of our vampires can feed on shapeshifters. We're the only vampire kiss in the country that can boast such rich food for all our bloodsuckers.

I still miss windows and light and air, but until we find and free the Lover of Death, the Circus of the Damned is the safest place to be. We're doing the best to make it home.

I've rearranged my schedule so that I have three afternoons a week free of clients, so I can train with the guards. Nathaniel tries to have coffee ready for me in the kitchen when I come home so we have a few minutes to visit. One afternoon Matthew was at the kitchen table drinking milk and eating a freshly made peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

"Hey, Matthew," I said, and made sure my suit jacket was lying flat over my gun so I wouldn't flash.

"Hey, 'Nita," he said, with a mouthful of sandwich. He stood up in his  chair and raised his arms for me to pick him up. He puckered up for a kiss and I gave him one. He got lipstick and I got grape jelly.

I went to Nathaniel and started to kiss him, then remembered Matthew's comment at the dance recital: All the big boys kiss you, 'Nita.

Nathaniel gave me a puzzled look and then kissed me, and I kissed him back, because I didn't know what else to do. Besides, the smell of his skin made me feel better than the smell of the coffee he handed me.

Nathaniel sat down at the table near Matthew, and I did, too. "Monica's taking a deposition out of state. It's apparently a witness they've been searching for on a fraud case."

I sat down at the table and sniffed the coffee. It smelled good. "How long is she gone for?"

"Overnight. We drop him at preschool tomorrow, and she'll pick him up like normal."

The guards spilled into the kitchen. It was shift change. They'd get coffee and maybe a snack and then we'd all go work out. The guards called, "Hey, kiddo." Lisandro, who had two little ones of his own, ruffled Matthew's auburn curls. He chattered with them, excited, like it was all normal. I took off my jacket, because I wanted to and every guard was armed to the teeth and not hiding it. My little gun didn't seem so bad.

He called out to Devil. "Can I come watch you practice?"

"Sure," he said, and he leaned over and kissed me hi. So did Nicky. All the big boys kiss 'Nita.

When everyone had had coffee or water, or just a few minutes to decompress, we all got up and went for the gym. We moved surrounded by muscular armed and dangerous men. Matthew took my hand and Nathaniel's. "What are we reading tonight, Natty?" he asked.

"Goodnight Moon?"

"No, that's a little kid's book. I'm big now."

Nathaniel smiled and said, "How about Peter Pan?"

"You mean like the cartoon?"

He smiled wider. "Yeah, like the cartoon."

"I like Peter Pan, he can fly!"

Peter Pan was the first book Micah, Nathaniel, and I ever read to each other, and now we'd read it to Matthew. I wasn't sure I was comfortable with everything Matthew saw and learned with us, but his mother was okay with it. Who was I to bitch?

What bothers me most about keeping Matthew is that Nathaniel is starting to hint that maybe we could have a rug rat of our own. Me, a mom? So not happening. But if he keeps hinting about kids, he may talk me into that puppy he's been wanting.

I can see us with a puppy, but a baby? Not only no, but hell no. I'm a U.S. Marshal, a legal vampire executioner, and I raise the dead for a living. None of those jobs would work with a baby, and not even the thought of having Nathaniel's lavender eyes staring up at me from some curly-haired moppet is enough to change that. Besides, brown beats light-colored eyes genetically. I'd more likely be staring into a pair of my own dark brown, and I can see that every time I look in a mirror. I'm not fond enough of my own eyes to want to see them in someone else's face.