15

I SLAMMED EVERY shield I had in place, shut, tight, metal, closed. I thought metal, smooth and thick and impenetrable. I stared at the floor, afraid to meet anyone's eyes. Afraid of what I'd see in their faces, or what I wouldn't.

"Anita," Richard said, and his hand reached for me.

I stepped out of reach. I was shaking my head. I didn't know what I wanted out of this moment, didn't know what reaction would please me, and which one would piss me off. I'd hoped to keep it secret until I knew for sure. I did not want to open this can of emotional worms until it was a done deal.

It was Samuel who broke the silence. "Congratulations to both of you. A baby, joyous news indeed."

I turned slowly to look at him, because of anyone in the room I cared least what he thought about the news. Him, I could look at. Him, I could be angry with.

Sampson was already touching his father's shoulder. "Father, I think we should leave now."

Samuel was looking from his son, to me, to Jean-Claude, to most of the people around the room. He looked utterly confused. "But this is wonderful news, and you're all acting as if someone has died."

"Father," Sampson said, soft and warningly. He was looking at my face, and whatever he saw there made him grab his father's elbow and try to get him on his feet.

He stared at his son's hand until Sampson let it drop away. Samuel then met my gaze. His eyes didn't look friendly now. They looked older, full of some deep knowledge, and sad around the edges, and angry. "Why such anger, Anita?"

I started to count to twenty, knew it wouldn't be enough, and just said it, in a voice that was choking with anger, confusion. "Don't tell me how to feel, Samuel, you don't have that right."

He stood up, and pushed his son's hands away from him. "Think how powerful a child you and Jean-Claude could have."

"There's no guarantee it's his," I said.

"The odds are that if you are pregnant, it won't be any of the vampires," Richard said. His voice was low and careful, but there was something underneath all that that I hadn't wanted to hear--eagerness.

I turned to him, and I don't know what I would have said, or even done, because Jean-Claude was just suddenly there between us. "Do not do anything rash, ma petite."

"Rash, don't do anything rash!" I pulled away from him. "He's not unhappy about this and you're locked down so tight I don't know what you're feeling."

"I feel that anything I say, or do, in this moment, will upset you." It was the most diplomatic way I'd ever been told that I was a pain in the ass.

I fought the urge to scream at him. I managed a voice that was strangled low and tense with the effort not to yell. "Say something," I said.

"Are you with child?" he asked in that neutral, pleasant voice of his.

"I don't know, but I missed October."

Richard came closer and he tried for neutral, failed, but he tried. "Have you ever missed a whole month before?"

I shook my head. "No."

Emotions fought on his face, and finally he had to turn away, as if whatever expression he had, he was sure I wouldn't want to see it.

"Don't you dare be happy about this, damn it!"

He turned back, face mostly under control, but his eyes held that look. That soft I-love-you look that once was meant just for me, but which lately I hadn't seen much of. I'd seen lust, but not this.

"Would you prefer me to be angry, or sad?" he asked.

"No, yes, I don't know." There, that was the truth. "I don't know."

"I'm sorry," he said, and he looked it around the edges. "Sorry if I'm making this harder, but how could I be completely unhappy if we made a child together?"

He would pick the very worst way to say it. The way most guaranteed to panic me. "It's not a child, yet. It's a bunch of cells smaller than my thumb."

His eyes got more careful. "What are you saying, Anita?"

I hugged myself tight and wouldn't meet anyone's eyes. "I don't know what I'm saying." But I was beginning to have more sympathy with Ronnie's idea about just going away and making the choice without any of the men.

"Would you really be able to kill our baby?" he asked, and I didn't have to see his face to know he looked hurt; I could hear it in his voice.

"Mon ami, you put the cart before the horse. Let her find out if she is pregnant before we make plans." Jean-Claude tried to move between us again, tried to block my view of Richard, as if that would help.

Richard moved around him, so he could still see me. "Anita, could you really kill our baby?"

I wanted to scream yes, just to see the pain on his face, but on this I couldn't lie. I already knew the answer, I just didn't like it. "NO!" I yelled it, and the sound echoed against the stones without the hanging drapes to soften it.

Richard's face softened and he started to walk toward me, around Jean-Claude. The look on his face was almost beatific, as if all his dreams had come true. I felt as if I were suffocating in a nightmare, and he looked like that. I had to wipe that look off his face, I had to.

"What if it's not yours?" I asked, and my voice was ugly. I wanted it to hurt.

He hesitated, then got a look that was almost smug. "The odds are in my favor, Anita." He looked entirely too pleased with himself.

"Why, just because Jean-Claude and Asher, and hell, Damian are several hundred years old? That doesn't mean it's not theirs; look at Samuel. He has three sons, two separate pregnancies."

Richard started to frown. He wasn't walking closer now. Good.

Jean-Claude sighed, and stepped back as if he'd given up trying to stop the fight.

"And what about Micah and Nathaniel?" I asked. "They're not vampires and I've had more sex with them in the last two months than with you." I was happy when he flinched. Ugly, but true.

"Micah's fixed," he said, and his face darkened. "That leaves Nathaniel." There was such anger in those three words, that I wished I'd left it alone.

As if on cue, Micah and Nathaniel came out of the far hallway. They looked at all of us and Micah said, "Is this about what I think it's about?"

"You knew about the baby?" Richard asked.

"Are we sure?" Nathaniel asked.

"No," I said.

"You both knew?" Richard said, and his power started up again. I was suddenly standing too close to the metaphorical fire.

"Yes, we knew," Micah said.

"You told them before you told us?" Richard said, and he gestured at Jean-Claude.

"They live with me, Richard, it's harder to keep a secret from them. I didn't want any of you to know until I did a test. I didn't want to deal with all this crap, if I didn't have to."

"Let us calm down until we know for certain," Jean-Claude said.

"Doesn't it bother you that she told them before us?" Richard said.

"No, mon ami, it does not."

Richard glared at Micah and Nathaniel, but his gaze finally settled on Nathaniel. Not good. "You know that if she is pregnant, it's probably you, or me," Richard said. The words were neutral; the tone wasn't. The tone was a warning as clear as the heat rolling off his body.

Nathaniel had one of the most careful looks I'd ever seen on his face. He looked blank, pleasant, but not sorry, not submissive. Always before when dealing with Richard, Nathaniel had given off subservient vibes. Now, suddenly, there was nothing subservient about him. He might still bottom to me, but his days of doing it for Richard were over. It was there in the set of his shoulders, the eye contact he gave the bigger man. He wasn't being aggressive, but he wasn't giving off those subtle submissive signals either. His attitude said, clearly, he wasn't backing down. On one hand I was happy to see it, on the other hand it scared me. I'd seen Richard fight and I'd seen Nathaniel fight. I knew who would win.

Of course, if Richard started the fight, he would win the slugfest, but he'd lose the girl. I hoped he understood that.

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?"

"I don't know where he is," she said, gazing up at Jean-Claude.

He laid the barest touch on her shoulder. She looked past him to me. The look in those eyes had nothing to do with childhood.

"She's over three hundred years old, Jean-Claude, don't shush her away like she's really five."

He looked at me. "Valentina prefers to be treated as a child, it is her choice." He gazed down at her. "Don't you, ma dulce?" He lied with his voice, but he did not touch her as if she were a child.

She nodded, but those eyes gazed at me. Those eyes that held centuries of power trapped in a body too delicate to do most of the things in her mind. There were nights when I felt sorry for her; then there were moments, like now, when I wasn't certain that she'd have been sane even if she'd come over as an adult. There was simply something in her that wasn't quite right. It was sort of a chicken/egg question on Valentina's sanity. She'd never hurt me. Never done anything to purposefully frighten me. But she was on my short list of people that I wouldn't have trusted if I'd been helpless and alone with her. It had taken me months to realize that the reason she creeped me out was only partly the whole trapped-in-a-child's-body thing. Months to admit to myself that I was more afraid of Valentina than any other vamp who called Jean-Claude master.

"I think having a baby around would be fun," she said.

"Fun, how?" I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.

"I wouldn't be the smallest anymore," she said. It should have been an innocent statement, so why did I suddenly have the urge to tell her that if she tried to change my baby over into a vampire littler than herself, I would fucking kill her? Paranoid, or just cautious? So hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Richard moved closer to me, and I let him. I wasn't the only one who felt something was terribly wrong with her. He put his arm across my shoulders, and I let him do that, too. Staring into Valentina's eyes I would have let almost anyone comfort me.

"No," I said, slowly, "no, not too much time at the Circus."

Micah moved closer to us, not touching me, because Richard never seemed to like that. He'd tolerate Jean-Claude touching me with him, but almost no one else. But I wasn't the only one weirded out by the "little girl."

Jean-Claude looked back at us, still touching her shoulder. "I must find Bartolome, and chastise him for not watching her better."

Valentina pulled away from Jean-Claude, and he let her go. She started walking farther into the room. Richard drew me in tighter against his body. Micah moved so that he was standing almost in front of me, blocking her from coming closer to me. Normally, I might have told him it wasn't necessary, but I didn't like how interested she'd been in the whole idea of the baby.

Valentina walked around us. The tension in my shoulders eased. Richard's breath eased out in something like a sigh. Micah didn't relax. He stayed tense just in front of us, as if he didn't trust she wouldn't circle back. She walked toward Samuel and Sampson.

"What are you doing, little one?" Jean-Claude said.

She gave a perfect, and very low, curtsey, holding her little dress out with her hands, ankles crossing as she went down. "Greetings, Samuel, Master of Cape Cod."

"Greetings, Valentina," he said.

She offered him her hand. He took the tiny hand in his, and laid the barest touch of his mouth upon her wrist. It was all protocol, perfectly acceptable, but the gesture showed better than any words that he wasn't comfy with her either.

She turned to Sampson. She gazed up at him, her head tilted back, very childlike, but I would have bet anything I had that the searching look on her face wouldn't be childlike. I'd had her stare at me before, and knew that the face didn't match the intensity and personality in the eyes. "Is this your son?"

"Yes, his name is Sampson."

She held her tiny hand out to him, too. He took it, but seemed unsure what to do with it. "I am not a vampire," he said, "nor anyone's servant, or animal to call."

"But you are his son, his heir. I am just one more vampire. I am not even a true master." She was saying that he outranked her.

Sampson glanced at his father, who must have given him some look, because he raised the tiny hand to his mouth. He, like his father, did the minimum touch he could get away with. He, like his father, kept eye contact with her while he did it. It reminded me of how you bow on the mat in judo. You keep your eyes up as you do it, never looking away from your opponent, just in case. But there was a difference between the two men. One was a very master vampire. The other was not. He was part human and part mermaid, and maybe someday he would be more, but tonight, he wasn't.

"Pick me up," she said, in that high little-girl voice.

He picked her up and sat her in his lap. She cuddled against him. He was blinking out at the room, frowning. His face looked almost like he was in pain.

"Shit," I said softly. She had rolled him, rolled him with her eyes.

Jean-Claude said, "Valentina, he is our guest."

Samuel raised a hand up. "I run my kiss in the old way. He is my son, my eldest; if he cannot win free of a vampire who is not even a master..." He left the sentence unfinished.

"You make him earn his place constantly," Jean-Claude said.

Samuel nodded.

I'd never even heard of the rule he was talking about. I said so. "I don't even know this rule."

"It is a version of survival of the fittest, ma petite. If Sampson is not strong enough to break free, or avoid Valentina's trickery, then he is a little less worthy in his master's eyes. It is a way that some Masters of the City separate the weak from the strong. Those who fail these tests often are demoted, traded to other lands, or killed." His voice was matter-of-fact, but I knew him well enough to taste the faint disapproval. "Very few American masters run their lands with this rule."

"I am older than most of the American masters," Samuel said.

I looked at Jean-Claude and he met my look. "But she's our vampire, and we don't live by this rule."

Richard hugged me, one-armed, as if he were afraid of what I'd do, or say.

"If his father decrees that Sampson must break free of her gaze by himself, then it is so, but we will make it very clear to all our vampires that this gaze is illegal in our country. It is seen as coercion." He stared at Valentina as he said it.

She pouted her lower lip out at him, and snuggled in tighter to Sampson. He put his arms around her, as if in response to the cuddling, or maybe she'd used mind tricks. If she'd rolled him enough not to need words to boss him around, we were in deeper trouble than I'd thought. Because once vampires roll you that much, they own you. They can reclaim their victims at any time. They can stand under their windows and call them out into the night. Hell, some of them can call their victims across town like sleepwalkers. If Valentina had rolled him that badly, he'd give her blood anytime she asked. He'd have no choice.

I don't know what I would have done, but suddenly there was new energy in the room. The air smelled fresher, faintly of salt and sea. Sampson's eyes cleared, that confused, bemused look fading. His eyes changed from the hazel of his father's to the flat black of his mother's. He stared down at the vampire in his lap, and his face had a look that I'd seen before. It was a look that said his seemingly youthful face held wisdom decades beyond the outside packaging. He gazed down at Valentina with a face that showed he had lived every day of seventy years. That he was no more his twenty-something, nice-guy-next-door package than Valentina was a child.

He tried to lift her out of his lap, but she clung to him, playing the child for all she was worth. "Don't you like me, Sampson?"

He shook his head. "No," he said, "I do not like you."

She pouted at him, even managing to feign tears, as if he'd hurt her feelings. Maybe he had. Valentina was hard to figure.

He drew her away from his body, and set her firmly on the ground. "You will not be able to trick me again, for I felt your mind. You are not a child, Valentina. You do not think as a child." He shivered, rubbing his hands up and down his arms as if to cleanse them from the feel of holding her. "I saw what you wanted to do to me. What you tried to persuade me I wanted to do." He shivered again. "Your mind has begun to want things beyond your body's years. Pain is your substitute for sex."

She put her hands on her hips, and stomped her little foot. "I don't know what you are talking about. Perhaps it is you that desires such things." Then she turned to Jean-Claude. "Master, can you not find one among all the visitors who would let me hurt him? I miss it." She said it as if there were no contradiction in telling Sampson he was the pervert, and then asking to do what he'd accused her of wanting to do.

Jean-Claude sighed. "Asher, if you would take her back to Bartolome."

Asher pushed himself up from the chair where he'd gone nearly motionless during all the hoopla. But Nathaniel said, "I'll take her."

We all looked at him.

He smiled. "You need to talk vampire business with Samuel. Asher will be more useful for that than I will." He walked toward us to say good night, and Micah moved out of the way, so he could lean in toward me. Richard's arm was still holding me close to his body. He tensed, and moved as if he'd take me out of Nathaniel's reach.

Nathaniel touched his arm, and Richard froze. His power lashed out like lightning scoring along my skin.

"Ouch, Richard, that fucking hurt."

Nathaniel shivered. "That really did hurt." But his voice didn't sound like a complaint.

"Back up," Richard said, his voice holding an edge of growl. He was controlling his power enough so it didn't actively hurt me, but it was like cuddling next to a stove that you just knew was going to get too hot to touch soon.

Nathaniel smiled and pushed in against us both, pressing his chest against Richard's arm. Richard moved away, but he tried to take me with him, and frankly, I just didn't want to be in the middle of it. So I stopped moving, but Nathaniel was so close I couldn't step forward either. Richard had choices: pick me up, or hurt me to move me, or let me go, or move away without me, or stay where he was, with Nathaniel touching him.

Richard tried to move back, while I tried not to move, and Nathaniel just watched us, from an inch away. Richard wasn't willing to move without me, or leave me alone with Nathaniel. The symbolism was too raw for words.

Nathaniel spoke low and soft, his lavender eyes raised to the taller man's face, his chest almost pinning Richard's arm between us. "You're like a dog marking your territory. Maybe you should piss on her, so we'll all know she's yours."

I froze between them, because this was going to be bad.

Richard growled low and deep, the sound of it vibrating over my skin, and into Nathaniel's body. We both shivered, but I don't think it was for the same reasons.

"Stop it, both of you," I said.

"She's not a bone, that only one of us can have," Nathaniel said.

Richard growled again and this time Richard's power rippled along my skin like little slaps of electricity. Nathaniel and I spoke at the same time. I said, "That hurts"; Nathaniel said, "Yummy."

"You are such a freak," Richard said, almost a yell.

"Maybe, but this freak is willing to do for the woman he loves and his baby what you won't do."

Richard jerked away so suddenly, it made me stumble. Nathaniel caught me. But Richard backed up. Nathaniel backed him down not with power, but with truth.

Nathaniel held me, and I let him, because if I'd pulled away now, the whole show would have been wasted. I'd hung around the lycanthropes long enough to understand what was happening. Nathaniel, my submissive Nathaniel, was stepping up to bat. He was showing the most dominant person in my bed that he was a force to be reckoned with. Why tonight? Why did Nathaniel have to draw his line in the sand tonight? The baby, of course, the baby. Something about the whole baby question had made Nathaniel feel like he had to be more dominant. Or maybe he, like me, was just tired of watching Richard say he was the dominant sweetie in my life, but acting like he was my fuck buddy. Nothing wrong with a fuck buddy, but you can't be the love of someone's life and a fuck buddy. They are mutually exclusive.

Nathaniel held me, and I wrapped my arms around him, hiding my face against his chest, because I wasn't sure what expression was on my face. Nathaniel had stood up to Richard and won. What else was going to change just because of the possibility of a baby?

"I'll take Valentina. You guys stay and talk business."

"You're part of the business," Micah said from behind us.

"But you can fill me in later, and I'm not really going to have an opinion on the vampire stuff." He grinned. "I'm also the least likely to object to anyone Anita is willing to take as a pomme, or a lover." He kissed me on the forehead, and whispered, "Besides, Valentina doesn't bother me."

I looked up at him. "And that bothers me a little, that you're not creeped."

The grin softened to a smile. "I know." He kissed me on the mouth, soft, gentle. He pulled away, and I let him go, still not sure what had changed in him.

Valentina came to him, and he took her hand. He began to lead her toward the far hallway. She looked back and stuck her tongue out at us.

Claudia sent Lisandro to accompany them. Aloud, she said, "Make sure Bartolome isn't doing anything he shouldn't." But I was pretty sure after Valentina's show with Sampson, she just didn't trust any of the non-vamps alone with her. Me, either.