Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [710]
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,