Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [50]
21
WE LET THE waiter, if that’s the term for room service, put the food on the dining table. I’d never been in a hotel room that had a full-size table for eating before. Since the room was in his name, Jason signed the check and figured out the tip. I just sat there and let them do it. I was thinking, or trying not to think.
The chicken sandwich wasn’t bad. The French fries that came with it were excellent. Jason seemed to be enjoying his Caesar and chicken. Once I would have let the conversation stay dead, but I’d grown up a little since then. Though I couldn’t help thinking that the last time I’d gone out of town with one of my guys it had been Micah, and we had had an uncomfortable and revealing conversation, too. What was it about being alone in hotel rooms with them? Maybe it was that whole alone thing. Maybe.
“Some of the other guys in St. Louis have suggested that everyone who is a regular in my bed grows in power.”
Jason looked at me, a bite halfway to his mouth. He put the fork down and looked surprised. “I was going to drop the conversation, and let you think about what I’d said.”
I shook my head. “If there is even a whisper that some of the other masters are thinking if they took me over, they’d be more powerful than Jean-Claude, we need to nip that idea in the bud. I’ve had vampire marks forced on me before and I didn’t like it. I’ve had a Master of the City do it, a couple of times. It’s pretty horrible. I so do not want to go through that, ever again.”
He took a bite of his chicken and looked at me. Those spring-sky eyes showed every bit of shrewd intelligence, all the deep thinking that he normally hid behind the flirting and the smiles. “You’re right, but I thought it would take you a few days of thinking it through before you realized how bad it could get.”
I shrugged. “Maybe I’m growing up, finally.”
He grinned at me. “You are one of the most grown-up people I know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You have a lot of trouble letting yourself enjoy yourself. You don’t play well.”
“I think a lot of the guys in St. Louis would say I play very well.”
He actually almost looked embarrassed, but fought it off. “You are an amazing bed partner, Anita, but you don’t have any hobbies. You don’t do anything to relax except sex.”
“I like going to the firing range.”
He tsked and wagged his fork at me. “That’s work, and you know it. You’re not a gun nut like Edward and his friend Otto, or Olaf, or whatever secret identity he’s using.”
I couldn’t argue that, so I didn’t try. I went back to concentrating on my food.
“So that’s it, you make one comment and it’s no more talk,” he said.
“Hey, I put the ball in play, you can pick it up, or you can let it sit there. I’ve been brave, I restarted a conversation that I don’t want to have; now it’s your turn.”
He smiled, and put his silverware beside his plate. His salad was mostly gone. He, like most men in his age group and younger, could eat damn fast when they wanted to, or weren’t forcing themselves to slow down.
I still had most of my sandwich left. Of course, the French fries were crisp and yummy, which was also distracting me from the chicken. Was I concentrating on the food so I wouldn’t concentrate on the conversation? Maybe, but not on purpose.
“Okay,” Jason said, “we have to help Jean-Claude appear as powerful as he is, or more so.”
“How do we do that?” I asked. I ate French fries while we talked. Jason had left some of his chicken and a lot of his grilled veggies.
“I’m not sure, but first we have to put a stop to this new rumor about us.”
“How do we do that?”
“I think we need a reporter who gets an exclusive that we can trust.”
“No one I saw here today is trustworthy.”
“I was thinking of a fellow werewolf and St. Louisian.”
I stopped eating and blinked at him. “Irving had to back off on all the exclusives I was giving him, because people