Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [58]
“Fibber?” I said.
“I’ve had sex with the two of you, remember. His hair is like fur on the skin.”
“Yeah, but it’s not as purely soft. It’s a different texture than yours.”
“Jean-Claude’s hair is soft.”
I frowned at him. “Yes, but not as soft as yours. Curly hair is never as soft as straight hair can be.”
“Asher’s hair is like foam.”
I frowned harder, and took back my hand, so I was just looking up at him. “I give you one compliment and you have to pick at it?”
“I’m sorry, but I just suddenly didn’t believe you.”
“I don’t lie during sex, Jason. I don’t say things I don’t mean, and I don’t fake anything.”
He lowered his face, so I had only his profile. It was a nice profile. “I’m sorry, Anita, this isn’t your issue, it’s mine.” He looked at me, and his eyes had begun to fade back to his normal, paler blue.
“What issue?” I asked.
“You’ve met my folks now. I’ve spent my life not being the person anyone wanted in their life. My dad wanted a different son, Anita. Do you know what it feels like to know that your dad is always wanting some other kind of son?”
“Not the son part,” I said.
His eyes intensified, getting that look of interest he got. “Did your dad want you to be a boy, or something?”
I smiled. “No, he was happy with me. I was still his hunting buddy, and we did all sorts of the guy stuff together.”
“Your stepmother, Judith,” he said.
“You are a little too smart sometimes.”
“Sorry.”
“They married when I was ten, and from the moment she came I was not good enough. Not blond enough, not girly enough, not nice enough, not cooperative enough, not the daughter she wanted.”
“She’s got a girl your age, right?”
“Yeah, Adriana. She’s the perfect daughter for Judith.”
“What’s she do?”
“She’s a lawyer, engaged to another lawyer.”
“Wow, a lawyer, and engaged to be married before thirty. Hard to compete with that,” Jason said.
“I figured out somewhere in my midteens that I couldn’t compete, so I stopped trying. You acted out your way, I had my own version.”
“Like what?” He lay down on his stomach, with his arms cradling his head, his face alive with attention. He wanted the sex, yes, but he wanted to learn more.
“I became the ultimate tomboy. I refused to wear a dress. I refused to play the game with Judith.”
“Did you do the whole black T-shirt and gloom?”
“Was I Goth?”
He nodded, head still cradled on his arms.
“Yeah, I guess so, but not really because it pleased me, more because it didn’t please her. I found the most offensive T-shirts I could get away with, and most of them came in black. But my friends in high school were the nice girls, not the death poetry writing crowd. I found them…tiresome.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d had real death in my life, and I thought most of them were pretenders.”
“You don’t have much patience with pretending, do you?”
“No.”
“But you could always tell yourself that Judith is the wicked stepmother.”
“Yeah, but Grandma Blake, who raised me for the two years before my father found Judith, well, that’s a different problem.”
“What sort of problem?”
“Remember, I saw ghosts in elementary school; by my early teens I’d accidentally started raising roadkill. I raised my dead spaniel from the grave at fourteen. My dad took me to see my mother’s mother, Grandma Flores, so I could learn to control it. But Grandma Blake didn’t want me to learn to control it. She was convinced that if we prayed hard enough, the evil would just go away.”
Jason looked at me, eyes a little wide. “She really believes that, even now?”
“I think so. I know she prays for my soul. I know she believes that raising the dead is evil. I know she believes that sleeping with vampires is a mortal sin.”
“How does she feel about shapeshifters?”
“Oh, you’re damned, too.”
“Does she know you’re living with two of them?”
“Nope.”
He grinned at me. “Saving the news for a moment when it will bother her the most?”
“No, I plan to never tell my family.”
He looked at me. “You’re never going home for the holidays and taking anyone with you?”
I sighed. “Who would I take?”
He seemed to think about that. “The vampires are