Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [69]
What do you wear to a bachelorette party for the future daughter-in-law of one of the richest men in a given state, who is also a presidential hopeful? I’d brought nice businessy clothes and comfortable clothes, and a lot of weapons. The choices were limited in everything except armament.
They were Jason’s friends, so I let him choose. I know, if the girl union ever hears that I asked my straight male friend to dress me for a party I’ll get my union card yanked, but hey, left to my own devices I’d have grabbed jeans, a T-shirt, my jogging shoes, and an extra gun. Maybe a couple of knives for added comfort.
Jason didn’t think the bachelorette party would get that out of hand, but I remembered the last bachelorette party I’d gone to. It had been my friend Catherine’s, and it had gotten so out of hand that what started that night almost got me killed.
Jason had said, “There won’t be vampire strippers at this party, Anita. I think you and I together can handle the normal humans.”
He had a point, but…we compromised. I switched the Browning from its more hidden location at the small of my back to its normal shoulder holster rig. I put a nice black suit jacket over a perfectly red T-shirt and nice blue jeans. My badge went in the jacket pocket. The Nikes gave way to a pair of short boots. I added knife sheaths in two wrist sheaths under the jacket.
Jason had protested, but I’d told him the truth. “I won’t be able to take off the jacket or I’ll flash the gun, so I might as well have my knives.”
“You’re not wearing the big-ass knife that sits at your spine, are you?”
“No,” I said, “I left it at home, thank you. I didn’t think your family was that dangerous.”
We’d tried again to get Shadwell and Rowe to step out of the room, but they had said they couldn’t disobey a direct order, and if they left their posts, they would lose their jobs. Fine, they had watched the negotiations. It had strained their professional bodyguard blankness to its limit, I think. At least Rowe had given me wide eyes a few times. Jason and I had to take turns changing clothes in the bathroom.
I was finally dressed, and armed, and sitting in one of the room’s many purple chairs waiting for Jason to finish changing. I’d gotten my cross out of the bedside table, and it was pretty visible against the shirt. What wasn’t visible was the charm under my shirt. I wore it almost all the time, too. But the cross was a religious symbol and protection against bad vampires. The ancient charm was protection against only one vampire—the Mother of All Vampires, who’d taken an unhealthy interest in me a few months ago. The charm was made of metal so ancient it bent if I pressed against a hard surface. It bore magical symbols so old that I had found no human able to read it. But there were vampires who could, because that was who had given it to me. They’d given it to me to keep Marmee Noir from using my necromancy to wake herself up and become their queen again.
Shad and Rowe tried to not look at me. It was sort of a very mild version of what the guards do outside Buckingham Palace. Duty first and foremost, nothing else exists. Once I would have left them alone, but first, I was a girl, and that meant I felt damn near compelled to talk to anyone in a silent room, and second, I just wanted to yank their chain. Maybe I’d been hanging around with Jason too long.
“How long have you been out of the military, Shadwell?”
His body reacted, but not his face, a stiffening of the shoulders, the spine. “Haircut?” he said.
“That and you just don’t taste like a civilian.”
He turned those pale eyes to me behind their wire frames. It was not a friendly look, or an unfriendly one, more neutral. “Two years.”
Rowe looked at me.
I fought not to smile. God, he was still so bright and shiny. “I can’t peg you, Rowe. You don’t taste like military, or cop, but you taste like something that isn’t civvie.”
He grinned at me, eyes