Burnt Offerings - Laurell K. Hamilton [112]
“But where is it going?”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the couch. “Anita, you make your life harder than it has to be.” She opened her eyes and moved just her head so she could look at me and still slump. “Why can’t a relationship just be what it is? Why does everything with you have to be so damn serious?”
I folded my arms over my stomach and stared at her. If I thought I was going to stare her down, I was wrong. I looked away first. “It is serious or should be.”
“Why?” she said.
I was finally reduced to shrugging. If I hadn’t been having sex with a vampire out of wedlock, I’d have had some moral high ground to stand on. As it was, I had nothing to fight back with. I’d been virtuous for so long, but when I lost it, I lost it big time. From celibacy to fucking the undead. If I’d still been Catholic, it would have been enough to get me excommunicated. Of course, being an Animator was enough to get me excommunicated. Lucky for me I was Protestant.
“You want some advice from your Auntie Ronnie?”
That made me smile, a small smile, but it was better than nothing. “What advice?”
“Go upstairs and join that man in the shower.”
I looked at her, suitably scandalized. The fact that I’d been pretty much fantasizing about doing just that not ten minutes ago only made it more embarrassing. “You saw him in the kitchen, Ronnie. I don’t think he’s in a co-ed shower sort of mood.”
A look came into her eyes that suddenly made me feel young or maybe naive. “You strip off and surprise him, and he won’t kick you out. You don’t get that kind of anger without heat. He wants you as badly as you want him. Just give into it, girlfriend.”
I shook my head.
She sighed. “Why not?”
“A thousand things, but mainly, Jean-Claude.”
“Dump him,” she said.
I laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“Is he really that good? So good that you couldn’t give him up?”
I thought about that for a minute and didn’t know what to say. It finally boiled down to one thing, and I said it out loud. “I’m not sure there are enough white roses in the world to make me forget Richard.” I held up a hand before she could interrupt. “But I’m not sure there are enough cozy afternoons in all eternity to make me forget Jean-Claude.”
She sat up straight on the couch, staring at me. A look almost of sorrow filled her eyes. “You mean that, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Ronnie shook her head. “Jesus, Anita, you are screwed.”
That made me laugh, because she was right. It was either cry or laugh about it, and Richard had gotten all the tears he was getting from me for one day.
34
THE PHONE RANG, and I jumped. Now that the danger was over, I could be jumpy. I went into the kitchen and picked up the phone. Before I could even answer, I heard Dolph’s voice. “Anita, you okay?”
“The police grapevine is even faster than I thought,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
I told him what I’d told the 911 operator.
“I didn’t know,” Dolph said.
“Then why did you want to know if I was okay?”
“Nearly every vampire-owned business or house in the city was hit about the same time this morning. They fire-bombed the Church of Eternal Life, and we’ve had one-on-one hits on non-vamps all over the city.”
Fear rushed through me like fine champagne, useless adrenaline with nowhere to go. I had a lot of friends that were undead, not just Jean-Claude. “Dead Dave’s, has it been hit?”
“I know Dave resents being kicked off the force after he…died, but we take care of our own. His bar’s got a uniformed guard until we find out what the hell is going on. We got the arsonist before he could do more than smoke up an outside wall.”
I knew that only the bad vamps were at the Circus, but Dolph didn’t. He might find it strange if I didn’t ask. “The Circus?”
“They defended themselves against a couple of arsonists. Why didn’t you ask about the love of your life, first, Anita? Isn’t he home?”
Dolph asked like he already knew, which could mean he knew or it could mean he was fishing.