Circus of the Damned - Laurell K. Hamilton [31]
Goosebumps rolled up my arms and down my chest. My nipples hardened as if he had touched them. My stomach clenched with a need that had nothing to do with blood.
“Stop it!”
“I am doing nothing, ma petite. It is your own desire that rolls over your skin, not mine.”
I swallowed and had to look away from him. Okay, I lusted after him. Great, fine, it didn’t mean a thing. Ri-ight. I scooted away from him, putting my back to the wall, not looking at him as I spoke. “I came here tonight for information, not to play footsie with the Master of the City.”
Richard was just sitting there, meeting my eyes. There was no embarrassment, just interest, as if he didn’t know quite what I was. It wasn’t an unfriendly look.
“Footsie,” Jean-Claude said. I didn’t need to see his face to hear the smile in his voice.
“You know what I mean.”
“I’ve never heard it called ‘footsie’ before.”
“Stop doing that.”
“What?”
I glared at him, but his eyes were sparkling with laughter. A slow smile touched his lips. He looked very human just then.
“What did you want to discuss, ma petite? It must be something very important to make you come near me voluntarily.”
I searched his face for mockery, or anger, or anything, but his face was as smooth and pleasant as carved marble. The smile, the sparkling humor in his eyes, was like a mask. I had no way of telling what lay underneath. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly through my mouth. “Alright. Where were you last night?” I looked at his face, trying to catch any change of expression.
“Here,” he said.
“All night?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
“Can you prove it?”
The smile widened. “Do I need to?”
“Maybe,” I said.
He shook his head. “Coyness, from you, ma petite. It does not become you.”
So much for being slick and trying to pull information from the Master. “Are you sure you want this discussed in public?”
“You mean Richard?”
“Yes.”
“Richard and I have no secrets from one another, ma petite. He is my human hands and eyes, since you refuse to be.”
“What’s that mean? I thought you could only have one human servant at a time.”
“So you admit it.” His voice held a slow curl of triumph.
“This isn’t a game, Jean-Claude. People died tonight.”
“Believe me, ma petite, whether you take the last marks and become my servant in more than name is no game to me.”
“There was a murder last night,” I said. Maybe if I concentrated just on the crime, on my job, I could avoid the verbal pitfalls.
“And?” he prompted.
“It was a vampire victim.”
“Ah,” he said, “my part in this becomes clear.”
“I’m glad you find it funny,” I said.
“Dying from vampire bites is only temporarily fatal, ma petite. Wait until the third night when the victim rises, then question him.” The humor died from his eyes. “What is it that you are not telling me?”
“I found at least five different bite radiuses on the victim.”
Something flickered behind his eyes. I wasn’t sure what, but it was real emotion. Surprise, fear, guilt? Something.
“So you are looking for a rogue master vampire.”
“Yep. Know any?”
He laughed. His whole face lit up from the inside, as if someone had lit a candle behind his skin. In one wild moment he was so beautiful, it made my chest ache. But it wasn’t beauty that made me want to touch it. I remembered a Bengal tiger that I’d seen once in a zoo. It was big enough to ride on like a pony. Its fur was orange, black, cream, oyster-shell white. Its eyes were gold. The heavy paws wider than my outspread hand paced, paced, back and forth, back and forth, until it had worn a path in the dirt. Some genius had put one barred wall so close to the fence that held back the crowd, I could have reached through and touched the tiger easily. I had to ball my hands into fists and shove them in my pockets to keep from reaching through those bars and petting that tiger. It was so close, so beautiful,