What I needed to be doing was finding out how many other animal groups were having trouble with the ancient wereanimals I’d casually forced into their groups when we brought the Harlequin vampires and their animals to St. Louis. Or trying to figure out anything that would help us find and set free the zombies being used online for those horrible films, though honestly the biggest hope for locating them was the FBI cyber division. Once they narrowed the location I might be able to locate them if I was close enough to them geographically, but an entire country and possibly countries away was beyond even my necromancy.
“Ma petite . . .”
I startled and turned to Jean-Claude, who was draped artfully beside me on the couch. I was curled up on the couch beside him; I didn’t really sit artfully on couches, my legs were usually too short for the graceful slouch he could manage.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t . . . I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
The woman sitting beside me raised an eyebrow that went perfectly with the cynical expression in her blue-gray eyes. “I don’t think you really care what I was saying.”
I turned more fully toward her, my back resting in the crook of Jean-Claude’s arm. “I really am sorry, but I was thinking about a case at work. Sometimes I have trouble leaving it at the office.”
She pushed a strand of her short, pale blue hair back behind her ear and studied my face, as if she didn’t believe me. Her hair was very short, just barely below her ears, but with strands of it tracing the strong oval of her jawline. The pale blue color was natural, not dyed, and the blue-gray eyes were tiger eyes in her human face. Fortune was the last female of the blue tiger clan left on earth as far as we knew. She was five-ten, which meant when she first hit her height as a young adult she must have been a giant among the men, let alone the women. People just hadn’t been that tall over a few thousand years ago. Okay, I didn’t know for certain how old she was, but necromancy let me know how old her master was, and if her master was over two thousand, then she had to be pushing the same.
“You really don’t want to be doing this, so why did you agree to it?” she asked.
I didn’t owe her the truth, so . . . “According to the prophecy that the clan tigers have been keeping, if I don’t marry one of you, then the Mother of All Darkness could come back to life. I don’t really want that to happen, do you?”
Her eyes narrowed, and I realized that even her eyelashes were a pale powder blue. Cynric’s eyelashes were black, weren’t they? Could they possibly be a dark navy blue so that I’d only assumed they were black? It made me want to get him and make him stand with the light behind so I could double-check.
“Do you believe that part of the prophecy?”
“A lot of it has come true recently; don’t you believe in it?”
She smiled and it was an age-weary smile, as if she’d seen everything and been impressed by none of it. “Answering the question with a question means I can’t smell if you’re lying.”
I shrugged, and smiled back at her. “I really was thinking about work.”
“Zombies or police work?”
“Both, actually; the police came to me for my expertise.”
“In what capacity?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, but it’s an ongoing investigation. I can’t discuss details.”
“I can’t tell if you’re lying; your heart rate doesn’t change, even your scent stayed the same. It takes a very experienced wereanimal to lie with the smell of their skin.”
“Since I’m technically not a wereanimal, maybe I’m just telling the truth?”
A brunette vampire who was only a couple of inches taller than me, five-six at best, came to stand in front of us. Her smile was cynical, too, but there was a shine of humor in the rich blue of her cornflower eyes. “Fortune and I think you just agreed to meet with female tigers to stop your men from complaining when you add another male to your harem.”
I laughed and glanced at the woman beside me, then back to her vampire master. “Really, so why did you both agree to come if you thought it was pointless?”
Jean-Claude stroked my shoulder with the hand across my shoulders. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to soothe me or himself. I hadn’t even done anything that rude yet.
“When the king requests your presence, you don’t disappoint him,” she said.
“Even if you think it’s a waste of time,” I said.
She grinned wide enough to flash one delicate fang and show that she had a dimple in one cheek. Her blond hair was wavy enough that it was like big, loose curls to her shoulders. “Most things that kings want are a waste of time.” She did a low sweeping bow to Jean-Claude, but the dimpled grin never wavered.
“I do not believe that I have known as many kings as you have, Echo, but I cannot disagree with your statement. I swear to you that I believed ma petite was in earnest or I would not have called you in from your tasks.”
“May I sit down?”
“You do not need to ask for permission to sit next to your own tiger, and lover.”
She flopped down on the other side of Fortune hard enough that the couch bounced a little. “You are very even-handed for your age and your sex.”
“I understand that older vampires are often set in their ways, but what does my being male have to do with it?”
“Jean-Claude, do not play games; you know what men have thought of women through most of the centuries you’ve lived. We have been second class at best, evil temptresses, or little better than breeding animals to many very learned and powerful men.”