Micah (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 13)

"No"--and he almost laughed--"but Bert is going to be pissed that we didn't try."

I laughed, because he was right. Bert had been our boss, but he'd been reduced to business manager because all the animators at Animators, Inc., had gotten together and staged a palace coup. We'd offered him business manager or nothing. He'd taken it when he realized his income wouldn't be affected.

"I'll get the files from the office. I'll get a flight. I'll be there. You just take care of yourself and Tammy."

"Thanks, Anita. I don't know what I... I've got to go--the doctor's here." And he was gone.

I handed the phone to Nathaniel, who placed it gently in the cradle.

"How bad is it?" Micah said.

I shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think Larry knows, not really." I started to crawl out of the covers and the nest of warmth that their bodies made.

"Where are you going?" Micah asked.

"I've got a plane to schedule and files to find."

"Are you thinking of going out of town on a plane by yourself?" Micah asked. He was sitting up, knees tucked to his chest, arms encircling them.

I looked back at him from the foot of the bed. "Yeah."

"When will you be back?"

"Tomorrow, or the day after."

"Then you need to book at least two seats on the plane."

It took me a moment to understand what he meant. I raised the dead and was a legal vampire executioner. That's what the police knew for certain. I was a federal marshal because all the vamp executioners who could pass the firearms test had been grandfathered in so that the executioners could both have more powers and be better regulated. Or that was the idea. But I was also the human servant of Jean-Claude, the master vampire of St. Louis. Through ties to Jean-Claude I'd inherited some abilities. One of those abilities was the ardeur. It was as if sex were food, and if I didn't eat enough I got sick.

That wasn't so bad, but I could also hurt anyone that I was metaphysically tied to. Not just hurt, but potentially drain them of life. Or the ardeur could simply choose someone at random to feed from. Which meant the ardeur raised and chose a victim. I didn't always have a lot of choice in who it chose. Ick.

So I fed from my boyfriends and a few friends. You couldn't feed off the same person all the time, because you could accidentally love him to death. Jean-Claude held the ardeur and had had to feed it for centuries, but my version was a little different from his, or maybe I just wasn't as good at controlling it yet. I was working on it, but my control wasn't perfect, and it would be a bad thing to lose control on an airplane full of strangers. Or in a van full of federal agents.

"What am I going to do?" I asked. "I cannot take my boyfriend on a federal case."

"You aren't going as a federal marshal, not really," Micah said. "It's your skills as an animator that they want, so say that I'm your assistant. They won't know any different."

"Why do you get to go?" Nathaniel asked. He lay back on the pillows, the sheets just barely covering his nakedness.

"Because she fed on you last," Micah said. He moved enough to touch Nathaniel's shoulder. "I can feed her more often than you can without passing out or getting sick."

"Because you're the Nimir-Raj and I'm just a regular wereleopard." There was a moment of sullenness in his voice, and then he sighed. "I don't mean to be a problem, but I've never stayed here with both of you gone."

Micah and I looked at each other and had one of those moments. We'd all been living together for about six months. But he and Nathaniel had both moved in at the same time. I'd never dated either of them alone, not really. I mean I'd gone out with them individually, and sex wasn't always a group activity, but the sleeping arrangements were.

Micah and I both had a certain need for personal time, alone time, but Nathaniel didn't. He didn't much like being alone.

"Do you want to stay at Jean-Claude's place while we're gone?" I asked.

"Will he want me there without you?" Nathaniel asked.

I knew what he meant, but... "Jean-Claude likes you."

"He won't mind," Micah said, "and Asher won't mind at all."

There was something about the way he said that last that made me look at him. Asher was Jean-Claude's second in command. They'd been friends, enemies, lovers, enemies, and shared a woman that they both loved for a few decades of happiness in centuries of unhappiness.

"Why'd you say it like that?" I asked.

"Asher likes men more than Jean-Claude does," Micah said.

I frowned at him. "Are you saying that he made a pass at you or Nathaniel?"

Micah laughed. "No, in fact, Asher is always very, very careful around us. Considering that we've both been naked in a bed with Asher, Jean-Claude, and you more than once, I'd say that Asher's been a perfect gentleman."

"So why the comment about Asher liking men more than Jean-Claude?" I asked.

"It's the way Asher watches Nathaniel when you aren't looking."

I looked at the other man in my bed. He appeared utterly at home half-naked in my sheets. "Does Asher bother you?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Have you noticed him looking at you the way Micah just said?"

"Yes," Nathaniel said, face still peaceful.

"And that doesn't bother you?"

He smiled. "I'm a stripper, Anita. I get a lot of people looking at me like that."

"But you don't sleep naked in a bed with them."

"I don't sleep naked in a bed with Asher either. He takes blood from me so he can fuck you. It may be sensual, but it's not about sex; it's about blood."

I frowned, trying to think my way through the tangle that had become my love life. "But Micah's implying that Asher sees you as more than food."

"I'm not implying," Micah said. "I'm stating that if Asher didn't think you and Jean-Claude would be pissed, he'd have already asked Nathaniel to be more than friends."

I stared from one to the other of them. "He would?"

They both nodded in unison, as if they'd practiced.

"And you both knew this?"

They nodded again.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you, or I, were always there to protect Nathaniel," Micah said. "Now we won't be."

I sighed.

"I'll be okay," Nathaniel said. "If I'm really that worried about my virtue, I'll bunk in with Jason." He smiled even wider.

"What's so funny?" I asked. I sounded angry, because I had totally missed the whole Asher-liking-Nathaniel thing. Sometimes I felt slow, and sometimes I felt totally unprepared for dealing with the men in my life.

"The look on your face, so worried, so surprised." He bounced up off the bed, leaving the sheet behind him. He crawled toward me, naked and beautiful. I was at the end of the bed and had nowhere to go. But he came at me so fast that I tried to back up and ended up falling off the bed. I sat naked on the floor, trying to decide if I had any dignity left to save.

Nathaniel leaned over the bed and grinned at me. "If I tell you that was really cute, will you be mad at me?"

"Yes," I said, but I was fighting not to smile.

He leaned his upper body off the bed, toward me. "Then I won't say it," he said. "I love you, Anita." He leaned down, but if we were going to kiss I'd have to come to my knees and meet him halfway.

I moved into the kiss he was offering and whispered against his lips, "I love you, too."

"Tell me what city we're flying to," Micah said from the bed, "and I'll see about flights."

I broke the kiss enough to mumble, "Philadelphia."

Nathaniel leaned in to me again, one hand holding on to the bedpost to keep him in place. The muscles of his arm flexed effortlessly as he used the other hand to smooth hair away from my face. "I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you, too," I said, and I realized that I meant it. But one "assistant" I might be able to explain to the FBI, not two. Two and they'd begin to wonder who they were and exactly what they were assisting me with. Or that's what I told myself. Staring into the startling lavender of Nathaniel's eyes, I wondered if I cared what the FBI thought of me enough to leave him behind. Almost not. Almost.