The Harlequin (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 15)

Chapter Ten

I SAT ON the edge of the bathtub, waiting for Edward to come to the phone. I'd insisted on privacy for the phone call, though I'd told Jean-Claude and Micah who I was trying to call. Jean-Claude had said only, "Help would not be unwelcome." The comment said, clearly, that he was worried. The more worried I realized he was, the more worried I got.

I heard noise over the phone, movement. The phone was picked up, and I heard Edward's voice say, "Hang up the other extension, Peter." A second later he spoke directly into the phone. "Anita, Peter said you needed help, my kind of help." His voice was that empty-middle-of-nowhere accent. It was his normal voice; when he was playing Ted Forrester, good ol' boy, he had a drawl.

"I didn't say I needed help," I said.

"Then why did you call?"

"Can't I just call to chat?"

He laughed, and the laugh was strangely familiar. I realized it was an echo of Peter's laugh earlier, or maybe Peter's laugh was an echo of Edward's. They weren't genetically related, I knew that, so what was with the laugh? Imitation, maybe.

"You would never call me just to chat, Anita. That's not what we do for each other." He laughed again, and murmured, "Called to chat," as if the idea were too ridiculous for words.

"I do not need you to be condescending, thanks anyway." I was angry and had no right to be. I'd called him, and it was me I was angry at. I was wishing I hadn't called - for so many reasons.

"What's wrong?" he asked, not taking offense. He knew me too well to let a little angry outburst bother him.

I opened my mouth, closed it, then said, "I'm trying to decide where to start."

"Start with the dangerous part." There, that was Edward, not start at the beginning, but start with the dangerous part.

"I did call for backup, but I have other backup already. It's not you, but it's not a bunch of amateurs either." I was being honest. The wererats were almost completely ex-military, ex-police, or ex-criminals. Some of the werehyenas were the same flavor of professional. I had help. I shouldn't have called Edward.

"You sound like you're trying to talk yourself out of asking me for help," he said, and his voice was curious, not worried, just curious.

"I am."

"Why?"

"Because Peter answered the phone."

There was a sharp intake of breath. "Hang up the phone, Peter," Edward said.

"If Anita's in trouble, I want to know about it."

"Hang up the phone," he said, "and don't make me ask again."

"But..."

"Now."

I heard the phone click.

"Well," I said.

"Wait," he said.

I sat on my side of the phone in silence, wondering what we were waiting for. Finally Edward said, "He's off."

"Does he listen in on phone conversations a lot?"

"No."

"How do you know he doesn't?"

"I know..." He stopped himself, and said, "I don't think he does. I think you're a special case for Peter. He's in Donna's old room. I told him he could keep the phone if he behaved. I'll talk to him."

"If he's in Donna's old room, where are you and she sleeping? Not that it's any of my business," I added.

"We put a master suite on the house."

"Have you moved in, then?"

"Pretty much."

"You sell your house?" I asked.

"No."

"I guess Batman can't sell the bat cave."

"Something like that." But his voice, which had started a little friendly, was not friendly now. It was empty, the old pre-Donna Edward talking to me. He might be talking about domestic bliss and raising teenagers, but he was still the coldest killer I'd ever met, and that person was still in there. I wasn't sure whether I couldn't bear the thought of him watching Becca at ballet class, or would have paid to see him sitting with all the other parents waiting for their leotard-clad darlings.

"If I lied well enough I'd just make something up and hang up."

"Why?" he asked, in that empty voice.

"Because Peter answering the phone made me realize that it's not all fun and games anymore. If I get you killed, then they lose another father. I don't want to have to explain that to Peter, or Donna, or Becca."

"But especially Peter," he said.

"Yeah," I said.

"Since you can't lie to me, just tell me, Anita." His voice was a little softer now, a little feeling to it. Edward liked me; we were friends. He'd miss me if I were gone, and I'd miss him, but there was still a little question on whether one day we'd find ourselves on the opposite sides of a problem, and have to finally see which of us was the better man. I was hoping that day would never come, because there was no way for me to win the fight now; dead or alive, we'd both lose.

"Do you know what the Harlequin are?" I asked.

"French clowns?" he said, and let himself sound puzzled.

"Do you know them in any other context?"

"Twenty questions isn't like you, Anita; just talk."

"I just wanted to see if I was the only vampire hunter extraordinaire who was totally in the dark about this. It makes me feel a little better that you don't know about them either. Apparently Jean-Claude is right; they really are a big, dark secret."

"Talk," he said.

I talked. I told him what little I knew about the Harlequin and his band. It really wasn't that much.

He was quiet so long that I said, "Edward, I can hear you breathing, but..."

"I'm here, Anita. Just thinking."

"Thinking what?" I asked.

"That you always let me play with the best toys." And his voice wasn't empty now, it was eager.

"And what if these toys finally manage to be bigger and badder than you and me?"

"Then we die."

"Just like that," I said. "You wouldn't have regrets?"

"You mean Donna and the kids?"

"Yes," I said, and I stood, starting to pace the bathroom.

"I would regret leaving them."

"Then don't come," I said.

"And if you get killed, I'd always believe that I could have saved you. No, Anita, I'll come, but I will bring backup."

"Not anyone too crazy, okay?"

He laughed, that chuckle of true delight that I'd heard maybe six times in the entire seven years I'd known him. "I can't promise that, Anita."

"Fine, but Edward, I'm serious. I don't want to get you killed on them."

"I can't stop being who I am just because I love Donna, Anita. I can't stop being what I am because I've got the kids to think about."

"Why not?" I asked, and I was thinking of a conversation Richard and I had had when we thought I was pregnant. He'd expected that if I were pregnant I'd stop being a federal marshal or vampire hunter. I hadn't agreed.

"Because it wouldn't be me, and they love me. Donna and Becca may not know everything that Peter does about me, but they know enough. They know what I had to do to save the kids when Riker took them."

Riker had been a very bad man. He had been doing illegal archaeology digs, and Donna's amateur protection group had gotten in their way. It actually hadn't been Edward or me that first got the kids on Riker's radar. Nice to know we weren't completely to blame for what happened. Riker had wanted me to do a certain spell for him, which truthfully I hadn't been necromancer enough to do, but he wouldn't believe me. He tortured the children to get my, and Edward's, cooperation. Six-year-old, now eight-year-old, Becca had gotten a badly broken hand. Peter had been sexually molested by a female guard. We'd had to watch on videotape. We'd killed Riker and all his people. We rescued the kids, and Edward had made me give Peter my backup gun. Edward decided in that moment that if we lost, he preferred Peter to be killed resisting, rather than taken again. I hadn't argued, not after what they'd done to him. I had watched Peter empty my gun into the body of the woman who'd hurt him. He'd kept dry-firing into her body until I wrestled the gun away from him. I still saw his eyes when he told me, "I wanted her to hurt."

I knew that Peter had lost some of his innocence the night his father died and he had to pick up a gun to protect his family. He'd taken a life, but I think he thought it was killing a monster, and that didn't really count. Hell, once I'd thought the same thing about monsters. Killing the woman who had hurt him had taken more from him, a bigger piece of his soul. I couldn't even imagine how big a piece the sexual abuse stole away. Had it been better for him to have his revenge so quickly? Or had it cost him more?

I'd told him the only truth I had that night: "You killed her, Peter. That's as good as revenge gets. Once you kill them, there isn't any more." Revenge was always the easy part; the hard part was living with it afterward. Living with what you'd done. Living with what they'd done to you, or those you loved.