Skin Trade

Rick looked at me.

I shrugged, and nodded. “Ted will want to know what’s happening to us.”

“You, he wants to know what’s happening to you,” Bernardo said.

“You’re part of his team, too.”

“Yeah, but I’m not his ‘woman,’ ” and he made little quotation marks around the word with his fingers. Was Bernardo starting to believe the lie that we were feeding Olaf?

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I kept my mouth shut. When in doubt, shut the fuck up.

Rick was looking from one of us to the other. It was way too thoughtful an expression for muscle. But then, I hadn’t believed that Rick was just muscle. If he had been, I didn’t think his queen would have wanted him on the feeding list.

“Have we passed your tests?” I asked.

“One last question,” he said.

“Shoot.”

“Why do you smell like wolf?”

I realized that the she-wolf was still just below the surface. I had called her energy, but had not had to put her back in her box. She seemed content to be ready to manifest more, but not to make a nuisance of herself. I had a spurt of pure happiness. I’d been working really hard with the beasts inside me, to be able to work with them and not fight them.

The wolf looked at me, as if she were standing in front of me. I had a moment of staring into her dark amber eyes, then I wanted her gone, and she just vanished. I didn’t have to watch her walk down the path inside my head. She just went. For a second, I thought she was truly gone, but a moment’s thought found her pale and distant in that not-so-real forest. She was still there, but I could bring her out and send her back with that little fuss.

I fought to control my emotions and not be as happy as I felt, or not show it. Bernardo was too observant, and wereanimals were way too observant.

“You don’t smell like wolf anymore,” Rick said. “How can you smell of tiger one moment and wolf the next?”

“Your Master of the City knows the answer to that question. If he didn’t share with you, not my problem.”

He nodded, as if that made perfect sense.

I didn’t hear Edward bang on the door, I felt the vibration of it. Rick glanced at the doors, then pressed his hand on a panel he’d been standing in front of; it was a fingerprint sca

32

EDWARD WAS YELLING in our ears. “Anita, Bernardo! Damn it!”

“We’re here,” I said.

“We’re cool,” Bernardo said.

“What happened?” Edward asked.

“The first room is a box that’s soundproof and electronics proof. We had to play twenty questions before they let us in.” I was looking around us as I spoke. It was a living room, just a living room. It was white and elegant, with windows that gave an amazing view of the Las Vegas Strip. There were huge white couches with cream and silver cushions. There were even a few touches of shiny gold in small cushions. The coffee table in the middle of the couches was glass and silver. I realized that it looked like a bigger version of Jean-Claude’s living room. It didn’t make me feel at home. It actually kind of creeped me.

“Talk to me, people,” Edward said in my ear.

“We’re in the living room,” I said.

“Nice view of the Strip,” Bernardo said.

“Thank you,” Rick said. He walked back to a hallway that was on the other side of the room. But before he got there, Ava walked out. They spoke low together, then she came on into the room, and Rick walked back until he vanished through the door at the end of the short hallway. It was like a changing of the guard.

I called after Rick and to Ava. “Where’s Crispin?”

“He’s safe,” Ava said, “I promise. We just want to talk to you without him for a few moments.”

“More tests?” Bernardo said.

“Not exactly.”

“Ava,” I said, partially so Edward would know she was here, “when do we get to talk to Chang-Bibiana?”

“Rick will tell her what you said in the outer room. Then either she will come out to meet you, or we will take you in to meet her.”

“What decides who goes where?” I asked.

“Chang-Bibi does.”

“When does Crispin join us?”

“When Chang-Bibi wishes him to.”

“She is the queen,” I said, and fought to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. I probably failed.

“She is,” Ava replied. “Would you like to sit down?”

Bernardo and I exchanged glances. He shrugged. “Sure,” I said.

We took opposite corners of the couch. It put neither of our backs to a door, and it gave us the maximum view of the surroundings. We did it without asking each other. Bernardo looked at me as we settled into the overstuffed couch, and I looked back. He gave a small smile, not his flirting smile, but I think a smile at how we’d divided the room up.

“Would you like coffee, tea, water perhaps?” she asked.

“Coffee would be great,” I said.

“Water for me, if it’s bottled.”

“Of course.”

She left us alone in the huge, pale room, with the Vegas sun beating against the nearly solid wall of windows. Even with the air-conditioning blasting, you could feel the heat pressing in against the room, like something almost alive and with malevolent intent.

“Why bottled water?” I asked.

“Because if you travel, the new water is the thing most likely to make you sick. Stick to bottled and you can eat almost anything.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

Bernardo began to report the room through the headset. Which direction the windows were, the lay of the land, including doors and all exits.

Edward spoke in my ear. “You want to add anything, Anita?”

“Nope. He covered everything I see.”

“Thank you,” Bernardo said.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

A disgusted sound came through the earbud. “I wish you were in here with us, big guy,” Bernardo said.

“Yes,” was all that deep voice said, but it was enough to make me shiver, and not in a good, happy way.

“How do you really feel about Otto?” Bernardo asked.

I gave him a disgusted look. “Oh, right, like I’m going to discuss my personal feelings about team members over an open radio.”

He gri

“Why?”

Whatever his answer was, I never heard it, because Ava came back from the hallway. Rick was with her, and Domino was back. Bernardo and I both stood up.

Ava spoke in a clear, ringing voice. “Chang-Bibi of the White Tiger Clan!”

The doors at the end of the short hallway behind the tigers opened. Chang-Bibi strode through the door, with Crispin on her arm. She was taller than me, because her head was a little above his shoulder, and then I had to revise that, because I saw her heels. Four-inch spike heels, and I was back to being unsure of her height. But other things were very sure.

White hair fell to her waist in perfect waves. She was wearing makeup that emphasized the pale, perfect blue of her tiger eyes in that human face. Her eyes tilted up at the edges, and there was something in the bone structure. It was as if her face held some genetic link to the long-ago Chinese origins of her ancestors. But, as I’d learned a few months back, the weretigers had been forced to flee China many centuries ago, in the time of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang. He’d seen all the preternatural races as a danger to his authority and had them slaughtered on sight. The weretigers had fled to other countries and been forced to marry outside the purity of their race, so most of them looked like the country they’d fled to.

There was something very exotic about Bibiana, and though they had similar hair and eyes, Crispin came off looking more ordinary. If you could have changed the eyes to human, he would have looked at home at any bar or club on a Saturday night. Chang-Bibi would have stood out anywhere, as if the aura of her difference was something that couldn’t be hidden.