The Harlequin

I did the long blink, the one that meant I was thinking hard, or too surprised to think. "You gave me your pornography name?"

"Half of it," he said.

I didn't know what to say. Was I supposed to be flattered, or insulted? "I declare this fight over until I figure out if we're actually fighting."

"Trust me, Anita, this isn't a fight."

"Then how come I'm angry?"

"Let's see: there's some bad vamps in town messing with us, you always hate it when fans recognize Brandon the stripper, but tonight, for the first time, you got recognized from the one time you went on stage. If you're embarrassed by my job, you're even more embarrassed that anyone would think you could be a stripper."

"I'm not embarrassed about your job."

"Yeah, you are," he said.

I started the car. "I am not."

"Then next time you introduce me to your friends, don't call me a dancer, call me an exotic dancer."

I opened my mouth, closed it, and started backing up. I wouldn't do it. He was right. I'd keep introducing him as simply a dancer. "Do you want me to introduce you like that?"

"No, but I want you not to be ashamed of what I do."

"I'm not ashamed of you, or your job."

"Fine, have it your way." But his tone said clearly that he was letting me win, but that I was wrong, and hadn't won anything. I hated when he did that. He just stopped fighting in the middle of the fight, not because he'd lost, but just because he didn't want to fight anymore. How do you fight with someone who won't fight? Answer: you don't.

The real trouble was, he was right. I was embarrassed about his job. I shouldn't have been, but I was. When he was a teenager, he'd been a runaway, and a prostitute, and on drugs. He'd been off drugs for nearly four years. He'd been out of "the life" since he was sixteen. He'd done porn, and I knew that. But I didn't dwell on it. I assumed he'd stopped doing the movies about the same time he stopped hooking, but I wasn't sure of that. I hadn't really asked, had I? He was a wereleopard, which meant he couldn't catch any sexually transmitted disease. That helped me ignore his past. The lycanthropy killed everything that could injure the host body; it kept him healthy. It made it so that I could pretend he hadn't had more sexual partners than I wanted to know about.

I was trapped at the light across from St. Louis Bread Company when I said, "Want to hear what Jean-Claude told me about the mask?"

"If you want to tell me." He sounded mad.

"I'm sorry that I'm not completely comfortable with your job, okay?"

"Well, at least you admit it."

The light changed, and I eased forward. We'd had two inches of snow, and everyone here forgot how to drive in it. "I don't like to admit when I'm uncomfortable, you know that."

"Tell me what Jean-Claude said."

I told him.

"So they may be here for Malcolm and his church."

"Maybe."

"I'm surprised you didn't demand more answers on the phone."

"I didn't know what the happy couple wanted. Jean-Claude said we're not in danger, so I hung up."

"It's not my fault that they recognized us."

"You. They recognized you."

"Fine, they recognized me." He was back to being mad again.

"I'm sorry, Nathaniel, I'm really sorry. That wasn't fair."

"No, you're right. If we hadn't been out together they probably wouldn't have spotted you."

"I am not embarrassed to be seen with you in public."

"You hate it when fans recognize me."

"I thought I was pretty cool when that woman passed you her phone number at di

"She waited until you went to the bathroom."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" I turned onto 44 and headed toward the city.

"She didn't want to intrude on our date."

"She thought you and Micah were escorts, and that I was paying you for the evening."

"The last time she saw me that's what I was doing for a living, Anita."

"I know, I know. She passed you her number because she wanted to see you again, and the old number wasn't working. You're right, she was polite about it."

"I told her I was on a date-date, and she was embarrassed."

I still remembered the woman. She'd been slender and elegant and old enough to be Nathaniel's mother. Thanks to Jean-Claude I knew clothes, and she'd been wearing expensive ones. The jewelry had been understated, but very nice. She was one of those women who headed charity balls and sat on committees for the art museum, and she'd been hiring male prostitutes young enough to be her son.

"I think what bothered me about her was that she didn't look like someone who would…"

"Hire an escort," he finished for me.

"Yeah."

"I had a lot of different kinds of customers, Anita."

"I figured that."

"Did you, or did you try never to think about it?"

"Okay, the latter."

"I can't change my past, Anita."

"I didn't ask you to."

"But you want me to quit stripping."

"I never said that."

"You're embarrassed by it, though."

"For God's sake, Nathaniel, let it go. I'm embarrassed about being up on stage myself. I'm embarrassed that I fed on you in public." I gripped the steering wheel so tight it hurt. "When I fed the ardeur off you that night, I fed off the entire audience. I didn't mean to, but I fed on their lust. I felt how much they enjoyed the show, and I fed on it."

"And you didn't have to feed again for twenty-four hours."

"Jean-Claude took my ardeur and shared it around among you guys."

"Yes, but he thinks that one of the reasons he was able to do that is that you fed off the crowd, and me. I loved that you marked me in front of the crowd. You know how much I loved it."

"Are you saying that if I hadn't gone up on stage and accidentally fed from the crowd, the ardeur would have gotten out of control in the middle of that serial killer case?"

"Maybe."

I thought about that for a second as I drove. I thought about the ardeur going out of control in a van full of cops, Mobile Reserve cops, our answer to SWAT. I thought about the ardeur getting out of control while I was in a nest of vampires that had killed over ten people.

"If that's true, then why didn't Jean-Claude try to get me down to the club again?"

"He's offered."

"I've refused."

"Yeah," Nathaniel said.

"Why tell me now?"

"Because I'm mad at you," he said. He lowered his head on top of the box in his lap. "Because I'm mad that our date is ruined. I'm mad that some metaphysical crap is going to ruin our almost-a

"I didn't plan this," I said.

"No, but your life is always like this. Do you have any idea how hard it is to have a normal date with you?"

"If you don't like it, you don't have to stay in it." The moment I said it, I wished I hadn't, but I didn't take it back.

"Do you mean that?" he asked, in a low, careful voice.

"No," I said, "no, I don't mean it. I'm just not used to you picking at me. That's usually Richard's job."

"Don't compare me with him. I don't deserve that."

"No, you don't." Richard Zeeman had once been my fiancé, but it hadn't lasted. I'd broken up with him when I saw him eat someone. He was the head of the local werewolf pack. He'd broken up with me when he couldn't handle that I was more comfortable with the monsters than he was. At the moment, we were lovers, and he was finally letting me feed the ardeur off him. I was his girlfriend in the preternatural community, lupa to his Ulfric, and he wasn't shopping to replace me in that part of his life. He was shopping for a completely human woman to replace me in the part of his life where he was a mild-ma