Anita Blake 24 - Dead Ice by Laurell K. Hamilton Page B

nighttime jeweler’s human servant, and ancient vampires are all about the formalities,” I said.
    “Yeah, it’s not every day you get to meet a human who can tell you that Helen of Troy had black hair,” Lisandro said.
    “She did not say that,” Socrates said.
    “Yes, she did.”
    “She said, these rings would be worthy of Helen of Troy, another raven-haired beauty.”
    “Raven-haired means black hair,” Lisandro said.
    “Are you saying she compared me to Helen of Troy?”
    The two men stopped bickering long enough to look at me. Then they looked at each other, and back to me. Lisandro said, “Any other woman I’ve ever met would be flattered, but you’re going to get all weird about it, aren’t you?”
    I frowned at him. “I am not going to get all weird.”
    “But you won’t take the compliment either,” Socrates said.
    I sighed, shrugged, touched my gun and shifted the holster just a little on its belt, and thought about it. “When you’re spending this much money on rings, they flatter you, it’s just part of the whole thing, but no, I don’t believe she’s sincere when she compares me to one of the great beauties of the ages. Sorry, but I just don’t buy it.”
    They gave each other another look, which irritated me, because it meant they were being careful around my mood, or my issue, and I hated that. I hated being difficult about my appearance. Thanks to a lot of things from my childhood, and a very ex-fiancé, I had trouble seeing myself as beautiful. People reacted to me as if I were beautiful, so I had to accept it, but I had trouble seeing it myself, so the jeweler’s flattery, insincere or not, wasn’t going to win points with me.
    “Besides, rings don’t go near the face, so what does hair color have to do with anything, it’s just skin tone that counts,” I said, and I sounded grumpy, but I’d managed not to criticize myself, and that was an improvement.
    “Let’s not keep the boss waiting,” Socrates said.
    It took me a second to realize he meant Jean-Claude, and then Lisandro was opening the door and ushering me inside to the larger and more richly furnished office that screamed upper-level executive, from the rich wood paneling to the desk big enough to slaughter an ox on; there was no hint that it was the manager’s office for the Circus of the Damned. Nothing as garish as circus posters in here. I had a moment of wanting to ask one of the guards to stay with me, but they were bodyguards. They couldn’t guard me from my sudden case of nerves, as I glanced at the jewels laid out on velvet cloths and samples of different metal wedding bands. The huge desk was covered in them as if a very proper pirate’s treasure had been given over to the accountants to catalog. A tiny, dark-haired woman stood beside it, thin hands clasped in front of her; she could have passed for an accountant, or a servant in an old movie, but the eagerness in her face was another issue. The jeweler was way too excited about all of this. I must have made an involuntary movement for the door, because Jean-Claude said, “
Ma petite.
” Just that, nothing more, but it made me look at him.
    Jean-Claude sat behind that huge desk and that gleaming display of matrimonial treasure, but none of it was as pretty as him. His black hair curled softly past his shoulders, mingling so perfectly with the velvet of his jacket that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. The shirt that peeked from the jacket was scarlet, a red that looked fabulous with the hair and that unearthly white skin of his, a perfect whiteness that no living skin could rival. He was very pale tonight, no blush of color to his face at all, which meant he hadn’t fed yet. There was a time I couldn’t have told, but I’d been studying his face and moods for years. Once I had refused to be food for any vampire, even him. Now the thought that he hadn’t fed, and that it could be part of our foreplay, tightened things low in my