Page 28 of Vampire's Choice

“Care to share what is?”

Clara swatted Ruth’s thigh, but chuckled as she did. “I tell you threat-to-the-universe stuff, and you make dick jokes.”

Ruth lifted a shoulder. “Humor’s how I counter too-serious stuff. When I get overwhelmed by it, I can’t live. Or think clearly about how to handle it.”

Clara looked at Ruth thoughtfully. “We don’t know one another well enough for you to trust me yet, but if we reach that point, I wouldn’t mind knowing more about what can overwhelm you.”

Ruth had lain down next to Clara at an angle, so it put their faces close, their shoulders almost brushing. The wistful tone behind the question, the way the hazel eyes darkened, told Ruth that Clara wasn’t poking into someone else’s business out of idle or uninvited curiosity.

“Okay.” She leaned in and put her mouth on Clara’s, a playful, teasing kiss with a touch of tongue, a scrape of fang over her full bottom lip. Clara stiffened in surprise, but then relaxed as Ruth kept it as she intended it. Light and easy, an exchange of female intimacy. She was smiling against Ruth’s mouth as Ruth put her hand to the girl’s throat, the pulse speeding up under her touch.

When Ruth settled back, lacing her hands on her stomach, Clara huffed out a breath. “Vampires,” she said.

Ruth smiled. “Yes. I intend no disrespect to your angel. But it helps me to know more about you, and you needed the distraction.”

“Glad you’re looking out for me.” Clara shot her a droll look.

While they took a break, going quiet to gaze at the sky and enjoy their surroundings, Ruth thought about what Clara had told her. Yvette had said she would be given the truth about the girl’s need for protection, and now that she had what she suspected was the gist of it, she needed to consider what other questions she should ask.

Clara’s hand was still close to hers, and a few moments later, her pinky tapped Ruth’s knuckle, a signal to stay still. Ruth saw a pair of pixies hovering over her bent knee. One landed on it with dainty feet and used the perch to bend and adjust the hem of the skirt she wore, layered and shaped like a rose bud.

The other spoke to her impatiently. Ruth couldn’t make out the language, but the whispery sound reminded her of the sound nodding flowers made when they bumped and slid against one another. Something most human ears couldn’t pick up, not consciously. The other pixie dipped down, seized her friend’s tiny hand and they were aloft again. They disappeared like hummingbirds.

“You weren’t kidding about them ignoring you.”

“Yeah. When they’re practicing for a performance, they’ll tune in and respond. Yvette has a universal translator spell over the Circus grounds, so we can understand one another, but everyone knows how to turn it off, if they want to talk to their own race without anyone listening in. So if you don’t understand a conversation, that’s why.

“Though they don’t seem like it, usually they’re hyperalert as house flies.” Clara fluttered her fingers over her stomach. “If you’d lifted a hand toward them, they would have been gone before you could blink. But they’d mark the insult. Usually they’ll raid your living quarters and take small items, make you think you’re losing your mind.”

“Has anyone threatened to go after them with a fly swatter?”

“Yvette. Numerous times. Though she doesn’t mean it. She’s very protective of them, of all of us. Leadership leads by example. We take care of one another here. It makes it hard to ever want to leave.”

“Unless you have no other choice.” Ruth met her new friend’s gaze. “Does it feel like a prison sometimes?”

It was the worst thing about being at risk for whatever reason—being weaker, or having traits that put one at the edges of the herd, vulnerable to attack. Who you were, who you wanted to be, your options, your horizon, could become lost in all that.

“There was a time I felt that way,” Clara said slowly, shadows in her gaze. “But we go everywhere, and I see so many amazing things. Maddock and Yvette’s shielding of my identity have allowed me to keep interacting with the audience on the midway. Then there’s Marcellus.”

Her face softened in a way Ruth knew well. She’d seen Elisa look at Mal with that expression a million times. Since her father was hyperaware of Elisa’s state of mind and whereabouts, he’d often turn and meet Elisa’s gaze, giving her his own version of that expression. As Ruth had developed a woman’s heart and mind, it had seeded the yearning to want a male like that. One who would look at her the same way, with all that it meant.

“Figuring things out with him,” Clara said. “That was a big part of finding contentment with what and where I am. If I wasn’t human, he could fly me up into the heavens so I’d be permanently out of harm’s way, but he does take me flying. I mean, for a woman with ‘limited’ options, I’ve had a thousand more experiences than most ever get.”

She sat up, brushing grass off the back of her shirt. Ruth helped her reach where she couldn’t, and Clara did the same for her. As Ruth rose, she helped the girl all the way to her feet, clasping her hand.

She knew how to modulate her strength for handling a human, so her brow creased when Clara flinched, jerked. Then she swayed on her feet. Ruth slid a steadying arm around her.

“Clara, what’s going on?”

Clara looked toward the lake, where Medusa was practicing with the mermaids. Only she wasn’t seeing them. Her body went loose, wobbly, a puppet with cut strings.

As Ruth caught her before she could fall, the girl’s pupils dilated. The black took over the way Marcellus’s did, only they didn’t stay dark. Instead the blackness was swallowed by a murky gray.

Clara began to convulse.

CHAPTER SIX

“Shit.” Ruth eased her to the ground. “Help,” she shouted, waving her arms to draw Medusa’s attention.