When we last left Anita, she was busy being all up in her feelings because her pretty pretty dress has triggered her latent mommy/stepmommy/grandmommy issues about her appearance. Obviously, we’re still here in chapter fourteen. Anita is still upset. She’s so upset, actually, that she trips and almost falls in the middle of the street, something that triggers Rodina’s mockery and makes Ru defend her against his sister.

(Which, kind of makes it clear that if Rodina doesn’t get brainwashed… she’s going to die. She can’t live and be that opposite Anita to the point where her brother chooses to defend Anita over her.)

So let’s start with a meaty quote:

“It’s a spike heel on cobblestones, guys, anyone can trip,” I said, but I stayed where Ru had put me with his arm around me and him between us. I let myself put most of my energy into shoveling the emotional shit that I could feel inside my head and body. Emotions didn’t just live in the head, or the heart, they burrowed down into your gut, they poured over your skin, they filled up your eyes, they spilled out your fingertips and toes. Emotions were everywhere if you just let yourself feel them, and I’d worked hard to learn how to feel instead of stuff everything out of sight until it erupted in rage or made terrible choices. I was concentrating so hard on working my issues that I didn’t hear what Rodina said to me.

“I’m sorry, Rodina, what did you say?”

“I said, have you ever seen us trip, any of us?” Rodina asked, peering around her brother at me.

I knew the us meant the Harlequin. “I’ve seen you all mess up in fight training.”

“We can lose, but that’s not the same thing as tripping on a stone. You are so damn mortal, my queen.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know I disappoint you, Rodina, you aren’t winning any prizes with me either.”

“I feel your pain and confusion, and it hurts me that you are so unhappy, but tonight I simply don’t seem to care.”

Anita is so full of emotions and I get it. I get it. But it’s also… she only just told Ru and Rodina that she didn’t care that they were sad about their third sibling’s death because he tried to kill her. So why on earth is she expecting Rodina to ever have empathy for her when she’s made it clear that her empathy won’t be aimed at them ever?

But yes, Ru defends poor Anita from his sister and that does not bode well for Rodina’s future considering that her only remaining sibling isn’t on her side. Especially because it’s basically, and I know this is wild to say, Rodina being a “mean girl” about Anita tripping and almost falling. It’s really not that serious and it’s a symptom of how LKH being someone stuck on being bullied by the hotter girls in school/as a young(er) woman.

And because of this, Anita’s reaction is to cuddle up close to Ru’s body and “scent” him (it’s a shapeshifter thing but the way LKH describes it is so omegaverse) in front of her… specifically because it’ll piss Rodina off. (“The only reason for what I did next was that I was hurting, and she was hurting, and I’d rather have picked a fight than deal with my own emotional shit.”). I also like… okay… after she cuddles him, Anita notes that Ru’s body “reacted to the unexpected cuddling not in the usual male way, but by letting go of some tension that I hadn’t even known he was holding” –

What is… the usual male way of reacting to cuddling?

Is this like her thing about giggling?

At this point, we know that anyone involved in the ever-expanding cosmic horror polycule isn’t subject to toxic masculinity… but also… many men (like cishet men) enjoy being cuddled? They may not be able to say that but like… who’s gonna yeet Anita for hugging them?

This is followed by some bloat because Anita has to talk about the intimate nature of cuddling in public with her guard – kind of weird because… wouldn’t this be papped? Why wouldn’t she be worried about this?. But then we get this:

“Can you guard her against emotional pain, sister?”

“No one can do that.”

“I’m holding her, trying to soothe her, what are you doing to help?”

“I see how much she’s enjoying the soothing,” she said, and she sounded jealous. It wasn’t usually the tone you heard from sisters.

First of all, “it wasn’t usually the tone you heard from sisters” makes me think that Laurell K Hamilton has never known the sweet, strange joy of watching a brocon overreact dramatically to their brother getting a girlfriend in a shojo manga.

Second of all, cuddling Anita isn’t “guard[ing] her against emotional pain”.

Like… it’s not that deep or serious.

Anita got up in her feelings over something she literally made up – because LKH is racing towards some sort of racist confrontation-conflagration in the next book, I feel – and Ru has decided that that’s just as bad as mourning their dead third sibling so he needs to cuddle her about it.

Then there’s this quote from Rodina that I roasted on tiktok:

“An evil queen doesn’t need comfort, she needs revenge, violence, not tears and handholding.”

If LKH had ever watched one of the eleventy billion seasons of ABC’s Once Upon a Time, she’d know that an evil queen has layers like an onion and can be quite sensitive in between all the murders. But beyond that, the idea that Anita needs like serious coddling – not cuddling, this time – because of feelings she’s made up and then did not verbalize is kinda wild? Like she doesn’t actually say any of what she’s going through aloud? She’s just yeeting her bad vibes at Ru and Rodina and they’re reacting to them without context or clarity.

If someone was busy being sad at me but wouldn’t tell me why they were sad, I would proceed to not give a shit?

Oh we have a return to LKH’s clear conservatism and the fact that she is not anywhere near as progressive as she pretends in public with “the US media is so woke but heteronormative” when fighting over who gets to escort Anita… again.

“Then allow me to escort you, my lady,” Ru said.

“If someone sees her walking on any man’s arm tonight, especially dressed like this, the rumors will start about you, dear brother.”

“I hate to agree with Rodina, but she’s right,” Ethan said.

“If I escort her it will look like two girlfriends out for a night of fun; any man on her arm is the next rumor. For all the wokeness of your media now, they are still terribly heteronormative.”

I’m a fairly repetitive writer. I understand repeating things to try and sink an idea in.

So… what does it say about LKH that this is the second time in fourteen chapters that she uses “woke/ness” as a pejorative… while also dropping a major “social justice” word like “heteronormative”? Nothing good, that’s for sure.

And again, in case you’ve forgotten from last time… Anita isn’t publicly out as queer. That is why no one will look at her on Rodina’s arm and assume she’s dating her. It’s not like how if Kristen Stewart hangs out with other noted queer women… people assume they could be dating? Because as far as the public in the Anitaverse knows, Anita doesn’t date women. All of her sweeties in public are cis (queer?) men like Jean-Claude, Micah, and Nathanie. Jade – my beloved black tiger who deserves better – is never a public girlfriend. Even Anita’s family doesn’t know that she has girlfriends – something that would come out as the evolving narrative about the Blakes is that they are conservative bigots who hate everything about Anita and think the shapeshifters and vampires are corrupting her.

“Since I’m dressed like a butch to your lipstick femme I might as well play the part,” she said with a smile I could only describe as rakish.

“You’re too femme to be butch,” I said.

That earned me a better smile.

“I’ll share my lipstick with you,” I said.

There’s a lot going on here but I am just gonna unhinge my jaw and howl at the moon and y’all can translate that later. Do you think LKH or Anita knows what a butch is or why “lipstick femme” is a bit weird to say to and about a barely practicing bisexual?

Also, I kinda threw up in my mouth a bit at “You’re too femme to be butch” and so as a palate cleanser, have my unofficial futch goddess TWICE’s Jihyo’s new single “Killing Me Good”.

This was such a long chapter but after getting Rodina a little dolled up with lipstick they finally enter the club to watch Jean-Claude take his tingz off… and the chapter ends.

Chapter fifteen opens with the bouncer at Guilty Pleasures not recognizing that Anita was Anita… because she’s all dolled up. Once a lady in the line is like “she’s Jean-Claude’s fiancée” and then the guard recognizes her… something Anita doesn’t like very much because it’s “so damn patriarchal”.

And while, to an extent, I agree… Anita still isn’t famous. Anita is functionally the same kind of character as Raylan Givens in Justified. The only difference is that her “justified” kills are of supernatural beings, not drug and gun runners in the south. And Raylan is only famous to us the viewers. His bad reputation on the show is limited to the people who work with him and who otherwise deal with him. There’s no one chasing Raylan around for autographs even when he does move back to Miami in the limited series “sixth season” of the show.

So Anita isn’t someone that should be recognized by the general public by and for herself as a celebrity because she’s just a cop. Her being recognized as Jean-Claude’s fiancée makes sense because he is famous – a master vampire who bares it all for a buck??? – but… it’s really not that big a deal. It’s like how George Lucas’ wife gets photographed when she’s on the red carpet with him… but probably not when doing a Costco run? (I will say that I used to know her name but I can’t remember.)

Anyway, the flood of fan paparazzi photos triggers both Anita’s anxiety and her inner beast, the leopard “down deep inside me where my human mind visualized my inner beasts” nudging up against her chest from the inside.

Again, not how that should work.

We get Ethan’s description as – being a tiger – the leopard inside of Anita gets pushed down by his touch and like… okay. Sure. He’s quad… racial by the way… red, white, gold and blue tiger combined. Yet another “this is not how that works” moment.

I could finally draw a deep breath and let go of the anger. Therapy helped me work out my anger issues, but nothing seemed to make them go away. I looked up at Ethan; his white hair spilled around the top of his face, still cut short enough on the sides that the top was the only volume he had. That one dark red streak that went from his forehead to the back of his skull looked like a skilled hairdresser had done it, but it was natural, the only hint of his red tiger lost in white and gray that signaled white and blue respectively. His eyes were a solid gray and if you didn’t know what you were looking at you’d never guess they were tiger eyes in his human face. Nothing in his human form gave away his golden tiger heritage, but I could call the scent of it to his skin.

Like… Okay.

Sure.

Fine.

Next we’ve got some metaphorical dick measuring as Ethan and Rodina square off within the club, using their positioning next to Anita to try and assert dominance over each other because it’s a symptom of the broader fight that the Harlequins (ancient shifters and/or vampires, I’m not sure) are having with the rest of Anita’s guards because they think they’re superior because they’re old badasses with a high body count (non-sexual).

Rodina does hit Ethan right where it hurts when she tells him “You’re just food for her, nothing more”.

Even I flinched from that because damn it’s mean as hell.

Now we get into… whatever this is:

Rodina drew back enough to give a cold, cruel look. “You’re just food for her, nothing more.”

I felt him flinch both physically and emotionally from her remark. “Ethan is my lover, no one in my life is just food, and I still don’t know why the two of you have turned guarding me into a pissing contest.”

Ru answered from across the table, voice still low. “Some of us wanted to know who outranked whom, and to save a bloodbath that would have gutted your security, someone came up with the idea that the highest rank starts with who has the privilege of sleeping with you. Ethan does, Rodina doesn’t.”

She turned on him with a snarl and hissed, “Neither do you, brother dear.”

“That is true, but I am not trying to be top cat, and you are.”

To begin, we know that there are characters in Anita’s life who are just food. Byron, Jamil and Graham are the first three names to come to mind. Byron was food in… Incubus Dreams, I believe? Jamil is consumed – nonsexually – in a later book. And Graham literally can’t be more than food. Oh and London… London is referred to as the “perfect meal” for the ardeur and absolutely dehumanized in the process. He’s such a good example of a character that isn’t a sweetie, isn’t a friend, and is absolutely to be consumed.

(Oh and remember at the tail end of Rafael where Anita got mad at the titular character for not sharing certain aspects of the expectations placed on her by the ratshifters? It was the final nail in the “I don’t love him, I just want to fuck/eat him” coffin there.

So there are some people in Anita’s life that are simply food for her.

But then, can we talk about the fact that they say outright that the hierarchy in security is determined by who has the “privilege” of sleeping with Anita? She’s not into women so women are at a disadvantage there. But also, their worth and power in the hierarchy hinges on whether or not they get to plow her not-so-fertile fields?

Are you kidding me?

And instead of handling this like a normal person… Anita’s inner anger vampire pops out and tries to feed on Rodina – who’s vibrating with rage. Ethan once again distracts her for a moment… before they kiss and then the chapter ends. I guess… Rodina is going up in the rankings at some point? I’m getting mixed messages because it’s so out of left field for me?

Also look at the wild writing that closes the chapter:

Rodina leaned toward me, and I watched the reflection of my power grow in the mirrors of her eyes until just before she kissed me the reflection spilled over her eyes and for a second I saw my eyes in her face. The dark brown of them turned to cognac diamonds; then our lips met, and I drank from her lips, tasting the thick sweetness of my own lipstick along with her rage.

Y’all…

This is so bad.

Chapter sixteen opens on that rage-eating kiss and I get that it’s not supposed to be sexy but wow it’s really not sexy. Like at all.

But Anita gets other emotions from Rodina aside from the rage and starts finally feeling empathy for Rodina over the massive losses she’s experienced. She strips Rodina of her emotional shields and finally sees her all emotionally naked. She basically breaks Rodina and this tiny chapter closes out with Rodina finally admitting that she is not fit for duty.

Ru and Rodina head back to the Circus when chapter seventeen begins and then we get this reminder that Anita doesn’t buy good lipstick because she had to… clean off all the lipstick that smeared everywhere. How is it 2023 and Anita still doesn’t have a good, long-lasting lippie?

Weird.

For some reason, Nathaniel gets called in and they’re… going to have metaphysical fuckery? Because gnawing on Rodina’s soul for a bit made the inner energy vampire act up so Anita needs a snackiepoo in order to go out on her date with JC. After everything that happened in Crimson Death and Serpentine – Nathaniel gaining his own rapey metaphysical power, the whole CSEM subplot and how strangely blasé Nathaniel continues to be about being violated and exploited as a child – I’m not a Nathaniel fan anymore. He makes me uncomfortable in a way that, in this series, only Olaf had before.

I won’t be like… writing ab/out the semi sex scene because we all deserve better than this… but like… it’s predictably… not super sexy? Way more talking than plowing and the characterization for both Anita and Nathaniel has melded into this goopy inconsistent mush because… you know how some artists have a “sameface” problem? LKH has a “samevoice” problem.

Thankfully, the chapter doesn’t go beyond some flirting and groping so I don’t have to deal with that and Anita actually calms down enough that they can put makeup on her. And by they, I mean the dancers at Guilty Pleasures that are rarely, if ever, named.

Once again, I’m asking myself why I’m doing this.

It’s just… this is not a good book and LKH is not a good writer.

But in good news, while my anti fandom knows no self control and I continue to spork… at least I now have LKH blocked on another platform: TikTok. So I will never know what she says there unless someone downloads and sends it to me – please don’t do that.

Anyway… next time we reconvene we’ll be… still putting makeup on Anita, apparently. Maybe Jean-Claude will get nice and naked so I won’t want to unalive from the stress of… all of this.

Ta ta for now~