had to be destroyed. Too mad, too savage, for anything else. That one of "her" vampires had done such things was one of her few things that Belle Morte seemed to feel guilty about.

"Yes," Jean-Claude said, "of course you are. You are our petite fleur." He moved forward as if he would herd her out of earshot of the grown-up talk. She may have looked five, but she was over three hundred years old. The body was a child's, the mind was not. But unless we were careful, most of us had a tendency to treat her like she looked, not like she thought.

She turned that tiny face to mine, with those solemn eyes. "Are you going to have a baby?"

"Maybe," I said.

She smiled, flashing fangs as delicate as needles. "I would have someone to play with."

Jean-Claude started to take her hand, then hesitated in midgesture. He had suffered at Valentina's hands more than once. He never truly forgot she was a monster. He said, "Where is Bartolome? He's supposed to be watch- ing you today, isn't he?"

"I don't know where he is," she said, gazing up at Jean-Claude.

He laid the barest touch on her shoulder. She looked past him to me. The look in those eyes had nothing to do with childhood.

"She's over three hundred years old, Jean-Claude, don't shush her away like she's really five."

He looked at me. "Valentina prefers to be treated as a child, it is her choice." He gazed down at her. "Don't you, ma duke?" He lied with his voice, but he did not touch her as if she were a child.

She nodded, but those eyes gazed at me. Those eyes that held centuries of power trapped in a body too delicate to do most of the things in her mind. There were nights when I felt sorry for her; then there were moments, like now, when I wasn't certain that she'd have been sane even if she'd come over as an adult. There was simply something in her that wasn't quite right. It was sort of a chicken/egg question on Valentina's sanity. She'd never hurt me. Never done anything to purposefully frighten me. But she was on my short list of people that I wouldn't have trusted if I'd been helpless and alone with her. It had taken me months to realize that the reason she creeped me out was only partly the whole trapped-in-a-child's-body thing. Months to admit to myself that I was more afraid of Valentina than any other vamp who called Jean-Claude master.

"I think having a baby around would be fun," she said.

"Fun, how?" I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.

"I wouldn't be the smallest anymore," she said. It should have been an in-