"I don't see why he needs to enter," I said.

"We will ask him." Jean-Claude took me into the curve of his shoulder. Micah moved in front of me. I wrapped my arms around Micah's shoulders, drawing him in against my breasts. Yeah, the water covered me, but Remus was still one of the newer guards. I didn't know him well enough to be comfortable in the tub with him in the room.

"You may enter," Jean-Claude said.

The door opened; Remus stepped inside, but kept his hand on the doorknob, as if he were no happier about invading our bath than I was. His eyes were green-gray, nice eyes, if he'd ever look directly at you. He never did, or at least he never did at me, or Jean-Claude, or Micah, or Nathaniel. Why? Remus's face had been broken at some point, and been put back together. There was no one thing you could point to and say, "That's out of place," but the overall effect was lopsided, and looked almost uncomfortable, like a ceramic mask that had been glued back together wrong.

I couldn't make complete sense of Remus's face, because he wouldn't look at me. I wanted badly to tell him to just look at me, but I couldn't without raising a subject that was probably painful, and none of my business. So I let it go.

The rest of him was dressed in the usual bodyguard black. If there were injuries under the clothes, it didn't show when he moved. He moved like there were steel springs in the lean muscles of his body.

"Claudia ordered anyone who takes over to check with you in person, eye to eye. Her orders."

"Did she say why?" I asked, because it was a change.

He looked up then, gave that lopsided smile. I had a moment to see disbelief on his face, before he looked away. "She filled me in on what's been happening. She wants at least two guards in the room with you, at all times."

"I don't think so," I said.

"That's what I told her you'd say." He gave another glance at me, and I had a second of those green-gray eyes, angry, then down and away again. "With Micah with you, it's not a problem, but if it were only Jean-Claude—" he shrugged. "If you shift for the first time and it's wolf, then he may be able to control you, but if you shift to an animal he doesn't control, then what if you eat him?"

"He's a Master of the City; I think he can handle it."

"You don't get it," Remus said, and he came into the room a step, letting go of the doorknob. He finally looked at me, and held my gaze. Since I give absolute eye contact, it left us staring at each other. His eyes flinched, but he kept the gaze. It was a relief to be able to see his face straight on. "Jean-