love when lust has worn away a little, and you realize that you still like someone. That it wasn't just lust, but something deeper. I stood there, staring at Auggie, and thought that it sounded like a good idea to wake up some morning beside him when he looked all sleep tousled and winsome. I was in love with him. I should have been terrified, or angry, but I wasn't. It wasn't vampire powers that made me stay calm about it. Maybe we could fix this, the way we'd fixed Requiem's attraction to me. There were options. We could work around it. I wasn't pregnant; we could work around anything else.

"Ma petite."

I turned back to look at Jean-Claude. I hadn't even noticed the brush of the black satin shirt underneath my hands. The shirt was untucked over black jeans. He had very few jeans. He usually only wore them if he suspected he'd be ruining the clothes, or he was trying to portray himself as accessible in some media event. His feet were bare, the flesh only a little less white than the carpet.

"Ma petite," he said again, and this time the nickname made me look back to his face. His hair was a careful fall of curls—his version of casual. "How do you feel when you look upon Augustine?"

I started to look back at the other vampire, but Jean-Claude caught my arm, turned me to look at him. "Answer before you look back, ma petite."

"I think it sounds like a really good idea to have him wake up beside me all tousled and half naked."

"Is it merely lust?"

I shook my head. "No, no, it's the beginning of the real deal. It's love, not just lust."

"You do not sound upset."

I smiled at him. "I'm not pregnant, we can work around everything else. I mean, isn't this similar to what I did to Requiem with the ardeur} If I can free him, then shouldn't a Master of the City be able to free me?"

"Jean-Claude, how do you feel about Augustine?" This from Richard, who had come to stand just behind us.

"I see him as lovely, but strangely, I am not in love with him. He is not in love with me. I had hoped that meant the worst, or best, had not happened, but. . ." He looked beyond us to Augustine.

I looked with him. I noticed that from this distance Auggie's charcoal-gray eyes looked almost black.

"Do you need to ask how do I feel about your human servant?" he asked.

Jean-Claude nodded.

"It is all I can do to stay here on this seat. I want to touch her, to hold her. If my heart could beat, it would break."