He turned. He'd lost the battle with the tears. They ran in pale pinkish tracks down his face.

"Of all the powers from Belle's line that I've had used on me, Auggie, yours is the most awful."

"How can you say that?" he asked. "The ardeur can enslave. Requiem can rape with a thought."

"Yeah, Requiem's power would be the ultimate date-rape drug, but he doesn't use it that way."

"He did once," Auggie said.

I processed that information, tested if it was a lie, but I didn't think it was. I shrugged. "Whatever he was as a young vampire, he's not that now. But the ardeur is just lust, and so is Requiem's power. It doesn't steal the emotions; yours does."

"And you think that is a worse crime?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I do."

"You hate me." He whispered it.

I nodded. "Yes."

He turned away, and took a step. I caught his arm. He froze under that one small touch, as if I'd turned him to stone. I knew that reaction. That was the reaction when the merest brush of someone's hand meant more to you than almost anything in the world, and it meant nothing to them. It was how I'd felt off and on with Richard. As if my entire life were in the hand that touched him, and he didn't care. It was one of the reasons that I'd fought free of him. It was too hard to love that much, and hate that much at the same time.

I used that touch to turn Auggie back to me. He let me do it, though he could have fought and won. I was stronger than a normal human now, but Auggie's bicep was thicker than my thigh. In a fair fight, I'd lose, but Aug-gie's own power had made certain he'd never have a fair fight with me.

I looked into his eyes, watching him try to be angry, instead of hurt. "What a terrible power you have, Augustine," I said, softly, "to offer true love and mean it. People must have been willing to trade anything, everything, for such a gift."

He nodded. "Without the ardeur to trap me back, I could have made you love me without risking this much of myself. I know everything about my power, Anita. I can make a person love me, really love me, and not love them back."

I dropped his arm. "Have you done that?"

"You're right, Anita, I have a terrible power. At first it was just the ability to make people like me, then love, but what I didn't realize, at first, was that