With an effort, I pushed down both the sick feeling of despair that roiled within me whenever I thought of the events of the afternoon and the worry about how I was to find an unknown murderer who was targeting someone equally unknown, and focused instead on summoning a known entity.

Twenty minutes later a thin eddy of grayish brown smoke trickled into the room from under the doorway, cohering into the familiar form of a brown-haired, brown-eyed naked man,

"Oh, good, focusing on you works! Hi, Jacob," I said as his body became solid.

He jumped back when I .stood up, his body immediately becoming hazy.

"No, there's no dragon! You don't have to leave," I said hastily, waving my hands around to indicate the dragon-free environment. "See? Just me, a friend, and my demon."

Jacob's body solidified again as he looked curiously at Nora. "There are two of you."

"Yes, that's Nora. She's a friend of mine. She's also a Guardian."

"Eh," he said, looking disconcerted for a moment. Then back went his shoulders, and out puffed his chest. "I can handle a threesome. I am a most virile and strenuous lover."

I walked over to where I had filched one of the hotel's navy blue terry bathrobes. "I'm sure you could, and I don't doubt that you are, but tempting as that offer is, I'm afraid we're going to have to turn it down. Nora was assaulted last night, and I've had an awful day. Here, why don't you put this on?"

He stared at the bathrobe I held out for him, eyeing it as if it was made up of slugs. "Why do you want me to wear that garment? Is it part of a game? Will it excite you if I do?"

"It'll make both Nora and me a lot more comfortable if you wear it," I answered, shoving it into his hands. To my relief, he donned it, although he didn't tie the belt very tight, so the front part gaped enough to give anyone who cared to look a view of his prime real estate.

"You do not wish for me to make love to you both?" Jacob asked, still clearly confused. He sat down on the edge of the bed. "It is because you have heard stories of this other one? I told you last night, I will make you forget him."

A little shudder went through Nora. I shared her sentiments. "We don't want sex. We just want to talk to you."

His eyes widened in horror. "You do not want me to service you? To pleasure you unlike you have ever been pleasured? To bring you to the highest peaks of ecstasy?"

"No servicing, no pleasure, no peaks, just answers."

He thought for a moment, then he stood up. "I am an incubus of the House of Balint. I have pleasured women for many centuries. I do not answer questions."

I leaned to the side to look around him. "Nora?"

She got to her feet and before Jacob could so much as blink, she had drawn binding wards surrounding him in the four compass points.

"A ward," she said in an instructing tone of voice as she pointed to one of the wards thai glowed blue in the air, "is only as good as the person drawing it. You must have belief in your own powers for the ward to draw with any success. If you doubt yourself, or if you draw a ward you have seldom used, it will be weak and ineffectual."

Jacob, looking around himself in disbelief, tried to move but couldn't, the four wards flaring to life with his attempt. "What is this? What have you done to me?"

"I believe it is because you have little to no experience drawing wards that the ghosts you met earlier gave you a binding spell. They must have known that you would not be able to hold a strong incubus with wards hastily learned. You can see, however, that once you have gained experience with wards, they are a fast and effective means of controlling many beings."

"I do not wish to be controlled! You will release me at once so that I may make love to you."

"Yes, I can see that," I said, ignoring Jacob's outbursts. "'I like how the wards glow bright whenever Jacob tries to break them. How long will they last?"

Nora returned to her chair. "As long as I desire."

"Pen!" Jacob exclaimed, and struggled against the wards again. It was hopeless, of course. Nora was no slouch at ward drawing. Eventually Jacob grew tired of yelling demands to be freed, and he slumped down onto the bed again, the wards allowing him a certain range of motion so long as he didn't try to break free. "You wish to play dominate. I will be submissive, although I am best when I am allowed to be virile and manly."

"Question-and-answer time," I said, kneeling before him. "If you play along with us, we'll free you so you can go seduce hundreds more women."

"You really do not wish me to make love to you?" He seemed to be having a hard time accepting that fact.

'That's right. We just want to talk to you."

"Ai," he said, his shoulders drooping as his eyes closed. Slumped there in resignation, he looked like a totally different man. "It is so tiring, this constant love-making. At last I have found someone who does not wish for me to be the stallion."

I stared at Nora in surprise for a moment, then looked back at Jacob. "Wait a second—are you saying you don't want to have sex?"

He nodded, his eyes still closed.

"But. . . you're an incubus. That's what you do. Ifs your whole reason for being, isn't it?"

"It is," he agreed, then suddenly sat up straight and opened his eyes. "It is my doom! My curse! I do not wish to be the muffin stud, every night fulfilling the endless fantasies of the women who summon me. And always, they summon me, demanding I give them pleasure after pleasure. For centuries I have been cursed to be the foremost lover in my house, but now"—he sighed and slumped down again—"now I just wish to live quietly and raise horses."

"Horses," I said, knowing control of the situation was slipping away from me, but unable to grasp it. "You want to raise horses."

He looked up, his eyes lit with warmth. "Yes. They are magnificent creatures, are they not? They are strong. They are beautiful. They allow you to ride them, and they never, ever ask to ride you in return."

Jim snorted. I shot it a look, having earlier ordered it to silence when the incubus showed up. "I don't think I'm going to touch that. Moving on—I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, do you know of any incubus at your house who has murdered women he served?"