“Almost,” Kaazim said.

   “What do you mean, almost?” I asked.

   “I’m not saying it’s the Mother of All Darkness’s power. I’m saying it is the Mother of All Darkness.”

   “No, she tried to take over my body, but I stopped her.”

   “Did you, or did you help her do the very thing she wanted to do?”

   I shook my head. “She’s dead.”

   “You ate her power, her magic, her spirit, and that was all she was, just spirit. Perhaps it didn’t work the way she wanted it to, but she is inside you.”

   “She is not in control of me, and that’s what she wanted.”

   “True, but if she’s in there, Anita, she is trying to figure out how you work, like a new car. Maybe what is happening to Damian is her learning to use the gas pedal, or figuring out how to drift around a turn.”

   “No,” I said, and sounded very sure of it.

   “Then if it is not the Mother, it is her power, and by your not forging a tighter bond with Damian, that power is treating him like a runaway vampire.”

   “Runaway vampire, what the fuck does that mean?”

   “When she was more physical and less spirit, sometimes vampires she wanted close to her would run away from her. They would run as far away as they could go. She used to send us to fetch them, but then her power grew. She was able to hunt them in their dreams, to torment them until they did what she wished.”

   I thought about everything he’d said and finally asked, “What do I do to make him closer to me? I mean, he’s right here, holding my hand.”

   “You are of Jean-Claude’s bloodline, or your power is, which means lust is your coin to exchange for goods, Anita.”

   I looked at him.

   “Why that look, Anita? You have had sex with Damian before, and he seems handsome enough for a man. Why do you run from him so?”

   “I promised Cardinale and Damian that I would honor their monogamy.”

   “She took her clothes, Anita. I think they’re done,” Bobby Lee said.

   I shook my head. “Cardinale is like the ultimate drama queen, an extreme girl.”

   “What does that mean?” Damian asked.

   “That I wouldn’t put it past her to move her stuff out as a sort of test to see how much you love her.”

   “You mean she wants me to see how much I’ll miss her.”

   “Something like that.”

   He shook his head. “I spent centuries crawling for She-Who-Made-Me. I won’t do it again.” He motioned around the room, which looked like it belonged to anyone but him. “I’ve crawled enough for Cardinale already.”

   “If the relationship is at an end, then your promise to honor their monogamy is at an end,” Kaazim said.

   “I’ve felt how much you love her,” I said.

   “You’re holding my hand. I’ll lower my shields. You can feel exactly what I’m feeling.”

   “If you lower shields now, I’ll feel it, too,” Nathaniel said.

   “I know,” Damian said.

   “Why do you want me to know how you feel about Cardinale?” I asked.

   “Why are you nervous, Anita?” Kaazim asked.

   “I’m not sure.”

   “If you don’t want me, that is your right.” Damian pulled away from my hand and lost the physical connection to both of us. He was still covered in his own dried blood like an extra from a horror show. I guess all three of us looked like horror show escapees.

   “It’s not that I don’t want you, Damian. You’re beautiful.”

   “Then why do you hesitate?” Kaazim asked.

   “This is really none of your business.”

   “When you asked for my help, you made it my business.”

   “Well, thank you, and now back off.”

   “You destroyed our queen, Anita. You ended our way of life and our reason for existence. Now, you are our dark queen, and Jean-Claude is our king. We are your bodyguards. How can your well-being not be our business?”

   When he put it that way, it was hard to bitch at him, but I so wanted to. “And how is who I have sex with your business?”

   “If you were descended from a bloodline that thrived on violence, I would tell you to hurt him. If a bloodline of terror, I would say make him fear you. If anger, then rage at him. But it is lust that holds your power.”

   “I can feed on anger,” I said.

   “Then make him angry, and bind him to you with screams of rage. Perhaps hit him. It will give you more food to siphon out of him.”

   “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather just have sex,” Damian said.

   “I vote sex,” Nathaniel said. I waited for Damian to protest that sex would include all three of us, but he just kept looking at me.

   “Anita,” Bobby Lee said, “why are you being weird about this?”

   “I don’t think avoiding adding another name to my list of regular lovers is weird. I think I’m over my limit for giving enough attention to the ones I have.”

   “If that’s all that’s worrying you, Anita, I’m a big, grown-up vampire. I’m not expecting hearts and flowers.” Damian looked around the room at the decor and added, “I think I’ve actually had enough flowers for a while.”

   “I don’t believe you.”

   He held out his hand. “Touch me, lower your shields and I’ll prove it.”

   “Anita, just touch him and then we’ll know how he really feels. No commitments, no promises, just touch him,” Nathaniel said, hugging me close and saying the last almost against my cheek.

   I sighed, then reached for Damian. His hand was strangely warm for his having lost so much blood and not having fed yet. We wrapped our hands together, looked into each other’s eyes, and lowered our shields. Nathaniel held on to me but made no move to touch the vampire.

   I was very carefully feeling nothing much, but Damian was feeling a lot of things. Sad, tired, angry, confused, but mostly tired. Cardinale had done what a lot of intensely jealous people do; she’d worn him down, worn him out emotionally. I tried to feel that love that I’d gotten a glimpse of just a few hours earlier in his office, but I couldn’t find it. What did that even mean? That it hadn’t been real, or that Cardinale had used up the last of it, as if love could be a cup that you both filled up with love, kindness, joy, sex, all the things that made you a couple, but if you could fill the cup up, you could also drain it dry with cruelty, sorrow, pain, jealousy, and anger.