“And you think that doesn’t include telling his mother that you’re his confidant?”

   “Don’t you?” Nathaniel asked.

   I thought about it for a minute and then nodded. “Donna wouldn’t be able to leave it alone. It would bug her that her son is able to confide in you more than in her.”

   “Even though the topics he’s needed help with would have been wildly inappropriate for a mother/son talk?” Nathaniel asked.

   “You’ve talked to Donna enough on the phone and via Skype while you’ve been helping with the wedding; what do you think?”

   It was his turn to think, and he finally said, “You’re right. She would have to poke at it.”

   “So you’re right. Edward won’t mention it to her, because he’d know better than we do that she wouldn’t be able to leave it alone.”

   We walked into the hallway outside the gym area, and it felt like a tunnel after the wide-open spaces of the gym. I heard Sin’s voice, though I couldn’t pick out the actual words. A woman’s voice answered him, but it wasn’t until they came into sight that I could see it was Sin and Pierette. Nicky and Magda were nowhere in sight. Pierette was talking earnestly to him. He nodded as if encouraging her to go on. All the anger seemed to have seeped away from her; what the hell had Sin said to Pierette to get her so eager to tell all?

   She saw us first and almost startled, standing taller, as if she were coming to attention. “My queen,” she said, and bowed.

   Nathaniel and I exchanged a look. If I hadn’t known she would hear me, I’d have suggested it was pod people, because Pierette’s entire attitude had changed in just minutes. Sin could be charming, but he was a twenty-year-old man; he hadn’t had enough life experience to be this charming. Hell, Jean-Claude couldn’t have pulled this off without using vampire mind powers on her.

   “Pierette,” I said, and inclined my head to her, though honestly I never knew what to do when someone referred to me as their queen. I let them use the title because that had been the Mother of All Darkness’s title, and it was very much a case of “The queen is dead. Long live the queen.”

   Sin glanced back at us with a smile. “Pierette has been telling me about all her travels around the world with her master, Pierrot.”

   “Are any of those adventures set in Ireland?” I asked.

   “Yes, my queen,” she said.

   “Ireland was one of the places that Pierette and Pierrot policed for the old vampire council,” Sin said.

   “Police arrest people. They save lives. Did you arrest people, Pierette?”

   “There was only one punishment for vampires who had overstepped themselves, my queen.”

   “And that was?” I asked.

   “The same as it is now: death.” I couldn’t really argue with her reasoning. I was a U.S. Marshal, but really my job description hadn’t changed. I was still a legal executioner with a badge.

   “Did you ever kill anyone in Ireland?” I asked.

   “No, M’Lady took care of such things herself.”

   “M’Lady? I’ve never heard her called that before.” We were up even with them now, so I got the full weight of her large brown eyes.

   “Even we of the Harlequin with the strength of the Mother of All Darkness behind us dared not speak her true names, for it called her attention to us, so we christened her M’Lady, for it was the name she forced her pets to call her.”

   “Pets. Do you mean her animals to call?” Sin asked.

   She turned that delicate face with its large dark eyes up to his face. “No, my prince. Though she made some wereanimals into pets, most were vampires like the queen’s servant, Damian.”

   “What do you mean, Damian was her pet? I don’t understand what the word means in this context.”

   “They were her sexual partners, but to call them lovers suggested an emotion that M’Lady did not seem to exhibit. She was as likely to torture them as share pleasure with them. They were at the mercy of her whims and she was . . . very whimsical.”

   “I thought whimsical meant fun and lighthearted,” I said.

   “Then I have misspoken, because M’Lady was not prone to fun, and if she had a heart in the sense that you mean, there was nothing light about it. She forced them to call her M’Lady much as the way a slave in the bondage-and-submission community will call their dominant master, except that title is usually earned and freely given, and nothing was free of cost between M’Lady and her pets, or slaves.”

   “Calling someone master is a term of endearment and respect in the BDSM community,” Nathaniel said.

   “Then again, I have misspoken, because it was a demand, a title like queen, or king, with nothing endearing about it.”

   “Didn’t it bother you to use the same name she forced her pets to use?” I asked.

   “Somewhat, yes, but what else were we to call her?”

   “Wicked Bitch of Ireland’s been working for me.”

   Pierette looked shocked for a moment, and then she laughed, but it was laughter you make when someone surprises or shocks you, more than amuses you. “If you have the misfortune to see her, my queen, please do not call her that to her face. I do not want to lose another dark queen in less than two years.”

   “What if I told you that M’Lady is allowing vampires that aren’t hers to terrorize a city in Ireland?”

   “I would say that it isn’t true. She holds absolute sway over the vampires in Ireland, because they can only rise through her bite, her line. She is her own sourdre de sang, fountain of blood, just as Jean-Claude has become, as Belle Morte and the Dragon have been for centuries. Only her power has been great enough to overcome the reluctance of the land to give up its dead.”

   “What do you mean about the land?” I asked.

   “The wild magic of the Fey is stronger in Ireland than anywhere else remaining in the world. Even if someone dies by vampire bite with the three bites and the right amount of blood taken in the last feeding, most bodies do not rise in Ireland. They are simply dead and begin to rot. Only someone who was their own bloodline could have any hope of creating vampires in Ireland.”

   “So, a vampire that was a fountain of blood would be able to raise vampires there, but no one else?” I asked.

   “Even then it wouldn’t be a given. We have seen M’Lady try to create vampires and the bodies remain inert. She was enraged by her failures, and they were not infrequent. The land’s magic is too alive for any kind of death magic to work well there.”

   “Then why do the Irish not like necromancers?”