“We’re taking Nicky,” Nathaniel said.

   “He can’t feed her for two days by himself without compromising his ability to fight.”

   “We’re taking Domino.”

   “He’s emergency food only. He’s not one of my lovers anymore, remember?” I said.

   “Fortune, Echo, and Magda are going,” Nathaniel said.

   “Well, that’s true,” Damian said, and sounded less certain.

   “I’m thinking of taking Dev, too,” I said.

   “See? She’ll have plenty of food,” Nathaniel said.

   “But you weren’t thinking that when you started us taking off our shirts.”

   The energy in the room was calmer now; I could think again. Whatever Nathaniel was doing had stopped. Damian had made him think too much about other things. It was hard to keep your concentration pure enough to do magic when you were having to think about relationship issues. Maybe that’s why so many major witches and wizards throughout history never married?

   “I’m sorry, Anita. Damian. You’re right. If we’d been the only two lovers going to Ireland, I’d have still wanted the three of us to make love and feed the ardeur together. We’ve never done that before, and I know it’s a rush when Anita and I do it with another person.”

   “I look forward to it,” Damian said, “but not tonight. She should feed off someone who isn’t traveling with us.”

   I looked at them and they were still yummy to see all shirtless and well, just handsome as hell, or maybe handsome as heaven—yeah, that sounded better—but they weren’t so overwhelmingly beautiful that I had to have them now, right now. The compulsion was gone, replaced by my usual desire for Nathaniel, which was a near-constant like breathing, and there was a new spark when I looked at Damian that wasn’t as strong, but it was most definitely there.

   “I’ve never gotten this much power before. If I’m not careful I’ll want to use it all the time.” Nathaniel was frowning.

   “I told you, it’s like being in love, that new-relationship energy that almost overwhelms you, but feels so good.”

   “So instead of NRE it’s NME?” I asked.

   “I know NRE is new-relationship energy, but what’s NME?” Nathaniel asked.

   “New metaphysical energy,” I said.

   He grinned. “I like it, and it’s accurate, especially because my new magic seems to be based on sex and love, but I like New Magical Energy, instead of Metaphysical.”

   “Lust and love are what Belle Morte’s bloodline does best,” Damian said.

   “Lust is Belle Morte’s line,” I said. “Love is what Jean-Claude’s power added to it when he became powerful enough to be his own bloodline.”

   Damian nodded. “It’s true. There is a softer power to this energy than anything Belle Morte ever offered.”

   “Is love softer energy than lust?” I asked.

   He thought about it and finally smiled. “No, no, I suppose it’s not.”

   “Love is the hardest thing of all,” Nathaniel said. “Just sex is so much easier.”

   I gave him a look.

   He smiled at me. “It’s like the difference between sleeping with someone and really sleeping with them. Having sex is easy compared to trying to learn to sleep with someone.”

   I laughed. “God, that is the truth.”

   “Love is even harder than sleeping overnight in the same bed for the first few times. They’re both worth the effort, but you still have to work at it.”

   “You have to work at sex, too,” I said.

   It was his turn to give me a look.

   “I mean, we all get better at it with each other, because we know what everyone enjoys and who has what skill set.”

   “I don’t think I had to work on much,” he said.

   I laughed again. “I can’t really argue about the actual skills. It was the emotional issues that kept stopping us.”

   He nodded, no longer smiling.

   “I don’t think I’ve been with either of you enough to know what you enjoy,” Damian said.

   Nathaniel looked at him. “We’ll fix that.”

   Damian started to be embarrassed, and then a calmness came over him. He seemed to steady, and held out his hand to Nathaniel. “Yes, we will.”

   “You just helped him be calmer about it all, didn’t you?”

   Nathaniel nodded and took the vampire’s hand in his. “Just like he helped me get over my power trip just now.”

   “We’re supposed to help each other,” Damian said.

   “We’re supposed to be stronger together,” Nathaniel said.

   I looked at them, holding hands, and waited for Damian to protest, but he looked . . . content.

   “Stronger together is the ideal,” I said.

   “We are that now,” Nathaniel said.

   “We are,” Damian said, smiling at him.

   “I guess we are,” I said.

   Nathaniel looked at me and his face had a new resolve that I’d never seen before. It reminded me of one of my expressions. One thing you did with a triumvirate was share bits of each other’s talents, memories, and personality. It had never worked quite that way between the three of us before, but it had always worked that way with Jean-Claude, Richard, and me. Richard had inherited my temper, Jean-Claude my ruthlessness; I’d gotten Jean-Claude’s blood hunger and Richard’s craving for flesh. I really didn’t want to go through all that again, but I wasn’t sure that what I wanted was really going to matter.

   “Go find someone to feed the ardeur, Anita. We’ll keep shopping for towels. If we put an order in they should be here by the time we get back from Ireland,” Nathaniel said.

   I left them shopping for linens on the Internet, and I went to find someone to have sex with and feed the metaphysical hunger that could only be satisfied by some very up-close-and-personal interactions. The ardeur was the other thing I’d inherited from Jean-Claude. He was an incubus, not demonic, just a vampire who could feed off lust as well as blood. I was a succubus to his incubus now. No, I really didn’t want to inherit any more metaphysical surprises from anyone again.

27

   NOW THAT I wasn’t drunk on metaphysics I went to find Jean-Claude. I wanted to tell him what had happened, and if I was having a last hurrah with anyone I was leaving at home, I wanted it to be him. He was in his bedroom talking to a man I didn’t know. The man was in a regular brown business suit with a clipboard and a pen in his hands. At first glance Jean-Claude seemed to be in a white button-up business shirt and black slacks, except that the slacks fit well enough and tight enough to his body to fit seamlessly into knee-high black boots. He held his hand out to me with a smile. “Ma petite, I have organized a temporary bed until the custom mattress can be remade and shipped to us.”