He shrugged as much as his shoulder muscles would allow. “My maternal grandfather’s name was Nicholas, the bitch who called herself my mother was named Nicole after him, and I was named Nicky after both of them. Let me just say while we’re on the topic that I know that Nathaniel wants to name a boy Nicholas, after his dead brother, but I’d rather not.”

   “What boy are we naming?” I asked.

   “Now you’ve done it,” Cynric said.

   “Sin, it is always lovely to see you, but we have personal matters to discuss with Nicky,” Jean-Claude said.

   “Are you saying that Nathaniel is picking out baby names?” I asked.

   “You know he has baby fever,” Nicky said.

   “Picking out names is a little more than baby fever,” I said.

   “Nathaniel wants a family, Anita—you know that,” Sin said.

   “Yeah, and if he could get pregnant we could talk about it, but since I’m the only womb in the relationship it’s not happening.”

   “You aren’t the only girl anymore,” Sin said.

   I looked at him, ready to be mad at Nathaniel for picking out names for a baby I hadn’t agreed to have, but any target would do. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

   “It means that when Nathaniel talked about wanting a baby, Fortune was there last time and said she might be willing.”

   “To have Nathaniel’s baby?” I asked.

   “It didn’t get that far, but she’s never had a baby, and if she and Echo feel safe enough she might consider it, that’s all.” Sin held his hands out in a little push-away gesture.

   “I guess I’ll talk to her on the plane about babies,” I said, and I was really angry and some other emotion was in there. I realized that the thought of Nathaniel having a baby with another woman bothered me, a lot. Damn it, I was not breeding!

   “I didn’t mean to start a fight, Anita. You made it sound like your objection to babies is getting pregnant. I thought knowing that one of the other women in our poly group was willing to get pregnant would solve things, not make you mad,” Sin said.

   “Well, it didn’t solve things,” I said, and I sounded pissed. Damn it.

   “Ma petite, we do not have time for an argument if you are to feed before you get on the plane.”

   “Besides, the kid is right,” Nicky said. “If your only objection was needing someone else to get pregnant, it would solve the problem.” He was watching me, and something about the way he was doing it let me know that he was feeling exactly what I was feeling. I couldn’t feel his emotions the way I could if I dropped my psychic shielding with Jean-Claude, or even Cynric, but I also couldn’t keep Nicky from sensing my emotions the way I could the others. As my Bride, Nicky was compelled to keep me happy. It literally seemed to cause him discomfort if not pain to feel me unhappy. He never seemed to share what he sensed from me with any of the other people in our lives, but the look in his eyes said that he, of all of them, knew exactly why I was upset.

   “It’s really hard to get in the mood sometimes when this kind of topic comes up,” I said, and my voice still held an edge of anger, but mostly I sounded peevish and whiny, and I hated hearing that in my own voice. I could do better than this. I had told Nathaniel that if he could get pregnant we could talk about babies more seriously. It had been my way of dropping the topic, but one thing I hadn’t considered when we added other women to our poly group was that I wasn’t the only one who could get pregnant now. I also hadn’t expected how bad it made me feel to think of someone else carrying Nathaniel’s child. I still didn’t want to be pregnant, but I didn’t want him to do it with anyone else, which made no sense at all. But one thing I’d learned in therapy was that just because a feeling made no sense didn’t make you stop feeling it.

   “I didn’t mean to make things harder, or weirder,” Cynric said.

   Nicky gave him a look that said he doubted that last part. He didn’t give Cynric looks like that much, so something was up. “Go ahead, kid. Tell them what you want that doesn’t make things harder, or weirder.”

   “You make it sound like I’m wrong.”

   “I didn’t say you were wrong. I just didn’t say you were right.”

   “I have to be one or the other,” Cynric said.

   “No, you can be wrong and right at the same time.”

   “No, you can’t,” Cynric said.

   “As much as I’d prefer the world to be black and white, yes or no, right or wrong, Nicky’s right: Sometimes you can be both,” I said.

   “Ah, ma petite, you have grown in wisdom since first we met, for then you believed the world was black and white without gray in between.”

   “What’s that mean?” Cynric asked.

   “It means that once upon a time I would have agreed with you, that there was no way to be right and wrong at the same time.”

   “I still don’t understand,” he said.

   “Tell them your plan and then they’ll explain it to you,” Nicky said.

   Cynric got a stubborn look on his face. “It’s logical,” he said.

   “I didn’t argue logic with you, kid.”

   “Please, stop calling me kid. It doesn’t really help me make my point.”

   “Not my job to help you make your point,” Nicky said.

   I frowned at both of them. “Why are you guys almost fighting?”

   “The kid—oh, sorry, Sin—is trying to cockblock me.”

   Cynric rolled his eyes. “Thanks for that elegant introduction to the conversation, Nicky.”

   “You’re welcome,” he said with a smile that looked real, as if he didn’t get the joke. I knew he got it, but I also knew he was a wonderful actor when he wanted or needed to be. A lot of sociopaths are.

   “Enough conversation, Cynric,” I said. “Just tell us what’s going on.”

   “Anita, please use my name.”

   “That is your name.”

   “Then use the nickname I prefer.”

   I sighed and made it a big one, but finally said, “Fine, Sin. I wish you at least spelled it C-Y-N.”

   “You know that everyone mispronounced it that way.”

   “I know, I know. They kept calling you Cindy, Sidney, or Sid.”

   “Or Carol, Karen, Carl, or Candy—that was my favorite when I was spelling it C-Y-N.”

   “Fine. Sin, spelled just like it sounds. What’s up?” I said, but didn’t try to keep the crankiness out of my voice.