2

I GOT BACK to the foot of the stairs and the still-crowded lobby. I scanned the crowd for Micah, but since he was my size neither of us could see the other over the crowd. The people parted and I could see him about halfway across the room, talking with a family I didn't recognize. He was smiling, face alight with good humor. He laughed, head back, soundless to me over the murmur of the crowd. The crowd closed again and just like that I couldn't see him. I started easing my way toward him. The crush cleared and I could see him again. He was one of those rare men who could look delicate, until you took in the wide shoulders tapering down to a slender waist. He was built like a swimmer, though his sports were jogging and weight lifting like most of the wereanimals I knew. His suits all had to be tailored-down athletic cuts. Italian suits seemed to fit best. American suits were mostly shaped like boxes and looked terrible on short men with muscles. Though Micah went for strength, not bulk. Micah's suit fit him perfectly, and I caught several women giving him covert glances as they hurried past with their families. I had to smile because I knew he looked even better out of the suit than in it. A man looked at his ass as he went past. Micah got that a lot, too. I think it was being short and pretty, because I could call him handsome if he wanted, but he was too pretty for words like handsome. It was also the nearly waist-length hair. Curly, and that rich, deep brown that said it might have been paler when he was little. His hair was almost as curly as mine and spilled down his back to the envy of many a woman. My own hair was almost to my waist, because he wanted to cut his hair and I didn't want him to. I wanted to take a few inches off my hair and he didn't want me to. So he'd made me a deal. If I cut my hair, he got to cut his. We had a stalemate, and my hair hadn't been this long since junior high.

He turned his face toward me as if he'd felt me looking, and I could  finally see all that delicate line of face, maybe a little long through the jaw for perfection, but that one line was all that saved him from looking like a beautiful woman instead of a man. Elementary school must have been hell, because short and pretty men don't usually fare well. He told me that his eyes had originally been brown, but I'd never seen those eyes, the ones he was born with. He'd come to me with leopard eyes trapped forever in those dark lashes, chartreuse eyes green and yellow depending on what color he wore near his face or how the light caught them. Most of the time he wore sunglasses to hide the eyes, but wearing them after dark sometimes attracted more attention than what they hid, and it amazed him how many people could look him in the eyes and only remark, "What beautiful eyes." Or, "What a great shade of green," and never make the connection.

Nathaniel would say, "People see what they want to see, or what their minds tell them they should see most of the time."

Micah gave me the smile that was all for me. It was made up of love, lust, and just that connection we had had from almost the moment we'd met. He was my Nimir-Raj, my leopard king, and I was his Nimir-Ra, leopard queen. Though I didn't shapeshift to anything, I still somehow held a piece of leopard inside me, and that piece had seemed to know him. Micah had never questioned it, and I had done something unprecedented: I'd let him move in with me. We were two years and still counting; two years and still happy with each other. It was a record for me.

Usually by now I'd wrecked it somehow, or the man had done something I could point at and go See, see I knew it wouldn't work. Micah had managed to walk the maze that was my heart and not get caught in any of the traps. He said his good-byes to the people and came to me.

He smiled, the edge of his mouth quirking up like it did sometimes, his eyes shining as if laughter were just a thought away. "What are you looking at?" he asked, voice low.

I smiled back because I couldn't help it. "You."

Our hands reached for each other at the same time, our fingers just finding each other, entwining, playing along the touch and feel of each other. I'd had one friend say that we could get more out of just holding hands than some couples got out of kissing. But we did that, too, leaning in and being careful of the lipstick. Micah went through most nights with a touch of my lipstick on his mouth. He didn't seem to mind.

"Who was that?" I asked as we turned and began to make our way hand in hand with the last of the crowd toward the auditorium.

"One of the families in our support group," he said.

Micah was the head/spokesperson for the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Human and Lycanthrope Communities. It was affectionately known as the Furry Coalition. The Coalition helped new shapeshifters adjust to the change in lifestyle, and kept them from shifting early outside safe houses. A new shifter was unpredictable. It could take months of full moons before they were in control enough to be trustworthy without older, more experienced shifters riding herd on them. And yes, unpredictable meant they were consumed by a craving for flesh, and fresh was better. They also blacked out and had few memories of what they'd done. Most newbies passed out after shifting back to human form, so they needed to be either in a safe place or where someone could get them under some literal cover.

Micah and some of the other local leaders had come up with an idea for a family support group, where the members of the families that weren't shapeshifters could talk freely about their parents, siblings, or even grand-parents. It was legal to be a shapeshifter in the United States now, but discrimination still occurred. There were entire professions where failing one blood test would get you excluded forever. Military, police, food industry, medical care - it was hard to keep a job if you were a teacher of children and the parents found out you turned into the big bad wolf once a month. That kind of discrimination was illegal, but hard to prove. It was one of the reasons that Richard Zeeman, junior high science teacher and local Ulfric, wolf king, wouldn't be here tonight sitting on the other side of Jean-Claude. Richard was technically Jean-Claude's wolf to call, as I was his human servant. We were a triumvirate of power and should both have been here at his side, but Richard wouldn't risk being outed and losing his job. That, and Richard really hated being a werewolf, but that was a problem for later. For right this moment, nobody who had come with Jean-Claude had a problem being exactly who and what they were.

Most of the seats were already full, and it was Asher's hair that I spotted first, gleaming golden under the lights. I wasn't kidding about the gold. He wasn't blond; his hair was as close to true gold and still a natural color as any person I'd ever met. Of course, once I'd found Asher, Jean-Claude was at his side. Jean-Claude's black hair curled over the seat back, inches longer than Asher's, which was just past shoulder length. Jean-Claude had grown his hair out because I seemed to like more hair on my men. Asher had informed me, "It takes energy for a vampire to grow his hair longer  than it was when he died. I don't have that kind of energy to spare." Which implied that Jean-Claude did, and that had been interesting to know.

There was another blond on his other side. J.J., Jason's current girlfriend, had traveled from New York so she could watch him onstage. They'd gone to school together and known each other a little during college. They'd met again at a friend's bachelorette party, and now here she was coming to see him onstage. He'd traveled to see her onstage with the New York City Ballet three times. This would be her third trip to St. Louis in as many months. It was as serious as I'd ever seen Jason over anyone.

He'd been almost embarrassed when J.J. said she'd come out for the recital. He'd said, "It's just amateur stuff. You do the real deal." I don't know what she'd said, because I'd left him to finish the phone conversation in private, but whatever she'd said, there she sat looking pale and beautiful, her long, straight blond hair in a neat braid down the graceful curve of neck and shoulders. Her dress was a pink that was almost white, with thin spaghetti straps. She was like most ballet dancers, honed down to muscle and grace so she could wear the filmy dress with nothing much under it and have it look great. I'd have looked like I was in desperate need of a bra. My curves only honed down so far.

Jean-Claude and Asher stood before we'd actually come up to the aisle. They turned without looking around, as if they'd sensed us, and maybe they had. Or at least Jean-Claude had.

Another man stood up in the row in back of them, and only then did I realize it was Truth. He'd combed his shoulder-length hair back in a tight, neat ponytail, and he was completely clean-shaven. Truth's face was trapped in that not-quite-beard stubble because that's how he'd looked when he died. Shaving meant that he might not be able to grow it back even if he wanted to. He was wearing a nice suit, too. If his hair hadn't still been its usual brown I might have thought it was his brother, Wicked.

I stood there staring up into his face, stunned. I wanted to ask, Where are your boots? Where's your leather? But that seemed the wrong thing to say.

Micah leaned in and said, "Say something to him."

"Um, you look nice," I said, and it was hopelessly inadequate. I tried again. "I guess I've just never seen you cleaned up like this. You look great."

He tugged on the front of the suit jacket. "I borrowed it from Wicked. He's in the row ahead of them."

Micah mercifully turned me away, so I moved up to Asher and Jean-Claude, who were still standing. Truth always looked like a mix between an outlaw biker and a medieval forest ranger. He was here as security. Had Jean-Claude insisted he get neatened up?

Wicked gave a small nod and a smile from the row in front of them. He looked, more than ever, like his brother's twin, though I knew they had been born a year apart as humans. His hair was straight and blond, thicker-textured than his brother's slight wave of brown. They both had the same blue-gray eyes, and now that Truth's chin was bare, the same deep dimple in their chin was very clear.

Asher took my hand in his and I was suddenly looking up at someone who made both Wicked and Truth look too manly, too modern-day handsome in comparison. Asher was almost as broad of shoulder as the brothers, but that face. The mass of wavy gold hair, the eyes so pale a blue, like ice given life and color, in a rim of darker lashes and brow. But it was the face that was always breathtaking. It was a beauty to make angels weep, or want to trade sides. He was just simply one of the most gorgeous people I'd ever seen. He thought his face was ruined because holy-water scars traced the right side of all that beauty. But they only went about halfway up, and the perfect curve of mouth was untouched. It was almost as if the inquisitioner who had tried to burn the devil out of him had flinched at the ruin of that face.

I knew the scars continued down the right side of his chest to trace the edge of his hip and thigh. He managed the Circus of the Damned and was the masked ringmaster, so he could be beautiful and mysterious and not show everyone the scars. For him to come out in public like this was a good sign. Though he was a master at using shadow, darkness, his hair, so that people around him would probably never see the scars if he didn't wish them to. He was wearing a soft blue silk shirt with a high, soft collar pierced by a stickpin that held a pale blue diamond almost the color of his eyes. Jean-Claude and I had bought it for him just this year. Admittedly, most of the money for the stone had come from Jean-Claude. I made good money, but the diamond was almost as big as my thumbnail.

Seeing him wearing it so that it attracted attention to his face made me feel that every penny had been well spent. I smiled up at him and went on tiptoe so his six foot one didn't have to bend down too far.

From the waist down he was wearing dark brown leather and boots that  came up to his knees. The fact that I hadn't looked below the waist until he kissed me said something about just how nice the upper bits were, because it was all nice. I also knew that Jean-Claude had dressed him for tonight. Asher was more suits, unless he was dressing for a fetish event and then leather worked dandy, just not this kind of leather.

It was more a cheek press than a kiss, to save him from wearing my lipstick, but it made me think of what Matthew had said, about everyone kissing me. I'd had sex with every vampire waiting for me. It wasn't a comfy thought.

Asher whispered, "What has put a frown on that lovely face?"

"Something Matthew said backstage," I whispered back.

"Precocious indeed if he can make you that unhappy."

I gave him a look, and he passed my hand over to Jean-Claude. He was wearing a white shirt that was almost identical to the blue one that Asher wore, but he'd put a short black velvet jacket over his, and the stickpin through his cravat was an antique cameo. It had been one of the first Christmas presents I'd ever gotten for him. It was nice, but not even close to the same kind of nice as Asher's diamond. It made me think I needed to go shopping.

Jean-Claude's black leather pants looked poured on, and his boots rose up over his thighs like a second skin. I didn't have to see the back of the boots to know they laced all the way up his leg. I liked these boots and had seen them with and without pants. I stumbled as he drew me closer, thinking too hard about the boots and nothing else on him, and then there was the moment when I had to look up, had to see that face. He and I had been a couple on and off for five years, almost six now, and I kept waiting for a moment when I could see him and not feel like there had to be some mistake. Someone this beautiful couldn't possibly be in love with me when he had an entire planet of people to choose from. I cleaned up well, but Jean-Claude made me feel like I'd sneaked into the Louvre and stolen a masterpiece off the wall so I could roll around on it naked.

His eyes were a midnight blue so dark that a shade more would have made them look black, but they never did. His eyes were the darkest true blue I'd ever seen, as Asher's were the palest. The head of their bloodline, their sourdre de sang, literally "fountain of blood," had a thing for blue eyes and had collected different colors of blue-eyed and beautiful men. She'd had centuries to find them, and I had two of her most amazing right here.  She'd thrown Asher away when he was scarred, and Jean-Claude had fled from her. Now he was his own sourdre de sang, the first new master of his own bloodline to appear in a thousand years.

He leaned down and laid a gentle kiss on my lips. I kissed him back, letting my body fall in against his, and his arms encircled me and it was like breathing, as if I'd been holding my breath until we kissed.

He pulled away with my lipstick on his lips, but it was a good color for him. He smiled down at me, his eyes sparkling as if he was on the verge of laughter. "Ma petite." That was all, just my nickname, but it seemed to hold years of I love yours.

The lights flashed. It was the signal to get to our seats before the curtain went up. J.J. was standing so that Jean-Claude could help me into the seat beside him where she'd been sitting. She smiled and said hi. I told her I was glad she could make it. "I wouldn't have missed seeing Jason dance again," she said, and her face lit up as she said his name. She was pretty, always, but in that moment she was beautiful. She had the same spring-blue eyes that Jason had. They both had the soft good looks that sometimes goes with blond, blue-eyed coloring. They looked enough alike to be siblings, but then they shared a common great-great-grandfather. A lot of the kids from their school looked like siblings. Apparently Great-Great-Granddad had been a busy boy.

Something made me turn and look back to Micah and Asher at the head of the aisle. Asher had tried to give Micah the same greeting he'd given me, but Micah had pulled away. Asher sat down laughing as Micah eased past Jean-Claude and me to sit on my other side by J.J. Jean-Claude patted Micah's back, as if saying, It's all right. In private Jean-Claude and Micah greeted each other pretty intimately, but Micah had made it clear that he wasn't food for everyone. Asher had taken it as a challenge to see if he could seduce Micah, and when that hadn't worked, he seemed intent on embarrassing him. I loved Asher, but he had a sadistic streak in him that I wasn't always crazy about.

If he didn't stop pushing, he was going to be on Micah's shit list permanently. I wasn't sure what to do about the rising tension between the two men, but something was going to have to be done before Asher pushed my Nimir-Raj far enough to do something unpleasant. Micah and Jean-Claude had tried to rip each other's throats out the first time they'd met. If Jean-Claude and I couldn't get Asher to tone it down, Micah would take  care of it; we just might not like how he did it. He wasn't homophobic, he just didn't want to donate blood to Asher, and the other man seemed to have taken the rejection badly.

Micah was tense beside me, his face striving for neutral but showing anger if you knew where to look for it. I covered his hand with mine. He was stiff and unyielding and then he relaxed into my hand. He finally gave me a small smile, but his reaction in public let me know that Asher was very close to pushing him too far.

I glanced at Jean-Claude to see if he'd seen it. He was watching the stage as if nothing untoward had happened. Had he not noticed, or was he trying to ignore the problem for a little longer? I needed some backup here, not the old ostrich-hiding-in-the-sand routine. But if Jean-Claude had a soft spot, it was Asher, and okay, maybe me. We both got away with things that he probably should have put a stop to long before he did.

Wicked was looking at me. He'd seen and understood the problem. Both the problem between Asher and Micah, and the fact that Jean-Claude seemed to be ignoring it. I was pretty sure that Wicked and Truth would back my play if I could come up with one that wouldn't destroy our happy little apple cart.

The trouble was, in vampire land I was Jean-Claude's human servant, and Asher was a master vampire with enough power to have his own territory. He stayed as Jean-Claude's second-in-command because he loved us and didn't want to be without, but it meant that my position of authority was a little shaky.

I was a vampire executioner, but I wouldn't kill Asher, and he knew that. So my threat was gone. I was a necromancer and could control the undead, not just zombies, but lots of undead, including some vampires. But I knew that if I got out my major mojo and controlled Asher like that he'd never forgive me. And once I had that much control over someone, sometimes it didn't go away, and that had become completely disturbing to me.

Monica came hurrying up the opposite side of the aisle. The one that made more people have to move their legs or stand up. The side that was farthest away from all of us who were supposed to be part of her group. It was very Monica. She'd apparently made a serious play for Asher and been rebuffed. She'd given him a wide-ish berth since then.

She smiled and waved at all of us as she sat down beside J.J. There was still one seat saved with us.

The lights flashed again and Vivian was at the head of the aisle by Asher. He and Jean-Claude stood, so I did, too. Micah was already on his feet. Vivian was petite enough that we probably could have stayed in our seats, but the older vampires often reacted to women as if bustles had never gone out of fashion, and if they could be gentlemen then so could I.

She brushed past me with a hurried, "Sorry I'm late."

"You're not late," Micah said.

I added, "You're just on time." That earned me a small smile. Nothing could really make Vivian less than beautiful, but there was tightness around her eyes and mouth, worry lines on that beautiful skin. Her skin was that shade of coffee with enough cream to make it almost white. She was technically African American, but it was by way of Ireland, and that showed a lot from the thick, nearly straight hair to the pale gray-blue eyes. She was one of the wereleopards in our pard. I'd had to rescue her from a very bad man once. He had done terrible things to her. I'd killed him in the end, but revenge only makes things all better in the movies. In real life, once the villain is dead the trauma lives on inside the victims.

She was here to watch her live-in boyfriend, Stephen, onstage. She spoke to J.J. as she sat down on the other side of Monica. Vivian slipped her coat off, and the moment I saw the dress I knew why she was running late. She'd gone home from her job as administrative assistant at an insurance agency to change. The dress was a little slip of nothing, black with a beading of bronze and gold beads so that it shimmered as she moved. Seeing J.J. and Vivian in their party dresses made me half wish I'd changed for the show, but I'd have been truly late. I could have taken something to work to change into, but in all honesty it hadn't occurred to me until just that moment. Oh, well.

Micah leaned in and whispered, "You look great."

I whispered back, "Was it that obvious?"

"To me," he said, and squeezed my hand. I squeezed back and we shared that smile that was mainly just for us. Nathaniel was the only one who got to share that smile sometimes, and he wasn't here because he was going to be onstage.

Jean-Claude's hand touched the edge of mine, and I took the hint, leaning my head against his shoulder and taking his hand. He had been a ladies' man for centuries and he swore that I was the first woman to make him feel a bit insecure. I tended to be hard on the egos of a certain kind of men. The ones who normally swept women off their feet had never moved  me much, because I'd always felt that if they swept me off my feet they'd practiced on a lot of women before me, and would practice more with women after me. I'd rarely been wrong on that. Besides, the normal sweep-you-off-your-feet tricks often left me puzzled. I still wasn't sure if I should apologize to Jean-Claude for throwing his game off this badly, or take a certain pride in it.

There was a part of me that still believed if I'd fallen into his arms easily he'd have wooed me, won me, and left me for other game by now. Was that unfair, my own insecurities talking, or just truth?

His hand was warm in mine. That meant he'd fed on someone. It had been a willing blood donor. Women, especially, lined up to feed him. In fact, one of the reasons I'd spent the last few weeks going through a stack of photographs and DVDs with some help from the other men had been that we needed more regular food. Other vampire and wereanimal groups across the country had sent in applications for some of their people to join us. The DVDs had been everything from flat-out porn to strangely awkward dating tapes. It was like the old idea of an arranged marriage, though this was more an arranged mistress, sort of. The groups hoped it would give them a stronger tie to our power base, and it might.

They'd been sending candidates to Jean-Claude for a while, and he had politely turned them all down. This last batch came addressed to me, personally. They seemed to feel that Jean-Claude had turned everyone down for fear of pissing me off, and there might be something to that, so I'd sat down and watched. I'd had Nathaniel and Micah help some, and Jason, but none of the vampires. I hadn't done that on purpose, but . . .

Who had Jean-Claude fed on? For a second I wanted to ask, and then I let it go. I didn't really want to know. Taking blood was entirely too close to foreplay for the vampires of his bloodline. Of course, he shared me with a lot of other men, so my being jealous of him taking blood from some other woman seemed childish and unfair. But just because it's childish and unfair doesn't mean it isn't the way I felt. Stupid, but true.

The lights went down and I was saved from having to think too hard as the curtain rose. I got to sit in the dark holding the hands of two of the men I loved most. It wasn't a bad way to start the weekend. I noticed Monica watching us. Was it envy on her face, or anger? I turned back to the stage and left Monica to get her face back to its usual polite I-like-you expression. Usually I liked the truth from everyone around me, but I'd make an exception for her. I knew not to trust her, so she could pretend to  like me, and I'd pretend to like her. It wasn't friendship, but it was an understanding.

The music came up; I hugged Micah and Jean-Claude to me, and watched Asher holding Jean-Claude's other hand. Even in the Bible Belt, when the lights dimmed you could still hold hands.