“She kept us all like addicts, ma petite. We were addicted to her charms. We competed for her love, but as you have said before of others in our lives, it is a rigged game. There is only one winner in any game involving Belle Morte, and that is Belle Morte.”

Nathaniel unfolded from beside the fire and walked on two legs, but there was something about the way he moved that was very catlike, as if his human body were remembering a lighter grace and it was all there as he came to take my other hand and look down at Jean-Claude.

“We are a game you can win,” he said.

Jean-Claude smiled then, and offered his other hand to him. Nathaniel took it, smiling back. “Oh pussycat, pussycat, you are right, because all of us are willing to talk about what is true and what we need, or want, or cannot live without. We do not—what is the phrase?—game each other.”

“You don’t game the people you love,” I said.

He sat up very straight in the chair, still holding our hands, while we held each other’s. “You are quite right, ma petite. Now, let us follow the recommendation of our clever cat and find Magda before her master wakes for the day and she becomes more clever.”

“She’s not stupid,” Nathaniel said.

“No, but she is not a deep thinker either.”

“Her body awareness and physical intelligence are amazing,” I said.

“That makes her an excellent warrior,” Jean-Claude said.

“And a really physical lover,” Nathaniel said.

I felt the first heat of the blush that was creeping up my face. I didn’t blush as often anymore, but occasionally . . . Jean-Claude laughed and kissed my hand. “Oh, ma petite, you never grow jaded. It is one of your many charms.”

“Dating women is new, okay?”

“We don’t date Magda,” Nathaniel said. “She’s more a bodyguard with benefits.”

I drew him into a hug and put my arm across Jean-Claude’s shoulders, bringing us into a sort of group huddle. “I’m dating as many people as I can do justice to; ‘with benefits’ is okay.”

We all agreed with that; though I hated the concept of “with benefits,” sometimes it was all I had to offer. If someone didn’t think that was enough, they were free to stop being part of our poly group. I’d finally realized that I didn’t have unlimited time and energy to date this many people. We were looking at closing our circle and making it closed poly, which meant eventually we’d start saying no. The trick was to figure out who was a yes before the door of possibilities closed, but right now, we needed to figure out what had gone wrong with the vampires in Ireland. Once I’d thought that Damian’s master was so powerful and evil that she should be destroyed, and now I was worried about why she wasn’t powerful enough to protect her turf. Sometimes evil was in the eye of the beholder, right along with beauty.

16

JEAN-CLAUDE HAD to take a business call, because though he was now head of all the vampires in the country, he was still running his own businesses and finances. Sometimes I forgot that part of what had led him to become king was his ability to do business, but he didn’t. It was part of our power base that I was no help at all with; my idea of investments was my 401(k) plan at work. Nathaniel and I went to find Magda to ask about Ireland, because we could handle that part while Jean-Claude did things only he could do. It was delegation at its best, though usually Nathaniel didn’t go with me when I was working on crime busting, but then this really wasn’t about the police work; it was more about trying to figure out why a country that had worked fine for eons was suddenly going apeshit. Had Jean-Claude and I done something to fuck it all up? If we had, how did we fix it? If we hadn’t, then what had changed in Ireland?

Before we could find Magda, Nicky found us. He was tall, blond, blue-eyed, and so in shape it was almost intimidating. He wasn’t the tallest person in my life, but as he strode toward us down the hallway he seemed like he was; it was part attitude and part that his shoulders were almost as wide as I was tall. His biceps strained against the sleeves of his black workout shirt. He was wearing the new shorts that were split up the outer thighs to accommodate men who had awesome muscled thighs like Nicky, so they’d have full range of movement in the octagon during MMA—mixed martial arts—matches. I’d seen them first on a pay-per-view match that I’d watched with Nicky and other friends among the guards.

My happy-to-see-you smile faded when I saw the outfit. Saturday morning was an informal fight practice. Sometimes there weren’t enough people showing up for it and those of us who did drag our asses out of bed for it ended up just hitting the weight room or the track. There was no reason I knew of for Nicky to be wasting some of the new fancy shorts on a Saturday workout.

Nathaniel saved me from having to ask. “Why are you dressed for a serious fight workout?”

“I’m one of the instructors today. Why are you awake this early?” Nicky said with a smile.

Nathaniel smiled back, and said, “Hey, I don’t sleep all day.”

“I thought you’d be tucked into bed between Jean-Claude and Damian for a few more hours at least.”

“We had enough sleep,” I said.

“Speak for yourself,” Nathaniel said.

“You would sleep all day,” Nicky said, grinning.

I led Nathaniel forward until I was close enough to touch the other man. He looked down at me with one blue eye and the other covered by a black eye patch that had a white skull embroidered in the center of it. I let go of Nathaniel’s hand so I could reach up and touch the long, thin braid on the right side of his face. It was the side of his bangs that fell in a long triangle down his face so that his own hair hid the missing eye. It was how he had kept enemies from realizing he was completely blind on that side for real fighting. Werelions fought to the death more than most lycanthropes when they met other groups of their own kind. In fact, they were the animal group most likely to fight savagely within their own group. Every other kind of lycanthrope I knew had traditions that limited serious fighting among themselves. The lions had one of the most vicious cultures of any group, so being a lion who had a blind side was a serious problem.