44

Everyone had melted into the woods like stones thrown on the surface of some dark lake. Even Ben, who was carrying Roxanne, had vanished. I moved through the trees at a slower, more human pace. Nathaniel stayed with me like a well-trained dog. I almost wished he'd gone off with the others. His company was not comforting because though he was able-bodied and a wereleopard, I wasn't sure I should be taking him into a fight.

He crouched beside me, hand on my arm, pulling me down. I went to my knees beside him, gun ready. He pointed to our right, and I heard it: someone crashing through the underbrush. It wasn't one of us.

I put my mouth near his ear. "Get behind whoever it is. Drive them towards me."

He nodded and slipped into the trees. I got behind a large tree, using it as a shield. My plan was to shove the Browning into whoever it was and find out what was happening in the house.

Someone gasped, and now they were running full-out. I felt the movement in the trees without really seeing it. The shape-shifters were driving him towards me. Nathaniel had found the others and spread the word. If it was some innocent hiker ... I couldn't think of an apology strong enough. Oh, well.

A figure crashed through the trees and right past me. I had to grab his arm and spin him around into the tree to get his attention. I shoved the gun barrel under his chin and only then realized who I had. It was Howard the psychic.

"Don't kill me," he gasped.

"Why not?" I asked.

"I can help you."

"Start talking," I said.

"Milo and Wilkes's deputies are up there, arguing about who gets to kill the man."

I pressed the gun barrel into his throat until he had to go on tiptoe. He was making a wild sound high in his throat. "Did you enjoy Charlotte Zeeman? Was she a good lay?"

He tried to talk but couldn't do it around the gun barrel. I thought about shoving the barrel through his throat until he gagged on his blood and died. I took a deep breath and eased down enough for him to speak instead. "Dear God, I didn't touch the woman. I didn't touch either of them. I'm a clairvoyant, for God's sake. I couldn't bear to touch someone during a rape or torture," Howard said.

I believed him. And I knew if later I found out he was lying, the world wasn't big enough to hide him. I knew with a cold certainty that if he were guilty, he would pay. "You said Daniel's at the house? Where's Charlotte?"

"Niley and Linus have taken her to use her blood to call up his demon. They're going to have the demon search the land for the lance. Niley plans on leaving tonight."

"You can't send a demon to find a holy relic," I said.

"Linus thinks the blasphemy of it will appeal to his master."

"Why are you running away, Howard?"

"There is no spear. I lied."

I eased up on the gun more and blinked at him. "What are you talking about?"

"You know how hard it is to make a living as a clairvoyant. So many horrible memories, and you usually end up working with the police for no money. I'd been using my powers to get myself in good with wealthy people who weren't so careful about the law. I'd promise them something, but it wouldn't be real. Then they'd be too embarrassed to go to the police about it. Or couldn't complain that they got cheated out of a stolen object. It worked. I only swindled crooks. It worked."

"Until Niley," I said.

"He's crazy. If he ever finds out I tricked him, he'll kill me and have Linus feed my soul to that thing."

"They're going to kill Charlotte to try and find something that isn't even here, you asshole."

"I know, I know, and I'm sorry. I am really, really sorry. I didn't know what he was capable of. Oh, God, let me go. Let me run away."

"You're going to get us into that house. You're going to help us rescue Daniel."

"There isn't time to rescue them both," Howard said. "They're going to kill the man and sacrifice the woman now. If I get you into the house, the woman will be dead before you can get to her."

Roxanne appeared on the other side of the tree, just there, like magic. Howard gasped. "I don't think so," she said. She opened a mouth full of fangs and snapped them near his face. Howard screamed.

She pressed clawed hands into the bark of the tree on either side of him and clawed long furrows in the bark. Howard fainted.

I left him with Roxanne and the vampires and Ben. When he came to, he'd get them into the house and they'd rescue Daniel. I'd take the rest and rescue Charlotte. There would be no choosing. No either/or. We would save them both. I had to believe it as I threw myself into the black woods. I unleashed that power inside me and sent it outward, casting like a net to catch ... a faint, ruffling scent of evil. They'd know I was coming now, but it couldn't be helped. I ran like I'd run earlier in the day with Richard. I ran as if the ground told me where to go, and the trees opened up like welcoming hands. I ran in the dark and couldn't see and didn't need to. I felt Richard running, running towards us. I felt the hard edge of his panic and ran faster.

45

They'd chosen the top of a hill that had once been meadow, but some time today they'd bush-hogged all the grass and meadow flowers so that the hill was bare and broken under the moonlight.

In the movies there would be an altar and maybe a fire or two, at least a torch. But there was nothing but darkness and a silver wash of moonlight. The palest thing in the clearing was Charlotte Zeeman's skin. She was tied naked to stakes driven into the ground. I thought at first she was unconscious, but her hands flexed and strained against the ropes. I was both happy to see her still fighting and sorry that she hadn't passed out.

Linus Beck was wearing the proverbial black hooded robe. I guess if it saved me from seeing him naked, I could live with it.

Niley stood by Linus. He was dressed in the same suit I'd seen him in earlier. They'd drawn a circle on the ground with something dark and powdery. Charlotte was inside the circle. She was food for the demon, bait.

Wilkes stood not eight feet from me, to my right. He had a high-powered rifle and was searching the darkness.

Linus's voice rose in a singsong rhythm that filled the night with echoes and movement as if the darkness itself shivered at the words.

Nathaniel and I lay on the ground at the line of trees, watching. Jason and Jamil were supposed to be on the other side of the clearing. A moment of concentration told me where they were. The marks with Richard were open and roaring. I'd never been so aware of the scent and sounds of a summer night. It was like my skin expanded outward, touching every tree and bush. I was liquid and barely contained within my skin.

I felt Richard and the others moving through the trees like a solid wind. The lukoi were coming. But they were miles away, and the spell was almost complete. I could feel it growing, swelling, like a dank, unseen fog. The evil was coming.

There were shots from the house, echoing up the hill. Wilkes turned towards them and I went to one knee and sighted down my arms. The first shot hit him in the middle of his back. The second shot took him a little higher up the back because he was falling to his knees. He stayed motionless on his knees for one of those seconds that lasted an eternity. I had time to put a third bullet in his back.

A bullet hit the tree next to my head, and I rolled back into the underbrush. Three more shots hit the bushes where I had been. Niley had a gun, a semiauto that might hold eighteen bullets if he'd modified the clip. Not good. Of course, it might hold only ten. Hard to tell in the dark from this distance.

I sidled up to a tree, leaned my arm against it, and sighted on his shape in the bright darkness. I pulled off one careful shot and he went down. I wasn't sure how badly he was hit, but I'd hit something. He fired back, and I hit the ground.

Nathaniel crawled to me on his belly. "What do we do?"

Niley yelled, "You cannot cross the circle, Anita. If you kill us, all you can do is watch Charlotte die."

I risked a peek. Niley had taken cover. I could shoot Linus, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure what that would do to Charlotte. I didn't know what the spell entailed. I just didn't know that much about sorcery.

"What do you want, Niley?"

"Throw your gun out."

"You throw yours out, too, or I shoot Linus."

"What happens to Charlotte if Linus dies in midspell?"

"I'll take my chances. Throw out the gun."

He stood and tossed the gun off the side of the hill. I couldn't hear it hit over Linus's chanting, but he'd done it. I moved out of the trees and tossed the Browning away. I still had the Firestar.

"The other gun, too," Niley said. "Remember that Linus searched you earlier today."

I tossed the Firestar away into the broken grass. It was all right. This wasn't about guns anymore.

I felt the spell close. Linus's last word reverberated on the night like a great brass bell that had been struck slightly off-key, but it echoed for all the flatness of the note. It echoed and grew until the skin on my body tried to crawl away and hide, creeping as if every insect in the world were under my skin. For a second, I couldn't breathe or move. Then Niley's voice came, "You are too late, Anita. Too late."

Charlotte was screaming through the gag on her mouth. Screaming, over and over again, as fast as she could draw breath.

I stared across the meadow and found that there was something else in the circle. I wasn't sure if it was the blackness of it that made it hard to see, or if it was like smoke, never exactly one shape. It seemed to be about man height, maybe eight feet, not much more. It was so thin that it looked like it was made of sticks. Its legs were longer than they should have been, bent wrong somehow. I realized that the longer I stared at it, the more solid it was growing. The neck was a long serpentine, bent back on its shoulders like a heron, and it had a beak for a mouth. If it had eyes, I couldn't see them. The face looked blind and only half-formed.

"You are too late," Niley said again.

"No. I'm not." I stood and walked out of the trees. Niley seemed terribly confident now that the demon was here.

"Only Linus can send it back to whence it came. If you harm him, then it will certainly devour the fair Charlotte."

I ignored him because I knew the plan was for the thing to eat Charlotte. Let them think I believed they intended to save her. Let them think she was still useful as a hostage. I wanted to get close enough to see the circle of entrapment they'd put up.

Charlotte had stopped screaming. I could hear her voice trapped behind the gag, but she was speaking now, not screaming. A strong woman, a very strong woman.

The demon paced the edge of the circle, flicking a long, thin, whiplike tail. It was becoming progressively more agitated, moving around the circle like a prisoner trying its cell.

"The circle is complete," Linus said. "You are mine to command."

The demon hissed at him, and the sound made the inside of my skull ache. It turned and gazed at me, though it had no eyes. I was on the edge of the circle now. I could see that Charlotte had closed her eyes, and I knew now what she was doing. She was praying.

I dropped to my knees beside the circle. I didn't feel anything from it. Which meant it wasn't meant for me. Whatever it was meant to keep in or out, I wasn't one of them. "She's pure, Linus. She's pure of heart and soul. She isn't a fit sacrifice for this thing."

"The pure are a rare and fine treat for my master."

"No, you can't feed her soul to it, Linus. Her soul is spoken for, and this thing cannot touch her."

The demon moved as far away from Charlotte as the circle would allow. It wasn't happy. "Give it its orders, Linus," Niley said.

"I offer you a sacrifice of flesh and blood and soul. Take this my offering and do my bidding."

The demon moved to stand over Charlotte. It snapped its beak next to her face, and she shrieked. The prayers stopped, and it laughed, a sound like grinding metal.

"It's a circle against evil, isn't it, Linus? Just evil."

"You're a necromancer," Niley said. "You are evil."

"Don't believe everything you hear or even read, Niley."

The demon raised fingers to the moonlight, fingers that ended in black knives. Charlotte opened her eyes and screamed. The Lord's Prayer would have been reasonable, but I blanked. All I could think of was Christmas. "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over the flock by night." I stepped over the circle. It was nothing to me. It was meant to keep out and in evil. I wasn't evil.

"And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid."

The demon was chattering, snapping at me, razor claws slicing around me like fan blades, but it didn't touch me. "And the angel said unto them. Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." I knelt and started untying Charlotte. When I pulled her gag away, she started to recite with me. "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord."

I cradled Charlotte's naked body in my arms. She clung to me and cried, and I was crying, too. And I knew I had to get us out of that circle because I only remembered about three more verses.

"And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." Charlotte couldn't stand, and I had to half carry her. We stumbled near the edge of the circle, and the demon rushed us in a wave of clattering, snapping, horror. "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying ... " I stared down at the circle as I prayed, that carefully constructed circle ... "glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men." I erased the circle with my hand. I broke Linus's circle of protection.

The demon threw back its head and shrieked. The sound was like a rooster's crow or maybe a growl or maybe something else. It was as if even hearing it, I couldn't hold it in my mind.

It rushed out of the circle and fell on Linus. It was his turn to scream and scream as fast as he could draw breath. Blood flew in a wash, sprinkling us like rain.

And suddenly, there were flashlights and men yelling, "FBI. Don't move." FBI?

The flashlights found the demon. The light glistened on the beak, and blood shimmered on it as if it had bathed in it. If they hadn't tried to shoot it, I think it would have left them alone. But they fired into it, and I pushed Charlotte to the grass, hiding her body under mine.

The demon rushed into the feds, and they started dying. I yelled, "Bullets won't work! Pray. Pray, damn it, pray!"

I tried to lead by example and found finally that I could remember the Lord's Prayer. A man's voice echoed mine, then another. I heard someone else doing the 'Bless me, oh, Lord, for I have sinned' liturgy. Someone else was praying, and it wasn't Christian. Hindu I think, but every religion has demons. Every religion has prayers. All it takes is faith. Nothing like a real, live demon to give you some of that old-time religion.

The demon stood with a man's body raised to its mouth. The neck was cut and it was lapping the blood with a long, sticky tongue. But at least it wasn't killing anyone else.

Prayers rose up into the darkness, and I bet none of them had ever prayed so hard, in church or out. The demon stood on its crooked legs and walked back to me. Charlotte was muttering a new prayer. I think it was the Song of Solomon. Funny what you'll remember under stress.

It pointed a long finger at me and spoke in a voice that was deep and rusted as if it wasn't much used. "Free," it said.

"Yes," I said, "you're free."

The beak and the blind face seemed to waver. For just an instant I thought I saw a man's face, pure and almost shining, but I would never be sure. It said, "Thank you," and vanished.

Feds were everywhere. One of them gave Charlotte his coat that said F.B.I. on the back. I helped her sit up and slip the coat over her. It hit her at midthigh.

Sometimes, it was good to be small. One of the feds turned out to be Maiden. I just stared up at him in shock.

He smiled and knelt beside us. "Daniel is all right. He's going to make it."

Charlotte grabbed his coat sleeve. "What did they do to my boy?"

His smile vanished. "They were going to beat him to death. I'd called for backup, but ... They're dead, Mrs. Zeeman. They won't ever hurt you again. I am so sorry that I wasn't there earlier today to help you, both of you."

She nodded. "You saved my boy's life, didn't you?"

Maiden looked at the ground, then nodded.

"Then don't apologize to me," she said.

"What is a federal agent doing posing as a small-town deputy?" I asked.

"When Niley came nosing around down here, they put me under with Wilkes. It worked."

"You called the state cops," I said.

He nodded. "Yeah."

Another agent came over, and Maiden excused himself.

I felt Richard arrive. Felt them slip through the trees. And I knew that some of them at least weren't in human form.

I called the agent over that had given Charlotte his coat. "There are some werewolves in the woods. They are friends. They were coming to help. Don't let anyone shoot them, okay?"

He stared down at me. "Werewolves?"

I looked at him. "I didn't know the FBI was going to show up. I needed the backup."

That made him laugh, and he started telling everyone to put their weapons up and not to shoot the werewolves. I don't think everyone was happy about it, but they did what they were told.

A woman in EMS gear knelt by us. She started looking Charlotte over, shining lights in her eyes and asking silly questions, like did she know the date and where she was.

Richard was suddenly there, still in human form, though he'd stripped down to jeans and his hiking boots. Charlotte flung herself from my arms to his, crying all over again. I stood up and left Charlotte to her son and the medical crew.

Richard grabbed my hand before I could wander off. He stared up at me, tears shining in the moonlight. "Thank you for my mother."

I squeezed his hand and left them to it. If I didn't leave them alone, I was going to cry again.

Another EMS came up to me. "Are you Anita Blake?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Franklin Niley wants to speak with you. He's dying. There's nothing we can do for him."

I went with him to talk to Niley. He was lying on his back. They'd set up an IV bag and tried to stop the bleeding, but he was cut up pretty bad. I stood so that he could look up at me without straining.

He licked his lips, and it took him two tries to speak. "How did you pass the circle?"

"It was meant to trap evil inside or keep it out. I'm not evil."

"You raise the dead," he said.

"I'm a necromancer. I was kind of doubting where that put me on the scale of good and evil, but apparently God's okay with it."

"You stepped into the circle not knowing if you would be safe?" He was frowning, clearly puzzled.

"I couldn't just sit there and watch Charlotte die."

"You would have sacrificed yourself for her?"

I thought about that for a second or two. "I didn't think about it that clearly, but I couldn't let her die, not if I could save her."

He winced, closed his eyes, then looked at me. "No matter what the cost to you personally?"

"I guess so," I said.

He looked past me, eyes starting to lose their focus. "Extraordinary, extraordinary." His breath sighed outward, and he died. The EMS crew fell on him like vultures, but he was gone. They never got him breathing again.

Jason was suddenly beside me. "Anita, Nathaniel's dying."

"What are you talking about?"

"He caught two bullets in the chest when people were shooting at the demon. The feds were using silver shot because they knew what Linus was."

"Oh, God." I took Jason's hand. "Take me to him."

There were paramedics on either side of him. There was another IV, and they'd set up a lamp. Nathaniel's skin was pale and waxy in the light. Sweat covered him like dew. When I knelt beside him and tried to push my way past the paramedics, his pale eyes didn't see me.

I let the paramedics push me out of the way. I sat there in the weeds and listened to Nathaniel try to breathe through two holes in his chest. The bad guys hadn't shot him. He'd gotten caught in stray fire from the good guys. It was just a stupid accident. He was going to die because he'd been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, I would not let an accident take him. I would not lose another person I knew to bad timing.

I looked up at Jason. "Is Marianne here?"

"I'll look." He went running into the chaos.

Nathaniel's back bowed upward. His breath rasped out. He lay back on the ground, horribly still. One of the paramedics shook his head and got up. He took some of the equipment and went to help someone else.

I crawled around to take his place at Nathaniel's side. I looked across at the other paramedic. It was a woman with a blond ponytail.

"Is there anything you can do?"

She looked at me. "Are you a friend?"

I nodded.

"Close?"

I nodded.

"I'm sorry," she said.

I shook my head. "No, I won't let him die." I wasn't evil. Everything that I'd done, and my faith was still pure. When I spoke the words, they were just as real to me as when I'd memorized them all those years ago for the Christmas pageant. The words still moved me. I never doubted God. I doubted me. But maybe God was a more generous God than I allowed him to be. Jason was there with Marianne.

I grabbed her hand. "Help me call the munin."

She didn't argue, just knelt beside me. "Remember the feel of his body. Remember his smile. The smell of his hair and skin."

I nodded. "He smells like vanilla and fur." I knelt by him, touching his skin, but it was already growing cool to the touch. He was dying. I didn't feel sexy in the least. I felt sad and frightened. I bowed my head and prayed. I prayed to be opened to Raina. I prayed to open my eyes and look at Nathaniel and feel lust. It was a weird thing to be praying for, but it was worth a try. I felt that measure of calm that I sometimes got when I prayed. It doesn't mean you'll get what you asked for, but it does mean that someone is listening.

I opened my eyes slowly and stared down at Nathaniel. There were leaves in his long, unbound hair. I pulled them away. I held his hair in my hands and buried my face in it. It still smelled like vanilla. I rubbed my cheek against his, burying my face behind his ear into the silk of his hair. I laid a hand over the wounds with my face still buried in his hair. He made a small pain sound when I touched him. I don't know if it was the pain sound, the familiar smell of his body, or the prayer, but Raina spread through my body like flame. The munin rode me, and I opened to it, no fighting, no struggle. I embraced it, and her laughter rolled out of my lips. I rose up on my knees and stared down at Nathaniel.

I wasn't horrified anymore. Raina thought it would be a grand thing to fuck him as he died. I laid my lips against his, and his lips were cool, dry. I pressed my mouth over his and felt that fire pour into his mouth from mine.

My fingers found the wounds in his chest and stroked them, pushing my fingers into the wound. The paramedic tried to pull me off of him, and Jason and someone else pulled her away. I dug into the wound until Nathaniel's eyes opened and he moaned with pain. His eyes fluttered, pale, pale lilac in the artificial light. He looked up but didn't see me, didn't see anything.

I covered his face in soft kisses, and each touch burned. I went back to his mouth and breathed into him. When I drew back, his eyes focused. His breath eased out in something too low to be a whisper. "Anita."

I straddled his body and laid my hands on his bare chest. I covered the wounds with my hands, but I touched the inside of his chest with something other than my hands. I could feel the damage. I could roll his damaged heart in the heat that fell from my hands, that sank into his skin, that filled his flesh.

I was burning alive. I had to feed the heat into him. Had to share this energy. My hands left the wound on his chest and fumbled at my shirt. The dress shirt came off and vanished into the grass, but the tank top was trapped under the shoulder holster. Hands helped me slip the holster off my shoulders. It flopped heavy and awkward over my hips. I undid the belt and I think it was Marianne who helped me slip the belt out of the loops. I know it was Marianne who stopped me from undoing my pants. Raina snarled in my head.

Hands caressed up my bare back and I knew it was Richard. He knelt behind me, legs straddling Nathaniel's legs, but putting no weight on them. He cradled me back against his body. I was suddenly aware that we were the focus of the pack. They surrounded us like a wall of faces and bodies.

Richard's hands slipped off the spine sheath and the blade down my back. His hands found my bra strap and undid it. I started to protest, started to hold it, and he kissed my shoulders, sliding his lips down my back and sliding the bra away. He whispered, "Bare skin is best for this." That prickling rush of energy filled the watching lukoi, filled them and spread into me. The energy of the munin fed on that power, grew until I thought my skin would burst with it.

Richard guided my body to Nathaniel's. My bare breasts touched Nathaniel's chest, a brush of velvet skin against the torn flesh of his smooth chest. I shuddered against him, and that heat spilled from my bare skin. At first it was as if my naked flesh rode above his skin on a pool of sweat, then I felt the flesh give. My body fell against his with a sigh, and it was as if our bodies became plastic, liquid. Our bodies melded together into one flesh, one body, as if I were sinking into his chest. I felt our hearts touch, beating liquid against one another. I healed his heart, closed his flesh with mine.

Nathaniel's mouth found mine, and the power flowed between us like breath until it raised the skin from my body, and there was nothing but his arms around me, his mouth on me, my hands on his body, and distant like an anchor I felt Richard, and beyond him the rest of the pack. I felt them offer their energy, their power, and I took it. And beyond that, distant as a dream, I felt Jean-Claude. I felt his cool power join with ours and strengthen; life from death. I took it all and thrust it into Nathaniel until he tore his mouth from mine and cried out. I felt his body give under mine, and his pleasure rushed over my skin, and I threw it out into the waiting pack. I took their energy and gave them back pleasure.

The munin left me in that rush of startled voices. Raina had never been able to take power from others. That was my doing. So even the bitch of the west had never pleasured this many people at once.

I sat up, still straddling Nathaniel. He looked up at me with his lilac eyes and smiled. I ran my hands over his chest, and there was no wound, only a healing scar. He still looked pale and awful, but he'd live.

Richard offered me the dress shirt I'd dropped. I slipped it over my breasts and buttoned it. I didn't know what had happened to the rest of the clothes. Jason had my shoulder holster and knife. The important stuff.

When I tried to stand, I stumbled, and only Richard's arms kept me standing. He helped me through the crowd. They touched me as we moved through, running their hands along me. I didn't mind or didn't care. I put my arm around Richard's waist and accepted it for tonight. I'd worry about what it all meant tomorrow, or maybe even the next day.

Verne stepped out of the crowd. "Damn girl, you are good."

Roxanne was at his side. "I'm healed. How did you do that?"

I smiled. "Talk to Marianne." I kept walking.

The paramedics were rushing forward. I heard the woman say, "Holy shit! It's a miracle." And maybe it was.

Richard said, "I won't be looking for another lupa."

I hugged him. "No more auditions?"

"You are my lupa, Anita. Together we could be the most powerful mated pair I've ever seen."

"It's not just the two of us that make us powerful, Richard. It's Jean-Claude."

He kissed me on the forehead. "I felt him when you called the power. I felt him give his power to us."

We'd stopped walking. I turned to look at him in the moonlight. "We are a threesome, Richard, like it or not."

"A menage a trois," he said.

I raised my eyebrows. "Not unless you've been doing more than just talking with Jean-Claude."

Richard laughed and hugged me. "He hasn't corrupted me quite that far."

"Glad to hear it." We walked down the hill, holding each other. Charlotte was lying at the bottom of the hill on a stretcher.

She reached her hands up to both of us. One of the hands was thickly bandaged. She smiled up at us. "Why didn't you tell me, Richard?"

"I thought it would make a difference. I thought you would stop loving me."

"Silly ass," she said.

"That's what I told him," I said.

Charlotte started to cry softly, pressing Richard's hand to her lips. I just smiled and held her hand. Life wasn't perfect, but standing there watching Richard and his mother, holding their hands, it was close.

46

Daniel's nose was badly broken. The perfect profile isn't quite as perfect. He says the women love it, makes him look tough. Daniel has never spoken to me about what happened. Neither has Charlotte, but on the first Sunday dinner after they both got out of the hospital, she broke down and cried. I was the one who went into the kitchen first. She let me hold her while she cried, saying how silly she felt, that everything was all right. Why should she be crying?

If I could do resurrection for real, I'd bring Niley and all the rest back and kill them more slowly.

Richard's family thinks I can do no wrong, and they are not being subtle about their plans. Marriage -¨C we should get married. Under other circumstances, not a bad idea. But we aren't a couple. We're a trio. Hard to explain that to Richard's folks. Hard to explain that to Richard.

Howard Grant, the psychic, is in jail for fraud. He confessed to some things he'd done in the past. I told him if he didn't spend some time in jail, I'd kill him. His greed had started everything. He didn't touch Charlotte or Daniel. He was horrified at what Niley was and what was happening, but his lies set it all in motion. He couldn't get away scot free. I just gave him a choice of punishments.

The police think Deputy Thompson fled the state. They're still looking for him, and none of us are talking. I don't know what Verne's pack did with the body. Maybe it's hanging on their tree waiting for a Christmas that will never come. Maybe they ate him. I don't know, and I don't want to know.

The Vampire Council didn't send anyone to kill us. Apparently Colin overstepped his bounds. We were within our rights to kill him, and his people. He didn't survive his servant's death. There is no new Master of the City yet. Verne and his pack are in no hurry for Colin's replacement.

I wake from dreams that aren't my own. Thoughts, feelings, not my own. It is overwhelming enough to be in love, in that first heat of lust, but the marks are sucking me inside both of them. They're swallowing me up. Every act of sex makes it worse. So ... no more sex. I have to get control of the marks first.

When I was sleeping with both of them, Richard catted around. Now that I've gone celibate, so has he. Jean-Claude, I think, knows I'm still looking for a good excuse to say, "Hah, see, you don't really love me." So he's behaving himself like some dark angel.

I took a month off and went back to Tennessee to learn from Marianne. Learning to control the munin is helping me to control the marks. Jean-Claude as my only teacher is just not a good idea. He has too much invested in me. I'm learning to put up barriers. Barriers so tall, so wide, so solid, that I'm safe from both of them. Safe behind my walls.

But sex brings all the barriers crashing down. It's like drowning. I think if I allowed it, and they allowed it, we could become like one organism with three parts.

Richard doesn't seem to see the danger. He's still naive, or perhaps I just don't understand him. I love him, but even thinking his thoughts, feeling his emotions, he's still a mystery to me.

Jean-Claude knows the danger. He says he can keep it from happening, but I don't trust him. I love him, sort of, but I don't trust him. I've felt his chortling joy as the power of the triumvirate grows.

He told me once he loved me as much as he was able. Maybe he does, but he loves power more.

So, celibate again, damn it. How to be chaste with the two preternatural studs of all time at my beck and call? Be out of town.

I've taken every animating job out of town that I could for three months. I spend weekends with Marianne. I have a great deal of power inside me, not the marks, but me. I've avoided confronting that power as much as possible, but Jean-Claude has forced me to face it. I have to learn how to control the magic.

It sounds silly that someone who raises the dead for a living has been ignoring that she has magic inside her, but I have. I've always learned the minimum to get by. That's over.

Marianne tells me that I have the tools to survive in the triumvirate. Until I feel confident in those tools, I'm avoiding the boys. Three months of not touching either of them. Of no one sharing my bed. Three months of not being lupa. I had to leave the pack to leave Richard. But I couldn't leave the wereleopards. They don't have anyone else but me. So I'm still Nimir-ra. Marianne is even teaching me how to forge the leopards into a healthy unit. She and Verne.

I've abandoned as much of the preternatural stuff as I can. I have to find out what's left of who I thought I was.

I faced a demon with my faith and prayer. Does that mean God has forgiven me my sins? I don't know. If He has forgiven me, He's more generous than I am.