“Fine, but what about the other vampires in the city?”

   “We’re hoping that most of them are either dead or in the hospital wards.”

   “Oh my God, are you telling me that they, that you, really believe that we have most of the vampires in the city contained?”

   He cleared his throat and said, “That is the prevailing theory.”

   “Theories are great in the laboratory, or in the boardroom, but out on the streets your theory is going to meet reality tonight.”

   “If you don’t shoot or stab anyone between now and nightfall, I may be able to get them to agree to you and your people being part of the watch groups that will be patrolling the city.”

   “If we help patrol the city we will be cleared to shoot in self-defense, at least?”

   “I won’t ask that question and neither should you, Blake.”

   “Why not?”

   “Because sometimes it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission and be denied.”

   “Jesus, Pearson, you’re setting your fellow Gardai up to be slaughtered.”

   “I’m doing the best I can; just stay out of trouble for a few hours. We have time before dark, if nothing else goes wrong and ends up on YouTube.”

   “We have no control over who has a phone and records what,” I said.

   “Stay out of sight then, just until I can talk them through this, and then you can show us how a holy item is supposed to work.”

   “Fine, fine, but . . . fine,” I said, and hung up because I didn’t trust myself to say more. Apparently I had time for more than just a quickie.

72

   MY FIRST CHOICE would have been Nathaniel, or Nathaniel and Damian, but I’d fed the ardeur on them recently and I needed to give them another day of rest. Maybe more now that Nathaniel had donated blood to multiple vampires today. I actually asked Dev to go with me, but Jake stepped in, saying, “He has donated much blood today and should rest before he feeds anyone else again.”

   Dev had protested, but in the end we’d listened to the older and more experienced voice, which left me with a quandary. Fortune had also donated to multiple vampires, Magda was thirty minutes or more away with traffic, and honestly girl-on-girl sex took longer, because it was girl foreplay for two, instead of just one. Yes, some men need more foreplay than others and a lot more men enjoy foreplay than will admit it, but I was out of women and almost out of men. Just when you think you’ve overpacked, you realize you didn’t bring enough of something.

   I’d done my best to get both Ethan and Domino off my list of lovers, because they both wanted more emotional commitment than I could offer. I was so over my limit for emotional caretaking, but I needed to use the only healing ability I had, which like so many of the abilities I had inherited was sexual in nature. As Dev had said earlier, lust was better than fear, or death, or violence, and I could feed off anger, but I couldn’t heal with anger and that was what I needed.

   “You could look a little less unhappy about this,” Domino said.

   “I’m sorry, really,” I said, and I included Ethan in the apology. “It’s just that I keep trying to trim my list of lovers and make a big deal out of the trimming, and now here we are again.”

   Ethan smiled. “Your dance card was beyond full by the time I came into your life; I figured that out once I got to St. Louis, and yes, I was disappointed, but now I’m with Nilda, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been. That wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t met me in Washington.”

   I patted his arm. “Thanks, Ethan, but will Nilda have a problem with us sleeping together again?”

   He shook his head. “She knows I’m one of your moitié bêtes, and to a member of the Harlequin that means I belong to you first and everyone else second.”

   “Good to know,” I said, and turned to Domino, who was not smiling.

   “Will Jade be okay with us doing this?”

   “Jade wants to fuck you, too, Anita. She’ll be fine.”

   That made me frown, because I’d just gotten free of a relationship with Jade that had been unsatisfactory on my part and frustrating for her. I didn’t want to get dragged back into it when we got back home.

   “Is it really that bad a choice, the two of us?” Domino asked.

   I smiled, but looked down because I knew it wasn’t going to make it all the way up into my eyes. “No, of course not. You are both lovely in bed.”

   “Lovely sounds like girl-speak for good, but not great,” he said.

   “Why are you making this difficult?” I asked.

   “Because if I’m going to get a chance to have sex with you again, I want you to treat it less like a chore you have to do, and more like something fun. I know you’re only doing it to try to heal, but still, sex is supposed to be fun, Anita.”

   That made me smile all the way up, so I let him see it. “Thanks for the reminder, because you’re right. I was treating it like a chore, and I’m sorry for that. I’m just worried about what the Irish police are going to do, or what they’re going to allow us to do tonight.”

   Edward said, “Nolan and I will help Pearson persuade the upper management.”

   “I hate it when police are run like a corporation. It just doesn’t work that way,” I said.

   “That’s still how most of them are run, especially in the larger cities.”

   “It still doesn’t make it right,” I said.

   He agreed with me but sent me off with the two weretigers, saying, “Have fun.”

   I looked at the two men who were waiting for me a little down the hallway. They were almost the same height, just under six feet. Domino’s shoulders were broader and he just bulked up a little more when he worked out. Ethan was even more slender than when I’d met him, honed down from the workouts and training that our guards did. Both of them were in better shape than when I found them. Domino had been muscle for the mobster who was also master vamp of Las Vegas. Being mob muscle didn’t come with a set exercise routine. Ethan had been a bodyguard for the queen of the red tiger clan. I looked at him, realizing just how much thinner he was now, and he’d been thin to begin with; either he wasn’t eating enough or he’d leaned down through all the exercise with us. Once I got him out of his clothes, either he’d have more visible muscle or he’d have less muscle mass in general from poor nutrition. Either way, once we got to our hotel room I’d find out.

73

   I DIDN’T FIND out if Ethan was starving himself or had just carved himself down to lean muscle, because Domino won the toss, or rather threw down with “I am more dominant than you are, so unless you want to fight about it . . .” which Ethan didn’t. It was sort of my fault, because I was having trouble choosing and had made some noise about why not make it a threesome? Neither of them wanted to do that, but they took my suggestion as meaning I had no preference between the two of them, so they decided for me. Normally, I might not have been okay with that, but there was nothing normal about our trip to Ireland. My arm was aching by the time we walked to the hotel, so I was good with someone else taking the initiative.