“Some of the older vampires see it as unseemly that their king is a performer.”

“I have heard the gossip, but those who say it are old-fashioned and trapped in the past. They still believe that rulers are to concern themselves only with power, but your joy in performing onstage radiates from you, my lord.”

Jean-Claude did the head tilt as we both looked at Irene. I asked the question. “When did you see Jean-Claude onstage?”

She blushed and cast her eyes down. “My master feels that the more we know about the people we design our rings for, the better we will please them.”

“Were you there on a night when I was introducing the acts?” he asked.

She kept her eyes down, hands clasped tight, as she said, “You did introduce most of the acts.”

“But I did not introduce myself.”

“No, my lord, one of your charming young men did the honor of introducing you.” She stared studiously at the floor.

“I have only been onstage at Guilty Pleasures once since the engagement was announced. I did not see you in the audience.”

“I stayed near the back, my lord. I was there to observe, not to participate by being one of the audience you interacted with.” She finally gave a quick look up, and then back down.

Jean-Claude had caused a near riot stripping onstage after the engagement hit the media. He’d put together a new act that had more romance at the beginning, but the end was romantic only if you considered “sexy as hell” romantic. I tended to think of it that way, but the human media had been split between headlines stating I was jealous and angry at him for going onstage again, to wondering how long until I might join him onstage. I had done it a few times as the pretend “lady victim” from the audience for some of my lovers, but not lately. One, the customers didn’t like the idea of a plant in the audience who had already had the pleasure of, um, meeting the men for real, and two, the U.S. Marshals Service didn’t think much of one of their officers going onstage at a strip club. Technically I wasn’t stripping, but just helping out the show with a “victim” who wouldn’t make a fuss or pressure the dancers for real sex, but somehow helping out a friend didn’t cover getting up onstage at a strip club. The vampire community thought their king shouldn’t be shaking his booty onstage for a bunch of humans.

“I am an exhibitionist; do you know what that means, Irene?”

She blushed again. We took that as a yes.

“Did you enjoy the show, Irene?” and he added just a touch of power to her name. I felt it thrill down my skin and tug at things low in my body. I watched Irene to see if it affected her that way. She stood very still, and then, very slowly, raised her eyes to stare into his face the way that mice must stare at cats when they are too tired to run anymore and begin to realize just how beautiful the cat is, and how it wouldn’t be a bad way to die.

My voice was very firm as I said, “Stop it.”

“You don’t mind, do you, Irene?” Every word was thick with power.

Irene’s eyes were huge, her face slack, as she nodded.

“It’s what you’ve wanted since you saw me onstage, isn’t it?”

“Since before that, my lord; how can any of us stand near the flame of your beauty and not want to be closer to the heat of it?”

“But I am cold, Irene, not hot. There is no flame here, no light, only the chill of the grave and darkness.”

“She is your heat, my lord, and the shapeshifters, they burn very hot indeed.” Her voice was eager now, and when she said heat, I felt the temperature rise, and burn; it almost made me flinch, hot, holding the press of high summer.

“Do you feel it, ma petite?”

“Yeah,” I said, and got off his lap to stand at his side, just our fingers intertwined. “Cut the mind tricks, Irene, that shit don’t fly here.”

The next words from her lips were someone else’s; the inflection was wrong, as if a stranger were borrowing her voice. “You tried to take over my servant. I am merely demonstrating that we are not helpless against you.” Irene’s hands were at her side, feet apart, shoulders more straight, and just something about the way she stood said male.

“My apologies, Melchior, but her desire to be seduced is very strong. It pushes at my determination to behave myself.” I always pronounced his name like Mel-Core, but when Irene said it, it sounded like Mill-Key-Or, and much more exotic. Jean-Claude’s pronunciation was closer to hers than my middle American blandness.

“A good king shows restraint.”

“A good master does not leave his servant wanting.”

“I do not have your inclinations, my lord. My love is for our shared art, not the art of flesh.”

“How sad for your servant,” Jean-Claude said.

“Perhaps, but more sorrow if her art had been destroyed for pursuit of fleshly pleasures.”

“It’s not one or the other,” I said. “There’s middle ground.”

“Irene is free to find a lover, if it does not interfere with our work.”

“What would you do if her lover did interfere with the work?” I asked, watching the stranger make Irene’s face look thoughtful. He stroked a hand along a beard she didn’t have.

“Nothing is allowed to interfere with our art.”

“Would you kill him after she had fallen in love?”

Irene’s face looked at Jean-Claude. “You do allow your servant to speak out of turn, my lord. We old ones puzzle over that.”

“Don’t look at him when I’m the one talking to you, Melchior.” I would have pulled away from Jean-Claude’s hand, but he tightened his grip on my hand and I didn’t fight him. I wouldn’t do anything else to make him appear weak to the ancient vampire who was staring at us from Irene’s face.

“This is why we do not marry our servants, Jean-Claude; it gives them ideas above their station.”

“You arrogant son of a bitch.”

“And she curses like a stevedore,” he said, folding Irene’s thin arms across her chest in a way that was again more like a man would do it than a woman; he controlled Irene’s body, but he couldn’t feel everything the way she did. She’d have moved her arms slightly over her breasts, not the way he had them. Interesting; he could move the body, but how much could he feel?

“Insulting my bride-to-be is arrogant, though I cannot speak of the status of your parents.”

I glanced back to see if Jean-Claude was joking, but his face was empty of expression, like a beautiful statue that just happened to move. It meant he was hiding very hard, which meant this was more serious than I understood. I hated dealing with the really old vampires; they were usually arrogant, and some of them were just . . . alien, as if the huge gap of centuries made them more other. Was it time, or were those long-ago cultures more alien than history understood?

“If I insulted you indirectly, my deepest apologies, my lord.” He made a bow with Irene’s body that just looked like it needed a taller, beefier body to go with it. It was like a bad puppeteer. I’d seen the Traveller, one of the ex–vampire council members, take over bodies, but he was better at it, smoother, more complete. This one seemed reluctant to move Irene’s feet much, as if he wasn’t certain of everything around her body, or couldn’t feel her feet.