He rose back and looked at me. “You’re shaking from emotional shock, and you’re just going to dress and drive to your appointment?”

“Yes, I have a job to do.”

“Throwing yourself into your work won’t make this go away.”

I pulled away from him. “I’m not avoiding the issue, I really have to go to work, or I’m going to be late.”

“The zombie you’re raising tonight is a few hundred years old; I think it’ll wait a few extra minutes.”

I shook my head. “I’m going to work, because it’s mine. If I’m still me then I keep moving forward. I go to work, I keep my appointments, and I do my regular stuff.”

“And if you give yourself a few extra minutes to process, what happens?” Micah asked.

“If I let this change anything, if I hesitate, then it gets me,” I said.

“What gets you?” he asked.

“This, this issue, this thing, this emotional shit.”

“So run fast enough and it won’t catch you,” he said, voice low.

I shrugged, still hugging myself, and shivering harder.

“Ma petite, would you do two things for us?”

“What?” And I snapped it at them. I took in a deep breath, let it out slow, and said in a more normal tone, “What?”

“Kiss us good-bye so we know that you will not take this revelation and punish us with it.”

I wanted to argue, but as he’d said, truth was truth, and I’d run away from all the relationships in my life for months at a time for far less trauma than this.

I nodded. “Okay, what’s the second thing?”

“Let one of the guards drive you to your first appointment.”

“I don’t want them tagging along all night.”

“As I understand it, Nicky and Dino are meeting you at the cemetery with a truck big enough to tow a trailer containing a cow.”

“Yeah.”

“Then surely they will have room for the extra guard to drive off with them after you have raised your first zombie of the night.”

His logic was great; it made perfect sense, so why did I want to argue? Answer: Because I had had a nasty shock and was all emotionally vulnerable; that usually made me want to either run for the hills or get angry and stay angry. In the end I agreed to a driver, because of how badly I didn’t want one. The more I didn’t want to be logical, the worse I was hurt; once it would have led to a full-blown fight about something peripherally connected to the thing that was actually upsetting me. Now, the urge to throw logic and caution to the wind was a way of lashing out without starting an actual fight. I knew this; I actually had a therapist now, because somewhere in demanding that other people in my life work their issues, it started to seem hypocritical not to do the same. I wondered if she would be surprised by my revelation about Cynric, or have one of those “I’ve been waiting for you to realize that” moments.

I got dressed, and wanted to give them each a quick kiss, but that was me trying to pull away and blame everyone for the parts that were bothering me. I didn’t do shit like that anymore, damn it, so I forced myself to stop and look at them both. I took their hands in mine, took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“I will do my best not to fuck up all the great things in our lives because I’ve hit some kind of personal issue.” I looked at Jean-Claude. “I won’t run away like I did before, I promise. I know now that I can’t run far enough, or fast enough, because most of the issues are inside me, and that travels with me.”

“You have grown wise, ma petite.”

I smiled, but wasn’t sure how happy it was; it didn’t feel happy. “Smarter, I’ll give you; I’m working on wise.”

“As you please, ma petite; I will not argue semantics with you.”

I smiled for real then, and shook his hand a little. “That’s good, because I’d probably lose right now, and I hate to lose.”

That made them both laugh, which was good. I turned to Micah and had a second of getting lost in those extraordinary eyes. “You never saw me at my worst, but I’ll tell you, before you ask, that I will do my best to work my shit and not let it rain down all over us.”

“It’s not us I’m worried about,” he said.

I frowned at him. “I don’t understand.”

“You and I are solid; you, I, and Nathaniel are solid. I trust that. I’m going to ask you something that’s much harder.”

“What?” And that one word held a world of suspicion.

He gave a small smile, holding my hand a little tighter. “First, cut yourself some slack. You’ve just had a shock and you’re barreling forward like it didn’t happen, but it did, and we both know that ignoring it doesn’t unmake it, so please, take care of yourself tonight.” He put his free hand against my cheek and kissed me softly.

I drew back from the kiss with a smile. “I’ll do my best, and Nicky will be there to help.”

“He will. You are my highest priority, you know that,” he said.

“Yes, but once you say it that way I know you’re thinking of someone else, too.”

“Don’t blow up at Cynric when you see him next. He doesn’t know what’s going on inside your head, and he loves you.”

I closed my eyes and counted a very slow ten. “Why did you have to say that? I was regrouping, and now I feel raw again.”

“Because I love you and I know you; if you lose it and lash out at him you’ll feel good for a few minutes while the rage finds a target, and then you’ll feel worse. You’ll beat yourself up, because you’re taking your anger out on the other victim.”

“Why aren’t Crispin and Domino victims, too?” I asked.

“Because they don’t see themselves as victims, and you don’t see them that way either.”

“That makes no sense; either you’re a victim or you’re not.”

“Not true,” Micah said. “You can experience trauma without getting stuck as the victim forever. You can choose to work the shit and rebuild yourself, or you can sit in the ruins and mourn forever. You and I both chose to rebuild.”

I remembered then that he’d had his own share of trauma, first surviving a wereleopard attack that made him one, and then years of being abused by Chimera, the man who took over Micah’s leopard pard. Chimera had been a sadistic bastard who had worked his personal issues out by torturing and killing those under his power. He’d been the one who had forced Micah into animal form so long that his eyes had stuck in leopard form and never went back to human. He could have been trapped in animal form forever, and never been able to regain human shape again, but he’d been powerful enough to survive intact, except for his eyes. Sometimes there isn’t enough therapy in the world to fix a person, and that’s when you have to find another cure. In Chimera’s case dead was the cure, and I’d helped him find it. I never felt bad about that, but then he’d been trying to kill me at the time, and self-defense assuages guilt like a son of a bitch.

Jean-Claude stepped closer to us. “We all build upon our ruins.”

I looked up into that almost unreal face, because no one was that beautiful, and remembered that he had endured hundreds of years of abuse at the hands of more powerful vampires before he’d been able to break free and be his own master. I’d met his last master, Nikolaos. She’d looked like a twelve-year-old girl but had been the first vampire I ever met who was over a thousand years old. She’d also been a sadist, and completely careless about the harm she did to those around her. She’d murdered a friend of mine, Phillip. He’d been everyone’s victim, and was just starting to try to change that when Nikolaos had made him the ultimate victim and taken the last thing anyone can take from you: your life. I didn’t feel guilty about killing her, but I still felt guilty about getting Phillip killed. Maybe she would have done it anyway, but he helped me solve some murders and she didn’t like him tattling to me. I’d known he was weak, and scared, and everyone’s victim, and I’d used him just like everyone else. Maybe it was for a good cause to save other lives, but in the end I doubted it mattered to Phillip. I’d told him I’d be back. I’d told him I’d keep him safe. They’d torn his throat out.