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the vampire community that, not the marshals. How do they know all this?”
    â€œYou aren’t the only one who’s a little close with their local vampires, Anita.”
    â€œI’ve met your local vampires, and I know that you are not talking to Obsidian Butterfly. She’s so scary that the worldwide vampire community has made Albuquerque, New Mexico, off limits.”
    â€œI live in Santa Fe.”
    â€œYeah, and it’s still too close to Obsidian Butterfly and her group. It’s why you have to travel out of state to hunt vampires; your local master is too scary to share.”
    â€œShe thinks she’s an Aztec goddess, Anita. Gods don’t share.”
    â€œShe’s a vampire, Edward, but she may actually be what the Aztecs worshipped under her name.”
    â€œShe’s still a vampire, Anita.”
    â€œI don’t like the tone in your voice, Edward. Promise me if you ever get a warrant of execution against her or any of her vampires that you’ll let me come help.”
    â€œYou’d have flown to Vegas without me.”
    â€œMaybe, or maybe getting a human head in a box was weird even for me. Maybe I am afraid of Vittorio, and I don’t like running into a trap like some rabbit. Maybe I just hadn’t had time to think to call you.”
    â€œThat’s a lot of maybe s, Anita.”
    â€œI may lose the phone signal if I go any farther underground, Edward, but I have to pack, so . . .”
    â€œIt’s a shorter flight for me to Vegas, so I’ll see you on the ground.”
    â€œEdward,” I said.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œDo you really think Vittorio planned me to have to fly to Vegas before Jean-Claude could be awake to argue with me, or make me take guards?”
    â€œI don’t know, but if he did plan it this way, then he’s afraid of your guards. He’s afraid of you with Jean-Claude. He’s afraid of you with all your shapeshifter friends. But he’s not as afraid of you on your own.”
    â€œI won’t be on my own,” I said.
    â€œNo, you won’t be,” he said.
    â€œI don’t mean just you, Edward. Vittorio killed police officers. I don’t think he understands how serious that can be.”
    â€œWe’ll explain it to him,” Edward said, voice gone empty of accent, empty of almost anything. It was the voice that he used when he was at his most deadly.
    â€œYes,” I said, “we will.”
    Edward hung up.
    I hung up and went through the door into Jean-Claude’s living room.

4
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    TWO OF MY lovers were dead in the bed that we all shared. They’d be alive again later in the day, or earlier in the night, but for now, Jean-Claude and Asher truly were dead. I’d touched enough dead bodies to know that sleep does not mimic death. There is a looseness, an emptiness, to the dead that not even coma can imitate.
    I stared down at them. They lay in a tangle of white silk sheets. Jean-Claude all black curls and that beautiful face; a line less or more, and he’d have been too beautiful, too feminine, but you never looked into his face and thought girl . No, he was all male no matter how pretty he looked. It helped that he was naked on top of the sheets. Nude, there was no mistaking him for anything but oh so male.
    Asher’s golden waves spilled across his face, hiding one of the most perfect profiles that had ever existed. I had some memories from the vampire who had made him: Belle Morte, Beautiful Death. She was over two thousand years old, and she still thought that his left profile was the most perfect she’d ever seen in a man. His right profile was marred, in her eyes, by the acidlike scars of the holy water that the Church had used to try to burn the devil out of him. The scars didn’t take up that much of his face, just from midcheek to chin on one side. His mouth was still as kissable, his face still had that heartrending beauty, but to