“Nor I, late in pregnancy,” Fortune said.

“But the baby will be born and you can both get back into warrior condition,” Echo said.

“But then we’d have a baby that would be like the greatest hostage ever,” I said.

“To take the child of Jean-Claude and Anita Blake would be suicidal,” Echo said.

“It’s really unlikely that Jean-Claude would be the bio-dad. He’s over six hundred years old. Most vampires aren’t fertile after a hundred or so,” I said.

“Legally you will be marrying only Jean-Claude, so in the eyes of the world, it will be his,” she said.

I glanced at Nathaniel. “You okay with that?”

He grinned at me. “Of course, the baby will call all of us Daddy.”

I said, “Jean-Claude would probably be Père,” which was French for “Father,” and thanks to channeling him I even pronounced it correctly, which I could never have done on my own.

“Probably we’d have different dad-isms for all of us,” Nathaniel said.

“What do you mean, dad-isms?”

“Jean-Claude could be Père, but we could use Dad, Daddy, Dada, Papa, Pa, Pop, Poppy, all the slang for Father.”

“You’ve really thought about this,” I said, and not like I was happy about it.

“Anita, I’ve been trying to think of all the arguments against it so that when we finally talked for real I’d be prepared. I never thought it would come up like this.”

“It doesn’t matter who’s Dad, or Poppy, or whatever; the kid would still have a sign around its neck saying, Kidnap me and use me against my parents, please.”

“Echo already said it would be suicide,” Giacomo said.

“Yeah, but people do stupid things all the damn time.”

“Anita,” Nicky said.

I looked at him so close to me, felt the weight of his hand on my thigh, the nearness of all that muscled willpower. “For your baby to be taken they’d have to get through me first.”

“And me,” said Dev.

“And me,” Pride said.

The plane filled with the sounds of all of them saying the same thing.

“Yes, the baby would be a hostage if it could be taken,” Echo said, “but the likelihood of anyone, or any group, slaying all of us and taking the child is almost zero.”

“And when Echo says that, she means only those of us on this plane,” Jake said. “If you add all the rest at home, then there are few children on earth safer than one you would have.”

I shook my head, afraid but not of being on the plane.

“All children of powerful people are potentially at risk,” Magda said, “but few are as well protected as any we might have.”

I looked at her. “We?”

“I do not think I wish to have one, but if Fortune can get with child I think more of the female Harlequin would consider it.”

“There is no guarantee that I can get pregnant at all. I mean, I’m over a thousand years old. My body looks like I haven’t seen thirty, but I’ve seen so many more years than that. Now that I have people who can help me not shift form for the time it would take me to get pregnant, which is what lets the clans breed at all, and a safe place, it still may be impossible,” Fortune said.

“One of the best things about having the tiger clans come to stay in St. Louis is them helping the other wereanimals through pregnancies,” Nathaniel said.

“I’m not sure I’d put that in the best thing category,” I said.

“But I would. It’s made so many people so happy.”

I smiled at him. “We both want that.”

“Everyone to be happy,” he said.

I nodded and couldn’t stop from smiling more. Then I frowned.

“What’s wrong?” Nicky asked.

I looked out the window of the plane. The sky was still black and star-filled, but I felt the press of dawn. It was the same way I could feel it deep underground in the Circus, or in the pitch-black of a cave when I knew that if I could just fight until dawn the vampires would collapse where they were and we could kill them. Of course, now I knew that if the vampire was old enough, strong enough, and underground far enough they might not “die” at dawn. Damian wasn’t the only vampire I knew that could daywalk either. If you read the original book Dracula by Bram Stoker, he has Drac walking around in the daylight, only adding a pair of darkened glasses, so dawn isn’t a guarantee of safety from vampires and it does nothing to protect you from their servants and allies, but dawn still meant good things to me. It didn’t to Giacomo and Echo, though. Damian didn’t burn in the sunlight anymore, but the light still frightened him.

Damian said, “Anita is feeling the sun start to rise.”

Fortune and Magda started closing all the blinds over the windows. Ethan started to help. Since one of my issues with planes is that I’m claustrophobic on top of being afraid to fly, it didn’t make me happy. In fact, my pulse started to speed up, the first beginnings of panic pumping through my veins.

“Look at me, Anita,” Damian said.

I looked into his green eyes, but I didn’t fall into a peaceful place again. The fear continued to bubble through me. My breath started to get too fast. “It isn’t working this time,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid of the dawn too.”

“Sunlight doesn’t hurt you,” Nathaniel said.