“And did you have a weretiger in mind?” Jean-Claude asked.

“My first choice is Cynric.”

“No,” I said, and it was very final.

“He lives with us, Anita. He helps Nathaniel with the domestic stuff. When I’m out of town on business he sleeps in the bed with you and Nathaniel at the house in Jefferson County.”

“Nicky sleeps with us, too,” I said, and it sounded churlish even to me.

“And sometimes all four of you bunk together when I’m not there, but when I am there Cynric is the only one I’m willing to wake up and see on the other side of you, or Nathaniel. Besides, Nicky is a werelion, and that won’t help us get the tigers off our back about this.”

“Cynric is nineteen years old; he should be out playing the field, not settling for just hanging on to the fringes of my love life.”

“How is he on the fringe? We wake up most mornings with him helping Nathaniel and Nicky cook breakfast. We go to bed at least half the time with him in the bed with us, no matter who else is included. We can all talk for hours.”

“When he’s done doing his homework,” I said.

“He’s graduating soon and already lined up for college, Anita.”

“I just have problems saying I’m dating a high school student.”

“He’s a senior.”

“A high school senior,” I said.

“What difference does it make if he’s in high school or college? That doesn’t change what he means to all of us.”

“What difference does it make? What difference does it make?” I stood up and knew I was yelling and didn’t care. “He was only sixteen when the Mother of All Darkness mind-fucked us and he and I had sex. I don’t even remember it, but he does. For me it was like some date-rape drug, so I know I did it, but I didn’t choose to do it, and I resent like hell that it happened like that.”

“It wasn’t just you and Cynric that night, Anita. The Mother of All Darkness rolled about a half dozen of you.”

“But only Cynric followed me home and stayed!”

“Crispin and Domino were there that night, and they live here now,” Micah said.

He was right, and I knew it, but somehow it felt wrong. “It’s not the same. Crispin and Domino are grown men. They came to stay in St. Louis, but when I didn’t have time for them in my life they found lives of their own. They have jobs and Crispin dates other people, and Domino is beginning to, but Cynric is always there. I thought he’d go away next year to college and stay in the dorms, but now he’s planning to commute.”

“You are his master, ma petite; you could have ordered him to live in the dorms.”

I glared at him. “I don’t want to order people how to live their lives, I just want them to live their lives and leave me the fuck alone!”

“You mean you want Cynric to live his life somewhere else and leave you alone,” Micah said.

I thought about it, and then nodded. My voice was calm when I said, “Yes, yes.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because he’s only nineteen and I’m thirty-one. Because he and I raped each other when he was only sixteen. Because he was a virgin and no one should lose their virginity in a metaphysical orgy orchestrated by one of the most evil powers I’ve ever felt. Because every time I see Cynric I think about Her, about that evil bastard who raped us both!”

I stood there in the strangely loud silence with my own words echoing inside my head.

Micah and Jean-Claude looked at me. Jean-Claude’s expression was as empty and perfect as any I’d ever seen on his face; hiding his emotions in an instant, a trick that had helped him survive in the seat of vampire power for centuries. Micah’s face showed pain, compassion, and finally as many emotions as Jean-Claude showed none.

“Well, fuck,” I said, softly.

Micah stood up and started to hug me, but I put my hand out and backed up.

I wanted him to hold me, but I knew if he did I might break down and I didn’t want that. I wanted to think, or try to think. But of course, I couldn’t think; all I could do was resonate with the clue-by-four that had fallen out of my mouth. I was like a bell that had been struck and the sound was still vibrating through me. I felt the shock of it down to my fingertips, as if I’d been physically struck and I couldn’t catch my breath.

Micah reached out to me, then let his hands fall back to his sides. “Anita, what can we do?”

I opened my mouth, closed it, and then shook my head. There was nothing they could do, nothing that anyone could do; it was done. We couldn’t fix it, because we couldn’t change it; all we could do was move forward from here. I just wasn’t as sure where “here” was anymore.

“Fuck,” I said softly.

Micah approached me again, slower this time, no sudden movements, the way you act around a spooked horse. They are very large, powerful animals and you don’t want them scared enough to lash out and hurt you, or themselves. I half expected Micah to start saying, Easy, easy.

When I didn’t tell him to stop he kept approaching me, until he could lay a hand on my shoulder. I didn’t push him away this time. I just sort of stood there and let him come closer. I was staring somewhere in the middle distance as if I were seeing another room, one in Las Vegas, three years ago.

Did I feel like a victim? No, but . . . but . . . something.

Micah hugged me gently, carefully, and I let him hold me. I didn’t hug him back, but I didn’t stay stiff; my body relaxed against him, but my arms just hung there while I thought my way through it all.