"And what if these toys finally manage to be bigger and badder than you and me?"

"Then we die."

"Just like that," I said. "You wouldn't have regrets?"

"You mean Donna and the kids?"

"Yes," I said, and I stood, starting to pace the bathroom.

"I would regret leaving them."

"Then don't come," I said.

"And if you get killed, I'd always believe that I could have saved you. No, Anita, I'll come, but I will bring backup."

"Not anyone too crazy, okay?"

He laughed, that chuckle of true delight that I'd heard maybe six times in the entire seven years I'd known him. "I can't promise that, Anita."

"Fine, but Edward, I'm serious. I don't want to get you killed on them."

"I can't stop being who I am just because I love Donna, Anita. I can't stop being what I am because I've got the kids to think about."

"Why not?" I asked, and I was thinking of a conversation Richard and I had had when we thought I was pregnant. He'd expected that if I were pregnant I'd stop being a federal marshal or vampire hunter. I hadn't agreed.

"Because it wouldn't be me, and they love me. Donna and Becca may not know everything that Peter does about me, but they know enough. They know what I had to do to save the kids when Riker took them."

Riker had been a very bad man. He had been doing illegal archaeology digs, and Donna's amateur protection group had gotten in their way. It actually hadn't been Edward or me that first got the kids on Riker's radar. Nice to know we weren't completely to blame for what happened. Riker had wanted me to do a certain spell for him, which truthfully I hadn't been necromancer enough to do, but he wouldn't believe me. He tortured the children to get my, and Edward's, cooperation. Six-year-old, now eight-year-old, Becca had gotten a badly broken hand. Peter had been sexually molested by a female guard. We'd had to watch on videotape. We'd killed Riker and all his people. We rescued the kids, and Edward had made me give Peter my backup gun. Edward decided in that moment that if we lost, he preferred Peter to be killed resisting, rather than taken again. I hadn't argued, not after what they'd done to him. I had watched Peter empty my gun into the body of the woman who'd hurt him. He'd kept dry-firing into her body until I wrestled the gun away from him. I still saw his eyes when he told me, "I wanted her to hurt."

I knew that Peter had lost some of his innocence the night his father died and he had to pick up a gun to protect his family. He'd taken a life, but I think he thought it was killing a monster, and that didn't really count. Hell, once I'd thought the same thing about monsters. Killing the woman who had hurt him had taken more from him, a bigger piece of his soul. I couldn't even imagine how big a piece the sexual abuse stole away. Had it been better for him to have his revenge so quickly? Or had it cost him more?

I'd told him the only truth I had that night: "You killed her, Peter. That's as good as revenge gets. Once you kill them, there isn't any more." Revenge was always the easy part; the hard part was living with it afterward. Living with what you'd done. Living with what they'd done to you, or those you loved.

"Anita, are you there? Anita, answer me."

"Sorry, Edward, I didn't hear a damn thing you said."

"You're a thousand miles away inside your own thoughts. That's not a good place to be in the middle of a firefight."

"It hasn't come to a firefight yet," I said.

"You know what I mean, Anita. I have to round up my backup and arrange transport. That'll take a day or so. I'll be there as soon as I can, but you need to watch your back until I get there."

"I'll do my best not to get killed before you get here."

"This isn't funny, Anita. You seem seriously distracted."

I thought about it for a moment, then realized what was wrong. I was happy for the first time in my life. I loved the men I was living with. I, like Edward, had a family to protect, and mine wouldn't be tucked safely in New Mexico while we cleaned this up. "I just realized that I've got my own family here, and I don't like them being on the firing line. I don't like that a lot."

"Who are you worried about?" he asked.

"Nathaniel, Micah, Jean-Claude, all of them."

"I'm looking forward to meeting your new lovers."

It took me a minute to realize. "You've never met Micah and Nathaniel. I'd forgotten that."

"Jean-Claude can handle himself, Anita, as well as anyone in this situation. It sounds like the shapeshifters have you covered for now. Micah is head of the local wereleopards. He didn't get the job on his winning personality. He's a survivor and a fighter, or he'd be dead already."

"Is this supposed to be a pep talk?" I asked.

He gave a sound that was almost a laugh. "Yeah."

"Well, you suck at it."

He laughed then. "Which of your lovers is cannon fodder, Anita? Who are you really the most worried about?"

I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and said, "Nathaniel."

"Why him?"

"Because he's not a fighter. I've taken him to the gun range and he knows the basics." Then I remembered a moment when Chimera, a very bad guy, had come to town. I remembered an ambush, when Nathaniel had been with me. I'd forgotten. He'd killed someone, and I'd forgotten. I hadn't even thought how it might have affected him. Some leopard queen I was. Fuck.

"Anita, you still there?"

"Yeah, I just remembered something that I guess I was trying to forget. Nathaniel shot someone, killed him to save me. One of the wererats had gotten killed, and he picked up the guy's gun and used it just like I'd taught him." I was suddenly cold down to my toes. All the awful things that people had made Nathaniel do over the years while he was on the street, and it had been me that forced him to kill. He'd done it out of love, but motive didn't change the end product. Someone was still dead.

"He'll do, Anita." There was a tone to Edward's voice, approval maybe.

"You know, I hadn't thought about what he'd done until just now. What kind of person forgets that?"

"Did he seem messed up about it?"

"No."

"Then let it go," Edward said.

"Just like that," I said.

"Just like that."

"I'm not good at letting go."

"No, you're not."

"How much does Peter know about your real life as assassin to the undead and furry?"

"That's my call, Anita, not yours." His voice wasn't friendly now.

"I'd love to argue, but you're right. I haven't laid eyes on Peter since he was fourteen."

"He turned fifteen that year."

"Oh, so not two years since I saw him but more like a year and a half. That gives me so much more room to bitch at you for introducing him to the scary stuff."

"I'm just saying that he wasn't a kid when we met him. He was a young man, and I've treated him like one."

"No wonder he adores you," I said.

It was Edward's turn to be quiet.

"I can hear you breathing," I said.

"You know how I said we don't chat?"

"Yeah."

"I finally realized, just now, you're the only person I can talk about this with."

"What, Peter?"

"No."

In my head I went through the list of things that Edward could only talk to me about; nothing came to mind. "I'm all ears."

"Donna is pushing for kids."

That stopped me. It was my turn to be at a loss for words. I managed to stumble out some words, the wrong words. "Really? I mean, I guess I thought she was too old to start over."

"She's only forty-two, Anita."

"I'm sorry, Edward. I didn't mean it that way, I just never saw you with a baby."

"Ditto," he said, and he sounded angry now, too.

Worse yet, I felt my throat closing tight, my eyes burning. What the fuck was wrong with me? "Do you ever wish you had a life where you could see babies and shit like that?" I asked, and fought to keep the sudden rise of emotion under check.