But when I agreed to all of it, I had never dreamt that I'd be doing the first introductions without Jean-Claude on my arm. Shit.

Micah took my arm in his. "It's going to be fine."

Nathaniel hugged me. "We'll help you be charming."

"I'm just not the Cinderella type," I said.

"But you're not Cinderella, Anita, you're the prince. You're Prince Charming."

I stared into Nathaniel's lavender eyes, and felt the first cold hand of fear in my stomach. Me, Prince Charming? There had to be some mistake.

Though I guess if you have to choose between being the woman who is trying to catch the prince's eye, or the prince who doesn't want to be caught, prince is better. Or at least that's what I told myself as Clay led us through the door, and the drapes that formed the walls of the living room.

I let Micah and Nathaniel each take an arm. Yeah, I couldn't get to my weapons fast, but what was waiting for me in the next room wasn't a prob­lem that guns and knives could solve. It was a problem that only diplomacy, witty banter, and sly sedcution could manuevuer us through. We were so screwed without Jean-Claude and Asher.

THE ROOM WAS all gold and white and silver from the drapes to the couch, the love seat, and the two chairs framing the empty white brick of the fire­place. It looked denuded without the picture of Jean-Claude, Asher, and their lost love, Julianna. A picture painted about five hundred years before I was born. Yeah, the wall looked bare, but the room didn't. The room seemed positively drowning in vamps and shapeshifters. I really did not want to play hostess without Jean-Claude. Really, really didn't.

Stepping into the room I gave them the smile I'd learned at work for clients. The smile that was bright and shiny, and only reached my eyes if I pushed hard. I pushed hard, but my hands were literally clutching at Micah and Nathaniel, as if they were die last pieces of wood in the ocean. I finally realized that I was scared. Scared of what? Polite banter, cocktail party talk? Surely not. I mean, no one here was going to try to kill me. Usually if no one tried to kill me, or I didn't have to kill anyone else, it was a good night. So why the major case of nerves?

Micah was introducing us, while I tried to get a handle on this sudden outbreak of rabid shyness. It wasn't like me. I didn't like small talk and par­ties with strangers, but I wasn't shy.

Clay and Graham took up their posts at our backs. There were more of our guards scattered around the room, but none of them could help us with the part that was scaring me.

Micah leaned in and whispered, "Anita."

I did the long blink, the one that means I'm thinking really hard, and try­ing not to show it. You have to know what it is to spot it, honest. "Welcome to St. Louis, and I hope our hospitality will be better from this moment on." There, that wasn't horrible. Point for me.

One of the vamps came forward smiling. He wasn't much taller than me, but broad enough through the shoulders that he looked almost misshapen. The way some short bodybuilders do in suits. "We are all Masters of the City here, Ms. Blake; we all know that some business cannot wait for niceties."

He just stood there, waiting, smiling, pleasant. It was my turn to prove that we weren't country bumpkins. To prove that we did indeed know the niceties. I got myself loose from Micah and Nathaniel. I stood on my own two feet and offered him my hand. "Welcome, Augustine, Master of die City of Chicago." Jean-Claude had described everyone to me, so at least I was pretty sure who I was talking to. That was all I was sure about.

Most master vamps tried to be scary, or mysterious, or sexy. This one smiled wide enough to flash fangs, and said, "Auggie. My friends call me Auggie." His hair was short, blond, but still had lots of small, stylized curls to it. The haircut didn't match the suit and the approach.

He took my offered hand gendy in his, as if I were too delicate to touch. Some muscular men do that. Usually it bugged me, but tonight I was okay with it. He turned my hand over and began to raise my wrist to his mouth. I did not raise my own arm. You end up hitting people in the face when you do that. I'd been practicing with Jean-Claude and Asher. My hand had to sit passive in his as he raised my wrist toward his moutli. He was a Master of the City and I was just a human servant. If Jean-Claude had been here, it would have been Auggie offering up his wrist, but I was officially outranked, so I got to offer up.

He bowed over my wrist, and raised his eyes to me at die same time. His eyes were a gray so dark tfiey were almost black. But diey were just eyes, and I could meet tliem. Most masters aren't used to humans doing diat. Auggie's eyes widened at it, and I tliink my smile slipped from welcoming to just a lit­tle bit arrogant. That I could meet his eyes witli impunity made me feel bet­ter, more myself.

His lips curled into a close, secretive smile, not at all the wide grin he'd greeted me with. He laid his lips against my wrist, where the blood runs shallow below the skin. Even then it was just lips on skin, then he kissed my wrist, and a little jolt of power went through my body. It tightened things low and intimate in my body. Tightened them so quick and hard that it caught my breatfi, and made me stumble.

I felt movement at my back, but I shook my head. My voice was breathy, but I said, "No, I'm all right. It's okay." I felt rather tlian saw everyone pull back. I had eyes only for die vampire still hovering over my wrist. I didn't pull away from him. I looked into his eyes, until I saw that they were like the sky when it goes black, just before it falls down and destroys everything you own. But I wasn't just a human servant gaining all my power through my ties to Jean-Claude. I'd come to him with partial immunity⁷ to vampire gaze, and what I did next was my power, my magic. Necromancy.

I put a little bit of power down my hand, into his skin, like you'd push

someone away who'd invaded your space. I told him, metaphysically, Back off.

He pulled his hand away, dropped that strange gray gaze. His breath came out in a sharp sound. "I apologize if my little push of power caused you dis­comfort, but I am trying to behave myself, Ms. Blake. Forcing me to show more of my power might not be wise."

He raised his face as he finished, gave me a glimpse of a face that was no longer boyishly handsome, or cute, in an ordinary sort of way. Now his face was simply beautiful. The bone structure more delicate than it had looked a moment ago. The eyes were rimmed with a lace of dark lashes. If I hadn't spent the last few years staring into Jean-Claude's lashes, I'd have said they were the prettiest eyelashes I'd ever seen on a man. Only the color of his eyes remained unchanged. That extraordinary charcoal gray with its shades of black.

I stepped back enough to look him up and down. His body was the same, and not. He was still short, for a man, but the suit fit him better. I'd gone suit shopping with enough men to know expensive when I saw it. It had been made for his body, and when a short man lifts enough weights to get an upper body that broad, it needs to be made to fit. But die suit looked good now, sleek and stylish, rather than fitting oddly.

He'd been using mind games to appear less beautiful and more ordinary. All I'd meant to do was stop him from doing what amounted to metaphysi­cal foreplay. What I'd done instead was strip him of his camouflage.

I shook my head. "I've seen vamps waste energy to make themselves scarier, but never to appear ordinary."

"Yes," a woman's voice said, "why would you hide so much of yourself, Augustine?" I looked at the woman who went with the voice. She sat on the white love seat, tucked in very close to the only other vamp in the room who made my skin tighten when I met his eyes. The man was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and handsome in an ordinary sort of way. After looking into Augus­tine's face, it wasn't really fair to compare. But I knew who he had to be.