This Auggie's yellow hair was down to his shoulders. He wore blue and silver gray with too much lace for my taste. "So the rumors are true—you have left her voluntarily."

Jean-Claude nodded, and looked up. "I have."

Auggie laughed. "You leave heaven voluntarily when I cry in hell for one last glimpse of it." He shook his head, sighed, the humor vanishing from his face. "But if you are strong enough to leave heaven I will get you to the coast. I know a ship and a captain that I trust."

"What is the destination of the ship?"

"The English colonies. The United States of America, they are called now. But honestly, Jean-Claude, does it matter where it goes as long as you are off the continent, and far from her?"

Jean-Claude bowed his head again as if whatever was in his eyes, he didn't wish to share. "I cannot pay you, Augustine, I have left with nothing."

"It is a gift in honor of your bravery at leaving paradise, not once, but twice. Twice, when I would give everything I have to go back."

Jean-Claude raised his face, beautiful and empty, his face when he was hiding what he was thinking. "Is it Belle you miss, or the ardeur?"

"Both."

"I cannot give you Belle, but the ardeur is mine to share."

Such eagerness on Augustine's face for an instant. A need so raw it filled his eyes with fire like lightning's glow behind gray clouds. Then his face stilled, all that hunger hiding away, but we had seen it. For in that instant, I was no longer seeing the room like some floating phantom. I was inside Jean-Claude's head as I had been inside him and Belle in the earlier memory.

Augustine's voice was as empty as his face when he said, "It is a gift, Jean-Claude. I would be your friend. Friends do not count the costs of favors."

We were surprised, and had been too long with Belle Morte to trust it. "I would have bargained my body to gain what you offer so freely, Augustine."

"And that is why I offer it freely. Yes, I long to be with her again. I will love her until the end of the world, but I did not always like her, or what she forced us to do." His face darkened with memories, but he waved them away, and smiled. "I would have stayed with her forever, doing her bidding, her willing slave, even though I knew her to be evil. I was too"—he seemed to search for a word—"immersed in her to ever wish to save myself, or save all those she wished me to enslave for her. If she had not cast me out, I would never have been strong enough to go."

"You refused direct orders from her. Some at her court still speak of it."

He nodded. "Even someone as weak as I am has things he will not do." Such sorrow on his face, such loss.

We laid our cheek against his hand where it lay on the chair arm. We rolled our eyes upward, so we could watch his face. His hand was very still under our cheek, as if he'd stopped breathing. "Let me share the one gift I have with my only friend."

He fought to keep the eagerness off his face, but only half succeeded. "You do not have to do this, Jean-Claude. I meant what I said. It is my gift to you." There was a tension in his hand where it lay, as if his body fought to be still but his hand betrayed him.

"I know your preference is for women."

"As is yours," Auggie said.

"Yes, but Belle does not share her personal men with other women."

Auggie smiled, and the smile was friendly but nothing more; it didn't

match the growing tension in the hand that lay under our cheek. His voice was mild as he said, "Unless it is a woman she wished for us to seduce."

We smiled, too. "For money, or land, or politics, oui." We shared a smile made up of centuries in her bed, pawns in her great plans. "I am the only one of her line to have inherited the full power of the ardeur, Augustine, and there are none of our blood in this new America."

"So my last opportunity to taste the ardeur and yours to be with another master of Belle Morte's line is tonight."

We nodded, our face rubbing along his hand.

He took his hand, gently, out from under us. "You are frightened," he Said, and his face was soft with wonder. "I am."

"Then why leave her?" "Because I could not stay, not and be hated by them both."

"Both?" We could not hide the tears, except by turning our faces away. Augustine came down on the floor with us. He held us while we cried. "It is not Belle that has broken your heart, it is Asher."

We wept for the first time in months. Wept into his arms, and he kissed our tears away and we sought comfort in the only arms that we trusted. Our only friend.

The earlier memory returned of them in the sheets. But it wasn't shock­ing this time. I was ready for it, knew what to expect. And I knew that this Jean-Claude had been the one who spent over twenty years as a happy cou­ple with Asher and Julianna. This Jean-Claude had lost Julianna, and Asher—Julianna burned as a witch, and Asher consumed by hatred at Jean-Claude for not getting there in time to save her. This Jean-Claude still blamed himself. Jean-Claude had taken the wounded Asher back to Belle Morte's court to save his life, and the bargain for that salvation was that Jean-Claude was her whipping boy for a hundred years. The Jean-Claude in Au­gustine's bed had lost everything and everyone he'd ever loved. He took the only comfort he could find, and I couldn't begrudge him that.

The memory faded round the edges, because it wasn't the sex that was im­ portant to me, or Jean-Claude, or even Augustine. It was the emotion of it. I came back gasping, pulse in my throat. "If that's a memory, then why does it almost hurt to come out of it?"

"I do not know, ma petite, but we have not much time. I could not stop the memory, but I was able to direct it. I wanted you to understand what hap­pened between us, because I cannot stop what is about to happen. We have fought her to give me time to soften the blow."

"We?" I looked up at Augustine, and his eyes held sorrow the way Jean-Claude's could hold lust.

"We'll hold it as long as we can, Jean-Claude, but hurry, whatever you are going to do, hurry." Asher's voice, but it held sorrow to match Auggie's eyes. I looked at Asher, and found his face traced with the faintly reddish lines of vampire tears. I realized then that everyone in the room had shared the memory.

"I am sorry, Anita," Auggie said, and he looked across me at Jean-Claude. "Sorry to you both."

"Sorry about what exactly?" I asked.

"This," he said, softly, and it was as if they'd both been holding their breaths, and suddenly they let go. They dropped their shields, their wills broke together, and the ardeur was suddenly there, smothering us all.

I thought I heard laughter, dim and echoing, Belle's laughter somewhere deep inside my head.

THE ARDEUR CAME and the clothes went. The custom-made leather knife sheath ripped away with all the rest. We fell to the carpet naked, all hands and mouths. The heavy metal and glass coffee table got shoved to one side as if it weighed nothing.

I pressed Auggie's muscled body onto the carpet, lay on top of him naked, feeling that he was already hard and ready, but I wanted to start at the other (Bid. We kissed, and his lips were as full and ripe as they'd looked. He kissed delicately, though I knew the ardeur rode him and what he wanted to do was anything but delicate. I licked and kissed along his neck, his upper chest. I came to his nipples, pale and hard in the muscled swell of his chest. I'd never Jieen with anyone who was such a serious weight lifter. It was as if his skin fit tighter over all those muscles, so that it was harder to get a grip with my teeth, but worth the effort.

Sucking on his nipple raised his upper body off the floor, tore a yell from jhim. His eyes were wide, surprised, his hands reaching for something to hold on to. Someone grabbed one of those reaching hands, and I knew who it was, before Auggie drew him into my line of sight. Auggie drew Jean-Claude in to him, drew him down, as he lay back against the floor, and I Worked lower on his body. I licked and bit along his stomach, as he drew Jean-Claude down for a kiss. Something I did raised Auggie up off the ground as their mouths touched, so that I had a good view of it. I had never seen two men kiss, not like that. Not with lips, and tongue. In the months that Asher had been in our bed they had moved toward each other a time or two, but stopped. I had never asked whose sensibilities they were saving, mine or theirs. Now, watching Jean-Claude cradling Auggie in his arms and kissing him so thoroughly ... it tightened my body so hard and fast that it was like a mini-orgasm. I'd been told by a very smart friend that to keep say­ing that I didn't like to be in bed with two men at once was a little silly. A case of the lady protesting too much. My body reacted for me; the sight of