Samuel and Sampson stood in front of the love seat. Asher led us to the couch across from them. The white carpet seemed emptier than normal. Oh, the coffee table was missing. Had we broken it after the ardeur rose? I couldn't remember.

I had my best professional smile plastered on my face, the one that's bright and cheery as a lightbulb, and about as warm. But it was the best I could do. I'd had about all the out-of-town visitors I could deal with for one night.

"Samuel, Sampson, you have not met our Richard."

Samuel bowed toward us. "Ulfric, it is good to meet you at last."

Sampson bowed a little lower than his father, and let him do the talking. They both looked way too solemn for my tastes, as if something else had gone wrong.

"Samuel, what brings you back to us tonight?" Jean-Claude asked. If he was tired of visitors it didn't show in his voice. He sounded pleasant, wel­coming, the perfect host.

"First, the apology I owe you on behalf of my wife. I worry that some­thing about her nature affected your servant, and may have helped cause what happened tonight."

I blinked at him, felt my smile slip a notch. Was this all someone else's fault? Was I going to have someone else to blame? Goody.

Jean-Claude sat down on the white couch, not so much pulling me down with him as leading, as you do in a dance. He sat, and I followed his lead, and Richard followed mine. Jean-Claude kept my hand in his, but Richard let go, and put his arm along the back of the couch. He was touching mostly me, but his hand moved along Jean-Claude's back, and ended lost in the thick curls of his hair.

"Where is your lovely wife, and your other sons?" Jean-Claude asked.

Asher sat in the overstuffed chair closest to us. He matched the chair and pillows perfectly, all white and gold. He still looked entirely too pleased with himself, like the proverbial cat with cream.

Samuel sat down on the love seat, and Sampson followed his father's lead. "They are at a hotel along with our two guards. I did not feel it wise to bring Thea and Anita together again tonight."

"What did she think of the show?" I asked.

Jean-Claude's hand tightened on my hand, where he held it in his lap. The squeeze was enough: Be nice, he was saying. I'd be nice. My version of it.

Richard had gone very quiet beside me, his arm tensed against my back. But it wasn't a warning to be careful, because his body temperature went up, as if he was thinking what I was thinking: was there someone else to get angry with, someone besides ourselves? Richard and I both preferred to be angry at other people.

"Thea was much impressed," he said, and his voice was mild, empty. His tone told nothing.

"If she was so impressed," I said, "then why isn't she here?"

Sampson smiled, and had to turn away to hide it.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

His father gave him an unfriendly look. Sampson fought to control his face, but finally burst out laughing. Samuel gave him his best ancient vam-

pire disdain. "I'm sorry, Father," Sampson said in a voice still choked with laughter, "but you must admit it is funny. 'Impressed' does not begin to cover Mother's reaction to what Anita and Jean-Claude did tonight."

His father gave him a stony face, until the laughter faded round the edges. Then Samuel said in a voice that held an edge of injured dignity, "My son has been indiscreet, but he is accurate. You ask why Thea and my other sons are not here; simply put, I did not trust her near the two of you."

"She liked the show," I said.

Samuel shook his head, gave his son another disapproving look. "More than liked, Anita. She is all ablaze with speculative plans. Would it be possi­ble for her and I to do what the two of you did? I find that unlikely, for though Thea carries something similar to the ardeur, I do not. I believe what you did to Augustine required similar gifts between the two of you."

Jean-Claude gave a small nod, face still empty. "I believe so."

"She is now convinced that Anita could bring our sons into the full strength of their siren's powers." Something crossed his face, too faint to read, but with such an empty face, it was strangely noticeable. "I do not share her certainty. What I felt from you tonight, Anita, is a different ele­ment of passion. It is like the difference between fire and water. They will both consume you, but in very different manners."

I looked at Sampson's face, still softly amused. "What did your mother ac­tually say?" I asked.

He glanced at his father before he answered. Samuel sighed, then nodded. Sampson grinned at me, and said, "I don't think you really want to know what she said, but what she meant was that if she had her way, Tom and Cris would both be here. She'd be here, too. She'd be offering us all to you any way you wanted us." His face sobered around the edges. "She can get car­ried away sometimes, our mother. She means well, but she doesn't think en­tirely like a human being, do you understand?"

"I hang around with vampires, so yeah."

He shook his head, his hands clasped on his knees. "No, Anita, vampires start out human, as do shapeshifters, and necromancers"—he said that with a smile—"but Mother was never human. She thinks like ..." He seemed un­sure what to say.

Samuel finished for him. "Thea is other, and she reasons in ways that do not always make much sense to those of us who began life as human beings." He didn't sound entirely happy about it, but he stated it as truth.

"That must make life interesting," Richard said.

Samuel gave him cool eyes, but Sampson nodded, smiling. "You have no idea."

"What did you think of the show, Samuel?" Jean-Claude asked.

The other vampire thought about it, face careful, and his voice was just as careful when he answered, "I thought it was one of the most powerful things I have ever seen. I think it is the kind of power that made me flee the great courts, and it is exactly the sort of power that made me avoid Belle Morte's court. It is the kind of display that made me flee Europe for fear of becom­ing nothing but a vassal of some great vampiric lord."

"Do you fear us now?" Jean-Claude asked.

Samuel nodded. "I do."

"I would not harm you deliberately," Jean-Claude said.

"No, but your power is growing, and growing power is a wild and capri­cious thing. I do not want my people, or my sons, near you while your power finds its way. I think you will be incredibly dangerous, by accident, for years to come."

"Yet, you come before me with your son. Why? Why not leave my lands, if we are so dangerous?"

"Because Thea is right in one way. If she and I could by some chance du­plicate what the two of you did, it would be"—he licked his lips—"worth the risk. I also agree that there is a chance that your Anita could bring my sons into their powers, if they have them."

"Do you believe your sons are so human?" Jean-Claude asked.

"Sampson is well over seventy in human years, so no, not so very human."

I looked at Sampson. He looked somewhere in his early twenties, maybe thirty at most. By no stretch of the imagination did he look seventy. "My," I said, "you're holding up well."

He grinned at me, and I liked the grin. He seemed to find the whole power game a little embarrassing, a little funny. "Clean living," he said, still grinning.

Richard moved beside me, a small, uncomfortable movement. I glanced at him, and his face was beginning to darken. One of Richard's biggest prob­lems with our new lifestyle was jealousy. Of all the men trying to be in my life, he was the only one who found jealousy a real problem. Until I saw that look on his face, I'd been able to ignore that they were still talking about Sampson and me being lovers. I'd gotten better at pushing away the un­comfortable bits until I had to deal with them. Richard was still working on that.