I eased into the room away from Fredo, not because he meant me harm, but simply on principle. I wasn't at my best, and he was the only professional bad guy in the room, so I treated him with the caution he deserved. Besides, I had to redeem my earlier stupidity somehow, and the days when I would have picked a fight just to reassure myself I was still tough were long ago and far away. Being a girl, that phase had been shorter anyway. We are much more practical creatures than men, as a general rule.

Richard was still at the table. Clair was beside him now. She had a hand on his good shoulder, her small hand very pale against the darkness of his skin. She was watching me. Her eyes were blue, a dark sort of gray blue, but blue nonetheless.

Micah stood at the side of the island closest to the table. He seemed tense, but it was a flicker of his eyes that helped me find Damian and Nathaniel.

The vampire had wedged himself into the corner between the cabinets and the sink. He was holding his knees tight to his chest, his face resting on them, so that he could hide his eyes. He'd managed to hide almost all of himself in the blue velvet dressing gown and the fall of his own hair. Nathaniel was beside him on the floor. He was touching Damian's hands, but that was all.

Nathaniel looked up at me, and there was something in his violet eyes, pain, helplessness, something. I wasn't mad anymore, and I didn't feel claustrophobic as I crossed the kitchen to them. I knelt on the other side of Damian and looked a question at Nathaniel. "I thought my touch might help him until you got back inside."

I nodded. It sounded logical.

"He didn't want me to touch him much." He wasn't hurt when he said it, it was just a fact.

I touched Damian's bowed head. His hand suddenly wrapped around my wrist. The movement had been too fast to see, which didn't happen often to me with vamps, and shouldn't have happened with this one. The speed of it, and the strength in his hand made me gasp.

He raised up and gave me the full look of those emerald eyes. I was suddenly struck by the sheer beauty of him. It was almost a physical force. As if beauty were a hammer and I'd taken a hit directly between the eyes.

"My God," Nathaniel whispered.

It took more effort than was pretty for me to tear my glance away from Damian. Once I saw Nathaniel's face it was easier, and I could breathe again. "Do you see it, too?" I asked.

He nodded. "It's like a really good face-lift, not much change, but the changes are just right."

"What are the two of you talking about?" Damian asked.

His talking made me look at him again, and I was held spellbound. He'd always been handsome, but not like this. "It's vampire powers, somehow. I thought as my servant he'd be less able to do that, not more."

"I don't think it's mind games, Anita," Nathaniel said. He reached out to touch Damian's face.

Damian pulled back. "What? What's wrong with my face?"

"Absolutely nothing," I said, "Richard beat the shit out of you, but there's not a mark left."

He raised his own hand up and touched his mouth. "It's healed," he said.

I nodded, and it was as if I was mesmerized by him. Was it mind tricks, or had more than just the damage healed? I couldn't tell, and I wasn't sure whether Nathaniel was a better judge than I was. "Micah, can you look at him?"

Micah came to stand at the end of the island closest to us. The look on his face was enough, before he said, "Wow."

But was it mind tricks? That's what I wanted to know. I reached up to touch his face, and he didn't lean away from me, as he had Nathaniel. I'd seen part of his memory of what had happened to him at the hands of other men, men that she-who-made-him had given him to, so she could feed off his pain and fear. So I understood some of the homophobia, but Nathaniel wasn't a threat to him, not in that way. In other ways, he was a threat to everyone who saw him. Oh, well.

I touched Damian's cheek, and it was solid. But it was all solid. Nathaniel was right, it was like a really good face-lift; there wasn't that much difference. What was it about his face that was different? What had kept Damian's face from being this heart-stopping before? I'd never made a study of his face, I wasn't sure I knew him well enough to know what had changed. Maybe my confusion showed on my face, because Nathaniel said, "His mouth, his lips were too thin for his face, now they're full and... they match."

Now that Nathaniel had said it, I could remember Damian's mouth, and this wasn't it. Was it just mind glamour? It had to be, didn't it? I closed my eyes and touched his mouth, but I'd never run my fingers over his lips. I didn't remember them. I kept my eyes closed and used my hands to guide me. I kissed him, soft but firm. I'd kissed this mouth less than two hours ago, and it wasn't the same mouth. The lips were fuller, as if he'd gotten a collagen injection while we weren't looking. I drew back just enough to see his face clearly. There was a slight up-tilt to his eyes, and they were bigger, not much, but just a little, or was it that his eyebrows had a wider arch to them? Were his lashes thicker, darker? Shit.

"What's wrong?" Damian asked again, and this time there was a thread of fear in his voice.

"I'll get a mirror," Micah said, and turned and went for one.

"This isn't possible," I said.

"Is there anything I can do?" Dr. Lillian was at the far end of the island. Damian looked up at her, and she said, "Oh, my."

"What?" he asked, and his voice was frantic.

I patted his hand. "You're fine, in fact you're... beautiful."

The fear spread from his voice to his eyes. "What are you talking about?"

Micah came back in with a hand mirror. He simply held it out toward me. I took it, but Damian shut his eyes tight, as if he were afraid to look. "It's okay, Damian, I promise, you look wonderful." But I sort of understood the fear, because even if it was an improvement, how weird would it be for the face you've had for a thousand years to suddenly change. I'd have had trouble with changes to the face I'd only had for part of a lifetime.

He was shaking his head over and over again.

"Please, Damian, just look. It's good, not bad. I promise."

He opened his eyes a little at a time, but once he saw enough, his eyes went wide, and he took the mirror from me. He moved it around so he could see his eyes, his mouth, and there was some change to his nose that he could see and I couldn't. Like I said, I hadn't made a study of his face, but he had.

He touched his face tentatively, as if he expected it to feel different than it looked. He dropped the mirror, and Nathaniel caught it before it hit the floor. "What is happening to me?"

I opened my mouth to say, I don't know, but Micah said, "I think we need to call Jean-Claude. We know he's up."

Good idea, I thought. "Yeah, I think so."

I actually got up to go for the phone, but Richard was at the end of the island, across from the phone, and I suddenly didn't want to be that close to the phone. His right arm was taped to his chest, completely immobile, like Lillian had started to mummify him and stopped. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking lower, at Damian.

"Healing and a little facial reconstruction, you are good," he said, and his tone made it not a compliment.

"I didn't do it on purpose."

"I know," and those two words just sounded tired. "Jean-Claude told me once that he couldn't remember what he and Asher looked like before Belle, but he'd seen others before and after. Belle never chose people who weren't pretty, but some afterward were more beautiful than before. It wasn't a common thing even in her bloodline, but it happened often enough to start the legend that it always happened to her blood."

I looked at him. "And when did you and Jean-Claude find time for all this information sharing?"