I stood there for a minute with my power spilling, cool and seeking, like a wind, except that this wind didn't move your hair, it only crept along your skin. It was like I'd been holding my breath, tight, so tight, and finally I could let it out, let it all out, and relax. Once I'd stopped being afraid of it, it felt so good to be with the dead. Peaceful, so peaceful, because whatever was left in the grave had nothing to do with souls or pain. Quiet as the grave wasn't just a saying. But I'd forgotten that there were dead near at hand that weren't underground.

My power touched Requiem. It should have ignored him, but it didn't. That cool not-wind curled around him like the arms of some long-lost lover. I'd never felt anything quite like it. For the first time I truly understood that my power was over the dead, all the dead, and that undead is still dead. I'd always thought, and been told, that vampires killed necromancers for fear that they would be controlled by them, but in that second, I knew that wasn't the whole truth. It was as if a door opened inside me, to a room that I hadn't known existed. Inside that metaphysical room stood something. It had no shape that my eye could see, no weight, nothing to touch, nothing to hold, but it was there, and it was real, and it was me, mine, sort of. A "power plateau" Byron and Requiem had called it, but that wasn't it. Plateau is static, not growing, not changing. This wasn't static.

It blew out toward me, and if it had been a real room in a real house, the house would have exploded outward with the force of its coming. It would have roared outward in a blizzard of wood and glass and metal, and there would have been nothing standing in that metaphysical yard, except ground zero of some mysterious blast.

It was inside me, so it couldn't slam into me, that was silly, but that's still what it did. It slammed into me, and for a second I was blind, deaf, weightless, nothingness. There was nothing but the rawness of that power.

I came to, with Graham's voice. "Anita, Anita, can you hear me? Anita!" I felt him holding me, knew we were on top of the grave. I could feel the grave, could feel Edwin Alonzo Herman lying underneath me. All I had to do was call his name.

"Something's wrong, Requiem."

"No," he said, and that one word was enough. I opened my eyes and saw the vampire standing over me.

"She's awake," Graham said, and he tried to cradle me into a sitting position, but I lifted my hand up toward Requiem.

The vampire reached down for me, and I reached for him. Graham helped, by pushing me upright, but he wasn't there for me in that moment. My business was with the dead, and Graham was too warm for me. The blood I wanted was slow and thick, and holding its hand out to me.

Requiem's fingers brushed mine, and the power inside me steadied, as if the world had been trembling, and now it was still. I touched his hand in that sudden stillness, and there was no pulse in his palm. No beat of blood to distract the senses. He blinked at me, his lips moved, but he did not breathe. He was still. He was dead. He was mine.

He pulled me to my feet, and we stood on the foot of the grave, hand in hand. I looked up into that face, met the turquoise flame of his eyes, but it wasn't me that was pulled into his gaze. It was he that fell into mine, and I knew, because I had a glimpse from his mind to mine, that my eyes were solid pools of black with stars glittering in them. It was the way my eyes had looked when Obsidian Butterfly, a vampire that thought she was an Aztec goddess, had shown me some of her power. She was powerful enough that no one argued with her about whether or not she was deity. Some things aren't worth the fight. I'd used the power I'd learned from her only twice, and both times my eyes had filled with stars.

The night was suddenly less dark. I could see details, colors, things that my own eyes could never have seen. Requiem's shirt was so green it seemed to burn like his eyes. It was a kind of hyperfocus, and it wasn't just sight. His hand in mine felt heavier than it should have, more important than it should have, as if I could feel each whorl of his fingertip like tiny silken lines against my hand. To make love like this would either be the most wondrous experience of your life, or drive you mad.

I remembered this power, but it wasn't what I needed. I had another flash from Requiem's mind, a tiny flash of fear, quieted almost immediately, because I was touching him and I didn't want him to be afraid. The stars in my eyes drowned in a rush of flame, black flame with a center of brown, as if wood were the flame, and fire what it ate.

My eyes were, for a moment, what they'd be if I'd been a vampire. They filled with dark, dark brown light, so dark it was almost black. I turned those glowing eyes toward the grave, and Graham saw them.

"Oh, God," he whispered.

"Get off the grave, Graham," I said, and my voice was mine, almost.

He just knelt on the ground and stared up at me.

"Move, Graham," I said, "you won't want to be there when I'm finished."

He scrambled to his feet and moved, until I told him, "Good enough." He stayed close, eyes wide, fear like a scent off of his skin, but he didn't run, and he didn't try to distance himself. Brave boy.

I knelt on the hard ground and drew Requiem down with me, so that he knelt behind me with his hands on my shoulders. He was like some huge solid wall of quiet strength behind me. I'd known that I amplified Jean-Claude's powers when I was near him, but I'd never felt anything like what was happening now. It wasn't a triumvirate of power between Requiem and me, it was that he was one of Jean-Claude's vampires, and that made him mine in a way. Mine to call on, mine to use, mine to reward.

I bent until my hands touched the ground, until I could feel the dead just below me. It was as if the ground were water, and I knew there was someone drowning just below me, and all I had to do was reach down and save them.

I whispered, "Edwin Alonzo Herman, hear me." I felt him stir, like a sleeper disturbed by a dream. "Edwin Alonzo Herman, I call you from your grave." I felt his bones grow long and straight, felt his flesh coalesce around him. It was like restuffing a broken doll. He remade himself, and it was so easy, too easy. The power began to spread outward, began to seek another grave, but some small part of me that was still me, knew better. It wouldn't be just one more grave. I knew in that instant that I could raise this cemetery. That I could raise them all. No blood sacrifice. No chickens. No goats. Nothing, but the power blowing through me, and the vampire at my back. Because the power wanted to be used. It wanted to help me, help me caress them all from their graves, pull them to the light of stars, and fill them with... life. It would feel so good to lift them all up, so good.

I shook my head and fought that helpful power. Fought not to spread like a sweet sickness through the graves. Fought to hold on to what was left of who I'd thought I was. I needed help. I thought about Jean-Claude, but that wasn't it. I needed to remember that I wasn't just the dead. I was alive.

I reached out to the other third of our triumvirate. I reached out to Richard. He looked up at me as if I hovered in the air above his family's dining room table. I saw his father like an older clone of Richard himself, and most of his brothers, sitting at the table, passing a blue bowl. Charlotte, his mother, came in from the kitchen's swinging door just behind that chair. She was still about my size, with honey-blond hair and a figure that was both petite and full-figured. Except for the hair color and skin tone, Charlotte even reminded me of me. There was a reason that most of the Zeeman brothers had chosen small, tough women. I watched her bring in a big platter, smiling, chatting with her family. I couldn't hear what she was saying, or any noise from the crowded, smiling family scene. They all seemed so happy, so perfect. I didn't want to bring this here.