I had a horrible thought. She and Bartolome, who was stuck at twelve, had both been in the underground when the ardeur hit everyone. What had happened to them?

“Valentina,” I said.

She startled visibly and hit some buttons. The screen flickered, and then there were pictures of little cartoon animals floating over it. She began to move the mouse as if she were concentrating on the children’s game. She might actually enjoy the game, but whatever she’d been doing moments before hadn’t been a screen full of big-eyed cartoons. She only looked five. In reality she was older than Jean-Claude. Actually both she and Bartolome were two of the oldest vampires in St. Louis. They were trapped in children’s bodies, but they weren’t children.

She glanced behind her, smiling, the intensity that I’d seen on her face when I first came through the door gone. She turned a perfectly good little girl’s face to me. She could even make her eyes fill with that naïve light, but it was a lie. She’d been turned into a vampire too young for sex, but she had some of the drives of an adult. Those urges had been translated into pain. She was a sexual sadist and had been a professional torturer for centuries. It had been both a calling and a hobby. I wondered if that was what the ardeur would translate into for her.

She smiled sweetly at me. “Anita, do you want to play a game with me?”

“Sorry, I have police work to do.”

She pouted at me. “No one ever wants to play.”

I didn’t want to ask the question, but the very thought that I had forgotten her in all this made me have to ask. “What happened to you and Bartolome last night?”

She crossed her arms over her thin child’s chest and pouted harder. There was an edge of anger to it now. “He locked me in my coffin for hours.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. I fought not to look as relieved as I felt. But she noticed. She’d had centuries to watch adults and to manipulate them.

“I’m sorry for that,” I said.

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m not sorry you were locked away while the ardeur went through us, no,” I said.

“At Belle Morte’s court, when the ardeur was unleashed they’d give me someone to play with while they had sex.”

I blinked at her, not sure what to say to that.

“She doesn’t mean play, Anita,” Damian said.

I turned to him. “What does she mean?”

“They would give her someone to torture in a private area where no one could reach her, or her victim.”

“I thought you only visited the courts once,” I said.

“Once was enough,” he said. He was looking at the little vampire, and even through the black eyes and the blankness of the very old vampires there was still something.

“You weren’t her victim,” I said.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“His friend was, though,” Valentina said. “I heard your master shoved him into sunlight and burned him all up later.”

Damian stiffened beside me, and I touched his hand. The death of his best friend and brother in arms was one of his worst memories.

“We need to use the room, Valentina.”

She hopped off the chair, fluffing out the skirt of her pink dress. She came to us, her dark curls framing that forever face. She stopped looking up at Damian. “I liked your friend. It was a waste to kill him like that. I would have kept him safer than that.”

Damian’s hand tightened in mine. I said, “What did Bartolome do after he locked you in your coffin?”

She looked at me, narrowing her eyes. “Why are your eyes all dark?”

“New power,” I said.

Either that satisfied her or she didn’t really care. “Bartolome did what he always used to do. He went to find a woman.” She rolled her eyes, which was more teenager than the rest of the act. “He’s with her now. She seems quite besotted with him.”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know her name, and I don’t care. She won’t play with me.” She wrapped her tiny hand around one of Nicky’s fingers. “You don’t play with me anymore, either.”

“That’s because you cheated,” he said.

“But we could have such fun,” she said, pulling on his hand and swinging a little the way children will.

“Did I miss something?” I asked.

“You knew the rules, and you broke them.” He held her shoulder so he could take his hand out of hers without her falling.

She stomped her little foot, hands on hips; it might have been cute, except that her eyes drowned in brown fire like any vampire’s when their power comes on them or they lose their control. “There are plenty of wereanimals that enjoy pain. You could help me do it.”

“They enjoy pain for pleasure, but you don’t get off on that. You need them to really hurt before you’re satisfied.”

I looked from one to the other of them. It must have shown on my face, because she said, “If I’d known you hadn’t tattled to Mommie, I wouldn’t have said anything.”

“Now I will have to tell her,” he said.

“Someone tell me,” I said.

“You know she was Belle Morte’s torturer,” Nicky said.

“I know,” I said.

“She found out that I was an interrogator before I came here. She wanted to compare notes.”

“Interrogator is a euphemism for torturer, right?”

“Right, but I saw it as more of a job. For Little V here, it’s a passion. Her only passion.” Just saying it showed that he understood her more than most people did. He got the true brokenness of her.

“Yeah,” I said.

“She wanted me to help her by seducing some of the other wereanimals into some bondage sex and then she’d help me play with them, but her idea of play is something that even a pain slut wouldn’t be able to enjoy.”

“They’ll heal, Nicky. They’ll heal if I don’t use silver metal,” she said, hands still on her waist, face in that perfect little-girl scowl.

“When she found out I wouldn’t help her lure the wereanimals in for torture, she tried to mind-fuck me.”

“I take it that she couldn’t roll you.”

“There’s too much of you in him,” Valentina said. She stamped her foot again. “There’s no room for anyone else in his mind, or in most of their minds. You’re like Belle Morte was, Anita. You fill them up so that they think of only you, but she would give them to me when they disobeyed her or made her mad. I had more fun there.”

“I didn’t make you stay here,” I said.

“No, we have to help Stephen and Gregory. We have to make up for scaring them.” Her face went from pouting to serious. She and Bartolome had tried to take blood from the twins, but feeding for Belle’s line is a kind of sex, and the thought of the child vampires feeding on them had terrified Stephen and Gregory. It had been too close to their past with their sexually abusive father. When they’d discovered why the twins were so frightened of them, they’d stopped tormenting them and stayed in St. Louis to make it up to the men somehow. We were going on two years and the child vampires were still trying to find a way to cleanse their honor with the brothers. Now, of course, they couldn’t go back to Belle’s court, because she was on the run with her court.

“If you would just let us kill their father,” she said.

“Stephen’s therapist says that he needs to handle his father personally. That you killing him might actually cause more damage.”

“I know”—she sighed—“and so we are trapped here. At least Bartolome will have a lover now and I still have nothing.”

“I never know what to say to you, Valentina. I can’t give you people to torture.”

“You could, but you won’t,” she said. She threw her tiny hands in the air in a gesture years beyond her size and stomped to the door. Her hands were a little small for the door handle, but she opened it hard enough for it to slam the wall.

“Nicky, find out what she was hiding on the computer.”

He walked over and started hitting keys as the fat cartoon sheep bobbed around the screen.