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Graham actually didn’t argue. He just nodded and went for the door. Good. Because I knew where I was now. I was in the basement of what used to be a hospital, but the lower levels had been turned into a place where you kept suspected vampire corpses if you didn’t think you’d get to them before nightfall, and where you held lycanthrope victims, or injured shapeshifters themselves until they were well enough to leave. Or you could force them into one of the government prisons—oh, “safe houses.” The ACLU was about to be heard by the Supreme Court on just how many constitutional rights the “safe houses” violated. Being admitted was voluntary—if you were eighteen or over, anyway. They told shapeshifters that they’d let them out once they learned to control their beast, but somehow people went in and never came out. Most hospitals had an isolation ward for shapeshifters and vampires who got injured, but this was the place they sent you if they were truly worried. How the hell did we end up here?

“Requiem,” I said.

He came to the side of the bed, his hooded cloak back to being tight around him. Only a pale glimpse of face was visible. “Yes, my evening star?”

“Why does that sound more and more sarcastic when you say it?”

He blinked so that those vivid blue eyes were shielded for a moment. “I will endeavor to say it as I mean it, my evening star.” This time it was soft, and romantic. I didn’t like that either. But I didn’t say so out loud. I’d complain later when I figured out how to get any use out of it.

“I asked you once where Jean-Claude is; now I’ll ask again. Where is he and what’s he doing?”

“Can you not sense him?”

I thought about it and shook my head. “No, I can’t.” A spurt of fear ran through me like fine champagne. It must have shown on my face because Requiem touched my arm. “He is well, but he is shielding mightily to keep the Harlequin from reading him, or you, or the wolf king.”

“So there were more than just the two of them in town,” I said.

“Why would you assume only two?”

“It’s all I saw,” I said.

“Saw how?”

Again, I didn’t like the question and how he asked it. “Does it matter?”

“Perhaps not, but yes, Jean-Claude has detected more than two in your fair city.”

“I’m impressed that Jean-Claude can keep them out of us all,” I said.

Requiem’s hand tightened on my arm. “As are we all.” He took his hand back, and it vanished under the black cloak again.

“Tell me what I’ve missed of the vampire end of things. Wait, how long have I been out?”

“It is only the night of the day you were injured. You have been out, as you put it, for only a few hours.”

“A few hours, not days?” I asked.

“No.”

I touched my stomach, and it didn’t hurt the way it should have. I started to raise the hospital gown I was wearing. I hesitated, glancing at the man. He was my lover, but…there was always something about Requiem that made me less than perfectly comfortable around him. Micah, Nathaniel, Jean-Claude, Asher, even Jason, I would have simply looked at the wound. Richard, maybe I wouldn’t have. But Requiem made me hesitate for different reasons.

“Look at your wound, Anita. I will not ravish you from the sight of your nakedness.” He sounded like I’d insulted him. Since he was an old vampire, that I could hear that much emotion in his voice meant one of two things: either he allowed me to hear the emotion, or he was so upset he couldn’t control himself.

I compromised. I raised the gown and kept the sheet over my lower extremities.

“I am not an animal, Anita; I can bear your nakedness without being affected.” The anger and disdain were so thick in his voice that I knew it was lack of control.

“I never doubt your control, Requiem, but there’s no way to be nude in front of you and have it be casual. I need to just look at my body and see what’s wrong and right with the wound. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, or a romantic deal out of it.”

“Would it not be a big deal if Jean-Claude were here in my stead?”

“Jean-Claude would concentrate on business and worry about