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“If you were this worried about how I’d react, why didn’t you warn me ahead of time?”

“In truth, there has been so much happening that I forgot. This was once very normal for me, ma petite, and Belle holds with the old ways. There are older still than she, who would not even allow the food to sit on the floor.” He shook his head, hard enough that his hair touched my face, smelling of his cologne and that indefinable something that was simply his scent. “There are banquets, ma petite, that you would not wish to see, or even know of. They are indeed horrible.”

“Did you think they were horrible while you were participating in them?”

“Some, oui.” His eyes filled with that wistful look, that lost innocence, centuries of pain. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes in his eyes I could glimpse what he’d lost.

“I won’t argue if you tell me there’s worse out there than this arrangement. I’ll just believe you.”

He gave me a look of disbelief. “No arguing?”

I shook my head and leaned back into his chest, held his arms around me like a coat. “Not tonight.”

“I should leave this miracle alone, but I cannot. You have taught me bad habits, ma petite. I think I must ask, once more, what is wrong?”

“I told you, it’s the dark.”

“You have never been afraid of the dark before.”

“I’d never met the Mother of All Darkness before.” I said it softly, but her name seemed to echo into the darkness, as if the darkness itself were waiting for the words, as if the words could conjure her to us. I knew it wasn’t true. All right, I was pretty sure it wasn’t true, but it made me shiver just the same.

Jean-Claude tightened his grip around me, pulling me tight in against his body. “Ma petite, I do not understand.”

“How could you?” came a voice behind us.

Jean-Claude turned me in his arms as he moved to face the voice, making it a dance-like movement, ending with my left hand in his right. His coat and my skirt swirled out and settled in a cloth whisper around us. Our outfits were designed to move and flow like some goth version of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Asher walked quickly to us, and even the way he moved was wrong. His posture was still perfect, but there was a hunching to it, like a dog that expects to be hit. He hurried in those white boots, hurried, and though still beautiful, there was little grace to his movement. There was too much fear in him to allow for grace.

Jean-Claude held out his hand, and Asher took it. We stood there, the three of us holding hands like children. It should have been absurd, considering the vampire we faced, but it wasn’t Valentina that we wanted to huddle together against. I think for all three of us, it was the night in general. It was everything in the next room, and what it represented.

Valentina stood in front of the drapes. She looked like a tiny doll dressed all in white and gold so that she, like Asher, would match the table settings. Everyone in Musette’s party matched the table, which meant that that, too, had been something they negotiated. Somehow clothes wouldn’t have been high on my list, but then that was me.

Valentina’s outfit was a miniature seventeenth-century dress with the skirt flared out to either side so that she was shaped like an oval. The skirt was very full and gave glimpses as she walked of tiny gold slippers and numerous petticoats. She even had a white wig that hid her brunette curls from view. The wig looked too heavy for that slender white throat, but she walked as if the jewels and feathers and powdered hair weighed nothing. She had absolutely perfect posture, but I knew that was from the corset that was under the dress. Those dresses don’t fit right without the proper undergarments.

There had been no need for powder to make her skin white, rouge and red lipstick had been enough. Oh, and a black beauty mark in the shape of a tiny heart near that rosebud mouth. She should have looked ridiculous, but she didn’t. She was like a sinister doll. When she flipped open her gold and lace fan with a sharp snap, I jumped.

She laughed, and only the laughter