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Damian landed in front of me. The barrel of the gun was aimed low at his body. If he’d been a little shorter than six feet, it would have been chest high.

I let out a breath slowly and eased my finger off the trigger. “Damn, Damian, you startled me, and that can be real unhealthy.” I got to my feet.

“Sorry,” he said, “but Micah wanted you to have someone else with you.” He spread his hands wide, showing himself both unarmed and harmless. He might have been unarmed, but harmless, never that. It wasn’t just that Damian was handsome—a lot of men, dead and alive, are handsome. His hair fell in a straight, silken curtain, scarlet, like a spill of blood. It was what red hair looked like after more than six hundred years of no sun. He blinked green eyes into the lights of the streetlamps overhead. A green that any cat would envy. The eyes were three shades brighter than the T-shirt that clung to his upper body. Black slacks fell over black dress shoes. A black belt with a silver buckle completed the outfit. Damian hadn’t dressed up, he’d just been wearing slacks and dress shoes. Most of the vamps that had recently come from Europe didn’t feel comfortable in jeans and jogging shoes.

Yeah, he was a treat for the eyes, but that wasn’t the danger. The fact that I wanted to touch him, to run my hands up the white, white skin of his arms. That was the danger. It wasn’t love, or even lust. Through a series of accidents and emergencies, I’d bound Damian to me as my vampire servant. Which was impossible, I mean vamps have human servants, but humans don’t have vampire servants. I was beginning to understand why the Council used to kill all necromancers on sight. Damian was glowing with good health, which meant he’d recently fed on someone, but I knew it had been a willing victim, because I’d forbidden him to hunt. He would do exactly what I said, no more, no less. He obeyed me in all things, because he had no choice.

“I knew I could get here before you went inside,” he said.

“Yeah, flying does have its benefits.” I shook my head and put up my gun. I had to rub my hand on my skirt to keep from touching him. The palm of my hand ached to caress his skin. He wasn’t my lover, or boyfriend, yet I craved his touch when he was near me, in a way that felt disturbingly familiar.

I took a deep breath that seemed to shake just a little. “I told Micah not to send anyone until I’d found out what was up.”

Damian shrugged, hands up. “Micah said, go, so here I am.” He kept his face carefully blank. There was a tension to him that said he was waiting for me to hurt the messenger.

“Touch him,” Asher said.

His quiet voice from right behind me made me jump, but at least he’d gotten out of the Jeep.

“What?”

“Touch him, ma cherie, touch your servant.”

I felt heat climb up my face. “Is it that obvious?”

He smiled at me, but not like he was happy. “I remember what it was like with . . . Julianna.” He said her name in a whisper that still carried on the cool autumn air. It startled me a little to hear him say her name, he avoided her name if he could; saying it, or hearing it.

“I’m Jean-Claude’s human servant, but I don’t feel an overwhelming need to touch him every time I see him.”

He looked up at me. “You don’t.”

I started to say, no, then had to think about it. I did want to touch Jean-Claude when I saw him, but that was the sex, the rush of being a relatively new couple, wasn’t it?

I frowned and concentrated on something else. “Does Jean-Claude feel the same need to touch me?” Like I feel for Damian went unsaid.

“Almost certainly,” Asher said.

I frowned harder. “He hides it well.”

“Because to expose such raw need to you would have made you run away.” He touched my elbow, a light touch. “I did not mean to give away uncomfortable secrets, but we must show a united front for . . . her, this night. When you touch Damian you gain power, just as when Jean-Claude touches you and Richard, he gains power.”

I took a deep breath, let