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Fredo pushed himself from the wall, all boneless ease like some dark, well-armed cat. Clay just took Bunny’s other arm, and helped Benny start carrying her toward the door. She used the spike heels effectively, probably drawing blood through Clay’s pants. He never slowed, and neither did Benny, though his face was bleeding from nail marks. Fredo got both her ankles, and they carried her out.

Auggie gave me a very low bow. “I don’t know what to say, Anita. I’m sorry that I brought her. I knew she was jealous, but not crazy jealous.”

“Jealous?” I made it a question.

“She, like Samuel’s Thea, is very competitive around other women.”

I frowned at him. “So she and Thea were like trying to outbitch each other?”

He looked at me. “You really don’t understand why she didn’t like you from the moment you stepped into the room, do you?”

Micah drew me in against his body, hugging me one-armed. I looked back and forth from one to the other of them. “What?”

“No,” Micah said, “she doesn’t.”

“Don’t what?” I asked.

“You are a natural beauty,” Auggie said. “Artifice gave Bunny her face, her figure; most of her best features were found under a surgeon’s blade. In you walk, all natural equipment, wearing more clothes, and still get more attention from the men in the room than she did. When you were with Thea and Thomas, every man in the room was riveted. We wanted you. Wanted to touch you, in a way that is rare.”

I felt myself blushing and tried to stop it, but, as usual, lost. “You’re babbling, Auggie,” I said.

“Watching you and a siren, two if you count the boy. Watching two creatures formed of desire, and it was not the pale beauty most eyes watched, Anita. It was the dark.”

I frowned at him. “I don’t need this much ego-boo, Auggie, just make your point. If you have a point?”

Nathaniel came up. “I’ll translate.”

“What do you mean, translate?” I said, turning to him.

He took my hand, and shook his head. His face had that I-love-you-but-you-amuse-me look. “You outvamped the sirens, Anita.”

“How?”

“I believe,” Auggie said, “because your power is over the dead, and the undead. I was told your animal to call was only leopard.”

I nodded. “It is, but through Jean-Claude’s marks, I also have ties to the wolves.”

“Yes, but my men are neither. They are lion, and yet they felt your call.”

I glanced behind him at the two men he’d brought along as both bodyguards and food, and I was told as pomme de sang candidates, though Auggie, like Samuel, had a new twist on the whole pomme thing. Auggie was hoping to convince one of our new female vamps from London to come home with him and play house. He wanted another of Belle’s line in his bed. Maybe that had predisposed Bunny to be pissy. He had come here to replace her, after all.

Auggie was offering to trade one of his werelions for a bedmate of Belle’s line. I wondered how the men in question felt; did they want to stay in St. Louis? Did they want to leave Chicago? Had anyone asked them? I was betting not.

They were both tall, and muscular, and all they needed was a blinking sign over their heads that said “bodyguard.” They both wore tailored suits that hid the guns I was almost one hundred percent sure were under there somewhere. One was brunette, the other pale; other than that they looked as if an unimaginative baker had used the same cookie cutter for both of them. Only the icing was different. The pale one had short spiky, blue hair, which had actually been dyed well, so that it wasn’t a solid blue color, but pale blue, dark blue, all mixed together like real hair is, and dyed hair seldom is. Except that nobody has hair the color of Cookie Monster and a spring sky on the top of their head. His eyes were a pale blue made deeper, richer, by the hair color. He was a little more slender through the shoulders, and maybe an inch taller, than the other guard.

The brunette’s hair looked like it might curl, but he’d cut it so short it didn’t have the chance. His shoulders had a swell that I was familiar with; someone lifted weights as