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“That you turn away from me, for such a small thing. I licked your blood off my fingertips and now you will not kiss me.”

“I would have kissed you.”

He shook his head. “But you did not wish to.”

That I couldn’t argue with. Part of me wished I could have, part of me didn’t. “What do you want me to say?” I asked.

“I want you and Richard to embrace yourselves, and I am out of time to await this miracle.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“You promised to feed the ardeur from Requiem, if he fought free of your power. Will you go back on your word?”

I glanced at the other vampire, lying on the mounded pillows, then back to Jean-Claude. “The ardeur hasn’t risen for either of us, yet. I think we should use the time we have before it does to plan strategy.”

“Strategy for what, ma petite? This is not a battle of guns and knives. This is battle of a softer sort, though no less dangerous in the end.”

I was shaking my head, and felt the first little trickle of blood down my throat. It wasn’t the shaking that was making me bleed a little more, but the fact that my pulse was speeding up. “We are not going to feed the ardeur before we have to.”

“Your power rises, and you are more like Belle Morte,” Requiem said, and he sounded sad.

I glanced at him. “What are you talking about?”

Requiem answered, “Belle used to promise to feed the ardeur on us, then say she had not meant right this moment, but later, always later. Later could be very late indeed when she wished to play cruel games.”

“I’m not playing,” I said, “I’m scared.”

“If you feed from him, and he becomes besotted again, then you cannot feed off any of the pomme de sang candidates. We will show them Requiem’s state of mind and tell them you have grown too powerful for such games.”

“And if he doesn’t fall under my spell again?” I asked.

“Then you may taste some of the candidates without sex.”

I was shaking my head.

“The ardeur is growing, ma petite, you must accept that. What we have seen today and last night proves that pretending will no longer work.”

“I’m not pretending,” I said.

“You are pretending.”

“Pretending what?” I asked.

“I am sorry, ma petite, so sorry, but we must accept the truth.”

I had crawled to the foot of the bed. Blood was trickling down my throat, like tickling fingers. I was so scared I could taste metal on my tongue. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You are succubus to my incubus, ma petite. You feed as a vampire feeds, but on sex instead of blood.”

“I know that,” I said, and sounded angry, because I didn’t want to sound scared.

“You say you know, but you know here”—and he touched his forehead—“not here”—and touched his heart. “You do not truly believe you are vampire.”

“I’m not a vampire.”

“Not in the traditional sense, non, but only because you have Damian and Nathaniel to draw upon. Without them to draw energy from, when you did not feed the ardeur in a timely fashion, your own body would feel the weakness.”

“You went for years without feeding the ardeur for real. The old Master of St. Louis wouldn’t let you feed the ardeur, not completely.”

“Oui, Nikolaos feared what I would become if she allowed my powers full rein. The Master of the City that traded me to her feared me, as well. He sent me to Nikolaos because he knew that her child’s body would not be something I would willingly seduce.”

“She looked about twelve or thirteen; that’s legal in some places.”

He shook his head. “Not for me,” he said, then he shivered. “You met her, ma petite; could you ever see me purposefully doing anything to draw her attention to me in that way?”

I shook my head. “No, she was creepy as hell, and not in a fun way.”

He nodded. “Oui, creepy will do as an appellation, though there are other words.” He shook his head, as if to clear his mind from such thoughts. “If you were a different woman, one of more casual lusts, then your being succubus to my incubus would not be a hardship. You would simply feed from whomever you wished. You are human, so your use of vampire trickery is not illegal.”

“Not true,” I said,