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“No,” Meng Die said, “no, my story is not for her. I want no one’s pity, least of all hers.”

Jean-Claude gave that Gallic shrug again, that meant yes, no, everything, and nothing. “As you like,” he said.

“You just fuck Anita, too.” She’d turned back to Jason.

He smiled, but gentler this time. “Anita makes it impossible to just fuck her.”

“What does that mean?” Meng Die asked.

“She was my friend, my good friend, before we ever had sex. You can’t just fuck someone that’s important to you. Because if you screw it up, you lose more than potential sex, you lose your friend. Her friendship was more important to me than the sex, so it had to be making love, not just fucking.”

“I don’t understand you,” she said.

Requiem’s voice then. “Because sex is almost never casual for Anita, it makes sex with Anita almost never casual.”

Meng Die shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“I know you do not,” he said, “and for that I am sorry.”

“Don’t pity me!” She shouted it.

I couldn’t see any weapons on her, but the leather could have hidden surprises. Slender surprises, but blades can be amazingly easy to hide.

“I want to fuck, who will fuck me?” Her words hit the air like a stone, and smashed into a suddenly heavy silence.

She looked at the men one at a time. She went to Damian, but he backed up, shaking his head. “Why shake your head? She is your master, not your wife.”

Damian actually looked a little embarrassed, as he said, “We fuck when we can’t find anyone else.”

Again, news to me.

“So, I am who you fuck if you can’t find anyone else, really?” That purring contralto went from sounding sexy to sounding ominous.

“You’ve turned me down enough, Meng Die. When Graham, or Clay, or Requiem was available, you didn’t even look at me. It stops being flattering to be last on a woman’s list.”

She looked at Auggie, and he just said, “We’re doing business.”

She turned to Noel. He backed away, as if she’d struck at him. “You scare me,” he said.

“But Anita does not scare you?”

“She scares me less than you do.”

Meng Die frowned at him. “Why?”

I didn’t expect Noel to answer, but he did. “Anita may hurt me by accident, but I think you’d hurt me just to see me bleed.” Damn perceptive for walking food.

I felt London coming down the hallway. Felt him in a way that I shouldn’t have been able to feel him. He was seeking me, using his vampire powers to find his fix again. I looked up, and found him coming toward us, all dark and pale.

Meng Die’s face brightened when she saw London. She practically skipped toward him. He glanced at her, but that was all. His eyes were set on me as if I were his north star and he were lost at sea without me. Shit.

She slid her small hand through the bend of his arm, their black-on-black clothing blending together nicely. “Come on, London, let’s leave them to their business.”

“Not right now,” he said, and didn’t look at her when he said it. He looked at me.

She stiffened, gazing slowly up at him, then followed where he was looking. She came to me, and started shaking her head. “No,” she said, “not London. You think he’s dark and morose.”

“He is dark and morose,” I said.

“But you fucked him anyway,” she said.

I shrugged, and gave her the “sorry” face. I mean, what was I supposed to say?

“You don’t even like him,” she said.

“It was sort of an accident,” I said.

“How do you accidentally have sex?”

It was a good question. I did not have a good answer.

London walked away from her. He never looked at her as he glided toward me.

I watched her face pale with anger. Her hand slid to the small of her back, and I knew she had a weapon. I took a breath to say something, but Claudia and Lisandro were ahead of me. The guns under their arms just seemed to magically appear in their hands. Claudia’s gun touched Meng Die’s shining black hair. Lisandro’s hand was hidden by Meng Die’s slender back.

Claudia said one word. “Don’t.”

Everyone on our side of the hallway moved closer to us. Everyone behind Meng Die moved farther down the