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“Who is in this coffin?” I’d almost said, what, but I was betting it was a vampire, just not like one I’d ever sensed before.

His face was already careful, neutral. “I would think, ma petite, that you have enough to be concerned over with Damian?”

“You know and I know that I am not moving until I know who’s in here.”

He sighed. “Yes, I know.” He actually looked down at the floor, as if he were tired, and because his face showed nothing, the gesture looked half-finished, like bad acting. But I knew that for him to be working so hard at keeping anything off his face, only to let his body betray him meant he was very unhappy. Which meant that I was really not going to like the answer.

“Who, Jean-Claude?”

“Gretchen,” he said, finally meeting my eyes. His face told me nothing, the one word empty.

Once upon a time Gretchen had tried to kill me because she wanted Jean-Claude for herself. “When did she get back in town?”

“Back?” He gave it that little lilt that made it a question.

“Don’t be coy, Jean-Claude. She came back to town still out for my blood, and you put her in here, so when?”

His face became like a sculpture, except with less movement in it. He was hiding as much of himself as he could, and the shields were like armor. “I say again, ma petite, she had gone nowhere.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He looked at me with that perfect face, so unreadable. “It means that from the moment you watched me put her in the coffin in my office at Guilty Pleasures, she has always been here.”

I blinked, frowned, opened my mouth, closed it, tried again, failed. I must have looked like a landed fish, because I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. He just stood there, not helping.

I found my voice, and it was breathy. “You’re saying that Gretchen has been in a coffin for two, no three years?”

He just looked at me. He’d stopped breathing. There was no sense of movement to him at all, as if, if I looked away I’d never find him again; he’d be invisible.

“Answer me, damn it! Has she been in a coffin for three years?”

He gave the smallest of nods.

“Jesus, Jesus.” I paced the room, because if I didn’t do something physical, I was going to hit him or start screaming. I finally ended up standing in front of him, hands in fists at my sides. “You bastard.” My voice was a hoarse whisper, squeezed out of my throat because to do anything else would have had me ranting at him.

“She tried to kill my human servant, who I also loved. Most masters would have simply killed her.”

“That would have been better than this,” I said, voice still a hissing whisper.

“I doubt Gretchen would agree.”

“Let’s open the coffin and see,” I said.

He shook his head. “Not tonight, ma petite. I knew you would feel this way, and we can try and release her, though I have poor hope for it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She was not the most stable of women when she went in. This will not have strengthened her grasp of reality.”

“How could you have done this to her?”

“I told you before, ma petite, she earned her punishment.”

“Not three years,” I said. My voice was beginning to sound normal again. I wasn’t going to hit him, great.

“Three years for nearly killing you. I could leave her in for three more years, and it would not be punishment enough.”

“I’m not going to argue whether the punishment was justified or excessive, or anything. All I can say is that I want her out of there. I won’t let her stay in there another night. There’s barely anything left now.”

He glanced at the coffin. “You have not opened it, how do you know what is inside?”

“I wanted to know how Damian was. I used a little magic to explore what was inside both coffins.”

“And what did you discover?” he asked.

“That my necromancy recognizes Damian. That Damian isn’t there. It’s like his personality is missing. Whatever made him, him, is missing.”

Jean-Claude nodded. “With the vampires that are not master strength and never will be, it is often the Master of the City, or their creator, that enables them to exist as strong