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Dominic gave a little bow. “My apologies, Jean-Claude, you have made your point. If you wished to, you could cause the damage that my master caused by accident at your office.”

“My office,” I said. Personally, I didn’t think that Jean-Claude could cause damage with just his voice. I’d been in situations where if he could have done it, he would have. No sense telling Dominic that, though.

Dominic gave an even lower bow in my direction. “Your office, of course.”

“Can we cut the grandstanding?” I said. “Can you help us?”

“I am more than willing to try.”

I walked up to him, picking my way over the broken stones. When I was standing as close as was polite and maybe an inch or so more, I said, “These three vampires are not an experiment. This is not some graduate study in magical metaphysics. You offered to teach me necromancy, Dominic. I think you’re not up to the job. How can you teach me when I can do things you can’t? Unless, of course, you can raise vampires from their coffins?”

I stared into his dark eyes the entire time I spoke, watching the anger narrow his eyes, tighten his lips. His ego was as big as I’d hoped. I knew he wouldn’t disappoint me. Dominic would do his best for us now. His pride was at stake.

“Tell me exactly how you called the power, Anita, and I will build you a spell that should work—if you have the control to make it work.”

I smiled at him, and I made sure it was just this side of condescending. “You come up with it, I can pull it off.”

He smiled. “Arrogance is not a becoming trait in a woman.”

“I find it a very becoming trait,” Jean-Claude said. “If it’s deserved. If you had just raised three vampires from their daytime rest, wouldn’t you be arrogant, Dominic?”

His smile widened. “Yes, I would be.”

Truth was, I didn’t feel arrogant. I was scared. Scared that I’d screwed Willie up and he would never rise again. I felt bad too, about Liv and Damian. It wasn’t a matter of liking them or not; I didn’t mean to do it. You shouldn’t extinguish someone’s life force by accident. If I felt half as secure as my words to Dominic, why did my stomach hurt?

32

* * *

DOMINIC, Cassandra, and I came up with a spell. The part of the plan that was my idea was very simple. I had put zombies back in their graves for years. I was good at it. As far as I was able, I was going to treat this like just another job: laying the dead to rest, nothing special. Lay the zombies first, worry about the vamps later.

I had Cassandra fetch one of my knives and a wrist sheath from the bedroom. If I’d been acting as a focus for another animator, I wouldn’t have let him sink teeth into me, so why did the blood have to come from Jean-Claude drinking it? It didn’t, or I didn’t think it did. Dominic agreed with me, but he wasn’t a hundred percent sure. So zombies first. They’d be the practice. If the knife didn’t work, we’d go to fangs, but what little normalcy was left to me, I was going to cling to.

I’d sent Stephen for a bowl to hold the blood. He’d returned with a small, golden bowl. I wondered if the size was deliberate, to encourage me not to spill too much blood. For a werewolf, Stephen didn’t seem to like blood very much. The bowl was polished to a shine so bright it almost glowed. The inside showed the dimpled blows of hammer work. Beaten gold, and I knew as soon as I touched it, it was old. Why does everyone think you have to have something special to hold the blood? Tupperware would have worked.

We stood in the rubble-strewn room where the zombies waited, patient as only the dead can be. Some of the eyes that watched me were sunken like the blind eyes of dead fish, a few skulls were empty, and even without eyes, they all seemed to be looking at me.

I stood, knife strapped to my left wrist, facing them. Richard stood to my left, Jean-Claude to my right. They weren’t touching me, by my request.

Dominic had asked for enough details of the first triumvirate that I’d been embarrassed. He agreed with me that the power was probably there without us having to crawl