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I touched his arm. “We are lovers. You do like girls better than boys.”

“Yeah, but there are a handful of guys that I wouldn’t mind getting up close and personal with, and bisexual is just ‘gay lite’ as far as my family is concerned.” He shrugged again. “We’ll have one more visit at the hospital tomorrow and then we’ll go home to St. Louis.”

I wanted to say something, but didn’t know what to say. Jason turned back to the phone and started talking to Irving.

I went back to my cell phone, which I hadn’t bothered to cover. “Did you hear all that?”

“I did,” Jean-Claude said.

“I feel like I’ve screwed up.”

“You could not have foreseen these events.”

“I guess not, but I should have thought how the other master vamps might think you were, well, that I wasn’t behaving like a very good human servant.”

“You are who and what you are, ma petite. I love you as you are.”

I smiled, though he couldn’t see it. “I know that, but Jason said we need to come up with punishments for us. That you have to be seen as getting your house in order, that you can’t be seen as losing control of your woman and your food.”

Jean-Claude was very quiet on the other end of the phone. Sometimes it was unnerving talking to vampires on the phone. They didn’t have to breathe, and the old ones had no sense of movement. I finally said, “Jean-Claude, breathe or something to let me know you’re still there.”

“The other masters see my allowing you access to my pomme de sang on a romantic trip as a weakness; if they only understood what a strength it was.”

“Which means that Jason is right. We need to be perceived as being punished for this, even though it’s not true. You need to be seen as bringing your house in order, so they don’t keep thinking you’re weak.”

“I would never have suggested it, ma petite, you know that.”

“I do, but now that Jason has let the cat out of the bag?”

“It would be helpful to my standing among the other masters.”

“Would you have just waited until someone made a move on you before you explained that it was my fault you appeared that weak?”

“That would have given me the opportunity to bring the subject up, yes.”

“Jesus, Jean-Claude, you’ve got to stop keeping this much from me.”

“I do not know what magic our Jason has over you, but it seems that he is one of the few people who can tell you hard truths and you accept them. You are not even angry.”

I thought about it. “I guess I’m not. I think I’m too worried to be angry. Jason told me there’s a hint that some of the masters think if they could take me as their human servant, they could be as powerful as you, but control me better. That kind of talk could go really badly since I travel all over the country doing my job. I needed to know that, Jean-Claude.”

“I thought you would see it as manipulation either to curtail your travel or to force you into a more servile role.”

“My ego is secure, Jean-Claude, but my safety and yours might not be if the other masters keep talking shit behind your back.”

“What are you willing to do to help stop this merde, this shit talk?”

“I haven’t thought that far, but I’m sure you have, so either tell me now, or wait and we’ll have this talk when we get home.”

“I have put some thought into things that might satisfy the perceptions of others, but not harm us in our own eyes,” he said, again his voice very careful.

“Is it anything we can do right this minute?”

“Non.”

“Then save it, let me digest all the news tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“And you will do what is necessary to repair my reputation?”

“Some of it, but if Jason was right, and he usually is, he suggested that if you were truly having sex with some of the other men, it would help repair your reputation.”

The silence on the other side of the phone was thunderous.

“Well, shit,” I said.

His oh-so-neutral voice said, “Why the exclamation, ma petite? I have said nothing.”

“Sometimes silence with you is louder than words,” I said.

“I do not understand.”

“Let’s say that I know the quality of your silences, and