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He nodded. “He’s not sure what will happen right now.” His face was very solemn, serious, closed. He was being careful around me again, and I didn’t know why.

“Have I missed something tonight?”

“You’re dripping blood,” Byron said, and he motioned at my arm.

Blood was trickling down my hand to drop, drop onto the white floor. The hallway was so white and so empty that the spot of crimson seemed loud, as if color were sound. I shook my head again. “Something’s wrong.”

“You’ve lost more blood than you realize,” Byron said.

“Anita,” Nathaniel said, and it seemed like it took longer than it should have for me to turn and look at him. “Anita, come into the dressing rooms. We’ll take care of you.”

I nodded and raised my arm up to about chest high. It would help slow the blood loss. The sleeve of my jacket was a bloody mess, and I hadn’t noticed until now. Something was terribly wrong, and I didn’t know what it was. I knew that making a new triumverate with Damian and Nathaniel was probably the cause, but that only told me why it was happening, not what was happening. Why didn’t matter very much to me right that moment; what was happening, that mattered a great deal.

Byron touched my arm, only enough to guide me through the door that Nathaniel opened for us. As I walked past Nathaniel, I felt something open between us, as if there were a door in the middle of our bodies. A door that wanted to close around us, to press us tight together.

Byron literally put his body in front of mine and kept me from touching Nathaniel. I growled at him, and Nathaniel echoed me at his back. “Ease down, kitty-cats, I am only doing what the Master of the City ordered me to do.” His eyes were a little wide, and I got a whiff not of fear but something close to it. “Do you remember what Jean-Claude’s kiss felt like out there?” He grabbed my hurt wrist and ground his fingers into it.

“That hurts,” I said, and I turned on him, angry, ready to be angry.

“But you can think now, can’t you?”

That made me take a step back into the dressing rooms beyond. Byron followed, a hand still on my wrist, but loosely now, not to hurt, but more to guide.

“What’s happening to us?” I asked.

“It looks like you’ve all hit a new power plateau,” Byron said, as he led me between the little lighted tables scattered with makeup and bits of costume.

“Which means what?” I asked.

He stopped in front of a big gray metal cabinet that was at the far end of the room. “Which means, answer my question. Do you remember what the kiss felt like in the other room?” He opened the cabinet, and it seemed to be full of cleaning supplies and extra bits of things that people might need. On the top shelf, so he had to stand on tiptoe, was a first aid kit, a big one.

“It was like he drank my soul,” and saying it out loud was too poetic for me. I blushed and tried again. “I thought he’d fed the ardeur during sex with me, but if that kiss was feeding the same thing, he’s been holding back.”

Byron tried to find enough clean space on the nearby tables to open the medicine chest, but gave up and asked Nathaniel to hold it, while he rummaged through it. “He’s been holding back, luv, trust me on that.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

He gave me a very flat stare out of his big gray eyes. “Jean-Claude liked London once, he liked it a very great deal, and I liked that he liked it.” There was something almost unfriendly in the way he finished that sentence.

“Why do I feel like apologizing?” I asked.

“Just hold your arm up higher,” he said. He had his hands full of things, but still wasn’t satisfied. “Nothing to apologize for, duckie. Except for Asher, Jean-Claude prefers his meat of the gentler persuasion, always did. Ah, here it is.” He held up an unopened package of gauze pads. He smiled at me, and the smile was so harmless, so not matching the situation. “Now, let Uncle Byron see to the big, bad boo-boo.”

I gave him a look that wasn’t entirely friendly. “I’m bleeding, not brain damaged,