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“I’m head of security here, Anita. You should have cleared it with me.”

I sighed. “You’re right. You’re right, I should have. I’m sorry.”

He just blinked at me like a deer caught in headlights. I think he’d expected an argument. But I was tired, and late, and feeling squidgie about having had sex with Byron and Requiem.

“I’ve got to go, Buzz.”

“Your security detail is waiting at the door,” he said, and nodded toward the door in question.

Requiem was by the door in his black cloak, wearing a fresh pair of pants that he’d borrowed from someone. The new pants were leather, so he’d probably borrowed them from another dancer. But we had a new addition, and that was the dark-haired werewolf that had fallen on top of Clay and me when Primo was fighting everyone. His name was Graham, and his body had that width of shoulder and impressive swell of arm that only semiserious weight lifting can get you. His black hair was cut in a longish layer on top so that it fell like a silken fringe over his ears, but underneath the hair was shaved close to his head and upper neck. It seemed an odd haircut to me, but it wasn’t my hair.

His face was exotic, in the way that people can be when some ancestor didn’t come from Northern or Southern Europe. The straight black hair, the ever-so-slight uptilt to the edge of his eyes made me bet he’d come from somewhere much farther east.

I’d argued that I didn’t need or want guards, but just as I’d made the call about Primo and Lisandro, so Jean-Claude had given his orders about this before he got carried away on stage. I was to go nowhere without someone with me. He wasn’t sure the Dragon was done with us for the night, and it would be a shame if something went horribly wrong. What he hadn’t told the security detail, vampire or otherwise, was about what had happened earlier in my office. That had had nothing to do with the Dragon and everything to do with my own metaphysical shit. Well, mine, and Jean-Claude’s.

Jean-Claude had even left a list of people he thought were appropriate to the job. Byron had not been on the list, nor had Clay. It had been a damn short list, actually, basically Requiem and Graham. The last thing I wanted to do was be trapped in a car with Requiem, but I didn’t have time to argue. I’d gone from having plenty of time, to having to call my clients and tell them to hold fast in the cemetery, I really was on my way.

I was wearing Byron’s leather jacket to take the place of my bloodied suit jacket. His was the only one that came close to fitting me and not making me look like I was wearing the upper half of a gorilla. It smelled faintly of his cologne.

Buzz’s eyes left me and went to the audience. The man who had been arguing with his date was still standing, but now so was the woman, and she was starting to make a scene. “Sorry, gotta catch that.”

“Be my guest,” I said.

Nathaniel seemed to appear from nowhere. He escorted me toward the outer door. He was smiling and seemed terribly at ease, more so than I’d seen him in a long time, maybe ever. It seemed an odd night for him to be happy. “You promised to get back in time to see some of my act,” he said, smiling.

“I’ve got two clients stuck in cemeteries,” I said.

He gave me the look that was half-pout and half-he-knew-he’d-already-won-the-argument. “You promised.”

“Can’t we just fuck at home later?” I asked.

He gave me a frown. “I’ll be furry, you don’t do furry.”

I had an idea, an awful idea. “I promised to mark your neck tonight. Oh, no, you so are not planning on me doing it in front of an audience?”

He smiled, and there was something in that smile that I hadn’t seen before. Some hint of confidence, of security that hadn’t been there before. He’d watched me have sex with two near strangers, and suddenly he felt more secure. Go figure.

“You little exhibitionist, you,” I said, “you like the idea of me marking you for the first time in front of all these people.”

He gave an aw-gee-shucks shrug, which was all act, because his eyes were bright