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I started to shiver. Except that I was still freezing. So cold, so very cold. “I dreamed, dreamed of Damian. He was so cold, in ice.”

“Your skin is like ice,” Nathaniel said.

Jason was sitting up, his short blond hair tossled and his eyes heavy with sleep. “What’s wrong?”

Nathaniel wrapped his arms around me, rubbing his hands against my cold arms. “When did you eat last, Anita?”

“With you, the drive-up.”

“That was over twelve hours ago.” He looked at Jason. “She needs food now.”

Jason didn’t ask questions, just crawled over the bed and dropped to his knees beside the mini fridge that acted as one of his bedside tables. He pulled out a bowl of fruit—apples, bananas.

“I don’t like cold fruit,” I said.

“Anita, you dreamed about Damian because you’re eating his energy. Eat a banana,” Nathaniel said.

I suddenly knew he was right. The cold was making me stupid. Jason handed me the fruit. But Nathaniel helped me peel it, because the shivering had gotten worse, and I couldn’t peel it. Shit.

Nathaniel fed it to me in pieces, while my teeth started to chatter. When I’d managed to get it down, the shivering was a little less, but not a lot. “Meat, protein,” Nathaniel said.

Jason lifted out a carton of Chinese takeout, but shook his head without offering it. “Too old.” He got out a flat foam container and handed it up. “Fajita fixings from El Maguey, from yesterday.”

Nathaniel opened it, lifted out a piece of the beef with his fingers, and held it close to my mouth. “Eat.”

I ate, and the meat was unbelievably good, even cold. The meat seemed to fill up more than just my stomach. I picked through the grilled onions and peppers, and ate the beef. When my skin wasn’t cold to the touch, and I’d stopped shivering, I slowed down, then shook my head. “I can’t eat any more.”

“You’ve eaten most of the meat,” Jason said. He was kneeling beside the bed, his arms propped on it, his chin resting on his arms. “Did I hear Nathaniel say that you were eating Damian’s energy?”

I nodded.

“Jean-Claude said that you’d formed a second triumverate with Nathaniel and Damian.”

“Apparently,” I said.

“I take it there’s a learning curve,” he said.

“You could say that. This is the second time in less than twenty-four hours that I’ve almost killed Damian.”

Jason’s eyes went wide. “How?”

“She’s trying to do what she always does,” Nathaniel said, handing the now closed box to Jason. “Barely eat, barely sleep, not do anything to take care of herself except exercise.”

“I can’t tell the cops, oh, sorry, I need a nap,” I said.

“No, but I told you that you needed to eat more. I told you that you were acting more like a lycanthrope than a vampire. All you had to do was go through another drive-up. There are all-night drive-ups.”

I didn’t like his tone. “I didn’t think of it. I just wanted to get to sleep. I was so tired I was nauseous.”

“Or maybe you were nauseous because your energy was bottoming,” Nathaniel said, and he was angry, “but you didn’t think of that did you?”

“No, I didn’t. Happy?”

“No,” he said, “because once Damian’s dead, who do you think you’ll start draining next?” He was so angry that his eyes had darkened, so they were almost purple.

I started to be angry back, because the nightmare had scared me, and endangering Damian again had scared me. I felt stupid that I hadn’t thought to eat, when Nathaniel had explained it to me. I’d just been so tired. Come to think of it, I’d been more tired than I should have been, hadn’t I? I wanted to be angry at him, because it was my fault. I hate it when it’s my fault. I hate being wrong, especially this wrong.

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry. I am.”

“You’re not going to argue?” Jason asked.

“Why argue when I’ll lose? I was careless. It’s not just the triumverate, or the new one, it’s the ardeur. I’ve finally got it conquered, sort of.”

“What does ‘sort of’ mean?” he asked, and came up to sit on the edge of the bed. He was nude. He’d been nude the whole time. I just really hadn’t noticed. I noticed now, and gave