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“I believe that is why lycanthropy is referred to as a curse,” Dominic said.

Richard looked at me. The expression on his face was eloquent. “A curse.”

“You’ll have to forgive Dominic,” Jean-Claude said. “A hundred years ago, it never occurred to anyone that lycanthropy could be a disease.”

“Concern for Richard’s feelings?” I asked.

“His happiness is your happiness, ma petite.”

Jean-Claude’s new gentlemanly behavior was beginning to bug me. I didn’t trust his change of heart.

Cassandra said, “If Anita didn’t believe she could raise the dead during daylight hours, then how did she do it?” She had joined in the metaphysical discussion like it was a graduate class in magical theory. I’d met people like her in college. Theorists who had no real magic of their own. But they could sit around for hours debating whether a theoretical spell would work. They treated magic like higher physics, a pure science without any true way of testing. Heaven forbid the ivory tower magicians should actually try out their theories in a real spell. Dominic would have fit in well with them, except he had his own magic.

“Both occasions were extreme situations,” Dominic said. “It works on the same principle that allows a grandmother to lift a truck off her grandchild. In times of great need, we often touch abilities beyond the everyday.”

“But the grandmother can’t lift a car at will, just because she did it once,” I said.

“Hmm,” Dominic said, “perhaps the analogy is not perfect, but you understand what I am saying. If you say you do not, you are merely being difficult.”

That almost made me smile. “So you’re saying that I could raise the dead in daylight if I believed I could.”

“I believe so.”

I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of any animator being able to do that.”

“But you are not merely an animator, Anita,” Dominic said. “You are a necromancer.”

“I have never heard of a necromancer that could raise the dead in broad daylight,” Jean-Claude said.

Dominic shrugged gracefully. It reminded me of Jean-Claude. It takes a couple hundred years to make a shrug pretty. “I don’t know about broad daylight, but just as some vampires can walk around during the day, as long as they are sufficiently sheltered, I believe the same principle would apply to necromancers.”

“So you don’t believe Anita could raise the dead at high noon out of doors, either?” Cassandra said.

Dominic shrugged again. Then he laughed. “You have caught me, my studious beauty. It may well be possible for Anita to do exactly that, but even I have never heard of such a thing.”

I shook my head. “Look, we can explore the magical implications later. Right now, can you help me figure a way to put the vampires back without screwing them up?”

“Define screwing them up,” Dominic said.

“Do not joke, Dominic,” Jean-Claude said. “You know precisely what she means.”

“I want to hear it from her lips.”

Jean-Claude looked at me and gave a barely perceptible shrug.

“When darkness falls, I want them to rise as vampires. I’m afraid if I do this wrong, they’ll just be dead, permanently.”

“You surprise me, Anita. Perhaps your reputation as the scourge of the local vampire populace is exaggerated.”

I stared at him. Before I could say something that sounded like bragging, Jean-Claude spoke. “I would think what she has done today is proof enough of how very much she deserves her reputation.”

Dominic and the vampire stared at each other. Something seemed to pass between them. A challenge, a knowledge, something. “She would make an amazing human servant if only some vampire could tame her,” Dominic said.

Jean-Claude laughed. The sound filled the room with echoes that shivered and danced across the skin. The laughter swept through my body, and for the briefest moment, I could feel something touch me deep inside where no hand belonged. In another context Jean-Claude might have made it sexual; now it was simply disturbing.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Richard said. He rubbed his bare arms as if he were cold or trying to erase the memory of that invasive laughter.

Jason trotted over to