'Yes.'

'I'll call him and let him know. I'll call Jean-Claude and see if his private plane is available.'

'Yes, good. Why can't I think?' he asked.

'You've just learned your dad is in the hospital and you're running out of time to make up with him. You're having to make up with your whole family during a crisis of epic proportions. Give yourself a few minutes to process, Micah.'

'Good points,' he said, but he still sounded shell-shocked.

'Do you need me to stay on the phone?'

'You can't call about the plane if you're talking to me,' he said. The words were reasonable; the tone was still stunned.

'True, but you sound like you need me to keep talking to you.'

'I do, but I need you to arrange the trip more. I'll give myself a few minutes to process and then I'll arrange for other people to take the business end here while I'm gone.'

'I'll do the same.'

'I love you,' he said.

'I love you more,' I said.

'I love you most.'

'I love you mostest.'

It was usually something that he, Nathaniel and I said to each other, but sometimes just two of us would do it. Sometimes you just needed it.

CHAPTER 3

It was late enough in the day that the vampires had begun to rise in the underground beneath the Circus of the Damned, so when I called to see if we could borrow the private jet, Jean-Claude was awake enough to take the call himself. His voice held none of that sleepy edge because he didn't really sleep; he died during the day, so when he woke it was abrupt and instant 'awake.' Vampires sleep more like a switch: on, awake; off, dead. His body would even cool over the hours, not as cold as a real corpse, and there was no color change, because the body wasn't really 'dead,' and it wasn't beginning to rot. If you were really dead, and human, the body began to rot as soon as the heart stopped. It's like cutting a flower in your garden; you can put it into water, delay the process, but from the moment you pick it, it begins to die. The flower looks pretty for a long time, but it's just a waiting game, the end is inevitable. Jean-Claude was a vampire, Master of the City of St Louis, and he'd been dead and beautiful for about six hundred years; his end was not inevitable. Theoretically, he could still be fresh as an unblemished rose five billion years from now when our sun finally gave up the ghost, expanded, and ate the planet. Of course, I'd killed enough vampires in my job as a legal vampire executioner to know that even being master of a territory and head of the newly formed American Vampire Council didn't make him truly immortal, just fucking powerful. That was one of the reasons he was awake with the sun still shining in the sky. If he hadn't been deep underground in what had begun as a natural cave system but had been carved out decades ago into luxurious rooms, even he would have still been dead to the world.

'I can feel your anxiety, ma petite. What has happened?'

I told him.

'I can arrange for you and Micah to go, but I will not be able to follow until I have reassured the master of that territory that we are not coming to take over his lands.'

'It hadn't occurred to me that we'd need to clear it with the local vamps to visit Micah's dad in the hospital.'

'If you and he were simply a couple, then no, but you are my human servant, one leg of the triumvirate of power that we share with my wolf to call, our reluctant Richard. If it was Richard, two of us heading into another's territory, they would be certain we were coming to destroy them.'

'We just need to get Micah to his dad's bedside before it's too late, that's all. Surely they can just check and see that the man is in the hospital.'

'It is never that simple to cross from one land to another for master vampires or for the leaders of wereanimal groups. Micah and you are the Nimir-Ra and Nimir-Raj, leopard queen and king, of our local pard. Are there wereleopards in Micah's hometown?'

'I don't know,' I said.

'You need to know,' he said, quietly.

'Shit,' I said, and put real feeling into it. 'This is going to piss me off really soon.'

'The new vampire council is very new, ma petite; we cannot afford to be seen as tyrants and bullies. If you enter other territories without at the very least alerting them, then it will be viewed as arrogance. It will seem as if you we feel that the entire country is ours to visit and use as we see fit. It will make the lesser leaders nervous and even be used by our enemies to stir up more rebellion against us.'

'I thought we took out the last rebels, or do you know something I don't?'

'I do not know of rebels in our country, but I know with certainty that there is discontent, because there is always discontent. Never in any government of any form is everyone in an entire country happy with being ruled. It is the nature of the political beast to be hated.'

'So you're saying they hate us because we formed a council to keep them safe from all the rogue vampires?'

'I'm saying that they ran to us for safety, but now that they feel safe, they will begin to look at the very power that enabled us to keep them safe, and they will begin to mistrust it, even fear it.'

'Well, isn't that just peachy. So, Micah, Nathaniel and I can't go to see his father.'

'Why Nathaniel?'

'He's our third. Micah wants him to come.'

'Ah, I thought perhaps you were taking Nathaniel as your leopard to call, and Damian as well, as your vampire part of your own triumvirate of power.' A super-powerful vampire could form a three-way power structure between their human servant and a wereanimal whose beast form was their normal animal to call, but I was the first human to be able to do my own equivalent of it. Jean-Claude thought that the fact that I was a necromancer and his human servant had enabled me to do the metaphysically impossible, but honestly, we didn't know how I'd done it, just that I had.

'I hadn't planned on taking Damian. He's part of my power base, but he's not our sweetie.'

'He is your lover on occasion.'

'If I took everyone who was my lover on occasion, we'd need a bigger plane.'

He laughed, that wonderful, touchable sound that thrilled down my skin as if he were touching me over the phone. It made me shiver. His voice still held that deep edge of masculine laughter as he said, 'Very true, ma petite, very true.'

I had to swallow past the pulse in my throat. He'd made me breathless with just his voice. 'God, Jean-Claude, stop that. I can't think when you do that.'

He laughed again, which didn't help at all. I realized he was doing it very deliberately when I felt the weight deep inside my body like the promise of orgasm. 'Don't you dare!'

The power began to retreat. He'd never been able to make me do the full-blown orgasm over the phone with just his voice until he'd been made head of the new American version of the vampire council. I'd known that it meant that all the master vampires had to make a fealty oath to Jean-Claude as their leader, but I hadn't understood that it came with a power bump, or what that might mean. We'd had no choice. It was us in charge or someone else, and I trusted us.

'I am sorry, ma petite, this new power level is a heady thing. I can see why the other masters fear the head of the council, because to be head and take the oaths of their leaders means we have a little bit of all their power. It is a great deal of power.'

'You're saying if you weren't a better person that power corrupts and this much power would corrupt you absolutely?'

'I am not always certain that it is I who am the better person, ma petite, but together we are the better person.'

'I don't think I'm always the civilizing influence, Jean-Claude.'

'Nor do I, but through all the metaphysics we have Richard's conscience, Micah's sense of fellowship, Nathaniel's gentleness, Cynric's sense of fair play, and Jade's memories of the terrible use that her master made against her of his ultimate power. The people we have gathered and bound to us have helped make us powerful, but they also help me remember that I am not a monster and do not wish to be.'