"What? For trying to kill me?" Sasha tossed her head disdainfully. "I think not. Besides, it's nothing a few dozen years of therapy won't clear up." Silver bracelets chiming softly, she stroked the velvet length of Austin's back. "Imagine living two hundred and twenty-seven years only to die at the hands of yet another amateur van Helsing. What a frigging waste."

"Yet another amateur van Helsing?" Austin rolled so she could reach his stomach. "This has happened before?"

"Once or twice; the nutb.a.l.l.s come out every time we get trendy." Crimson nail polish glistened like drops of blood against the white fur. "But this..." Her other hand lightly touched the bandage under her clothes. "This is as close as anyone's ever come." When she lifted her gaze from the cat, Claire realized that for the first time since the other woman had arrived at the hotel, her eyes neither threatened nor promised. "Thank you for my life, Keeper."

"You're welcome. But it was no more or less than I would have done for anyone. Murder creates the very holes the lineage exists to seal."

The vampire sighed, a fringe of sable hair dancing as she shook her head. "You really lean toward the sanctimonious, you know that?"

"I'm a Keeper," Claire began defensively, but cool fingers tapping the curve of her cheek cut her off.

"My point exactly. Try to get over it."

Speechless, Claire watched as Sasha turned her would-be executioner unresistingly toward the door and, when she opened it, finally gave up trying to put together a sufficiently scathing response, settling for: "What are you going to do with him now?"

Pausing on the threshold, the night spreading out behind her like great, dark wings, Sasha locked one hand around her captive's wrist to prevent him from moving on and turned back toward the guest house. "I'm going to take him to his car and release him."

"But the sun's down."

White teeth flashed between carmine lips. "Obviously."

"And people complain about the way cats play with their food," Austin snorted as the door swung shut.

"I'm not sanctimonious, am I?"

"You're asking me?"

Claire's eyes narrowed. "Is there anyone else around?"

"Just the dead guy on the stairs."

Jacques gave the cat a scathing look as he materialized. "I only arrive this moment, and if he says I am here all along, he lies."

"Cats never lie," Austin told him, leaping from the counter to the desk to the chair to the floor. "There's not much point is there, not when the truth can be so much more irritating. If you two will excuse me, I have things to do."

"What sorts of things?" Claire asked suspiciously as he started down the hall.

The black tail flicked sideways twice. "Cat things."

Elbows still propped on the counter, Claire let her head drop forward into her hands. Cat things could cover everything from a nap on top of the fridge to the continuing attempt to twist Baby's already precarious psyche into still tighter knots. If it was the former, she didn't need to know. If the latter, she didn't want to.

"I thought," Jacques said softly, "that there were no more secrets between us."

Without lifting her head, Claire sighed. "No more secrets that concern you. This doesn't."

"You think it does not concern us that Sasha Moore is Nosferatu?"

"No." She wondered when Jacques and Dean had become an us and whether it would last longer than this conversation. "You're dead. Dean is off limits."

"But you get hurt defending her and, if we knew, we could be there."

"You were there."

"Ah. Oui." His face fell. "And I could do nothing to save you. But I am dead." The realization perked him up. "What can a dead man do? And besides, my failure does not change your silence.

You do not tell me. You do not tell Dean, which is, of course, of not so great a consequence."

"It wasn't my secret. If she wanted you to know, she'd have told you herself."

"And yet, now I know."

Claire straightened, both hands gripping the edge of the counter. "Now you know," she agreed. "Now what?"

He grinned. "Well, I am thinking; you do not want Dean to know so, if I do not tell Dean, tu me does un recompense."

"I owe you for not telling Dean?"

"Oui."

"And what do I owe you?"

His grin warmed and his eyes grew heated under half-lowered lids as he leaned so close his breath, had he been breathing, would have stroked her cheek. "Flesh, for one night."

"Just one night?"

"One night," he told her, his voice low and promising, "is all I ask for. After that one night, I no longer need to ask."

She turned so she was facing him. He was a comfortable amount taller than she was, unlike Dean who loomed over her, and it would only take a tilt of her head to bring their mouths together. She wanted to push his hair back off his face, run her thumbs down the stubble-rough sides of his jaw, watch everything he felt dance across his expression as she slid her arms up under his sweater. She didn't understand the attraction, but she couldn't deny it. "Think highly of yourself, don't you?"

"Not without reason."

Someone, or something giggled. She frowned, stepped back, and almost saw a flash of purple disappear beneath the shelf.

"Claire?"

"Forget it, Jacques." Squatting down, she peered at the imp trap. It had been moved from across the mouse hole leaving a tiny opening clear on the left side.

"Then not a night." He dropped down beside her, his knees making no impact with the floor. "An hour. An hour only and I can convince you."

"No, not a night, not an hour." The miniature marshmallows were missing. "Not ten minutes."

"Ten minutes would not be worth the effort. I have no interest in a quick and frenzied pawing."

That drew Claire's attention away from the imp trap. She turned to face the ghost, both brows lifted almost to her hairline.

"D 'accord. I will take a quick and frenzied pawing if it is all I can get. But to be truly intimate with a woman requires a little more time. Give me that time, cherie, and you will be like plaster in my hands."

"Putty."