The first answer that came to mind wasn't something to say out loud, because it was basically that I needed Damian to help us with the vampires in Ireland. I didn't need Nathaniel. I was willing to endanger Damian to help save lives and solve the case. Nathaniel didn't need to come to help solve the case, or that was how I saw it, so any risk to him had no payoff. Police work was often about risk assessment and gain versus loss. Probably M'Lady was now scrambling to shore up her own power base, so she wouldn't be a threat to any of us, and I wouldn't be taking Damian with me when we finally hunted the rogues, so he wasn't going to be in the line of fire either way. If I'd thought otherwise I wouldn't have taken him, so why was it different adding Nathaniel? The only truthful answer was that I valued him over Damian, and that was something better not shared.

"If I really thought you would be in serious danger, I wouldn't take you either, Damian, but you have information about the local vampires that might help us figure out what is happening. You could help us save lives, and that's worth a little risk for both of us. Nathaniel hasn't even been to Ireland, so he can't help us. There's no cost benefit to him possibly risking himself by coming with us to Ireland."

"I'm coming with you, Anita," Nathaniel said.

"No."

"I'm not asking your permission, Anita."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm not asking permission. I'm telling you I'm coming."

"It's my case. If I say no, then it's no."

"I was able to take control of the power between us and make it work, which is something that neither one of you has managed to do. Don't you think that it might be useful to have a working triumvirate of power in Ireland when you're up against rogue vampires?"

"I'm already part of a working triumvirate."

"Richard's doubts cripple Jean-Claude and you, too."

"Jean-Claude and I work just fine, and it's helped make Richard Ulfric here in St. Louis."

"I'm not sure it's been your trio so much as the fact that you ended up being so fucking powerful, and that fed into Jean-Claude and Richard. I think if you'd just been a normal animator and not a true necromancer, or if you hadn't gotten contaminated with one of the rarest types of lycanthropy on the planet, that having your first triumvirate crippled could have gotten all three of you killed by some ambitious master vampire years ago."

I stared at Nathaniel. It was like he was somebody else suddenly. Someone more serious and more . . . Was it wiser? I didn't want it to be true, because I didn't like what he'd said, but he was right in one thing. Richard's reluctance to fully be with Jean-Claude and me had damaged the power the three of us could have had, but luckily for Jean-Claude I had become a metaphysical miracle.

"I think he's right."

I glared at Damian. "Don't help."

"I thought you wanted me to help by going back to the one country I most want to avoid. She let me go once, Anita, but part of me worries that if I get this close to her again physically, she'll find enough power to steal me from you forever."

"You're my vampire servant and in a triumvirate with Nathaniel and me. Your metaphysical dance card is all filled up."

"She won't know that."

"She will if she tries to break you free of me."

"She almost killed me once from a distance, remember?"

I did remember.

Nathaniel said, "We remember."

"I always wondered why she didn't try to take you again. Maybe this is why," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe something about the Mother of All Darkness waking up and then getting killed damaged She-Who-Made-You's power."

"If she's allowing lesser vampires to invade Dublin, then she's lost power. She would never have allowed that many new vampires to just happen that close to her."

"The Harlequin think that the magic that kept her, or any vampire, from creating too many vampires in Ireland is fading."

"What do you mean, the magic that kept the vampires from being created? She-Who-Made-Me kept our numbers low to help us hide."

"According to the Harlequin, the Fey magic of Ireland itself makes the land so alive that the dead don't rise easily."

"Are you saying that She-Who-Made-Me didn't keep our numbers low because she wanted to, but because she had no choice?"

"If Pierette and Pierrot are correct, yeah."

"If that is true, then she lied so we wouldn't realize her power had limits."

"What did that gain her?" I asked.

"She's controlling us all through fear of her power. If we'd known that power had limits, we might have pushed back more. Hell, Anita, she had some pretty powerful people under her power. If they had known the land itself was fighting back, it might have made them fight harder to be free. Her animal to call is seal, so she can call the Roane, or Selkies."

"I thought they were considered a type of fairy creature, not a shapeshifter," I said.

"I know that's what folklore says, but from my experience they reacted to her the same way that the wolves react to Jean-Claude, or the tigers interact with you. She can call real seals to do her bidding and their half-human counterparts the same way that I've seen other master vampires call their natural animals and their preternatural ones."

Nathaniel said, "Maybe folklore thinks they're fairy creatures, because they didn't know what else to call them?"

"Maybe," I said.

"Knowing the land itself was fighting her might have been enough to get the Selkies to fight harder for their freedom. The rest of us were created by her, part of her bloodline, but the Selkies are born free folk. Only her magic, or the theft of their sealskin, could bind them to someone on land as a slave."

"Like the stories of the seal maidens where fishermen stole their skins and forced them to be their wives," I said.

"Yes."

"Some of those legends are supposed to be romantic stories," I said.

"There's nothing romantic about a man stealing something of yours and then blackmailing you into his bed or forcing you to marry him, Anita."

"When you say it like that, no," I said.

"Remember that the romantic versions of these stories were told in centuries when women didn't always have a lot of freedom to choose a husband. Ancient Ireland had some of the best laws for women when it came to marriage, but overall marriage was less about romance and more about land, wealth, safety, and procreation. I mean inheritance and the safety of land and even countries. The idea that marriage is about romance and love is such a new idea."

"Curse those French troubadours," I said.

He smiled. "The British troubadours helped spread the new ideas, too."

"I guess when singing and poetry were your major entertainment, that was the way new ideas traveled."

"A good singing voice, someone who could play an instrument or recite poetry and tell a good story-they were so important that some rulers would compete to have the great bards under their roofs. A good jester wasn't just to amuse the king but to help the rest of the court while away the formal feasts. Traveling theatrical troupes were welcome in all the major cities of Europe, and the small ones, though actors were usually paid better in larger cities."

"You were a young Viking before you became a vampire. How do you know all that?"

"She brought over an actor and a few of his troupe to entertain us. She pretended at the time that she thought making them all vampires would endanger our hiding places, but now I know that she couldn't raise them all. She wasn't strong enough. Gods, just saying that is frightening and thrilling at the same time."

"Why frightening and thrilling?" Nathaniel asked.

"Because to question her meant punishment. I left Ireland believing that she was all-powerful. To know that she's not is exciting, because that means that maybe I could rescue the ones I left behind."

"I didn't know you left anyone behind," I said.

"Not in the way you mean, probably, but you spend centuries with anyone and you become something to each other."

"Friends?" Nathaniel asked.

"True friendship was not encouraged, and in fact any relationship that didn't revolve around her was actively discouraged."

"How actively?" I asked.

"Not as actively as a lover that you might prefer to her. I mean, she wouldn't kill someone that you were just friendly with, but actively enough that she made certain you'd remember the lesson."

"So if not a lover or a friend, who did you leave behind?" I asked.

"You can't actually keep people from being friends, Anita. There are people that I would rescue from her slavery if I could without risking falling back into it myself. I hate myself for saying it that way, but it's the truth. One of the things I had to understand about myself was that I wasn't that brave. In battle, sure, that's easy, but everyday torture and torment . . . I'm not that kind of brave."

"Everyone breaks, Damian," I said.

He looked at me. "No, Anita, not everyone."

"Edward told me that everyone breaks eventually. Maybe the people you're thinking of just haven't hit their eventually yet."

Damian looked down at his hands where he was still holding the towel across his lap. "How many centuries does someone have to stand up to torment before you call them unbreakable?"

"I don't know what to say to that, Damian."

"How many centuries are we talking about?" Nathaniel asked.

"Eight hundred years."

"That's a very long time," Nathaniel said, raising his eyebrows to go with the comment.

"Eight hundred years, okay; how about we call him hard to break?" I said.

Damian looked at me. "You believe that everyone has their eventually, don't you?"

"I do."

"But you still want me to go back to Ireland and give her another chance at me."

"No, I want you to go back to Ireland and help us stop a bunch of murdering vampires from killing people. Police and our own guards will be with you."

"Will I have to talk to her?"

"I doubt it, but even if you do, you'll be guarded by our people and the police."

"And Anita and I will both be there," Nathaniel said.

I shook my head. "No."

"You just said it yourself: We'll have our own guards and the police. I'm not going out hunting vampires with you. I'll just be there to make sure Damian has all the power our triad can give him."

"We're not taking him back to challenge his old mistress to a duel, Nathaniel."

"I know that, but we have more power together than apart."

"More power would be good," Damian said.

"Jean-Claude does just fine without Richard at our side all the time," I said.

"Let's ask him," Nathaniel said.

"And if he says what you want him to say, then what?"

"Then we all go to Ireland."

"And if I keep saying no?"

"You wouldn't tell Micah no, or Jean-Claude."

"That's different."

"How?"

"It just is." And yes, I heard that it sounded lame.

"Yes, neither of them would help me have more power, because they aren't part of my triumvirate," Damian said.

"You both keep saying that we raised more power than ever before with Nathaniel leading the way, but how do we know we raised any power? All we really know for certain is that the three of us had sex without you and me angsting about it and getting in each other's way. The two of us don't even remember much of it."

The two men looked around me at each other. "I feel more energized," Nathaniel said.

"So do I, but maybe that's just the rush after sex," Damian said.

"I can't afford to have Nathaniel roll me while I'm working the case. I mean, how would the Irish police react if their two vampire experts got mind-fucked by their leopard and lost hours while they were supposed to be crime busting?"

"I didn't mean to make us lose hours," Nathaniel said.

"I know, but when the metaphysics first come online like this, there's always a learning curve. I don't want that curve to be when the police or Edward needs me most, needs us most."

"I thought I knew exactly what had happened and what needed to happen. I felt so certain that I should stay with you and Damian, that you'd need me there. He'd need me there. Am I wrong? Am I just wanting our triumvirate to work that way?"