“No, I wouldn’t have.”

“When I was younger, I would have, but not now,” Nathaniel said.

“So why did I let Cardinale do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t either,” he said, still staring into the nearly empty closet.

“Where are the rest of your clothes?” I asked.

“In a room further into the underground. I had to get dressed for work in a storage area, because she needed room for her things.” He touched the empty hangers.

“We’ll go wash up in our room. Give you some privacy.”

“Don’t, Anita.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t go. Please don’t go. It’s daylight and I’m awake and I’m afraid to sleep again. I’m covered in my own blood, and . . . I’m afraid of what’s happening to me. Even if Cardinale were here, she couldn’t help me. That’s why I went to you and Jean-Claude, because something is wrong with me, and if we don’t figure out what it is soon, I’m afraid of what will happen.”

Nathaniel hugged him first, but I came and added my arms to his. “I know you’re afraid you’ll lose control like you did before, but that time was my fault. I’ll never cut you off from me metaphysically again, I promise.”

“We’re both here,” Nathaniel said.

He grabbed our arms a little more forcibly than I’d touched him. “Last time I slaughtered innocent people. I don’t remember doing it, but I remember being covered in blood like this, and I remember trying to kill people who were my friends. And now I’m covered in blood again, and I don’t know why!”

“It will be all right, Damian,” I said.

“You can’t know that. Whatever this is, it’s getting worse, Anita. I sweated enough blood to soak the bed. I’ve never heard of a vampire doing that.” He shook me a little with his hands gripping us too tight.

I put my hands on his arms, partially just to touch him, and partially to try for some control. “We have a lot of old vampires with us now, Damian. One of them may know something.”

Bobby Lee said, “Kaazim’s not a vamp, but he’s been with the vampires for centuries.”

We both looked from Bobby Lee to Kaazim where he stood quietly near the door. Damian let go of us enough for me to turn toward the other man. “How about it, Kaazim? Have you ever heard of a vampire sweating this much blood?”

“From a nightmare, no.”

“But from something else, yes?” I asked.

I think he smiled again, but it was hard to tell with him in the shadows. He’d picked the perfect place to stand to be as invisible as possible; he’d had centuries of practice. “Yes.”

“Tell us,” Damian said.

“I do not answer to the servant of my queen.”

Damian frowned, and I felt his anger run through us both, and then he went cold, still, the emotion not so much shoved down but gone. I was never sure how he did that, but I knew why he did it. She-Who-Made-Him had used all emotions against people, so to survive he had learned to hide them under an icy calm that he’d shared with me. Sometimes I thought it was his calm that had helped me, as much as therapy.

“How about your queen’s pet? Will you answer it for me?” Nathaniel said.

Kaazim smiled, just a little. “If that were all you were, then no, I would not answer you.”

“Then answer to your queen,” I said, but my voice showed some of my displeasure that he’d slighted the others. I wasn’t as good at hiding my emotions.

He gave a small bow and said, “As my queen commands,” but that was all he said.

“You’re going to make me drag it out of you, aren’t you?”

“I will answer any direct question you ask, my queen.”

“I can’t say it’s Anita when we’re working out in the gym and you just answer as a friend?”

I couldn’t quite read his expression from the shadows. I just knew it was one I hadn’t seen before. “You would call me friend?”

“I know we don’t go drinking together, or see the same movies, but yes.”

“We are not friends, Anita, not in that way.”

I nodded. “Okay, then we’re work friends.”

He seemed to think about that for a minute, then said, “I know this term. It implies we are friends at work, but how can we be friends if I am your bodyguard?”

“I’m friends with a lot of my guards,” I said.

He smiled wide enough that I saw the flash of it even in the shadows. “I do not think we will ever be that friendly.”

I laughed with him. “I don’t mean that kind of friendly. I mean more like I am with Claudia, or Bobby Lee, or Fredo, or Lisandro, or Pepita, Pepe.”

He nodded again. “Work friends.” He said it softly.

“Yeah.”

“As a queen I would have made you hunt and ask the right questions. It is what my master told me to do if you asked certain things.”

“Why would Billie tell you to withhold things from me?” Billie was short for Bilquees, though she’d informed me that sometimes she went by Queenie. I liked Billie better.

“My master’s reasons are her own.”

Which probably meant he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me her reasons. Fine. I moved on. “But if we are friends, then will you just help me help Damian?”