“She is your heat, my lord, and the shapeshifters, they burn very hot indeed.” Her voice was eager now, and when she said heat, I felt the temperature rise, and burn; it almost made me flinch, hot, holding the press of high summer.

“Do you feel it, ma petite?”

“Yeah,” I said, and got off his lap to stand at his side, just our fingers intertwined. “Cut the mind tricks, Irene, that shit don’t fly here.”

The next words from her lips were someone else’s; the inflection was wrong, as if a stranger were borrowing her voice. “You tried to take over my servant. I am merely demonstrating that we are not helpless against you.” Irene’s hands were at her side, feet apart, shoulders more straight, and just something about the way she stood said male.

“My apologies, Melchior, but her desire to be seduced is very strong. It pushes at my determination to behave myself.” I always pronounced his name like Mel-Core, but when Irene said it, it sounded like Mill-Key-Or, and much more exotic. Jean-Claude’s pronunciation was closer to hers than my middle American blandness.

“A good king shows restraint.”

“A good master does not leave his servant wanting.”

“I do not have your inclinations, my lord. My love is for our shared art, not the art of flesh.”

“How sad for your servant,” Jean-Claude said.

“Perhaps, but more sorrow if her art had been destroyed for pursuit of fleshly pleasures.”

“It’s not one or the other,” I said. “There’s middle ground.”

“Irene is free to find a lover, if it does not interfere with our work.”

“What would you do if her lover did interfere with the work?” I asked, watching the stranger make Irene’s face look thoughtful. He stroked a hand along a beard she didn’t have.

“Nothing is allowed to interfere with our art.”

“Would you kill him after she had fallen in love?”

Irene’s face looked at Jean-Claude. “You do allow your servant to speak out of turn, my lord. We old ones puzzle over that.”

“Don’t look at him when I’m the one talking to you, Melchior.” I would have pulled away from Jean-Claude’s hand, but he tightened his grip on my hand and I didn’t fight him. I wouldn’t do anything else to make him appear weak to the ancient vampire who was staring at us from Irene’s face.

“This is why we do not marry our servants, Jean-Claude; it gives them ideas above their station.”

“You arrogant son of a bitch.”

“And she curses like a stevedore,” he said, folding Irene’s thin arms across her chest in a way that was again more like a man would do it than a woman; he controlled Irene’s body, but he couldn’t feel everything the way she did. She’d have moved her arms slightly over her breasts, not the way he had them. Interesting; he could move the body, but how much could he feel?

“Insulting my bride-to-be is arrogant, though I cannot speak of the status of your parents.”

I glanced back to see if Jean-Claude was joking, but his face was empty of expression, like a beautiful statue that just happened to move. It meant he was hiding very hard, which meant this was more serious than I understood. I hated dealing with the really old vampires; they were usually arrogant, and some of them were just . . . alien, as if the huge gap of centuries made them more other. Was it time, or were those long-ago cultures more alien than history understood?

“If I insulted you indirectly, my deepest apologies, my lord.” He made a bow with Irene’s body that just looked like it needed a taller, beefier body to go with it. It was like a bad puppeteer. I’d seen the Traveller, one of the ex–vampire council members, take over bodies, but he was better at it, smoother, more complete. This one seemed reluctant to move Irene’s feet much, as if he wasn’t certain of everything around her body, or couldn’t feel her feet.

I squeezed Jean-Claude’s hand and then let go of it slowly, wondering if touching each other was helping us “combat” the other vampire’s mind games. I could feel the power rolling off Irene more, but other than sensing the power more, it wasn’t bad.

“There are other jewelers, Jean-Claude. I don’t want to wear a ring made by someone who sees me as less than a person.” I moved slowly toward Irene.

“As you wish, ma petite,” Jean-Claude said, making a sweeping gesture at the sparkling treasures on their velvet cloth. “Pack these up, Melchior, and take them away.”

I moved closer to Irene, but she didn’t even look at me. All her attention was on Jean-Claude, as his face showed that this was unexpected. “My lord king, we are close to finishing the design for the rings.”

“We will begin again with another jeweler. They may not be the great artists that you and Irene are, but I’m sure they will be able to help us create something of lasting beauty. Though finding a living jeweler who has a true flair for crowns and diadems will be difficult. It’s almost a lost art among the living, don’t you think, Melchior?”

Irene’s face looked pained, and her hand pressed to her chest. “Crowns, diadems, this is the first you mentioned such things.”

“We had been discussing having something to hold Anita’s veil in place. I know your work of old, Melchior; you would have done a masterful job of it, but we will make do with someone else. Perhaps Carlo will be interested in having a chance to create the first crown for vampirekind in centuries.”