“He said that he has some new ideas,” I said.

“Something about wanting to capture love in the rings, or something like that,” Jean-Claude said, waving a hand vaguely in the air. He looked harmless and almost foppish, the way he’d hidden his power for centuries among the other vampires. He was just handsome and seductive, nothing else to see, move along, move along.

“Well, I’m sure my master knows best; he is the greatest metal-smith in the world.” She smiled happily and simply began to repack all the jewelry. She never questioned our word, or that her master might simply use her like a puppet and change all their plans. It probably happened often enough, because Melchior had been an “artist” for a few thousand years. It gave you an attitude. I wondered how Irene would feel about his new inspiration.

We waited while she packed and the guards let her out. They’d make sure that her personal guards who had been made to wait in the back were at her side before she took that much bright and shiny outside the Circus. It would suck to have her mugged on the way back to her master now that he loved her.

When we were alone in the room, I turned to Jean-Claude. “Did he really love her all along?”

“I believe so.”

“But you don’t know so.”

“No.”

“Did you make him fall in love with her?”

He gave that Gallic gesture that was almost a shrug, but not quite. “We lifted the veil and allowed him to see the brightest jewel in his collection, that is all.”

“You mean Irene.”

“Oui.”

“And we’re both tired of people discounting me because I’m your human servant.”

“And that,” he said.

“Are you really going to make me wear a tiara for the wedding?”

He smiled like some fallen angel trying to sell you ice cubes in hell. “Well, ma petite, it would be churlish of us to strip him bare enough to fall in love and then insult his art.”

I looked at the ceiling, took in a deep breath, let it out, and said, “Fuck, you didn’t tell me we had to wear crowns.”

“You will look lovely, ma petite.”

I gave him a narrow look. “If I have to wear one, you have to wear one.”

He gave that almost-shrug again. “Very well.”

I frowned at him, and then a thought made me try to fight not to smile at him, but I finally gave up. “Why do I think the thought of wearing a crown has been a goal of yours for a few centuries?”

He smiled, and then finally grinned wide enough to flash the edge of dainty fangs. “It has been my experience that if you have the responsibility of leadership, you might as well have the jewelry to go with it.”

I laughed and went to him. “I love you, you know that?”

“I do.”

“Are we actually going to say I do as part of the vows?”

“Come sit in my lap again and we will discuss it.”

“I think if I sit in your lap again without witnesses, we’ll get distracted.” But I smiled when I said it.

“This meeting has run surprisingly short, and we are left with a hole in our schedule; whatever shall we do with the extra time?” he said, holding his hand out to me.

“Hmm . . . let me think,” I said, walking closer.

He pulled me onto his lap, and my arms were just suddenly around him, as if they were made to fit that way. “Je t’aime, ma petite.”

“I love you, too, Jean-Claude,” I said, just before I kissed him.

7

WE LOVED OURSELVES out of some of our clothes, but not all. Our jackets had gone first, and then my belt had to go so we could put my gun carefully in a drawer. It was the only thing that couldn’t just be thrown off to land wherever. I’d had a few moments where my gun had gone missing in a pile of clothes, and I had to dig for it when I needed it to protect us—so the gun was carefully placed. Our shirts were in a pile on the floor with the jackets. We only had about an hour until I had to be at a cemetery raising the dead for clients, and Jean-Claude would need to be at Guilty Pleasures lending his voice to the acts onstage. Besides, the leather pants he was wearing were one of those pairs that you had to peel down his body with lots of straps in the way. I’d learned that some clothing was better admired than stripped out of, just as some clothes that looked just as complex had a trick that made them fall off onstage at the appropriate moment. I unfastened the front of those pettable pants, and was fighting to slide my hands inside them, but Jean-Claude caught my hands in his and shook his head.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Ma petite, I have not fed tonight.”

“I know.”

He smiled. “I know your penchant for going down on men when they are small, and I would stay small for you until you allow me to take blood, but I do not have the patience for it tonight. Our time is too short for that much foreplay.”

I sighed, and looked down at our hands sort of bunched at the top of his pants. “Okay, but I need some foreplay. I’m not really in the mood for a quick-quickie.”

“I would not dream of it,” he said, lifting my hands up, so that I wasn’t trying to fish inside his pants. He laid a light kiss on each of my hands and then a firmer kiss on my mouth. His lips were already scarlet with my lipstick. It was a great color on him, actually.

He slid just the very tips of his fingers inside the edge of my blue satin bra. “This is a new color for you, ma petite; I approve.”