with everybody.’
‘The Harlequin respect Jean-Claude more than me,’ I said.
‘Some do, but I trust Jake to explain one important difference between you and Jean-Claude.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Jean-Claude wants the clout of having the Mother of All Darkness’s assassins and bodyguards work for him, so he’ll hesitate to kill them; you won’t.’
‘I’m human, Nathaniel; I can’t afford to fight any of the Harlequin. All I can do is kill them.’
‘Exactly,’ he said.
I frowned. ‘I don’t want to kill them.’
‘But you will,’ he said.
‘Let’s get the other guards on board and get in the air. No more delays,’ Micah said, and that was that – though Ethan stayed behind to help the driver keep Nilda in the car. The driver was human and we didn’t trust her not to go berserk and tear him up. Strong emotions can bring on the change; grief works almost as well as anger. Which made me worry about Micah as the plane left the ground. I’m usually most afraid on takeoff and landing, but as I held my love’s hand, I was too worried about him to worry much about me. Easiest takeoff I’d ever had.
7
It was dark when we landed in Colorado, so all I can say is Denver looks like every other city from the air, all lights like electric stars scattered across the ground. We got off the plane to two black SUVs that came with matching vampires and a white SUV that had a very human woman leaning against it. She was built small and delicate like Micah, with curly red hair trailing around her shoulders. I couldn’t see the color of her eyes from where I was standing, but I knew the shape of them, because I’d spent too much time looking into Micah’s eyes and face. There was a lot of similar bone structure, though the red hair and freckles were a surprise. I’d pictured his family as darker like him. She smiled, pushing away from the truck, in her blue jeans, blue polo shirt, and cowboy boots, which looked too beat-up and used to be a fashion statement.
Micah went to her with a huge smile on his face. He said, ‘Juliet.’
She said, ‘Mike.’
They hugged like they meant it, though with that below-the-waist distance that you learn with relatives. Thanks to the nearly four-hour flight, we knew that Juliet was Uncle Steve’s daughter, and that Cousin Richie had been Steve’s son, but both of them had died in the attack that had turned Micah into a wereleopard. Micah and Richie had both been only eighteen, Richie back from basic and about to ship out to an active-duty post and Micah back from college. They’d come home to have one last deer hunt with their dads, but while they’d been hunting the doe they bagged, something else had been hunting them. Micah’s dad had been called away for a suspicious death or he’d have been on the hunt with them.
Nathaniel took my hand. I could feel the tension thrumming down his arm. I turned and looked at him. His face looked neutral but it was a nervous neutral. I fought the urge to lower the mental shields that kept us from getting a direct feed into each other’s emotions. We did not need to be drowning in Micah’s emotions right now, and once the shields came down, sometimes it was hard to filter strong emotions from anyone I was connected to. It was going to be hard enough to support Micah through the family reunion without actually feeling the emotions with him. So I moved closer to Nathaniel and whispered, ‘You don’t have to be nervous.’
‘Tell me nothing will change between the three of us,’ he whispered back.
‘Nothing will change between us,’ I said, and squeezed his hand. I would have done more comforting, but one of the vampires from the black SUVs walked toward us. Would I have said glided, once? Maybe, but he didn’t glide, he walked. For graceful movement I had Jean-Claude, Damian, Wicked and Truth, or Requiem, or hell, lots of vampires in St Louis who made the one moving toward us seem rough in comparison. He was dressed in a black suit and white shirt; even the tie was black. It was Jean-Claude’s signature black and white, but somehow it didn’t work as well for this guy. Maybe it was the cut of the suit being less tailored or the fact that it was a standard suit that anyone could have worn. Jean-Claude always made sure his