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filled it with both light and darkness.

Except for the light and shadows it was a cocktail party, with everyone standing around sipping drinks, eating hors d’oeuvres, and chatting. I hated cocktail-party small talk mainly because I’d always sucked at it, but all the men in my life seemed really good at it. As long as Jean-Claude or Micah or Nathaniel or Asher or Jason was on my arm they took the conversation and I just smiled and nodded. That I could do.

Damian and I were both almost equally bad at this kind of thing, so he kept Cardinal on his arm, and we waved at each other.

I was on Jean-Claude’s arm when we met Victor, weretiger and son of the Master of Las Vegas and the white tiger queen, Bibiana. Victor was still tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome with his short white hair carefully cut, looking as if someone styled it one hair at a time. His suit was expensive and tailored, and looked almost as good on him as Micah’s had on him, but in very different ways. Victor was built more like Richard. Victor’s tiger eyes were a rich, deep blue, bluer than Crispin’s. I liked Victor’s eyes; in fact my white tigress liked everything about him. He took my hand when I offered it, and the moment he touched me I wished he hadn’t. His power breathed along my skin in a warm wash. It made it hard to breathe for a moment, and I watched his eyes go a little wider. His breath came out in a shaking line as he let go of my hand. It took visible effort for him to stop touching me.

He laughed, and that shook, too. “Is it my imagination or are you even more captivating now than you were a year ago?”

“Thank you, and I don’t know.” The white tiger inside me wanted to touch him. I took a step forward without realizing it. Victor actually backed up a step, before he caught himself.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” A woman came to lean against him in a possessive way that some girlfriends have. My white tiger didn’t like it, and I had a moment to fight the instinct to mark him as some sort of territory. I’d met him twice, and slept with him twice, and had sex only one of those times. I had no right to mark him as mine, but wasn’t I supposed to do exactly that? Shit, I didn’t know.

The woman had long pale curls, mostly white, but with edges of pale golden brown here and there, and I knew that meant her white tiger would have stripes the color of her darker curls. She had the same lush curves as Bibiana, but on a body that was nearly a foot taller. Part of it was silver stiletto heels, but her legs were almost longer than I was. Her dress was silver, too, and managed to both cling and billow as she moved. She, like me, had to be wearing a bra under the dress or things wouldn’t have stayed put.

Her eyes were a blue so pale they were gray, but with a line of black around the iris so that it echoed the eyeliner around her large, uptilted eyes. The effect was startling, and beautiful, even to me.

“Julia, this is Anita Blake, Jean-Claude’s lady.”

She held out a perfectly manicured hand. The nails were French-tipped with white. Cardinal had buffed my nails and declared them hopeless. I didn’t really care about nails, so I smiled sweetly and held out my hand.

She wrapped her hand around mine and sent a flash of power into me. My white tiger was just suddenly there, roaring up through my skin, not to tear me apart, but to spill around me like some white phantom.

Julia tried to take her hand back, but I held on, and my tiger spilled over and through her. I tasted her tiger, saw it in its pale stripes, and knew she was no queen. She tried to slap me, like a girl, but my other arm was there blocking hers.

“Let go,” she said, but her voice was high, and afraid. Fear meant food. Fear meant weak.

I started to, honest, but Jean-Claude was at my side. He said, “She began this, ma petite. You must finish it.”

I glanced at him, and my tiger seemed to look at him, too.

“She challenged you,” he said. “Answer it.”

I glanced past the woman to Victor, who had moved so he wasn’t