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good answer, so I said nothing. I rarely got in trouble saying nothing.
    â€œAnswer me, Anita. How is that love?”
    Of course, not everyone will let you say nothing; sometimes they demand more than that, even when there’s nothing good to say. “I don’t know, Damian.”
    â€œYou don’t know, or you know that isn’t love—it’s obsession?”
    â€œSince I’m the other woman as far as Cardinale is concerned, I’d rather not comment.”
    â€œShe-Who-Made-Me didn’t understand love, but she understood being obsessed with someone. She’d find someone among the prisoners or the would-be treasure seekers who would come to the castle; like ordering pizza, the food comes to you.” He laughed, but it was a bad sound, the kind of laughter that made you cringe or want to cry. “She’d pick one special person to tease and torment and maybe fuck. Sometimes they thought she loved them, but it was the kind of obsession that scientists feel for insects, so beautiful until you kill it, stuff it, and put a pin through it.”
    I fought not to point out that insects aren’t stuffed, and not to ask if She-Who-Made-Him actually stuffed or pinned her victims. Neither comment would help the pain in his eyes, so I let them both go. I can be taught.
    â€œYou can’t equate Cardinale with her,” I said, finally.
    â€œWhy not? Maybe after so many centuries with She-Who-Made-Me, obsession is all I understand? What if that’s what I saw in Cardinale? What if years of being tormented have made me mistake someone who wants to possess me for someone who wants to love me?”
    â€œI don’t even know what to say to that, Damian, except it’s probably above my pay grade on the therapy scale and it sounds like a question for a real therapist.”
    He nodded. “Maybe it is.”
    â€œWhen do you get off work tonight?” I asked.
    â€œTwo hours before dawn.”
    â€œYou and Cardinale live at the Circus, so you’ll be heading that way anyway. We’ll see you an hour before dawn.”
    â€œThat won’t give us much time.”
    â€œI’ll fill Jean-Claude and Nathaniel in on everything, so we’ll have less to explain.”
    â€œAn hour is still not much time to solve the unsolvable,” he said.
    â€œJean-Claude doesn’t have to die at dawn, if I’m touching him, and you aren’t dying at dawn. That gives us more time,” I said.
    He seemed to think about that, then nodded, putting his coat over the back of his chair so his hands were free. He stood there bare from the waist up, except for the blood that was beginning to dry on his back. “A bright side to this cursed sleep, then,” he said.
    â€œMost vampires are a little afraid of that moment when they die each day,” I said.
    â€œI think a part of me would be relieved to finally die for real.”
    â€œAre you thinking suicidal thoughts?” I asked, because you have to ask, or you won’t know.
    â€œNo, I was raised to believe a death in battle meant a good afterlife, and I was fighting when She-Who-Made-Me took my life.”
    â€œYou mean Valhalla and all that.”
    He grinned. “Yes, Valhalla and all that.”
    â€œSo you count that moment as your death, and wouldn’t count dying as a vampire now?” I asked, because it was me and I wanted to know.
    He shook his head. “She-Who-Made-Me killed me, Anita. Make no mistake about that.”
    I wasn’t sure I agreed with his definition of life and death and when he was killed, but if it gave him comfort, who was I to argue with it? I believed in heaven, and wasn’t Valhalla just Damian’s version of that? If it wasn’t, the difference was a question for a priest and I wasn’t one of those, so I let him take his comfort and I kept mine.
    â€œI’ll see you later tonight, then,” I said.
    â€œI can’t go to work like