“Who’s the twitchy one?” Ryder asked, and didn’t even have to point out the one he meant, the one he’d noticed from the moment he’d walked into the room.

Caitlin knew exactly who he was asking about; she wrinkled her nose in a way Ryder would have found endearing if she weren’t so obviously distressed.

“Banjo Marks,” she said with distaste.

“Bad news,” Ryder said.

“Oh, yeah,” she answered fervently.

“Surprised he even has a seat, here.” It was surprising. Jagger DeFarge was a model citizen—more than a model citizen, a pillar of the community, dedicated to serving the humans of the city as well as his own kind. After seeing the vampire in action, Ryder had expected the other Council members to be, if not equally exemplary, at least stable, as Du Lac certainly seemed to be.

But Marks… There was something about the skinny, nervous vampire that would have drawn Ryder’s attention as trouble in any situation, and even more so in a gathering where he was on active lookout for a possessed Other.

Caitlin shook her head. “Banjo’s from an old bayou family. You know how it is here—bloodlines are everything, even if you’re a vampire.”

But despite Marks’s flamboyantly odd behavior, Ryder realized he was not the likeliest suspect in the room.

“So he’s always like this?” he asked, and Caitlin began to answer.

“Worse than this, actually.” And she stopped, and he saw she’d realized his point.

Quick study, this woman. A Keeper, he thought, to himself, but his feelings were too deep for the pun to be a joke.

“Yes,” she said more slowly. “He’s acting completely normal—for him.”

“Right,” Ryder said. “So probably not possessed. What we want is to keep looking for behavior that’s beyond the norm for someone in particular.”

He scanned the room again, noticing the shapeshifters in the crowd. The shapeshifters—now there was a different kind of charisma, less easily explained. When you looked at a shapeshifter, you saw what you wanted to see. Expert shifters—and there were no others at this gathering—could unconsciously pick up the fantasies of even random strangers and reflect a tantalizing fantasy persona right back at the wishful thinker. He’d done it often enough himself.

He suppressed a twinge of guilt and focused again on the crowd.

Notably absent were Caitlin’s musician friends, Case and Danny. Too rebellious to do anything as mainstream as serve on the Council, obviously.

“Where are your friends?” he asked Caitlin any way, straight-faced, and he saw her flare up, defensively.

“This isn’t their kind of—” She stopped, realizing he was joking. “Very funny.” Then she sighed. “Shapeshifters are so hard to recruit. Most of the Others have this natural wariness about the Council. It took a lot of years to get…most Others comfortable enough with our intentions to make any kind of parish-wide delegation at all. But shapeshifters…”

She stopped then, suddenly not wanting to say something insulting.

Instead of getting angry, he grinned at her. “Sorry bastards, all of us. Temperamental, self-righteous…” He dropped the joking tone and said more seriously, “It’s what I said last night. When you’ve been so many people, your own sense of self gets hazy. It’s hard for a shifter to trust anything. Anyone.”

But the way he looked at her was not the look of someone who was distrustful.

“I’m sorry you ended up with the hardest-headed group of Others out there,” he said, and sounded so sincere that it nearly took her breath away. “On the other hand, I’m not sorry at all that it was you.”

And the way he looked at her when he said that did take her breath away….

But the moment was broken and the bright, wine-enhanced party chatter suspended as an old-fashioned waiter—in a wig and doublets, snug-fitting Renaissance jacket, no less—rang an enormous dinner bell and announced, “Dinner is served.”

Other wigged and doubleted servants pulled open the twenty-foot-tall doors, and the party began to flow into the dining hall, from which a current of savory smells rolled: gumbo and duck and raspberry and chocolate and butter and heavenly bread and the woodsy scent of a fire.

Ryder offered his arm to Caitlin with a slight bow. She felt the skin of her chest and shoulders flush—and not just from embarrassment. Underneath there was a sense of pride. Pride of ownership, and of being owned.

Which isn’t true at all, she admonished herself. It has nothing to do with anything.

But that was the way Ryder was looking at her, too.

She put her hand on his well-muscled arm, and he swept her into the dining hall.

St. Pierre’s love of ceremony extended to the seating; the tables were carefully laid out in a large rectangle, with Council delegates from each of the Other communities forming three sides of the rectangle, in descending order. The General Council members were seated at the head table, with St. Pierre in the middle, and the three Keepers to his right. Ryder, being the guest speaker as well as the guest of the Keepers, had a place between Caitlin and Fiona, a privilege that even Jagger couldn’t claim; he sat with the vampires at the vampire table, and while he was playing it off with vampire cool, Ryder could feel he was steaming. Ryder wouldn’t have been a shifter worth his salt if he didn’t torture the vampire a little, leaning in to be extra attentive to the charming Fiona.

Who liked him, he could tell. And since Fiona was obviously Caitlin’s father, mother, fairy godmother and sister all rolled into one, it was useful as well as a pleasure to be on her good side.

He liked Shauna, too—the youngest Keeper was a firecracker in an earthier way than the more ephemeral Caitlin. The sisters each bore at least some imprint of the Other community they represented. Occupational hazard, clearly.

The food was superb, but the formality of the dinner bothered Ryder. He continually had to restrain himself from feeding Caitlin oysters with his fingers, from kissing raspberry sauce from the corners of her mouth. He could imagine this sumptuous feast in private, where he could have his fill of her body along with the food. And he could feel her sense his thoughts, if not outright read them; he felt her attraction for him in the heat between them, in the chemicals of her body, creating an intoxicating pull, literally vibrating. Her body responded to even the slightest shifts in his posture, to the brush of his hand against her arm, to the graze of his thigh against hers under the table. He was having a great deal of fun tormenting her with his “accidental” touches…but truth be told, he was tormenting himself every bit as much. He was swollen with arousal beneath the tight breeches he wore, filled with a raw impatience to seize her, take her, standing, sitting, in his lap, splayed on the table under his thrusts…the taste of raspberry on her mouth…licking cream off her breasts…feeling the warm wetness of her engulfing him, driving him to the brink….

She had gone very still by his side, and when he looked at her, he had no doubt she knew exactly what he was thinking. He held her eyes without smiling, to emphasize the moment, the meaning that was passing between them.

She shoved her chair back abruptly, breaking the moment, and stood—shakily, he noted with satisfaction. She hurried from the table, and for now, he let her go. There was work to do; she would be in the spotlight soon in her official capacity. He understood that he had unbalanced her profoundly, and that she needed to regain her composure to do her work. Important work.

He noticed Fiona watching her go. Then she turned her eyes on him, and the look she gave him was appraising—and carried a cool and direct reminder of her words in the kitchen. If you hurt her, you’ll answer to me.

Ryder met Fiona’s eyes calmly and didn’t look away. She nodded thoughtfully and turned back to her meal.

Ryder leaned back in his chair, marveling at how civilized the gathering seemed, how ordered. They were seated in a room full of supernatural entities that could easily run rampant through the human population of this city or any other, taking whatever vicious pleasure they wanted from whoever or whatever crossed their tracks. But what he saw was a citizenry that may have had its differences, but now was making efforts on many fronts to get along, to forge a general community, an alliance, despite something far stronger than racial or cultural differences: differences of species, of beingness.

He had come to understand that the sisters’ parents had had much to do with the forging of this community spirit, and at great cost. But it was dawning on him now that the three sisters, these three young Keepers, might have done even more than their parents, and at a far younger age, to ensure the civilized functioning of the underworld.

Surprisingly, he felt drawn toward the idea, the warmth, of a community where everyone worked together for the common good. Where he might stop and stay, make a home and a life, instead of this incessant and angry wandering.

More surprising still, he was curious, even hungry, to know what it would be like to share a life’s work with a lover and partner the way Caitlin’s parents so clearly had, willing to risk their very lives for love of community, for a higher purpose, for love itself.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden sound of silver ringing on crystal. Armand St. Pierre had started the ancient summons to order by tapping a knife against a goblet, a perfect icy clarion call that silenced dinner chatter as effectively as a shot from a gun.

Armand acknowledged the effect with a small smile and stood theatrically, raising his glass.

“Brother and Sister Others. I welcome you to my table—and to the Council. The Keepers of the City of New Orleans and vampire liaison Jagger DeFarge have requested a special joint session of Council to discuss an imminent attack on our city.”

Ryder frowned, looking toward the doors for Cait. Very strange, that St. Pierre would have started the meeting without her.

At his seat, St. Pierre continued. “I pray you listen with your hearts and minds, that we may keep the peace between us and the peace of the city.”