Safe
by Fran Hutchinson


Maura was on her way to the side entrance that Saturday night to
collect cover when Janette caught her in passing.  She'd only been on
the job for a week but already she sensed her new boss had taken a
personal interest.  Given the details of their respective lives, it
wasn't a surprise.

"Maura, I'd like you to meet an old friend of mine.  He comes by the
club frequently, and should never be questioned or charged for
anything."  She indicated the good looking man to her right, medium-
tall, dressed in black jeans, white buttoned-up shirt, and black
leather jacket.  His hair was strawberry blonde, she'd never seen
many guys with that color.  His eyes were a deep blue-grey, a much
darker version of Janette's, and old in contrast to the boyish face
that sported a stylish scruff of beard.  Though there was no physical
resemblance, she wondered if he and Janette were related, and how. 
She already knew the answer, and she knew what he was even before
that.

"Hi, I'm Maura Logue," she said with a smile as she extended her
hand.  "Janette hired me to manage security but I'm still learning
the operation."

"Maura has had extensive club experience in Boston and Vancouver,"
Janette explained, never taking her eyes off Nick, gauging his
reaction, "only a fool would have turned her away.  Maura, this is
Nicholas Knight, he's a police detective.  We go... far back."

He smiled and took her hand, "Call me Nick.  I'm glad to meet
someone Janette trusts so completely with Raven, there aren't many
who can say that."

She held his eyes as their hands joined.  His grip was normal male
strong/gentle, but his skin was cool.  Not cold, as you'd expect from
November in Toronto, but cool as in body-cool.  And he wasn't wearing
gloves.  There was something else.  A visual "click" in his eyes, one
Maura could feel as well as see, a shock of recognition he was very
good at disguising.  But not entirely.  In that one second, each knew
who the other was.  And Janette knew it would happen.  After the
merest second of blank cognition, Nick's smile returned as he
released Maura's hand.  Only they noticed the heartbeat's hesitation.

"Well.  I'm sure we'll see more of each other.  As Janette said, I
pass through frequently."

"Well, a police detective might be a handy ally in my business,"
Maura acknowledged.

Nick raised an amused eyebrow as Janette commented, "I rather hope
not, cherie."

"Homicide," Nick explained, and Maura shrugged.

"Whatever it takes.  It was very nice meeting you, Detective
Knight," at which point he corrected, "Nick.  Just Nick."  Maura
laughed, and Nick could fairly taste the richness behind it.  "Well
then, Just Nick, I hope to see you again, but not professionally." 
With a nod to Janette, she was gone about her business.

Immediately Nick turned to Janette and demanded, "Where did you find
her?"
	
A shrug.  "She found me, Nicolas.  That is the truth.  She came in
the door on Monday night looking for a job, and the staff nearly
fainted as one."

Nick responded drily,  "I can imagine.  Does she know what she is?"

"I daresay if she didn't, she would not have lived this long.  She
knows too well.  She knew what I am, what we all are, she had heard
the rumors and came here of her own accord.  Safety in numbers,
perhaps."

"Like a virgin in a men's prison?  I doubt that very much."  He was
watching Maura as she chatted with the Vargo the bouncer, then handed
off her take to the Vachon at the bar for safekeeping.  She knew all
of them were vampires, whatever made her think she could work here
safely?

"Are you watching out for her, is that it?  Is she one of yours?" 
The last word held an unmistakable weight.

Janette gave an incredulous laugh.  "No, she is not 'one of mine'. 
I can't afford to be so clouded by desire.  She is nobody's, not now.
But she has told me… things, about other places and others like us. 
Not pretty, to be sure.  So I let her stay in the office for now. 
It's safer than anywhere else, since you know she can't disguise
herself as we do. Mortals are easy to fool, but she is unmistakable
to us.  And even immortals would like to keep their jobs, so she is
left unmolested.  Besides, she fits in rather well."

"Why Janette, have you become a humanitarian?" Nick asked in
undisguised amusement.

"Who knows better than we do what it means to be hunted?" she
reminded him sharply.  "And besides, I needed a security manager,
Nicolas.  Who better than one who knows us but is no threat?  And no
competition," she mused, eyes following a young mortal who trailed
by, drink in hand.  "Excuse me," she followed after him.

Nick shook his head slowly.  In 800 years, he had heard about
mortals referred to as "prized", but had never met one, had almost
come to take them as mere legend.  Mortals whose blood was rich
beyond imagining, ambrosia, searing the senses with euphoric delights
that defied description.  A human drug.  Nobody knew the why or how,
but to find one was to find paradise, brief respites from the hell on
earth the immortal existence too often became.  Any vampire, it was
said, could detect any prized mortal in a crowd of a thousand
mortals.  Their scent, it was said, was like honeysuckle mixed with
amber, and Nick realized that he'd been struck by that when Maura had
come within six feet of him and Janette.  And during the new moon the
power of their blood increased tenfold, triggering a passion and
pleasure unknown in mortal or immortal existence.  For these reasons
and more, they were a favorite prey and their lives were child-brief.
Little was known about how they lived, or where, or how they stayed
alive at all in a world full of immortals who could seldom pause in
their craving long enough to allow one to survive.  They could not be
brought across, nor could they be controlled hypnotically.  For that
reason alone, LaCroix had once told Nick, the Enforcers ordered
killed every prized mortal that was discovered.  They knew a vampire
at first sight and could not be compelled to submit to control
without their consent, which was of course no control at all.  Even
LaCroix had never encountered one.  How they were created, for they
were born only of mortals, was a mystery.  For Nick, and Janette too,
it was like meeting a unicorn, the rarest of rare.  Particularly
because this one had survived into adulthood, and appeared to be in
her mid-thirties.

Maura told Vachon to take off with his friends, she'd finish the bar
work.  "Go on, Vash, you can't stay out as late as me."  After barely
a week she felt comfortable among them, knowing they wouldn't bring
her to harm because it was Janette who had invited her into their
circle.  She sometimes teased her coworkers about getting up at the
crack of doom.  Besides, they all seemed to like her, and she them. 
They felt her ease with them, her lack of fear that didn't come from
arrogance but from empathy.  Everyone here was trapped by who they
were, one way or another. 

Maura set the last of the cases of empties in the alley to be picked
up by the distributor on Monday, or picked clean by the denizens of
the neighborhood for deposit money.  When she turned to re-enter the
club Nick was standing behind her.

"Damn!  You all just can't help yourselves, can you, always gotta
make an entrance!"

He looked a little sheepish.  A sheepish vampire, that was new. 
"Sorry.  I forget sometimes."  He savored her scent.  Honeysuckle and
amber.  It was the night before new moon, and it was becoming clear
to him that the "legends" were not legends at all.

"So, you come here for a taste?"  

Nick started. Could she read what he'd been thinking?  "What?"

"You know, taste of nightlife off duty.  Like that."  She saw his
recovery and knew how he'd taken her.  "Oh brother, you're not gonna
be one of them?"

"Them?" Nick echoed, rather stupidly he realized.

"One of them who just stand around and watch me like some animal in
the zoo, or like some schoolboy drooling over the prom queen but no
nerve to ask her out.  I know I'm no raving beauty, but it's kind of
like some guy looking at the most gorgeous woman alive.  Naked."  She
thought for a moment, and added, "Or maybe like dogs in heat."

Nick seemed taken off guard, but his visceral response as she
stepped closer was unmistakable.

Maura stood planted before him, hands on her hips.  "Look, we know
who we are.  I could see it on your face the second we shook hands. 
Let's not play games.  These are vampires.  You are a vampire.  And I
am every vampire's favorite fang candy.  So why am I here?  Or more
to the point, how did I live long enough to get here? You're a
detective, Detective, so which do you crave more, blood or answers?  
Well step into my office, and I'll fill you in.  I know it's killing
you."  She paused a beat.  "Unless that's redundant."  Nick followed
her inside with a bemused smile.

Janette's "office" was a sumptuous suite of rooms in the
labyrinthine rear of the club, and she had given Maura use of one of
the additional boudoirs that had traditionally been used for
"entertainment" rather than sleeping.  Elegantly furnished, Maura had
nonetheless decorated it in her own style as best she could, with
Indian silk scarves and the few books she still owned.  A small
statue of Ganesh sat on one end of an ornately carved Victorian style
vanity, a statue of Lakshmi on the other.

"I suppose I'm giving a terrible first impression, inviting you to
my room when we've only just met."  Maura's smile made the joke
obvious.

"Hey, I'm a cop, I can defend myself if I have to."  Nick hadn't
been in this room in quite some time, and took a look around at the
small additions Maura had made.  Indicating the bronze figurines he
commented, "Covering all the bases, I see."

"Good fortune and money.  What more to ask?  At least I'm not a
Christian."

Nick settled on the velvet sofa.  "Would that be so bad?"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, giving my life and responsibility up
to the creation of a book of myths dictated by shepherds millennia
ago.  Sounds like a plan."

Nick laughed.   "But you have these," he indicated the statues.

She was realizing she loved the sound of his voice, low, quiet. 
Gentle  "They guide me.  They protect me.  They remind me to pay
attention.  They do not tell me what to do."

"I don't suppose anybody does," Nick mused with a smile.  He really
was liking this, meeting someone new who hadn't just had someone near
and dear murdered.  Her hair was deep red, her eyes a mottled green,
her complexion Irish-ruddy.  He did enjoy color.

Maura sat down at the other end of the sofa.  "Okay I'll bet you're
wondering lots of stuff.  Like I did when I first encountered one of
you.  You wonder how I got this way, you wonder if I'm enchanted or
something.  You wonder how long I'll live, and most of all you wonder
why living breathing vampire-bait would choose to consort with the
undead."  Nick made an unpleasant face.  "Sorry.  I'm not known for
being P.C.  How about 'viability-challenged'?"  Now he laughed.

"I don't think I've ever heard anyone make jokes about it."

"She who laughs, lasts."  Her smile faded a bit.  "Anyway, the only
difference between a laugh and a scream is modulation." 

"So, tell me why, if I'm not prying." The answers to most of his
questions were merely a matter of curiosity.  But this intrigued him.

"Nah.  Most people, dead or un-, couldn't care less who I am or
where I came from.  Hmm.  Why.  I guess I could say I subscribe to
keeping your friends close but your enemies closer.  But that's not
really it.  These aren't my enemies, they're actually helping me. 
Protection I guess.  I show I'm not a threat to those of you I come
to know, and in return you mostly don't drain the tap until I'm
albino."

"Mostly."

She shrugged.  "Well there have been some less than stellar
characters.  Like any culture, there are the nice guys and the
assholes.  Of course in the mortal world the assholes aren't usually
fatal.  So I count on the nice guys to cover my back."

"Does it work?"

"I'm still breathing, aren't I?"  She sighed.  "Look, I guess some
would think it's weird to spill to a stranger.  But my guess is we're
not really strangers, are we?"  She met his eyes.  They looked right
into her.  Something was here, she felt it, something she'd never
encountered before.

Nick was thinking the same thing.  "I don't suppose we are.  And I'm
told I'm a good listener."

"Goes with your job, I guess.  Anyway," she settled back, stretching
her legs out on the sofa, feet stopping inches short of Nick's thigh.
"As for the first question, I don't know, but I think it happened
shortly after puberty, in Boston.  At least that was my 'first time',
if you know what I mean.  One of you lot popped out of an alley, just
like in the movies, and that's all she wrote.  He almost killed me,
but not quite.  Somebody found me and brought me to the hospital and
they transfused me to the limit.  But whatever it was about me didn't
get drained out with my blood.  It took a few more 'encounters'
before I realized what might be happening every new moon, and
sometimes in between.  But new moon is always the riskiest time."

"But you were a kid.  How could you figure it out?"

"Instinct?  Maybe this little gift came with accessories, I dunno. 
All I know was that in no time at all I could pick you guys out at
fifty paces, but you couldn't do the same, not until you got within a
few feet.  See I started asking questions, between 'high seasons of
the month', and found you have to get close enough to smell me which
for a vampire is about maybe ten feet or so?  No mortal notices it so
it's gotta be pretty subtle."

Not so subtle, thought Nick, who was surrounded in her scent and
trying not to respond.  He'd noticed Maura had made no mention at all
of family, but decided it would be better  not to ask.   In 800 years
he'd learned what wasn't shared wasn't meant to be his business.

"Call it a vampire pheromone.  Anyway it made me lots of new
friends, mostly unwanted but some better than others.  Only a couple,
though.  And they didn't last."  Her face betrayed more weariness
than sadness.  "See, the Enforcers, are you surprised I know about
them?  They're not allowed to kill me themselves, they'd be tainted
or something.  So from time to time when they get convinced I'm gonna
blow the whistle they send minions who of course have lesser powers. 
Though they do pretty well at persuasion and deceit.  They keep me
careful I guess, and moving around, but being a human target makes
you cagey.  My protectors weren't so lucky.  They're bound by that
quaint code of yours, but I'm not."

"It sounds like a hard life."  Acknowledgment, not understatement,
Maura realized, and exhaled in a derisive chuckle.

"At least.  In between times, I just have to be alert and careful. 
I mean I still pack a mind-altering wallop to anyone who feeds on me,
but nothing like the new moon.  At the new moon, that first night
especially, it is open season and I have had to lock myself up and
then some.  I used to try to get arrested about that time, but found
out the hard way it's no guarantee.  You guys are everywhere.  So
since my life is a prison, I do what prisoners do.  I become one
vampire's bitch to save myself from being everyone's."

The bitter humor didn't register with Nick, he was so focused on her
casual description of continual torment.  "Maura, I can't imagine,"
he pictured what she obviously left out, the fact that she probably
wasn't entirely successful at hiding herself.  "It sounds just like,"
he didn't finish the statement.

"Rape?" she finished for him.  "Yeah." She sighed painfully now, and
was unable to suppress a shudder.  "More times than I can count.  The
only time I'm sort-of safe is in the daylight, so that is the only
time I sleep.  When I can."  Nightmares were a given.

Unconsciously Nick had wrapped a hand around Maura's crossed feet. 
"I'm so sorry.  I guess I always thought the worst that could happen
to mortals at our hands was death, or betrayal, or to be brought
across.  But those things only happen once."

She smiled wanly.  "Guess I got the gift that keeps on giving."  She
glanced at her watch.  There were no windows in the room.  "Hey it's
getting early.  You'd better get back to where you go.  Tomorrow's
new moon and it's time for me to hang them religious symbols I laugh
at the rest of the month.  Thank goodness for immortal superstition."
She withdrew her feet from Nick's grasp and rose.

"Nice talking with you, Just Nick.  Really.  Not often I get to
think out loud to an understanding audience."

"My pleasure.  But Janette appears helpful," he waved his hand
around the room and was surprised by Maura's cynical bark of laughter.

"Oh, yes, Janette.  Don't get me wrong, I genuinely like her, and I
am grateful for the job and the digs.  But I haven't lived this long
on naiveté.  She'll get bored playing mother soon enough and then
it's time to move on again, if she hasn't offered me up as an
employee bonus. You know of course she set you up tonight."

He looked puzzled, then annoyed as reality broke.  "She wanted me to
meet you, not the other way around."

"Exactly."

"Janette believes that I should mix more with the not-quite-mortal."

Maura shook her head knowingly.  "She thinks you'd enjoy some magic
blood."  His eyes narrowed.  "You do know, don't you.  Well no
illusions among the not-quite-mortal, huh?"

"Perhaps," Nick suggested tightly, "I need to have a talk with
Janette," then added more reasonably "Don't sell her short, though. 
She's capable of more than you might give her credit for.  Even if
she is fond of meddling."

Maura stopped short at the door and turned to face him.  "Oh, don't
make anything of it.  She really does have your best interests at
heart, even if she is completely wrong.  And believe it or not, I
trust her.  Anyone with that kind of power has no reason to lie."  

They stood inches apart.  Nick was still trying to ignore her scent.
"Tomorrow is the new moon."

"Don't I know it.  I have the next two days off, and I'm gonna spend
'em locked up here and hope for the best."

"I have the next two days off as well.  You could stay at my place."
He couldn't believe he was saying it.  Being the host even for a few
hours was not his strong suit, even when everyone went home after,
and they had met less than two hours ago.  Damn.   What she was
pulled at what he was, sure.  But even the part of his mind that was
clear told him she'd be safer with him.

She regarded him carefully.  "If you're offering to play
protector... I guess I could do worse, seeing you're a friend of
Janette's." She clicked into the evaluation mode, weighing the risks
against the benefits.  This one seemed different, but they all did at
first, didn't they?

Nick shook his head.  "No, not like that.  I'm offering a safer
place than here, as someone who's got eight centuries' experience
consorting with and dodging 'assholes'."  She knew he was right.  She
also knew it could be a bad idea.  She was drawn to him, to his quiet
voice and open manner.  No.  It was too soon after the last
betrayal.  

"And by the way, I don't 'play' at anything."  His steady gaze and
gentle voice convinced her, in spite of herself.

"Okay.  But you're proposing something that could be, uh, risky for
both of us, you know?   You could end up a little over your head." 
As if she couldn't.

He smiled wryly.  "Better me than the whole neighborhood.  Come on,
I'm parked out front."

She packed up her things into a couple of travel bags and joined him
as he left the room, feeling slightly more impulsive than she
believed was smart.  

"Janette," he called to her as they crossed the bar, "Maura will be
visiting with me for a couple of days."

Janette looked insufferably pleased with herself, Maura thought. 
"Be careful, Nicolas, don't let her get... in your blood."  

Janette's smugness annoyed Maura.  As they were leaving she pulled
Nick around and shoved him against the doorframe, kissing him hard. 
"Might as well give her a show, huh?" she whispered, and he laughed
quietly and pulled her tight against him, kissing her equally hard,
mouth open, his tongue velvety cool in her mouth.  It was a lame
excuse for them both, but that first contact threw out Nick's last
pretense of detached concern.   Like a teenager curious about drugs,
he wanted to know prized blood was like,  and he wanted to know with
her.  He inhaled deeply before letting her go.  "Sweet," he told her
as they left Janette staring after them.  

Maura was laughing that rich laugh he could almost taste.  "Not bad
for a dead white guy," she teased.

"I have my moments."  He ushered her into the caddy, and drove home.

She explored his loft with interest, lingering over his paintings
and books and expressing pleasure in his choice of color in the
former.

"You miss the sunlight, don't you?" she asked him.  "Most of you
guys don't, or pretend not to, but I can tell by these paintings
you're trying to bring it home."

He'd come down from putting her things in the bedroom.  He'd use the
couch.  He could sleep anywhere, after all.

"Even after this long I try to remember what it felt like," he
admitted.  "I got a sun lamp once, but it wasn't the same.  Still I
stayed under it too long and got a very mortal-style sunburn."  A
rueful smile.  "Sometimes I open the shades a bit during the daytime,
to watch the light move about, as if it were a live thing."

Maura jumped as she heard the window blinds slide and lock into
place.  

"Custom made," Nick explained.  "Daylight-proof."

"Asshole-proof?" she asked hopefully.

Nick replied with an apologetic shrug.  "Remains to be seen.  But
they couldn't hurt."

She was rooting through the kitchen.

"Do you always rifle the kitchens of strange men?"

She turned to challenge, "Do you always invite strange women home?"

"Some 'stranger' than others," he shot back, and with a wave of his
hand invited, "go ahead.  I have nothing to hide, from you anyway."

She pulled the fridge door open and discovered the endless Bordeaux
bottles that did not contain Bordeaux, and smiled.

"Ah, the reluctant vampire.  You know I've heard a bit about you
already.  From Janette. And the others."

Nick was seated on the sofa now, feet carelessly propped on the
coffee table.  "Naturally.  Immortal gossip."

As she returned to the living room Maura elaborated, "Yeah, they've
told me all about how you're trying to redeem your past 'sins' by way
of your police work and, uh, mitigating,  your nutritional needs. 
You're obviously at great pains to mix with mortals, and not for the
usual reasons.  Janette told me, in fact, you have a friend who is
helping you to shed your fangs, so to speak."  She didn't intend to
sound dismissive, but somehow that's exactly how it came out.

"Well, we all have our goals, n'est-ce pas?" he answered shortly,
and rose to turn on the stereo.  Dvorak filled the room.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that.  I think in just a few days
I've picked up Janette's lousy habit of making every real concern
sound droll."  She approached where Nick stood, back to her,
examining some cd's he already knew by heart.  "Really, I find it
remarkable that it has even occurred to someone that they might be
able to change, let alone that they'd want to.  I think I've been
dealing with you guys for so long I think of you as some sort of
ethnic group, you just are who you are, like an Arab or an Eskimo. 
Different history, different customs.  I mean, you do have your own
shared cultural heritage in a way, don't you?  And you do bring such
things along with you to add to the mix!   I can't imagine being of
so many different places and times and people, knowing the
limitations of life but being immortal."

When he turned abruptly to face her, there were pulses of gold in
the blue eyes.  "Maybe I'm just trying to have it both ways."  He
reached a hand to her waist.  "After all, my version of life does
have its advantages.  Late nights, pleasant company," he leaned in
close and his nose barely touched under her ear.  She didn't want to
step back, but she did, and his eyes returned to normal.  He shook
his head as if to clear it.  "I'm sorry.  I invited you here to be
safe, not seduced."

"I've had worse offers."  She was remembering their kiss at the
club.  "Don't be sorry," she patted his arm and went back to slouch
on the luxurious leather sofa, her feet on the coffee table where his
had been.  "There's really nothing I can do about it, so I've learned
to live with it.  Even the best of intentions have their limits, I've
seen that before too and I don't take it personally.  Really, Just
Nick," and he smiled at what he now recognized as his permanent
nickname, "you're not betraying my trust or your honor or anything." 
Seeing her stretch and yawn, Nick realized it was after 3 a.m.

"Why don't you get some sleep.  I've fixed things up for you
upstairs."  She followed him up and was impressed with the sleek
decor of the bedroom.  Spare lines, blacks and reds.  "Wow," she bent
to run a hand over the red silk velvet comforter, took in the black
lacquer furnishings.  "Very classy."  He shrugged, but she continued,
"No really, I've never met a broke vampire, but you don't all have
the best of taste."

"Call it 'timeless' elegance," he laughed softly at his own joke. 
"I think you're having an effect on me.  Your things are there," he
indicated her bags in the corner.  "The bathroom is down the hall on
the right.  I'll be downstairs if you need anything.  Sleep well." 
She was bending to her bag when he hesitated in the doorway.  "May I
ask you something?  Two things really."

"Sure."  She stood and faced him, tall and lean silhouetted in the
light from the hall, a red-gold halo around his head.

"Why do you trust me?"

She shrugged.  "I don't know, Just Nick.  I have so little left to
lose, and have gotten used to picking the least threatening port in a
storm, regardless of the fee.  I hope you're not offended."

He leaned against the doorjamb.  "No offense taken.  And there's no
fee here."

"Excuse me if I say that would be a first.  But what's the second
thing?"

He took a step in, then seemed to stop himself.  "That fragrance, it
smells like,"

"Honeysuckle and amber," she finished.  He nodded.  "I don't wear
fragrance, it's just me.  But you knew that, didn't you?"

"I suppose I did.  Anyway, someone should bottle it.  It's lovely."

"To you, maybe.  To me it's the mark of Cain.  I'd give anything to
be rid of it.  But maybe you're right, we'll get some chemist to
bottle and mass-market it.  I'll call it... 'Camouflage'."

Nick laughed kindly.  He couldn't remember the last time he'd
laughed so much in one evening.  "Perhaps my friend can help you. 
We'll go see her tomorrow.  Sleep now, I've taken enough of your
time."

"Thanks.  It's been a while since I've slept in a real bed."  When
he'd left she undressed and put on a too-large t shirt with the words
"The dark is afraid of me" on the front.  A stupid play at bravery,
she'd had it for years.  She crawled into bed and was immediately
overwhelmed by the feel of the black silk sheets, the warmth of the
comforter.  It was so hard for her to stay warm for very long, given
the frequency of her blood loss.  She was asleep in seconds.

The dreams came.  They always did, night before the new moon.  Every
lie, every betrayal.  Every useless run and hide, every discovery and
attack.  Pain, and confusion, and the awful inevitable repetition. 
It was always only a matter of time, til next time.  No matter what
she did or who promised to help.  This time would be no different. 
She was trapped now in a strange place, in a strange room, and the
only one who knew the way out is the one who would hand her over in
the end.  They always did.  A figure in the doorway made her scream
in desperation, in futility.  It disappeared, and she fell back in
bed, weak with relief, only to see it reappear.  Now she wailed in
resignation, in recognition of what would come next.  Pain and
terror, helplessness.  That was the worst part.  She scrambled off
the bed, and the figure pursued, it was saying something she couldn't
hear over her own screams.  Crouched in the corner, back to the wall,
nowhere to go, her cries turned to gasping breaths as it came closer.
Again.  And again.  And again.  It would never stop, never.  But then
the figure stopped short, and she heard her name spoken in a quiet
soothing voice, calling to her, trying to calm her.  "Maura, it's me,
it's Nick, don't be afraid.  You're safe here.  You had a dream.  I
know, I have them, too.  Don't be afraid, I won't hurt you."  She
shrank back as far as she could, but a hand touched her, grasped her
wrist, her shoulder, touched her hair.  Strong.  Warm.  Warm?  If it
was warm, it would be okay.  

Nick had heard Maura's first scream as he sat reading on the sofa
downstairs.  She hadn't been up there for very long.  He considered
the upstairs to be secure in an everyday sense but since meeting her
he doubted everything he'd been sure of.  He flew to the bedroom
door, seeing nobody but Maura, cowering in bed and crying out in
fear.  He took a step, and realized the cold in him would only
terrify her more.  Back in the kitchen he seized and hastily drank a
full bottle, barely pausing to swallow.  It would warm him for a
while, long enough to keep him from being added to her list of
terrors.  When he returned to the bedroom with a bright candle she
was crumpled in a corner like a hunted animal.  Which was, of course,
what she was among his kind.

"Maura, it's me, it's Nick, don't be afraid.  You're safe here.  You
had a dream.  I know, I have them too.  Don't be afraid, I won't hurt
you."  He reached out to take her hand, to touch her and wake her and
let her know he was no stranger come to harm her.  She shifted and
fought, "NO, no, no-no-no-no," less words than a series of panicked
yips.  He let her go.

"Maura it's all right, you're all right, you're safe.  It's me.  I
won't hurt you.  You're safe here."

The room was pitch black but for the pool of candlelight from the
dresser.  He could see every angle of her face, her eyes so wide they
seemed to fill it, barely seeing him.  "Safe?" she hissed,
disbelieving.  "Safe?"  He moved closer and she seized the front of
his shirt, "Safe?!".  

"Safe," he whispered, sighing with relief when she came to him.  He
held her tight, kept talking to her, "Safe Maura, I'm here, I'm
watching, don't be afraid."  She held on with a power that surprised
him yet didn't, as if he were salvation itself.  

"Safe?" she kept repeating, incredulous, "Safe?"  

He lifted her and set her on the bed, tucked the covers around her
and continued to hold her and whisper to her.  Her fragrance
enveloped him like a vapor.  "Safe," he told her and finally, finally
kissed her cheek and hair, not like they kissed at the club but
gently this time, gently, to soothe and comfort her.  Or so he told
himself.  She reached around him and pressed tighter against him as
if offering herself in payment, anything, anything, "Safe, keep me
safe, I'll do anything," she promised in a low desperate voice,
"whatever you want, just help me, don't leave me to them." She bent
her head back to expose her throat to him, and it struck Nick like a
blow.

"No," he told her fiercely, holding her away from him, angered by
the ugliness that drove her to such a bargain. "No more.  You don't
have to do that, you don't have to give yourself up anymore.  Not to
me, not to anyone, I won't leave you to them."  The words came out
without effort, and without regret.  A bond was forming already,
quite different from what Janette had imagined.  She was beginning to
calm down, focusing on his voice.  How she loved that voice, already.

"I wish I could believe you, I want to believe you, I need to," she
told him in a rush, "but there have been so many promises, so many
lies, I want to believe you..."
"You will," he promised.  She wound her arms round him again, this
time pressing her face into his shoulder.

"Make me believe it, make me believe."  

He whispered into her hair, passionless kisses and passionate words.
 "I won't have to.  You'll see.  You'll believe all on your own."

Something was different this time, something she couldn't name,
something that reached inside and told her he was the truth, even
more than the few others who tried and failed.  But part of her still
fought it.  

"You'll leave me to them, you will, you'll leave me or kill me or
give me away, like the others.  I've known them all," she protested,
but still held tight to him.  Wanting to believe.  Waiting.

"You haven't known me."  He was still, as quiet as he could be,
"Maura Logue, you haven't known Nicolas de Brabant, Knight of the
Second Crusade."  Only he knew what a hollow title that was.  "I
won't leave you, I won't kill you, I won't give you away, you're safe
here," he clenched his hand in her hair to hold her head against his
shoulder.

"Nicolas de Brabant," she repeated in wonder, understanding now his
tremendously long life and the torment he must have  collected, and
broke his grip on her to look him in the eye.  She was slowly
regaining the inner strength that had faltered in the dark.  She took
a deep breath, looked away to the candle, and back to his eyes.

Nick ventured a smile as he peered into her face.  "Better now?" 
She nodded, a little hesitantly, a little sheepish.

"Yeah.  I just, I have these dreams, the night before, you know..."
she trailed off.

"I don't wonder."

"I'm not usually like this.  I'm a strong person, really," she felt
the need to explain.  He hushed her.

"If you weren't, you wouldn't be here to tell me.  Do you think you
can go to sleep now?"  He read her uneasy nod and added casually,
"I'll stay for a bit, okay?  Do you mind?"  

She tried not to sound too eager, too desperate.   "Sure.  Which is
your side?"

Before she could move he assured her, "You're fine where you are. 
I'm flexible."  He waited until she was settled down on her side in
bed, then went into the adjacent dressing room to change.  When he
returned in sweatpants and t shirt he caught her smiling.

"What?"

"I dunno, it just seems that some stuff is universal 'guy', you
know?  Sweats and t's for bed, mortal or im."  

"Ah.  Well, 'creature' comforts make for comfortable 'creatures'." 
He was beginning to get the hang of this vampire humor.

"You're catching on."

When he slid into the bed next to her without need of explanation,
she relaxed completely, feeling drained of everything that had
happened for the past months.  Years.  Safe.  She felt safe here, and
the feeling was so blessedly welcome she didn't bother to wonder why.

"You really don't have to do this, you know."  She was sufficiently
recovered to be a bit embarrassed by her display of abject dependence.

He was leaning up on an elbow as she spoke.  Like a goddamn
sleepover she thought.  It was too weird to get her head around at
the moment, but she felt oddly at home and at peace.  For once.  

"It's okay.  Besides, you warm up the bed.  It's nice."  He leaned
toward her a bit and told her as if in confidence, "And you smell
nice."

"That's my problem," she responded woefully.  He reached out a hand
to smooth her hair back from her eyes.

"Not with me.  Sleep well, Maura.  Don't be afraid.  I won't leave."

He settled down on his back, facing the ceiling, hands folded on his
stomach. No reason really, it was just his most comfortable sleeping
position.

"You wanna lily or something?" she ventured, her humor creeping back
to cover the strangeness of the situation.

"Don't push it."  But he was smiling.

"Sorry."  She reached for his hand, and was surprised to find
lingering warmth there.  "I am trying to believe."  He gave her
fingers a squeeze.

"Don't worry, you will."  He kissed the back of her hand and
released it.  "Good night."

"Yeah, you are."   Pun intended. 

2

She heard Nick's voice downstairs.  As her fog cleared she realized
she was alone in the big bed.  She remembered reaching once for Nick
while half-awake, and retreating immediately from the chill of him. 
Now she strained to find a clock, discovering one over her shoulder
on the bookshelf.  Just after 3pm.  She hadn't slept that late, that
soundly, well she had no idea when.  She stretched experimentally,
finding no end or edges to the bed.  Damn.  This cop knew how to
live, even if he weren't quite alive.  He knew how to sleep, anyway. 
She crawled out of bed, not bothering to pull on jeans.  Hey, they'd
slept in the same bed, after all, and her t shirt was long enough to
cover what needed to be covered.  She ventured downstairs carefully,
still waking up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"Just Nick?  You got anything resembling coffee down here?"  She
smelled it at the same time she said it, and two heads 
in the living room turned to see her.   Two heads.  Whoops.  She was
near the bottom of the stairs when she saw the guy with the receding
hairline sitting in the cushy leather armchair across from the sofa.
He wore an off the rack type Euro suit, and held a paper cup of
coffee he had obviously brought in with him.  Nick was dressed in
black jeans and white shirt, open necked this time.  It was way too
late for her to retreat, so she just stopped where she was.

"Uh, hi there."  The other guy's expression as he looked from Maura
to Nick said he'd found the mother lode in terms of harassment
potential.  His eyebrows went up, and a grin of joyous discovery
spread ear to ear.

"So, Nick, aren't you gonna introduce me to your new friend?"  He
rose and approached the stairs.  Giving up, she descended the rest of
the way and stood before him, refusing to be embarrassed.  Nick was
looking at him with an acerbic expression.  Thank goodness he'd
gotten up before she did.

"Don Schanke," the man said, extending his hand in exaggerated
graciousness and looking back at Nick.  "I'm Nick's partner.  His
work partner."  Nick rolled his eyes and got to his feet.

She wasn't sure she heard right.  "Skanky?" she echoed.  Nick
suppressed a laugh as his partner blustered, "Schanke, with a c-h,
okay?"

"Sorry."  She shook his hand firmly.  "Maura Logue, I'm Nick's guest
for a couple of days.  I work at Raven, and his friend Janette asked
if he could take me off her hands.  I've been living in the office
for the past week, just got to town and no time to find my own place
yet."

Schanke's "yeah, sure," smile was firmly in place.  "Nice." He
turned to Nick, who had come to stand near them.  "That's nice Nick,
I know you're not much for extended company.  So far, anyway.  So
Maura, hope you like red wine, it's all he has in the house."

She groaned.  "Shoulda gone to the all-night place before we got
here.  Gawd, I can't live without coffee in the morning."

Schanke looked confused.  "It's after 3."  

She gave him her "look", one that anyone could  recognize, that said
"duh".  "I work nights, just like you guys.  Anytime I get up is
morning."  She turned on Nick.  "Jee sus, Nick, you mean you don't
even have coffee for guests?"

"Ran out," he said lamely, then took Schanke's nearly-full cup from
him.  "Here.  Schanke drinks too much coffee.  Affects his judgment,"
he looked sharply at his partner, and stilled his protests with,
"Myra said so, remember?  It makes you cranky, and nobody likes a
cranky Schanke.  Schank just came over to discuss some case stuff. 
He never remembers to call," glaring, "do you?"

"Well I always know when you're home.  I just didn't expect you'd
have a 'guest'."  Maura could see he was very glad he didn't call
this time.  They all stood staring at one another until Nick took
Schanke's arm and propelled him to the door.

"Thanks for coming by, we can use this information when I come in
tomorrow.  After my day off." He had the poor guy halfway out the
door, calling over his shoulder, "Nice to meet you, Maura..." to
which she replied as Nick slid the door shut behind him with a bang,
"Uh, same here.  Thanks for the coffee!"

Nick ran his hands over his face as he returned from the door. 
"Well I think that went well, don't you?"

"Don't fight it.  Adds to the air of mystery."

He stopped and stared at her.  "Just what I need.  More mystery."

"No kidding though, do you have anything here besides Chateau Moo-du-
Pape?"

"Nope.  I wasn't expecting me to have guests, either.  Get dressed
and we can go shopping.  But first we'll go see my friend Natalie and
discuss your body odor problem."

She gave him a look.  "Excuse me?"

He tipped her a wink as she went upstairs to change.  "Only your
best friends will tell you."

The sun had just sunk beyond the Toronto skyline as they got into
the car.  "This is a pretty cool ride," she told him, "but the color
is butt-ugly."

He looked wounded.  "It's classic.  Besides, people don't steal butt-
ugly cars," he explained.  When they got to the coroner's office he
led the way to Natalie's autopsy lab.  "I'll check first to see she's
not with a 'client'," he offered, not wanting her upset by some
cadaver in mid-dissection.

She stepped with him to the door.  "As long as he can't get up, I'll
be fine."  He'd forgotten what she was and what she'd experienced.

The petite woman with the wildly curly brunette hair lit up as they
entered.  "Nick!  Where have you been?"  The light flickered a bit
when she saw Maura bringing up the rear.

"Nat, this is Maura Logue."  As Maura extended her hand, Natalie
pulled off a rubber glove to shake it.

"Natalie Lambert.  I've heard of you already."  

Natalie cast a meaningful glance at Nick.  "Schanke came by to say
hello."

He shook his head wearily.  "And a whole lot more, I'm sure."

Ignoring this, she spoke to Maura.  "So what brings you to Toronto? 
Schanke said you work at Raven.  Rough trade for a newcomer."

Maura shrugged.  "I manage security.  If you've done it in Boston
and Vancouver like I have, nothing much else seems all that rough."

Natalie's eyebrows rose.  "A bouncer.  Nick, are you expecting
trouble at your place?"

Maura could see things were not going to warm up quickly.  "I'm not
a 'bouncer', Dr. Lambert.  I hire and manage them, and work out
logistics for security and safety, evacuation in case of emergency,
things like that."

"Still, you don't find Raven a little out of the ordinary?"  

Maura could tell that Natalie figured she knew nothing about the
true nature of the place or its clientele.  Or Nick.

"Not in my experience." she answered truthfully, and changed the
subject.  "Nick tells me you got to know each other through work. 
Did you meet on a case?"

Nick smiled archly, indicating the autopsy table.  "We met on a
slab.  At least that's where I was."  Natalie's eyes widened in
shock.  "She knows, Nat.  She knows about all of it."

Natalie was completely taken aback.  She'd never heard of this
woman, and though she suspected they'd only just recently met it was
obvious there was some connection between her and Nick. "Then she's,"
then turning to Maura, "you're..."

"No, I'm not.  But I have what could be termed an 'ancillary
condition'."  As she told her story, Natalie forgot her suspicions
and was drawn into the puzzle as she had been drawn into Nick's.  At
least to her it was a puzzle, with an eventual solution.   Maura saw
her own situation, and Nick's,  as a casual if difficult fact of
existence.

"Do you mind if I take a blood sample?" she asked Maura.  "I'd like
to look into this."  There might be some link between this and Nick's
condition, and she wondered if there were mutual answers to be found.

"No problem."  Maura pulled up her sleeve as Natalie prepared a
needle.

"I'm still pretty good with live patients," she tried to reassure
Maura, who tipped her head back and laughed.  Nick shut his eyes for
just a second, luxuriating in it.  Natalie saw.

"Are you kidding?" Maura inquired,  "a needle is a welcome change."

Natalie's clinical curiosity was again displaced by a curt demeanor.
"Yes, well, the company we keep, and all that."

"Come on, Nat," Nick objected.  "She's told you the reasons."

"Right, Nick.  Safety.  Familiarity.  Understanding.  But tell me,"
she turned on Maura again, "why would a living breathing vampire
addiction attach herself to a vampire except to addict him?  To
control him?"

Maura stood abruptly. She'd been willing to let Natalie's catty
comments slide at first, but was finding herself too impatient to
wait for Nick's friend to get educated.  He hadn't told her the
nature of their relationship and she didn't much care.  "You call
what I've lived with 'control'?  You think a hooker controls her
pimp?  You think a gang rape victim 'controls' her rapists?  This is
not my fault, Doctor.  My veins flow with fucking vampire
aphrodisiac, and I give off my own pheromone to advertise it.  All of
it against my will.  Now Janette just introduced me to Nick here last
night,"

Natalie cut her off as she turned to Nick.  "Janette!  What a
surprise.  It was only a matter of time before she fixed you up with
a playmate.  What luck she comes with her own recreational drug
supply."

"That's enough Nat."  Nick warned, offended, and took Maura's arm to
leave.  She shook him off.

"No, goddammit.  You're not my keeper!"  She whirled on Natalie.  "I
met Nick last night.  We talked, and he offered me a place to hide
out during high season.  Yeah, Janette definitely had something in
mind pretty much like you said.  She's all about 'control', after
all.  But Nick took me in, gave me a safe place until I can figure
out what to do.  I'm not after anything from him, not even his armed
protection.  No secret, no excuses, I would give up anything to any
one of his kind for the opportunity to be used by one and only one
instead of being handed around like an open bottle, or attacked at
will and left for dead.  Until next time.  And I have done it,
plenty, or I wouldn't still be alive if you call this living.  In
fact, since you're so interested, I tried to make the same bargain
with him," she pointed at Nick standing in the doorway, "and he said
no.  He said I never have to give myself up like that again because
he won't use me and he won't sell me out.  And it's gonna take a
while, but I plan to believe him as soon as I can.  And you, madame
Doctor, can take your superior scientific attitude and shove it."

She pushed past Nick, leaving him and Natalie to regard each other
with mutual disappointment for entirely different reasons.  "She's
telling the truth, Nat.  It's the only way she's been able to
survive."

"Until you came along."  Her voice was cold, hard-edged. 

He took a step into the lab.  "You want me to be 'mortal', to become
'human'," he reminded her in a low, tight voice, "well biology is
only part of the formula."  He turned on his heel and went after
Maura.  

He found her in the car with the doors locked, fuming.  "Some jerk
was sniffing around," she told him when he used his key to get in. 

"Must be that red hair," he tried to tease her out of it.

"Lucky me," she snapped, turning to nail him with an evil glare that
said "don't even try".  "I get the assholes for both reasons."

Nick tried to figure out how to characterize what just happened. 
"Natalie can be... protective where I'm concerned.  We've been
friends for some time."

"Protective," Maura observed acidly, "try 'proprietary'.  She thinks
she has the lock on who you are and how to 'cure' you and she thinks
I'm threatening her experiment.  She's trying to turn the beast back
into a prince, and I might just get in the way of the payoff."

"It's not like that with us."  He said it to everyone, it seemed. 
For him, at least, it was true.

"Tell her that."  She cast an edgy look around.  "Look, let's get
some groceries and get back to your place before we have to beat the
junkies off with a tire iron."

Nick drove them to Safeway and stuck close by her.  It was an odd
hour to shop, a bit late for after work and early for the night owls.
He accompanied Maura with the air of someone visiting a museum.  She
made a beeline for the produce section, Nick trailing after.  As she
worked her way through carrots, pea pods, apples and pears, hefting
and fingering each vegetable and fruit against an obvious inner
meter, Nick realized something.

"You don't mean to tell me you're," he began.

"A vegetarian?" she finished brightly, brandishing a peach as if it
were a shot put.  "How the hell could you imagine anything else, with
what I've been through?"

"So you've developed empathy with animals used for food," he
observed sagely, or so he thought.  

She approached and spoke so only he could hear, "I am an animal used
for food.  But that's not really it.  It's not empathy, it's nausea. 
Anything connected with consuming flesh or blood at this point just
creeps me out too much.  Well I'm glad you find that amusing, M.
Sommelier du Sang."  Nick was laughing.

"I don't know, it's just rich.  You live among," he whispered the
word, "vampires, but you're a vegetarian?"

"Think of me as health food," she smirked, casting a longing look at
the garlic bin that Nick gave wide berth to.

"Uh-uh.  No garlic."

"But I love garlic," she whined, reaching like a frustrated child
for a bulb of the elephant variety as Nick dragged her away.

"You'll get over it."

"Life as we know it isn't possible without garlic," she continued to
protest as he led her to the checkout.

"Life as who knows it?"  He pulled out his wallet.

"Wrong," she told him, pushing his hand back toward his pocket,
"you're not gonna eat any of this stuff.  I'm staying with you, but
I'm paying for the groceries."  She paused and added mischievously,
"Except maybe the wine.  Hey," she asked the young guy checking out,
"You got any Chateau Moo du Pape?"  The kid looked confused and was
about to call the manager as Nick intervened.

"Pay no attention to her, she's late for her medication," he told
the kid as he hustled her to the door.

"Hey, I didn't get my change!" she complained.

"He just earned it," and he opened the massive trunk so she could
put her bags in, but the kid chased them out to the parking lot and
handed the money to Nick as Maura was getting in the caddy.

"Hey mister, your wife forgot her change."

Nick took it and thanked him, then handed it to Maura who sighed,
"Swell.  Now I'm the bride of Dracula."

As he got behind the wheel he told her dismissively, "Vlad was a
piker."  She cracked up, and he looked very pleased with himself.

Back in Nick's kitchen, Maura found gorgeous china and silver
stacked in the cabinets and drawers as if they were Corelle and
Farberware.  She held a Limoges dinner plate up to the light, the
shadow of her hand showing through it.

"I don't think I want to know where this came from," she murmured.

"The court of Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV," Nick announced casually

"Yeah, right.  How come I keep hearing about you guys hanging with
Copernicus, and Shakespeare, and now Marie Antoinette?  How come I
never yet met a vampire who just shoveled shit at the village cow
barn?  You're all just like mortals who go in for the 'past lives'
crap, everyone's a celebrity.  Aside from some dietary differences
and specialized 'allergies' you really aren't all that different.  A
poser is a poser, mortal or im."  

Nick was regarding her with a most curious smile.

"What?" she insisted.  "You know I'm telling the truth."

"No, it's not that.  It's just that you talk about these things,
about your life with and knowledge of creatures that most people
either hate or fear or simply don't believe in, as if it's the most
natural thing in the world."

"Isn't it?"

He considered this for a moment, and had to admit she was probably
right.  "I suppose it is, at that.  For us.  I'm just not used to
hearing it that way."  He reached into a drawer and took out the
knife he somehow knew she was looking for.

"More things in heaven and earth Horatio," she reminded him.

"If I'm not careful I might learn something from you," he
admonished, standing too close.  The rush of fragrance, of vampire
pheromone, nearly staggered him as his eyes flashed gold.  "Whatever
you do," he muttered a little too gutturally as he handed her the
knife handle-first, "don't cut yourself."  He retreated hastily to
the living room as she prepared her fruit salad, taking a glass of
blood with him.

"Oh baby, you have outdone yourself," she congratulated as she
tossed the diced white peaches and pears in the mixture of yoghurt,
honey, and nutmeg.  Nick appeared at her side.  

"How would you know?"

"I was talking about me.  This is heaven in a bowl," she dipped her
index finger and held it before him.  "Taste.  Come on, you are
allowed to taste."  

He knew she wasn't playing any game with him.  She simply was
incapable of questioning any of this as out of the ordinary.  And she
was right.  Tasting wasn't consuming, and wouldn't do him any harm. 
He took her wrist in a light grip, and his eyes never leaving hers,
slipped the tip of her finger between his lips.  She was right about
that, too.  Heaven, only this time on warm flesh.  It had been so
long since he'd bothered, even though he could, he'd been both a
gourmand and a glutton in his native France before... had loved the
smell and taste and texture of all manner of foods.  It was his
sensualism in general that got him in trouble in the first place,
wasn't it?

Maura felt the cool velvety tongue again as Nick drew her finger
first in and then out of his slightly open mouth, felt the soft grip
of cool lips as he held onto the yoghurt.  The lightest scrape of
teeth.  Normal teeth, for now.

"Sweet," he barely whispered, or did she only hear him think it?  He
released her hand and returned to the sofa.

After eating in solitude while Nick read up some case notes, she
rummaged through his DVD collection, finding a copy of "The Cabinet
of Dr. Caligari."  

"Can we watch this?" she asked.  He saw the title and smiled.

"Sure.  It's been awhile since I've seen it."

"Lemme guess.  You were assistant director."

"Nah.  I was in Russia, shoveling shit for the Revolution."  

"Ha, ha," she slipped the disk in the machine and found the right
remote, "ha."  Then flopped on the sofa next to him.  A little too
close, apparently, because he slid to the far end.

"Don't worry," she purred in a dead-on imitation of Janette, "I
won't bite."

"It's not you I'm worried about.  If you want popcorn, there's
microwave stuff in the kitchen cabinet."

"Maybe later."  She settled into the opposite corner of the
impossibly cushy sofa, and made herself comfortable.  "Where's the
lights?" she asked.  Nick reached for yet another remote and killed
them, so they were lit only by the silvery glow of the black-and-
white pictures flickering on the screen.

"I hope you're not a commentator," she confessed as the opening
credits ran.  

"Maybe later."

When the movie had ended and Nick faded the lights up a bit, he
noticed Maura looking a little disoriented.

"What is it?  You feeling all right?"

She looked at him as if struggling to process some foreign concept. 
"It's the new moon."

"Uh-huh."  He tried not to let on he noticed the difference, and how
hard it was to keep his distance.

"It's the new moon and I'm sitting with someone I like, someone I
trust, watching a movie.  I'm not  running and knowing I won't get
away, hiding in a dark corner, begging for mercy, and never escaping.
I'm here, and I'm not terrified or wounded."

Nick smiled gently at her.  "It's what you deserve, what anyone
deserves."

She looked around, wonderingly.  "Safe," she murmured.

"Safe," Nick echoed.  And, lightening the mood, "Safe to go to bed,
if you're tired.  And I think you are."

She had to agree, not bothering to suppress an extravagant yawn. 
She said goodnight headed for the stairs, but stopped and returned to
the sofa where she knelt in front of Nick, hands on his knees.

"Thank you," she told him earnestly, and looked at him very hard so
he'd know what she meant.  Just in case, she continued, "You think
you know what you're doing here, but you don't.  Even I can't explain
how I feel right now, it's that new to me.  You think you're just
doing the right thing, helping out someone in trouble, but it's so
much more than that."

Her proximity was making Nick supremely uncomfortable as he engaged
in the vampire version of battling against a raging hard-on.  He
wanted her more than any mortal he had ever had, or wished he had. 
In a moment she sensed it, and took her hands off of him.

"Sorry.  I don't want to make this more difficult for you."

The gentle smile again.  "Don't worry.  It's not more difficult than
I allow it to be.  Go on to bed.  I'll sleep down here tonight."  

He didn't have to tell her why.  Her body was pumping out vampire
pheromone like crazy and the only defense was distance.  She wanted
badly to give him a hug, a kiss goodnight, something to express what
an enormous shift he'd made in her life, but she withdrew and,
wishing him goodnight again, went upstairs to get ready for bed.

The shadow over shoulder didn't frighten her, nor the glowing golden
eyes she turned to see gazing at her as she brushed her hair.  His
hand was outstretched, not quite touching, and she felt that he
wanted her to push him away.  She was convinced that if she told him
to go he would find a way to comply.  But she didn't want him to go.

"It's okay, Nicolas de Brabant," she told him quietly.  "It's okay
you're here.  You brought me here, and you belong here."  

She put down her brush and turned to face him again.  For once in
her haunted life it didn't feel like endless some variation on an
inescapable theme.  The look on his face was more desire than hunger,
curiosity and need, not power.  He was drawn to her as others were,
but it was almost as much against his will as it had always been
against hers.  When he opened his mouth, barely, to speak she could
see the fangs.  

"I'm sorry," he breathed, his voice a deep echo, "I'm weaker than I
thought."

"You're not anything you shouldn't be."

The glow in his eyes faded as a shadow of immeasurable sadness
crossed his face.  

"Don't," she took a step closer, and the glow returned, his breath
modulating to a guttural purr.  "It's okay, really.  I want to know
too."  She took one of his cold hands and held it in both her own,
blew on it as if she could warm him from outside, knowing she
couldn't.  His fingers closed on hers, gentle but humming with
tension.

"I wanna know," she confessed, "what's it like to share instead of
being robbed, and maybe held for once, just held, instead of
subdued."  She touched his face, and he turned his open mouth to rub
his teeth against her palm. "Just this once, okay? Just this once." 
She said it as if it were her idea alone. 

When she kissed him he pulled her hard against him and seized the
back of her head with a snarl to hold her mouth to his.  Cool,
velvety tongue.  It was an experiment, she lied to herself, and his
strength didn't frighten her any more than the growling.  The truth
was this was the only semblance of passion she knew, an expression of
connection that, though loveless, made human lovemaking seem childish
and superficial.   There had been a few who were less than violent,
though far less than tender, and she'd taken what little solace there
was to be had in close contact even as she was being used as a drug
of choice.  She knew she was likely expecting way too much from this
Nick, but figured he might at least be more careful than most.   If
in the end there was a bargain to be struck, better with one who was
given to self-reproach; it might be safer.

Nick had fought this, and in what was left of his logical brain he
still did.  He was a gentle 'man' in everyday terms but had never
been a gentle vampire.  He had seized, and immobilized, and drawn dry
like his teacher, even when fooling himself by playing at romance. 
Maura was right, he wanted to know, was prized blood a myth, or a
relief, or another road to hell.  It had been so long since he had
known mortal blood he feared what it might do to him, especially her
blood, especially now.  What he might do to her.  That fear only
fueled him.

It was Maura who propelled them to the bed, pushed Nick down on his
back and lay atop him, pulled open his collar so she could kiss his
throat where no pulse beat.  Abruptly he grabbed her shoulders and
held her away from him, eyes nearly blue again as he gained control
of himself one last time.  

"You want this..." he both asked and stated as a fact.  She nodded.

"I wanna know," she whispered.   "consent, I want to know consent…"

"Then we'll both know," he answered and rolled her to her back,
leaning over, no longer trying to disguise the rumbling growls that
escaped him.  And she shut her eyes to feel him, covering her face
and neck with kisses, giving her no room to respond.  Kisses.  She
had never known them from the others, even the kinder ones, no kisses
but the unavoidable lip-touch at the first bite.  She'd forgotten
what they felt like, if she ever really knew.

Any doubts Nick had were removed as she gripped him to pull him
closer.  "Show me," she muttered, "show me it's different now," and
he ran his open mouth over and over, up and down the side of her
neck, teasing her, teasing himself, holding the curiosity in
anticipation, then reared back with a hiss and fell into her like a
dream.

And the last lucid thought that flashed in her mind was, It doesn't
hurt... but it always hurts... and then her head dropped against his
arm as she breathed through half opened lips, "oh."  Revelation.

Flowers and honey, the first human blood he he'd had in a hundred
years, and it was nothing like he remembered.  It used to taste
metallic-sharp, exciting, it drove his madness higher until it was
sated.  This was... honey and flowers.  She tasted as she smelled,
sweet, rich beyond imagining.  And, after barely a taste, he was
drawn into a whirlpool of color and an intoxication beyond anything
he'd ever felt.  He'd had opium addicts, and absinthe drinkers,
people whose blood was laced with hallucinogens and tainted with
narcotics, and he'd felt their effects as he fed on them.  This was
different, this was floating weightless yet rushing beyond speed,
instead of firing an insane passion it seemed to spin it into
euphoria.  No shame, no sin, no regret. And he knew her now, knew her
completely, but unlike the others it didn't come to him in a frenzied
rush of tumbling images.  He felt it all, pain, shame, relentless
determination to survive, saw every kindness and evil done and knew
where it damaged and strengthened her.  It came all at once and
separately, and it came in an easy progress of time and sense he
could never explain or understand. She didn't feed any hunger he'd
known in 800 years, but satisfied an inexpressible craving that had
never been apparent until it was being relieved.  Finally, he could
be gentle. The rough growling in his throat smoothed to a rumble,
then a hum, his mouth working softly against her skin like an infant
nursing. 

Light, her head was filled with light, the darkness that had always
swallowed her with the others wasn't dispelled so much as negated. 
Every nerve was calmed and fired simultaneously, every need triggered
and fulfilled, she spun in aching slowness through a thick sea of
color and sensation that made any physical pleasure she'd known pale
in comparison.  No fear, no pain, no regret.  She felt herself
growing farther away and in a very distant sense knew she was fading.
She wasn't frightened.  If after all the darkness and pain her own
body had brought her she was to die now, suffused in light and
pleasure with a gentle humming in her ears and an embrace that would
not leave her bruised, it would be a welcome end.

Some final remnant of Nick's awareness told him to stop.  He was not
feeding his typical hunger, after all, there was no survival
imperative or blood madness that kept him blind until his victim was
near death.  There was just enough left to remind him to be careful,
to stop now, enough.  With near physical pain he did stop, withdrew
his fangs and pressed a tongue-tip into each tiny wound to stanch the
flow of blood.  The marks would fade in hours.  He felt drugged but
not weakened, still in the grip of a sensation he couldn't identify. 
It was as if he had consumed joy.  Every dark corner had been lit,
and shown to be empty of demons.  Instinctively he knew the feeling
would fade, but for now he was immersed in a state he had never known
even in his before-life: peace.  He rested his head against Maura's
shoulder, and felt the tremble begin deep inside of her.

Cold.  She felt it then, a core-deep cold that somehow didn't ache
like the other times, spreading from her bones and seizing her with
shaking.  She felt a fiery heat outside of her.  Nick, Nick was
holding her close against him and sharing the blood-warmth she had
given him.  She was too weak to hold onto him, but he pulled the
quilt around them and trapped his heat that went beyond any of the
times he had drained bottle after bottle.  Her head still fallen back
on his cradling arm, she looked at him through half-opened eyes,
seeing the gold in his cross over slowly to blue.  He was smiling, a
trace of her blood on his lips.  

"Sweet," he pressed into her hair and cheek in a slurred whisper,
"sweet."  His lips burned her.  She didn't care.  He was keeping her
warm instead of leaving her alone, and so very cold.  Sharing instead
of taking, giving some back of what she'd just given to him.  Her
trembling faded and she was lulled to sleep by his gentle grip and
the quiet sound of his voice.  "Sweet."

Somewhere in the next hours Maura separated from Nick as his body
temperature cooled.  She had recovered sufficiently from her blood
loss (another "gift" was her body's ability to replenish itself
fairly quickly if things didn't go too far) to regain some of her own
body heat, and rolled away to settle into her own separate sleep.  He
wouldn't wake, wouldn't even stir in the barest consciousness, until
well after sunrise.  She knew his kind didn't need the same kind of
restorative sleep as mortals did, it was more of a metabolic
recovery, often not long after feeding.    Sometimes those she knew
rested only two or three hours, but their bodies shut down so
completely it was the one time they were, truly, death-like.  Maura
had also learned that there was nothing magical about the hours that
the sun was up, as long as its light could be avoided.  She had even
known one vampire who kept near-mortal hours, running a computer
business from the bricked-up apartment building he'd purchased with
the millions he'd accumulated in centuries of life.  Because of his
work and relationships with mortals Nick's habits tended to overlap
the traditional day/night divide.

She woke slowly, easily, opening an eye to see only the tiniest
crack in the blackness, where a harmless sliver of light leaked in at
the corner of the blinds.  The clock read ten-thirty.  A short
night's rest for most, but she had become accustomed to furtive
sleep, wakened by sudden noises that may or may not have been
harmless night sounds.  This time, as the night before, she'd slept
soundly.  It felt like ten hours to her.  When she climbed out of bed
and lit the bedside candle she noticed the pinkish stains scattered
on her t shirt.  Nick's blood-tinted sweat.  She peeled off the shirt
and tossed it aside as she reached for his lush silk kimono where it
was flung carelessly at the foot of the bed.  Everything she found
here felt so good against her skin... well he'd said at one moment or
other that he'd been a sensualist when he was a mortal.  This must be
hangover, she figured.  Vampire senses were, after all,  more keenly
sensitive than a mortal's.  

She still felt a little dizzy, a little lazy.  It was actually
rather enjoyable, like the prolonged languor before waking.  Except
she was awake.  And desperately thirsty.  She knew she'd left apple
juice in the fridge, so she went downstairs to the kitchen to get
some.

The voices coming from the living room didn't register until she'd
padded down the stairs to the living room calling, "Nick?  Didn't get
enough of German Expressionism last night?"

She never expected to find Natalie, obviously just arrived, showing
him what looked like a medical file.  After yesterday's bad beginning
she didn't expect to see her here for some time to come.

"Hi, Natalie.  Look, I want to apologize for my nasty outburst
yesterday," she figured it was a good way to start, and really didn't
think much about how she was dressed or where she'd come from.  It
was such an oft-repeated morning after scene she didn't think twice
about the new context.

"Oh, that's," Natalie began, then shut up abruptly when she turned
her head to face Maura.  It wasn't that she didn't know the woman was
staying here, in fact she'd decided that she'd been silly.  Nick
forged relationships differently than mortals, and this certainly was
a different sort of mortal anyway.  But there she was, obviously
naked under Nick's robe, shiny red hair askew, smiling lazily if
earnestly, the kimono wrapped carelessly and wide open at the neck. 
The neck.  The marks that hadn't quite completely faded, surrounded
by a round red bruise where he'd tried so hard to be subtle and
failed so miserably.  Even Nick seemed taken aback to see it. 
"Vampire hickies" Maura had always called them in the past; they
could persist well after the bites healed.

Natalie looked from Maura to Nick, then back to Maura.  "Well I see
you two have gotten better acquainted," she shut the folder with an
unsatisfying-sounding slap and turned to leave in a hurry.  "I
brought the blood test results by," she said tightly, "I'm sure any
doctor could help you look them over."  She was at the door and
sliding it open before Nick could react.  He looked sharply at Maura,
who could do nothing but shrug, and ran after Natalie as she fled.

'Nat, come on, don't run off like this." He flew down the stairs and
caught up with her as she came out of the freight elevator.  She
confronted him angrily.

"It looks like you're the one who's running off, away from
everything we've been trying to do.  For heaven's sake Nick, I don't
blame her for finding shelter with someone she knows instinctively
won't hurt her, for entering into the only arrangement she knows. 
But you," she broke off, struggling for words. 

"You talk like I'm some kind of vile seducer.  Or maybe you think
Maura is.  Nobody's taking advantage here, no matter what you think. 
And I'm not running off from what we've been trying to accomplish. 
I've come a long way, we both know that."

Natalie's reflexive rage seemed to be cooling, but her displeasure
was not.  "And you're thinking maybe it's far enough, aren't you?  I
know you, Nick, you're like a drunk who wants to be free of the
hangovers but can't face the idea of never having another drink. It's
why you keep the bottles, even as you half-heartedly try the things I
come up with.  You just can't let it go, no matter how much you think
you want to be mortal.  And now you have a new reason."

Much of what she said was true, but not all of it.  "Nat, you can't
understand what's happening here," but he was powerless to express it
to her, because neither did he.  He'd never experienced a more
powerful joining, not with Janette, not with anyone.  Though it
appeared outwardly to be the start of yet another of Maura's
protector/dependent arrangements, he knew they were meeting as equals.

"No, Nick, I can't.  I'm sorry, but I can't.  I'm gonna need a while
to think about this."  She turned and opened the front door.  Nick
stepped back reflexively as sunlight poured in just over the
threshold.

"Nat, please, this can't be worth throwing our friendship away."

She didn't look at him as she left.  "We're both going to have to
figure out what it's worth, because right now I just don't know."

He stood watching as she drove away.  When he returned to the loft
Maura was standing in the doorway clutching his robe around her as if
for protection.  It was all about protection, wasn't it?  Protection
from danger, protection from life.  Protection from such a dangerous
and lonely life that neither one of them had ever suspected it could
be otherwise.  She went inside as she saw him approach.  When he slid
the door shut she was in the kitchen washing a wine glass.  She
didn't look at him as he entered.

"I'm sorry.  That was stupid, I should have been more careful."

"She would have found out anyway.  We're friends, we have no secrets."

"I think maybe there are better ways to find out, though, than me
traipsing in like the Whore of Babylon."

He stepped in her way as she tried to leave the room.  "You're
nobody's whore."

"First time for everything."  She pushed past him and went upstairs
to get dressed.  When she returned to the living room she grabbed a
book randomly from Nick's collection, a history of mutinies. 
Rebellion, how appropriate.  She sat on the sofa all day, sullen,
reading silently.  What a fucking world, she finally found what might
be some escape from the hell she'd been living and even then
something was going wrong.  She indulged in some internal self-pity. 
Fucking vampires.  Let 'em all take a walk in the sun.

3

Maura had wanted to go out tonight, before Natalie came.  Fuck it,
she thought, she was going out dancing at Raven.  New moon be damned,
she'd be safer there than most anywhere else.  Vachon and Vargo would
watch out for her.  She ran up to the bedroom, ignoring Nick as he
looked up from his computer and followed her with his eyes.  He
wished he could convince her things would be okay, even if he didn't
know how they could make it happen.  

Maura slipped into tight black jeans and a tailored purple blouse
open to there, brushed out her hair and sprayed on a little Emeraude.
It didn't fight with her natural fragrance but seemed to mask it a
bit.  At least they had to get within a foot or two to pick her out. 
She grabbed her jacket and bag and took the stairs two at a time.  

"Gimme a lift, will you?"  Nick was standing at the window now,
staring out the open blinds at the stars.

"What?  Where do you plan to go?  Tonight, of all nights."

"I wanna go out.  I feel good, Nick, for the first time in I don't
know how long.  For once I don't feel like the blue plate special.  I
feel like a person.  And I don't know how long it'll last, so I don't
want to waste it, okay?  I wanna go dancing.  Do you know how long
it's been since I've really gone dancing?"

In spite of his concern, a smile crept over Nick's face.  She did
seem transformed after her sulk, eyes lit with a fire he hadn't
noticed since they'd met.  Then he was a bit ashamed, feeling rather
like some mortal man who believed his sexual prowess changed women's
lives.  "No, I don't think you've told me that."

"Probably since back when you were shoveling shit for the
Revolution, if I'd lived that long."  She whacked him with her purse.
"Come on, please??  I relieve you of all responsibility. I'll catch a
lift home.  You can come back here and brood over your fight with
Natalie if you want. "

"We didn't 'fight'," he corrected her.

"Well somebody did.  Maybe she was verbally shadow-boxing.  Come on,
you could use a real night out too.  When was the last time you
really had fun?  I mean you guys are allowed to have fun without
killing people, I've seen it happen."

He was tempted.  Something felt lightened in him since he'd taken
her and, like her, he didn't know how long it would last.

"Okay.  But don't expect me to dance."

"Yeah, right.  You are absolutely the first stuffy vampire I've met,
ever."

Janette seemed surprised to see Maura and Nick arrive through the
front entrance shortly after ten.

"Did you forget something last night, cherie?" she asked Maura
solicitously, casting a knowing look over them both.  Though no mark
remained on Maura's throat she could tell, be damned she could always
tell, Nick thought, just like Schanke said his mother could always
tell when he got laid as a teenager. 

"Non, merci, just came to play tourist," Maura bounded to the bar to
get a drink.

"Champagne, Vash, I'm celebrating!" she called to him over the music
and general noise.  He was surprised to see her again, and on the new
moon.  Even Vachon, the most mild-mannered of his circle, felt his
fangs tingle when she got within a few feet.

"Celebrating what?" he wanted to know, pulling out a split of
Janette's French reserve.

"The new moon!" she announced.  "I'm celebrating the new moon and
the fact that I'm not locked in a dark room tonight!  Is that good
enough?"

"Sure," Vachon popped the cork and poured a flute for Maura, handing
her both the flute and the small, flowered bottle.  "Whatever works."
He understood the significance of her being out tonight, but not why
she felt safe doing so.  He figured Nick probably was keeping an eye
on her.  She looked for Nick; he was talking with Janette in the
shadows.  She held her ever-present glass of Merlot and blood. 
Vampire boilermaker.  Maura drained her glass on the way across the
room, and the alcohol made her immediately giddy.  She hadn't eaten
in some time.  By the time she reached Janette and Nick she had to
hold the bar to steady herself.

"Take it easy with that, I don't want have to carry you to the car."  

She smiled and patted his arm.  "No worries."  She polished off the
rest right from the bottle, laughing as Janette's cool cracked with
the raising of an eyebrow.  Nick felt a rush of warmth in his gut at
the sound.

"Well come on, Nick, you gotta dance with the broad what you brung."

"Oh, no," he shook his head with a smile.  "I told you, no."

Janette was amused.  "But Nicolas, you were always the first to
search for a partner when the music started.  When did you change?"

"Yeah, Nick, you're 800 years old, you must know every dance in the
universe."  She took his arm and leaned against his side.  Together
with the perfume she wore, her scent triggered that whirl in his head
again.  And again, he was tired of fighting it.  He tightened an arm
around her waist, pulling her hard against him.  "All right," he
warned, "but don't complain if you can't keep up."

He was, as she'd guessed, an amazing dancer.  Well anyone who could
fly, she figured, must be pretty good on the dance floor too.  She
just never imagined how good.  He moved with a feral smoothness,
holding her eyes every minute with his own, smiling at her, laughing
at himself.  He led, he followed, he spun her and held her strongly
to gyrate with him as the d.j. played the dark, bass-heavy music the
club goers favored.  Finally the music calmed into a slowly pulsing
rhythm.  She took a step back, thinking he'd want to go back to the
corner, but his grip became firmer.  "Don't go," he told her quietly,
and turned her against him where he could press her cheek to his
shoulder.  She could feel him inhale deeply.  

"Nick, come on," she warned half-heartedly.  How long, how long, how
long, her mind kept repeating.  Since she'd had fun, since she'd been
genuinely attracted to someone, since being close meant enjoyment and
not desperation or pain?  

"Sshh," he whispered in her ear, "we're having fun, remember?"  But
when his lips grazed her neck she lifted her head from his shoulder. 
His eyes were glowing golden, mouth open a little, exposing the
barest fang tips.  He didn't even try to hide it.  She shot a glance
around the dim dance floor, bodies swaying and merging between the
dancing shafts of light and waves of mist.  He pursued her gaze, made
her look at him.  "We're among friends," he murmured so low she could
barely hear, "it's the new moon," he kissed her and her mouth opened
to him before she let herself think of anything else besides being
pressed full length against him, one of his hands massaging the small
of her back and the other spread across the back of her head, tipping
it to the side, holding her, holding her.  She wrapped her arms
around his waist, and they kissed wildly as if they were utterly
alone.  The song continued, the dance continued, nobody noticed. 
Except Janette.  Maura felt Nick's teeth here and there, her chin,
her lower lip, and finally the barest nip at her throat, more a kiss
than a drink, but he got the rush just the same, and stood still with
her tight in his arms to feel it flow through his body.

"Nick," she muttered against his shoulder, and he knew he was
holding her too tightly and let her go, but laid a finger on her lips.

"Sshh."  His fingertip traced her lower lip for just a second, and
his expression was troubled.  "Come on," and with an arm around her
shoulders he led her back to where Janette stood.

"Be careful, Nicolas," she told him.  "Leave some room for
reason..."  yet she reached out a hand to barely touch Maura's hair. 
"This one could be more dangerous than anyone, even as she tries not
to be."  Oddly, Maura sensed no threat in her words.  Just a warning
to an old friend who was more than a friend, as if even she hadn't
realized what her plan might lead to.  Nick didn't answer but stepped
in to give Janette a kiss.  "Good night."  They drove home in
silence, and Nick slept on the sofa.  When he woke some hours later
Maura was gone, leaving behind a single phrase written on his French
parchment stationery: "room for reason".

She'd pretended to go to bed when they got back even though it was
barely midnight, knowing he wouldn't come upstairs.  Not tonight. 
Once she knew he'd slipped into his death-sleep, she packed her
things.  She hadn't intended to leave a note because it seemed too
maudlin.  As she put her hand on the door, though, she realized that
given the situation he would assume she'd come to harm.  So she went
to his desk, wrote three words, and left it on the coffee table where
he'd find it when he woke.  She slid the door shut as quietly as she
could, but even that small noise betrayed her exit and reached Nick
deep in his slumber as if some filament between them had snapped. 
His eyes opened only seconds later.

At Raven, the night was winding down in the hour or two runup to
sunrise.  Even the mortals, and there were many, fancied themselves
creatures of the night.  The employed ones were denizens of the
graveyard shift, and all made a habit of shunning the daylight if
only for fashion.  Dungeon bunnies, they were called derisively by
the staff behind their backs. 

"Vash, where's the boss?" she asked.  He shot a look toward the door
of the office she'd recently vacated.

"In back, but she's 'entertaining', so can you wait a bit?"

She took a seat and sipped a Coke for the next fifteen minutes or
so.  A darkly handsome man, dazed,  very young, stumbled out of the
office.  Knowing Janette, as she did after only a week, she had him
six ways from Sunday.  Adding another few minutes for her to collect
herself, Maura approached the slightly open door and knocked. 
"Janette?  Can I come in?"

"Of course you may."  If she didn't know better she'd swear Janette
was drunk, but knew her intoxication was of an entirely different
sort.  She reserved her sexual/vampiric encounters for only the most
desirable young men, and they would stand in line if such a thing was
permitted.  It was not. Janette alone made the choices, and the
schedule.

She found her boss reclining on the Victorian fainting couch in the
corner, wrapped in a silk kimono remarkably like Nick's.  Or not so
remarkably.

"Back so soon, Maura?  I thought you and Nicolas had some things to
discuss."  She almost sounded genuine.

"Not so much.  Look, Janette, I don't want to leave you in the lurch
here but something's come up and I've gotta move on.  I just came to
collect my pay for the week.

"'Move on'?  But you've only just arrived."  Now Janette sat up and
arranged her robe.  She was obviously taking this seriously in spite
of the lingering effects of her 'afterglow'.

 "Look Janette, let's not play games.  We both know, we all know,
that you set Nick and me up to see what would happen.  Well you've
seen, and so have we.  And I may have traded my self respect for
protection in the past, but I won't trade anyone else's.  So I think
it's time this little experiment comes to an end.  I do appreciate
your help, Janette, even if I understand that philanthropy isn't your
immortal ambition."  

Now Janette stood and gestured to a chair.  "Please, Maura, don't be
hasty.  Sit down for a moment."  Maura remained standing, so Janette
sat down with a shrug.  "I admit, I did plan to introduce you to
Nicolas as a... diversion.  I also admit I had no idea what the
result would be.  You are a mystery to all of us, you can't blame me
for my little game of 'what-if'."  Stony silence.  "Or perhaps you
can."  She waved an elegant hand.  "But there is no reason to walk
away from our arrangement, and endanger yourself again.  I can help
you find safe accommodation here in Toronto.  Or we could convert
some of the empty rooms in this building into a flat for you.  Even
in this short time I have come to appreciate your services, and the
staff seem to like you.  Beyond their customary interest in mortals,
of course."  At this Maura had to smile.

"They do seem to treat me more as a colleague than a potential
meal."  A nod from Janette.  Unknown to Maura, she could sense Nick's
approach.  She saw no reason not to keep the woman here until he
could speak with her.  She had encountered so many loose ends in her
time, she found them distasteful when they could be avoided.  And
Nick did seem to care for her already.  But Maura was insistent.

"Thanks, but no thanks, Janette.  This was all just a bad idea, and
I'm not blaming you.  Who knows, we might have met anyway since he
comes here so often.  But really, now I'd just like to collect my pay
and hit the road."

Janette made a great show of slowly opening the antique safe, taking
out the likewise locked antique cashbox, and counting out a pile of
bills to hand to Maura.

"Janette this isn't what we agreed on.  It's way too much."

Janette shrugged philosophically.  "It's only money, cherie.  And
besides, you'll probably be needing some... what is that quaint
mortal term?... 'traveling cash'."

"Okay, then. Thanks, I mean it.  You're better than you think," and
Maura pocketed the money, exchanged kisses on the cheek with Janette
(who nearly swooned at her fragrance), and left the office.  

The club was empty now, strangely so, the strobes dark, low room
lights not quite dispelling the shadows.  Vash was gone from behind
the bar, and Vargo, who should have been cleaning up, was
inexplicably absent.  Oh well.  Goodbyes are commonplace for
vampires, they exchange so many over centuries.  She turned to leave
when she saw him.

Nick stood between the ornate pillars by the front door, her bags at
his feet.

"I don't need room for reason."

"Consider it a gift."  She stayed where she stood, afraid to move
closer.

"It isn't yours to give."

She didn't enjoy being the cause of the pained expression on his
face.  She knew it wasn't only because he was losing something he'd
never known he'd want.  He felt he'd let her down, that his immortal
passions had sold her out as thoroughly as others had done in her
life.  How could so many emotions burst forth in just a couple of
days?

"You're nothing you shouldn't be, Nick.  If I can believe it, you
can too."

He gestured emptily.  "Don't go.  Please.  At least accept Janette's
offer."  Vampire telepathy, he didn't insult her by pretending it
didn't exist.

"Why Nick?  Why is it so important?  Is it that my leaving would
interfere with your immortal absolution?  That's not mine to give
either."

"That's not it."

"What then?  I don't want to fuck up the balance you've managed
here, I don't want to destroy what friendships you have and trip you
up on the road to salvation.  You're the one good thing I've
encountered in this unholy existence, do you really think I want to
help you destroy yourself?"  She realized her final paradox was to
harm the only one who really helped her.  She wanted to stay,
forever, and continue whatever connection they'd found that might
keep them safe from their nightmares.  But she couldn't sell him out
the way she'd been sold out.  She wouldn't.  He was walking toward
her.  She backed away, her resolve faltering.

"I 'balance' between those who want me to become what I can never be
and others who insist I need to be who I was so long ago I can't
remember him, and don't want to.  The truth lies somewhere in the
middle, and so far nobody but you has seen it that way.  You want to
hate Janette for introducing us?  So do I.  It would have been so, so
easy just to keep on keeping on.  There's comfort in misery, if
you're used to it.  But now it's too late to go back.  Trust me, I've
tried."

"I don't want to destroy you."

At this he laughed quietly.  "After 800 years, do you really think
all it would take is a little honeysuckle and amber?  Nothing in you
can hurt me.  You make me laugh, you listen to my thoughts, you keep
my friends guessing.  And all in less than seventy-two hours.  
Aren't you curious what might happen next?"  He moved still closer,
reaching a hand to barely touch her cheek.  "You feed my dreams.  How
could that destroy me?  Don't go, Maura, please.  It doesn't have to
be this hard.  You don't have to save me, you don't have the power. 
Why put yourself at risk for nothing?  I'll give you a safe place,
and you can tell me vampire jokes."  When he got no response, he
leaned closer, "come on, don't be so dramatic.  Come home, we'll
watch a movie, I'll sleep downstairs."

She was frowning.  Home. He said it so casually, and it sounded
absolutely right. He wanted her to come home, and she wanted to go. 
Tables had turned somehow, he was approaching her angst with the
casual logic she'd shown him since they'd met.

"I'm not being dramatic," she protested.

"Prove it," he challenged.  "Because if you leave now everyone will
just keep believing their own gossip.  That you were out to use me
and left when I figured it out.  That I can't keep even a moderate
hold on my 'traditional' weaknesses.  Do you really want to concede
to Natalie?"  Maura raised an eyebrow.  How transparent.  He reached
an arm around her, whispered in her ear, "Come on.  I won't bite." 
She reared back to give him an evil look, and he conceded, "Well
maybe just now and then."

"You are a bastard, you know that?"

He kissed her cheek.  "I've had 800 years of practice.  You're
tired, let's go home.  I don't wanna go back alone."

"But you've always been there alone."  He hadn't told her, but she
knew anyway.

Now the joke left his voice.  "But I wasn't lonely until you left,
and after only two days.  Go figure."

Maura heaved a great weary sigh and gave up, dropped her head to
Nick's shoulder in defeat.  "Okay.  Okay.  But if you start to go
south, I'm gone.  Got it?"  

A kiss in her hair.  "Got it.  Which way is south?" he asked with
the hint of a grin, "so I can avoid it?"  She gave him a shove, and
went back to the office where Janette didn't have to listen to hear
every word.

"Welcome back.  You're on the schedule for tomorrow night.  There's
a new bouncer starting... a young mortal."  A rumor of a smile,
anticipating.

"For christsake Janette, when are you going to stop hiring with your
hormones?"

"That's why I have you, cherie.  Go now, Nicolas is waiting.  You
have put him through enough, I think, for one night."  And Maura
nodded.  Janette really did love him, didn't she?  What kind of bond
is forged in 800 years, she wondered.

When she caught up with Nick he was throwing her two bags into the
cavernous trunk of the Caddy.  They didn't speak on the drive back to
the loft, but Maura could feel Nick's fingers toying lightly with her
hair where his hand rested on the back of her seat.  When they got in
she dragged upstairs, exhausted from high emotions and no sleep to
speak of.  True to his word and over her protests that it wasn't
necessary, Nick left her to herself in the bedroom and, after
changing into the customary t shirt and sweatpants, went downstairs
to sleep on the sofa.  But not before hugging her one last time.

"I'd miss you terribly, you know.  Surprising what you get used to
so quickly."  She returned the embrace wearily and crawled into bed
as he shut the door part way behind him.

Some hours later Maura woke suddenly, and with a voracious thirst. 
Creeping quietly down the stairs, she was drawn to guttural sounds
from the living room.  Nick, in his deep slumber on the sofa, gnashed
and twisted in the throes of a nightmare.

The dreams had returned, triggered by his attraction and need.  The
city was populated by his past, by eight hundred years of those he
had betrayed, seduced, destroyed.  Every woman whose love was turned
upon her with brutal laughter, every man whose confidence was flung
in his face with a surge of pleasure only the power of cruelty could
have given him.  Lying in alleys, fallen by roadsides, left to rot
carelessly on beaches and in barns.  They all were there, disguised
as those people he passed by every day in his work and life.  They
stared sorrowfully, accusingly, bearing their scars and open wounds
as if they'd been inflicted moments ago instead of over the
centuries.  And suddenly as one they laughed at him, as he had at
them, laughed at his need to change that compelled him to do all he
could to save those he once would have killed.  They laughed because
they knew that no penance was sufficient.  And they laughed because
they knew that this time would be no different, that he would use
this woman as he had the others.  After a hundred years without
killing, this would shatter the balance they knew he really didn't
want.

Maura approached the sofa where Nick struggled with some inner
visions she couldn't imagine.  She dropped to her knees next to him,
uncertain how to wake him.  He slept so deeply in this state, she
didn't know if she could.  

"Nick," she whispered, then louder, "Nick."  She laid a hand on his
chest, the other touching his face.  As if some inner circuit had
been closed he sprang up and grabbed her brutally by the shoulders,
eyes afire, fangs exposed, face twisted in a fierce snarl.  He held
her so powerfully she couldn't even shrink back, but called to him,
"Nick!  It's me, it's Maura, Nick it's okay now, you're okay!"

His eyes darkened immediately, face numb with shock.  He just stared
for a moment, then seized her in such a tight embrace she could
hardly breathe, as if he were protecting her from someone other than
himself.  She wrapped her arms around him, holding his head to her
shoulder, pressing her face in his hair, "Nick, it's okay, just a
dream, it's okay. Can you tell me?"  He was shaking his head,
shuddering like a child frightened in the night.  His face was
pressed into her neck and the pulse he felt there didn't tempt him,
it seemed to offer some distant comfort.  Warmth, softness, he'd had
these things before but this time they existed in someone who was
unafraid and couldn't be fooled.  Safe, she was safe with him because
of who she was and not what he wanted.  Maybe that was the only way
it would work.  Suddenly Maura became for him everyone in the dream,
every deceived brutalized and betrayed mortal, every kindness repaid
with pain and death.  "I'm sorry," he muttered, then she felt
something wet on her skin and realized it wasn't her blood but his
tears, "I'm sorry I hurt you, I lied to you, I used, you," and Maura
was confused at first and thought he was talking about the past few
days.

"No, Nick, no, you didn't hurt me, you didn't lie to me, you aren't
using me, don't," the intensity of his desperation alarmed her.  He
was so sure of himself and so secure even in his sadness at times,
this wasn't anger or vampire passion or bitter rage.  It was grief,
and a remorse that usually was played out through this incarnation he
had engineered to make up for the past.  It seemed that that the
guilt he carried every day was rushing out, released by a bad dream. 
She climbed onto the sofa, still locked in his arms and holding him
tightly as she could, "Nick, it's okay, it's all right, you're nobody
you shouldn't be, not anymore."  But nothing seemed to soothe him as
he'd been able to soothe her, and she knew his torment was so much
older and deeper than hers that maybe nothing would reach it.  "I'm
sorry, I'm sorry," he repeated like a mantra until she understood it
wasn't her, it was everyone.  Centuries of the evil he'd done, put on
a shelf but never redeemed even by his best intentions.  Maura knew
she'd triggered this storm somehow.  He was afraid of going back, he
wanted her here but was afraid what he'd discovered would revive what
he'd been.  She managed to pull his head from her, to take his face
in her hands and force him to look in her eyes.  Deeper than she'd
ever seen, there was light flickering, but it wasn't the blood fire
this time, it was another sort of struggle.  "Nicolas, listen to me,
listen, you won't go back.  I won't let you.  You know what I am, you
know you can't control me, I'm here of my own will and I won't let
you go back, okay?  If it's me, I'll leave first, I promise.  You're
safe, I'll help keep you safe.  I'm not afraid of you.  You can't
hurt me and I won't let you hurt yourself."

"I'm sorry," he whispered again and she said the only words she knew
might reach him even if they didn't make sense to her.  "I forgive
you, are you listening Nicolas de Brabant?  I forgive you, for all of
us, for all of them, you aren't who you were.  Oh, please, Nick,
listen to me!"  She even shook him a little, gripping with her hands
in his hair.  And, suddenly, he was still.  His hold on her softened,
some of the torment left his expression.  He looked as if just now he
recognized her, as if he were coming out of hypnosis.  He took a deep
breath, released it slowly.

"I'm," he began. "Don't say it, okay?  Don't.  Just tell me you're
okay."

Nick nodded a little sheepishly.  "Yeah, I think so."  He ran a hand
through her messed-up hair.  "Thanks for not running away."

Maura shook her head a little and smiled.  "Not with a grip like
yours, man.  I couldn't have blasted away."  She rested her forehead
against his and sighed with relief.  "We gotta do something about
these mood swings, you know?"  She meant both of them.  He laughed
shakily and let her go, sitting back against the arm of the sofa.

"I don't know if there's a psychiatrist qualified to deal with our
'issues', Maura."  

"I think we both need some sleep.  I don't know about you but I
don't think I've hit REM in the past day or so."  She frowned a bit
as she pulled back and stood up.  "You don't have to stay down here
anymore.  New moon is past by now, look," and she opened the blinds
to reveal the barest sliver of silver crescent low in the sky.  "I'm
safe now.  For both of us."  He reached a cool hand to touch hers and
brought it near his face.

"But you still smell sweet."  He kissed her fingers lightly.  "I'll
be up in a minute."  

Maura was nearly out, but she felt something shift in the bed.  He
was there, as promised.  He must have drunk quite a bit because he
was throwing off considerable heat.  He slid right over to her,
reached his arm across to pull her around to face him.  "Let me keep
the bad dreams away for you."

"I won't have any more bad dreams, Nick.  I really don't think I
will.  I'm not going to fight anymore, or make excuses for whatever
is happening here.  I think if I manage not to fuck it up I might
just have something resembling a life before too long.  Or as close
as it's gonna get.  And if you can be as brave as I can try to be,
maybe you won't have to hold your hand in the sunlight to feel alive."

"But I'm not alive, not really."  Honesty, always.

"Yes you are.  I don't sleep with dead guys.  That would be sick." 
She made him smile, which felt much better.  "I'm so tired, Nick, I
don't wanna be all weird anymore.  I just wanna get on with things,
you know?"  She yawned.

"Yeah, I know.  C'mere," he pulled her into his arms.  "Just this
once, let me keep you warm instead of the other way around.  Okay?"

She settled against him.  He wasn't just warm, he was burning up. 
"Yeah, okay."  Where no heartbeat was she felt instead a stillness
not of death but of peace.  She asked idly, for no reason, "If you
can absorb so much of a mortal by feeding on them, what do you get
from that stuff in the bottles?"  Though she figured there must be a
difference between a live feed and a "preserved" one.  There was
silence for a moment, then a low "Moooo," in her ear, followed by a
laugh and a kiss.

"I sometimes get the urge to lie down when it's going to rain," he
told her seriously.  

"Sorry I asked."

"I'm not.  I love your questions, that you're not ever afraid to ask
anything at all.  I like having a reason to make stupid jokes.  I've
always been so serious, so elegant, so taking it all so gravely.  I
took me 800 years to realize that life doesn't have to be one long
film noir."

"Mm, good, I'm glad."  She felt drugged by his heat, and still
fairly stunned by the absence of fear.  She felt a quiet chuckle from
within him.  

"Sleep, Sweet, I'll shut up now."

That night she didn't pull away from him even when the chill
returned.  Her warmth was enough for both of them, just this once.

4

"Natalie, this is stupid.  I miss you, and you can't make me believe
you don't feel the same way.  We've been friends for a long time,
Maura's presence shouldn't change that."

"It's not her presence that bothers me, Nick."

He had come to the lab to force her to talk.  It had been two weeks
now, two weeks of silence or else curt communication, excruciatingly
professional, when work brought them together.  Everything about his
life had suddenly come to feel so natural to him that this made no
sense at all.  He wasn't naive enough to be unaware she was jealous,
but knew it was more complicated.  Natalie did believe Maura was a
catalyst for him to backslide, to be content with his life as a
vampire and to stop fighting against it.  Maybe she was right, he no
longer felt the panicky need to become mortal, no longer saw his
existence as a prison.  He had begun to consider that perhaps his
obsession with penance as just that, an obsession that kept him from
seeing and doing the good that was within his reach.  Maura welcomed
him, needed him and understood him just as he was.  He didn't
frighten or disappoint her, he wasn't a "could be" or a "used to be",
in her eyes he was an "is".  "Ain't nothing but is, Just Nick," she'd
told him one night when he was caught in musing about some past
perceived failure, and about how things might have been different if
only, if only.  He wanted to be patient with Natalie, to let her come
around of her own accord, but he was beginning to fear that
neglecting the situation might make it permanent and that was good
for nobody.

"I'm sorry if I haven't been able to be the kind of man you think
you want me to be, Nat.  It's not as if I haven't tried."

"But you're giving up."  She ignored his double meaning.  It wasn't
like him to be coy, but he had always been careful about not forcing
her hand.  So she wouldn't get angry, so he wouldn't have to face her
logic.  So he wouldn't have to hurt her in the final way they'd been
postponing.  And the truth was she would have given anything to be in
Maura's favored position.  Not her condition, of course, but the easy
link she'd made with Nick, the connection that happened almost by
default.  There was a mutual understanding that Natalie knew Nick
would never share with her.  She'd always wanted him to be like her, 
always felt that was the only way to cure him of his melancholy need
for distance.  Well now it appeared she had been wrong about that
too, because that need for distance had evaporated in a heartbeat
when Maura appeared in his life.  He wasn't afraid of her, of hurting
or disappointing her.  His only fear seemed to be that she might
leave.

Nick sighed.  "You're confusing giving up with acceptance.  Not
settling, not surrender.  Acceptance that maybe who I am and what I
do is all good enough the way it is, that I can find a way to make it
even better without having to get down to the molecular level.  I
don't quite believe it yet, but suddenly there is a possibility I
might.  I don't think that's such a bad thing."  He reached out for
Natalie's hand, and in spite of herself she grabbed on, but couldn't
look him in the eye as she asked,

"Do you think you love her?  In a way you couldn't love anyone
else?"  Like me, for instance.

"I don't think we have the vocabulary yet for what this is.  I just
know I'm the closest to being at peace that I've been for 800 years."

"Maybe it's her magic blood, have you thought of that?"

He squeezed her hand.  "I don't think you believe that.  Drugs make
you feel drugged, not secure."

The deepest part of the conversation went, as always, unspoken.  Why
not me, Natalie thought, why aren't I good enough?  It's not you,
Nick thought, it's not about shortcomings or what you might have done
differently.  It ain't nothing but is.  He hugged her tight, and she
hugged back fiercely.

"I'm sorry Nick, I know I should be glad you're finding a way to
stop hating yourself.  I just wish,"

"Ssh," he stepped back and let her go.  Not a warning, but an
acknowledgment that the words weren't necessary.  "You need to know
that Maura is disturbed by the notion of hurting our friendship. 
Personal connection is important to her, Nat, because she's never
really had it.  The last thing she wants to do is ruin it between
anyone else."  He looked so eager to convince her, so needing her to
understand, that she couldn't keep the cool attitude any longer.  

"Okay, Nick.  I'm sorry, I know I've made it harder on you than I
should have.  Maybe you're right, maybe I'm reading this all wrong. 
Maybe there's more than a little bit of ego involved here."  She
shook her head as if to clear it.  "Maybe I'd rather not go into that
right now."  She took a breath, sorting things out.  "So, if you
think maybe you're okay where you are, maybe we can look a little
deeper into where Maura is, maybe there's a way to help her that
doesn't involve hiding out."

His smile was genuinely affectionate.  "That would be great, though
I'm not sure where you'd start."

"Maybe on the 'molecular level'," she teased, then patted his arm. 
"I'll check some things out in her blood sample and let you know if I
need to see her again."

"You could call her yourself, you know.  She's not the one who bites."

"Ha, ha.  Now if we're through making up, I have work to do."

He lingered a little awkwardly.  "There is another thing I could use
some help with..."

"What's that?"

"Well, it's about body temperature.  I'm wondering if there's some
way I could boost it," he trailed off.

"You mean without feeding."

"Yeah, you know that as it is I only warm up when I've had something
to er, drink."

Natalie considered this as she sat on her lab stool.  "But I thought
you never had trouble with that, you're always pretty comfortable
wherever you are."  She knew his winter clothes and fur-lined gloves
were only affectations to avoid questions.  When he didn't elaborate,
she understood.  It was for Maura, not him.  Of course, who wanted to
get close to someone with the body temperature of a corpse?  She
really needed to stop being taken by surprise by any of this.  It was
obvious, had been obvious, how closely joined Nick had become to
Maura in just a few weeks.  Whether or not they had made love in the
mortal sense, there was certainly a physical connection.  She'd been
naive to think that Nick had been sleeping on the sofa.  She kept all
of this to herself, merely suggesting, "So maybe we can look into
finding a way to mimic the chemical reaction that happens when you
feed, so you can have it on demand so to speak."

"Or find a way to have it occur all the time, like mortals do."

"But you're not mortal, Nick.  You're asking for a global change in
physiology that probably isn't possible."

His smile was narrow, and a little smug.  "But that's what you've
always proposed, isn't it?  A global change to make me mortal.  Well
maybe we can work on just this one thing."

"Not for you, though."

"Nat, please.  Don't start this again."
 
They stared one another down for a moment, and Natalie sighed in
acceptance.  "Okay, okay.  I'm sorry.  But tell me something so maybe
I don't feel like such a possessive bitch, does Maura have any
problem with our friendship?  The fact we've been close for a while
and that I maybe can help you out of this?"

Nick looked almost apologetic.  "Not a bit.  In fact she has been
nagging me to come here, told me it wasn't fair for me to expect you
to make the first move when the trouble started on my side."

Natalie shook her head.  "I do wish it was easier to hate her.  But
you're right, I'm applying mortal rules to something there's not even
a definition for."  He was beginning to look hopeful, which was
interfering with her need to be self-righteous.

"She isn't threatened by our very real, very deep relationship,"
Nick told her, stepping closer to look in her eyes.  "So why should
you be threatened by hers and mine?  Neither is more important than
the other, or better, or more substantial.  They're just different."

On a logical level Natalie knew he was right.  Nothing that happened
between Nick and Maura could possibly change what was between Nick
and herself.  As for her emotions, she would have to work on them. 
Both knew she wished she were in Maura's place in Nick's life, but
they also knew what they had was important enough to hang onto.

"Okay, Nick," she told him finally, hoping not to let the trace of
sadness show through.  "More than anything I want you to be happy, to
have the best kind of life you can.  And if Maura helps make it that,
how could I be selfish enough not to want it?"  He hugged her tightly.

"Thank you, Nat, I was so afraid I'd lost you, lost us."

So there was her answer.  Between the two of them, he would have
lost her rather than Maura.  Not that the power to choose belonged to
any of them.  

Before long Maura was accepted, albeit with a bit of puzzlement, as
Nick's live-in girlfriend.  Though Schanke and Stonetree found the
rapidity of his transformation unusual, they and others who knew him
had to admit that Nick Knight's permanent state of philosophical
melancholy had been replaced by a lighter mood.  Not gregarious or
wildly upbeat, but more seemingly at ease with himself.  And if it
happened in just a few weeks, who were they to question it?  Only
Natalie knew the truth, which was perhaps not much different than the
general understanding.

The annual department awards dinner was coming up.  Schanke and Nick
were to receive an above-and-beyond type of award for their work on
breaking the case of a serial rapist/killer.  Such things made Nick
supremely uncomfortable, hating as he did, for obvious reasons, to be
the center of too much attention.  Even since his friend doctored the
computer personnel records, his air of mystery remained among his
colleagues and any more details they could glean from him were
eagerly consumed.  Now that the seemingly permanent single was known
to have a love life, the curiosity increased exponentially.

"So Nick, you bringing the reluctant Maura to the dinner on
Saturday?" Capt. Stonetree wanted to know.

"Afraid not, Captain, she has to work.  Filling in for the
doorkeeper at Raven. "  He left out the part where the doorkeeper had
flown - sans plane -  to the French Alps to sample the rich young
skiers.  "Besides, she's not much of a party animal."

Schanke appeared from nowhere and shook Nick by the shoulder.  "Come
on, man, even Myra is coming!  You can't get a special commendation
without the little woman there to cheer you on!"  As the only one
beside Natalie who had met Maura, Schanke fancied himself an insider.
Nick cringed a bit at "the little woman", knowing exactly how Maura
would respond to such a description.  

"Well if you promise to call her that to her face, I might give it a
shot," Nick suggested drily. "Though I'd suggest you wear your Kevlar
tux."  To be honest, he hadn't even told Maura about the award, not
wanting her to feel compelled to attend.  Who was he kidding?  She
hated big parties so much it wouldn't matter if he were to be
anointed king and sainted simultaneously.  She'd smile, say "Cool,
Just Nick," and curl up on the sofa to read for the evening after
duly advising him on attire.  Not that it had ever come up, but he
knew how it would play anyway.  And of course there was the certainty
that they would be scrutinized all evening, every word and look and
interaction with each other and anyone else.  On display they'd be,
all night, and the subject of avid discussion for days (weeks?)
thereafter.  He didn't even want to go himself.

Stonetree persisted, "Well just ask her, will you, you she might
surprise you.  And frankly I'd like to meet the woman that has chased
some of the noir from your attitude, detective.  I imagine she must
be something."

Nick smiled, involuntarily.  "She is that.  Okay, I'll ask her.  But
no promises.  And if she does say yes, Schanke," he turned on his
partner, "try to leave your spotlight at home, huh?"  Schanke raised
both hands in conciliation.

"Understood, partner.  I won't even speak to her."

"Right.  No promises."  Nick was beginning to realize that if he
showed up alone that speculation would be wilder than any encouraged
by Maura's attendance.

"No.  No-no-no-no." Maura barely looked up from the cash shuffling
rapidly through her fingers. She was counting money at the bar after
closing, double checking before she cashed it out.  For some foolish
reason Nick figured she'd be less likely to laugh in his face at
work.  Wrong.

"Schanke promised he'd behave," he added lamely.

"Fuck Schanke.  He couldn't behave if he was unconscious."  She
didn't dislike him exactly, he just got on her last nerve like a
sugared-up six year old.  She'd banded the bills and was heading for
the office but Nick cut her off and planted himself in front of her.

"Look, this is the lesser of several evils.  I can't not go and
accept the award with Schanke.  If I go alone, it's all I'll hear
about all night and the following week, where's the 'mystery woman',
why didn't she come, blah, blah, blah."

Maura listened in silence, regarding him with a cool stare.  "So far
all I'm hearing is your problem."

Nick threw up his hands in exasperation.  "Oh, well, excuse me then.
We'll just forget about how all the attention I'd almost succeeded in
calming down has focused like a laser since your arrival."

"Don't go there," she warned, trying to step around him, but he kept
step with her, leaning in to make his point.

"We're already there, or hadn't you noticed.  Come on, Maura, we'll
just make our appearance and beg an early evening, okay?  You can get
a headache or something."

"Why do I have to get a headache?" she demanded.  This time she
succeeded in dodging around Nick but he followed close by her ear.

"Just one night, and we can shut them up for awhile."

She stopped short and he walked into her.  "I suppose I could be
such a bitch that nobody would ever want to see me again..."

"Wouldn't that be a stretch," Nick muttered, though not low enough
for her to miss.  She whirled on him in outrage.

"You are so evil!" she hissed.  Before he could say it, she did too,
and it came out in unison, "Centuries of practice," and they both
started laughing.

"Oh, all right," Maura relented, "but only if you dance with me."

Nick hedged, remembering their last dance at Raven and not wanting
to even come close to repeating that performance.  "Well, I'm not
sure if they're going to have dancing."

"Deal's off," she declared and marched to the office door, where
Janette was just coming out to see where she was with the night's
door take.

"Oh all right, I'll dance your feet off, okay?" Nick was saying as
the door opened.

"Dancing again?  Why Nicolas, you've rediscovered your past,"
Janette drawled.

"Nick's invited me to the prom," Maura volunteered, and enjoyed the
shock on her employer's face.

"The department awards dinner," Nick corrected.  "If we show up
together it might dampen some of the gossip."

Janette raised an eyebrow and smiled wickedly, "Or raise some more,
if you're not careful.  When is this... fête?"

"Week from Saturday.  She can have the night off.  Have one of your
mascots do the door."  

Janette readily agreed, noting, "It's full moon that night.  You
should be quite safe to be seen in public."

But on the ride home that night Maura began to have second thoughts.
She hated being on display, and there was no doubt that the whole
point was for everyone to see her, more to the point to see her with
Nick.  

"I dunno," she said, "I hate being watched.  I've been watched all
my life.  I'm so sick of it."

"Well at least this time they'll just be watching, not stalking."

She sighed as he pulled up outside the loft entrance.  "Yeah, okay. 
You're right, the way to keep people from peeking in the windows is
to stand outside.  Or something."

Nick arrived at Raven to pick Maura up on the way to the dinner.  It
was all a bit mysterious, but he gathered that Janette had enlisted
her personal dressmaker to create something for Maura.  Janette was
behaving much out of her usual character, demonstrating an enthusiasm
for the event as a sort of "coming out party" for Maura.  The two had
developed a guarded fondness for one another, not the least because
of their cynical world views and weary instincts for survival.

"Now is your chance to engage mortals on their own home ground,"
Janette told Maura at her final dress fitting.  Maura had let Janette
have her way with the design, a modified gothic look in emerald green
silk velvet with a black brocade-embroidered front panel of burgundy
silk.  It featured a fitted bodice with deep décolletage, the skirt
falling on the bias from the hips. The sleeves were long and loose,
fitted at the wrist with a long cuff fastened by three buttons of
ruby crystal.  Maura had objected to the length of the skirt, which
Janette had originally intended should sweep the floor.

"For christsake, Janette, it's an awards dinner not the grand ball
of the Duke of Mantua!  Isn't it enough that it has a neckline
designed for a harlot?"  To be honest she loved the dress, even if it
made her feel a little vamp-chic.  Or perhaps because of it.  It was
agreed finally that the skirt would hang to cocktail length.

"I am a mortal," she now reminded Janette.  "And engage them in
what?  It's a party, not a battle of wits."

Janette looked put out.  "Now cherie, you mustn't spoil this for me.
I haven't had the chance to dress a lady for presentation, since,
since," she pondered for a moment.

"Since the last days of the Folies Bergère?" Maura prompted
absently, tugging at the bottom of the neckline that certainly
revealed enough cleavage for a can-can dancer.

"Well if you like I certainly wouldn't care if you bought one of
those dreadful commercial creations off the rack." In Janette's mouth
those three words sounded exactly like "from the dumpster".

Maura whirled as Yvonne, Janette's dressmaker, removed the last of
the basting tape from the rolled hem.  "Now Janette, I love it.  Just
ornate enough, without being vulgar."  Janette disappeared for a
moment into the private room off of her office, reappearing with a
black velvet box in hand.  "I think this will look splendid, you must
wear it," she insisted as she opened the box to display the contents.
Inside was a large full red rose, carved entirely from garnet and set
on an ornate silver chain with a small gold clasp set with more
garnets.  Too stunned to respond, Maura stood motionless as Janette
put the necklace on her and swept her hair aside to fasten the clasp.
She steered Maura to the mirror, then stood back to admire the effect
as she asked, "You have done a wondrous job, Yvonne.  What do you
think of our 'muscle' now?"  More than once she had suggested to
Maura that she perhaps might dress a little more elegantly.  Not that
she looked like a vagabond, of course, but no harm in indulging in a
little elegance now and then even in a bar.  Janette of course was
always a vision of fashion.

Yvonne, a petite blonde mortal, enthused "Why madame, she will turn
heads to be sure."

Maura stared at herself in the mirror.  God, she looked so strange
to herself.  The pendant hung at exactly the right level midway
between her throat and breasts.  Maura could swear she could feel it
radiating warmth.

"Janette, there isn't anything I should know about this little
bauble, is there?" she asked suspiciously.  "It's not some sort of
cursed gift from Elisabeth Bathory or Bloody Mary or anyone like
that, is it?"

"Certainly not.  It was given to me by Lord Byron," she managed to
deliver this with a look that was simultaneously innocent and sly,
"and since both you and Nicolas are already 'mad, bad, and dangerous
to know', what harm?"

Maura laughed and shook her head.  "Fine."  She turned to face
Janette and Yvonne, and swept an elegant curtsy.  "Mesdemoiselles, I
thank you.  I only hope I don't make Nick look like a derelict by
comparison."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, cherie."

As Maura agreed with Janette that it would be fun to surprise Nick
with her outfit, he was told that he should pick Maura up at Club
Raven at 6:30pm on the appointed evening.  She got dressed with
little ceremony, choosing to wear her hair down over Janette's
protests.  

"Cherie, such a dress was made for an upsweep of silken hair," she
argued, twisting the hair in question into an ornate knot behind
Maura's head.  "Look at what it does to display your throat."

Maura stepped away.  "Enough with the throat, Vampira."  She brushed
out her hair and shook her head vigorously, letting it fall in rich
loose waves about her shoulders.  "I'm not going to the opera, after
all."

"Am I permitted to see my 'date' now, or do I have to drive downtown
blindfolded?" came a voice from out in the bar.  Nick.

"Nah, get an eyeful now and get over it," announced Maura, pulling
open the door without ceremony and striding boldly through, hair and
skirt flying.  "Wow," she murmured.  Nick looked positively edible in
black wool trousers, deep sapphire-blue silk blazer, and silver-grey
silk shirt with a black tab tie anchored by a sparkling diamond tack.
His mouth was opened to speak, but frozen now in a half-smile as he
took in Maura's appearance.

"Likewise.  You look," he began, nodding in approval to Janette and
Yvonne who stood behind her, "she looks, well," he trailed off, then
blurted out,  "Hey, isn't that the necklace that you stole from Lady
Caroline Lamb?"  Maura exploded in laughter.

"So Byron 'gave' it to you, huh?" she challenged, turning to
confront Janette.  

She was unembarrassed.  "He would have, cherie, but he never
displayed very astute judgment when enjoying his opium."

Nick spoke up.  "Well since we are agreed that we look better than
anything abroad in Toronto this evening, let's go on to the dinner
and shut up all the gossips, shall we?"  He extended his arm like a
true gentleman.  Maura accepted the black velvet swing coat offered
by Janette, grabbed the green velvet purse that held only lipstick
and two ten-dollar bills ("Cab fare, cherie" Janette explained, "in
case Nicolas behaves like a brute") and took Nick's arm as if she
were stepping out with the Prince of Wales.  She was a lot more
nervous than she would admit.  She never liked being the center of
attention, it was one of the things that she and Nick shared
wholeheartedly in common, but the prospect of a night out with new
people was beginning to feel appealing.

They entered the conference center about twenty minutes into the
cocktail hour.  Nick had already prepared his colleagues for the fact
that he would not be dining, only joining them at the table.  The
facts of his "macrobiotic diet" were firmly established and no longer
questioned in general.  Some preferred to think his not eating in
public was a neurosis equivalent to being unable to pee when anyone
else was around.  Whatever worked, he always said.  Maura hung back
at the doorway for half a heartbeat.  "Deep breath," she muttered.

Nick straightened his arm and let her hand drop into his.  "Come on,
chicken, let's turn some heads."  Yvonne's comment had obviously
gotten back to him.

And turn heads they did.  Everyone nearby tried desperately to look
casual as they checked out Nick's "girlfriend".  Maura was almost
relieved to see Schanke approach them in a rush, accompanied by a
striking blonde draped in sequined black crepe.  "Nick!  Maura!  You
sure clean up nice!"  The blonde  at his side extended her hand to
Maura first, offering her cheek to Nick.  "Myra you look
breathtaking," Nick complimented.  "Allow me to introduce Maura
Logue.  Maura, this is Myra Schanke."

The contrast between this stylish woman and her gregarious husband
was a stunner.  Maura took her hand, saying "Myra, I'm so glad to
meet you.  You must be very proud of the work your husband has done."
Myra smiled glowingly at said husband.  "He is someone to be proud
of," she declared.  "And Nick too, they earned this together for the
work they did.  You know, even Robin Moran is here tonight."  Robin
Moran was the only surviving victim of the serial rapist Nick and
Schanke had collared; they had apprehended him as he was beating her
nearly to death.  Both Nick and Schanke had worked prodigious
overtime on that case, both personally offended and horrified by what
had been done to the victims, both equally driven to prevent more. 
She squeezed Nick's hand.  "There is a certain cachet in hanging with
the good guys."  At that moment a tall, beefy man obviously
uncomfortable in his buttoned-up suit approached them, beaming.

"Captain!" Schanke exclaimed.  "Here's the mystery woman that
improved Nick's mood... sometimes," he indicated Maura.

"Joe Stonetree," the beefy man grinned and shook her hand
vigorously.  "I was beginning to think you were one of Schanke's
caffeine-induced hallucinations."  Myra Schanke laughed heartily at
this.

"Maura Logue," she offered.  "And I'm afraid I'm something of an
hallucination to everyone.  Too much work, and after dealing with
long nights of Toronto's party people I usually like to play hermit
in my off time."

"Sounds like you two are well matched," Stonetree observed.

"Maybe I should just leave the 'mystery woman' alone with her
adoring public and go on home," Nick suggested in feigned insult.  

"Don't you dare," Maura warned, wrapping her free hand around his
arm.  "You know how I am with strangers."

He smiled indulgently.  "Yeah, you charm them out of their shoes." 
She smirked in reply and their eyes locked.  

"Yep, partner," Schanke observed, " I'd say you've met your match." 
Nick freed his arm from Maura to reach around her in an affectionate
hug.

"That remains to be seen, I'd say.  The night is young."

"Good thing something is," Maura muttered out of the side of her
mouth.  From the corner of her eye she spied Natalie, dressed to kill
and sharing a drink with her lab mates, studiously avoiding looking
her way.

Dinner conversation was light and friendly, and none of the
questions were very intrusive.  They were all, naturally, directed
toward Maura.  How did she come to Toronto, how did she and Nick
meet, did she like it here, etc.  She was able to answer truthfully
without much effort.  

"I came here from Vancouver, and there from Boston.  I'd lost my job
out west, and figured I needed a change so why not head back East? 
I'm from Boston originally.  I stopped here when I ran out of money,
to be honest, and needed to find a job fast that didn't demand an
upscale wardrobe or complex references!  Luckily when I got to Raven
my timing was perfect, Janette was desperate for a security manager. 
I'd done plenty of that over the years, so she hired me on spec and
there I am."

"But what do you do when you're not managing bouncers?" Myra wanted
to know.  It was a reasonable enough question, but one Maura couldn't
answer clearly.

"This and that.  Whatever the job requires.  I've been a bookkeeper,
a crisis counselor, a hotel desk manager.  I've done lots and lots of
temp work, which is a great way to gather broad experience."  And a
great way to come and go quickly, she added silently.

"Think maybe you might settle down here?" Captain Stonetree asked
pointedly.  This was, of course, her cue to beam lovingly at Nick and
probably squeeze his hand.  Her dinner companions were disappointed
by her shrug.  "It could happen.  I like it fine so far."  She did
tip a brief smile to Nick, but they didn't dwell on it.  A puzzled
silence followed, broken by the voice of the police commissioner
announcing the beginning of the awards program.

Nick joked to break the awkwardness.  "I've learned not to ask too
many questions.  She'll fill me in on a need-to-know basis."

Someone was tapping on the microphone on the small dais at the front
of the dining room.  It was the police commissioner, whose name Maura
had already forgotten after Nick told her just few minutes before. 
So many people to talk to, and to her surprise and relief she was
beginning to relax and enjoy behaving like a "regular" person.  The
attention didn't seem as scary now as Nick's colleagues obviously
respected her privacy.  He must have coached them a little.  In fact,
he'd coached them a lot.

"Schanke," he'd told his partner the day before, "I am counting on
you to help prevent an inquisition.  Maura isn't comfortable at the
center of attention, and as you've pointed out one of the things we
share in common is a taste for privacy.  Do you think you can sort of
spread it around, and ensure a pleasant evening for everyone?" 

For all of his smartass displays, Don Schanke wasn't exactly a
savage.  "Sure, partner.  We'll keep the dissecting table safely
locked in Dr. Lambert's lab."

But now it was time for Nick and Don (Maura had begun to refer to
him by his first name, encouraged by his uncharacteristically subdued
behavior.  He'd even seemed to deflect some question