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intriguing—one of his conquests had said it made him look “deliciously cruel.” He liked that. A lot of women were drawn to cruelty, mistaking it for strength.
    With his loose, black curls, his trim beard, and his lean body, honed to edgy bone and sinew from hours of working out, he knew he had been a temptation to Marie-Claire ever since they had met at their children’s preschool. Though her witchly powers had lain dormant then, he had felt the call of blood to blood. He knew at once that there was more to this lady than a pretty face, a French name, and a certain selfish drive that he found utterly charming.
    After that first meeting Michael had rushed home and descended into the Room of Spells, the heavily fortified hexagonal chamber he’d had built into the heart of his two-story Art Deco house. He’d put on his sorcerer’s robes of red and green and summoned his patron with blood and smoke. First had come the sulfurous odor that always made his eyes water, and then the charnel stench of the grave. Then the cold frost of Charon’s ferry, parting the veil, had descended upon the chamber. Michael’s breath had joined with themist that rose from nothing and diffused through the frigid room. The dipping of the oars became his own heartbeat.
    From the darkness the phantom had taken shape—the ghostly skull and skeleton at first all that was visible, followed by decayed flesh and dust that hung loosely on bone and leathery muscle as the revenant stepped from an invisible boat. According to his faded portrait, the Duke in life had been even more handsome than Michael. He claimed that once their House was again ascendant he would “carry myself as a full man,” as he had said in medieval French—a language Michael had dutifully learned in order to communicate with him. Neither of Michael’s sons spoke it . . . because neither of them knew about Laurent.
    Laurent, Duc de Deveraux, had declared that he was as intrigued by Marie-Claire Cathers-Anderson as his descendent was, and together they had consulted with various demons and oracles to find out more about her. Michael had asked Jer’s help in searching the Net for information on genealogy, heraldry, and French peerage, for he felt certain that the Cathers family had once been noble. It was in her bearing and speech—even, it seemed to him, in her very scent.
    Now he walked over to her, looked down at her. He bent, ran one fingernail up the side of her neck,tracing the large vein that he could feel pulsing slowly just beneath her skin. He smiled.
    For over a year Michael had investigated this mysterious woman, whose appearance was striking in much the same way as his—ebony hair, black-brown eyes, her face a perfect oval, her skin seashell-smooth and pearly. She was tall and graceful, like the Deveraux men who lived in Lower Queen Anne. Indeed, for a time he wondered if she were a Deveraux herself, the family name perhaps lost through marriage at some point in the past.
    During that year—those thirteen moons of the Coventry calendar—Michael had spied on Marie-Claire, had watched her with her daughters and her husband. He sent falcons to circle their gabled rooftop, observing from afar through their eyes with a scrying stone. On his visits to their mansion he had hidden glasses of cursed water in various rooms, through which he could eavesdrop on the family’s conversations. He felt he knew them intimately . . . and he wanted to know Marie-Claire even better. And when Michael Deveraux wanted a woman, he usually got her.
    Then had come the revelation: After that year, Laurent had told Michael the story of the Cahors and the Deveraux, informing his descendent that he hadknown before Michael had even met her that Marie-Claire’s maiden name, Cathers, was what had become of the ancient French name Cahors. Through time and forgotten family history, the “Cathers” had no idea that they had