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Jonathan’s blond hair, soothing them both.
    This time, however, was different. Though Jonathan remained silent for a long time, Deven could feel him struggling, could feel his fear. Whatever he had seen had been enough to terrify him … and that almost never happened.
    Finally Deven couldn’t stand it anymore. “What did you see?”
    Jonathan shook his head and turned his face into Deven’s neck. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I just … I can’t, baby. I’m sorry.”
    “Am I going to die tomorrow or anything like that? Because if I am, I need to go cancel my massage.”
    Jonathan looked at him, his usually bright hazel eyes full of anguish. “Please … don’t even joke about that.”
    Their eyes held. “All right,” Deven said with a nod. “Do we need to call off our trip?”
    “No. We have to go. It’s not … it’s nothing immediate, at least not for us. We’re the least of our worries right now.”
    Deven sighed, lying back; now it was his turn to stare at the ceiling. “Let me guess.”
    “Pack extra eyeliner,” Jonathan said. “We might be in Austin for a while.”

Two
    “Damn it, would you hold still?”
    Faith managed—barely—not to roll her eyes at her boss. “Sorry, Sire.”
    The electrical hum in the room grew fractionally louder. It was starting to make Faith’s ears ring. “Any closer?” she asked.
    The Prime’s eyes were on the bank of monitors in front of him, their light glaring off his glasses.
    “You’re staring again,” he said mildly without looking up.
    “Sorry.” She held back her reaction, which was to flush at being caught, but there was no undertone to his words, just amusement. As far as he knew, she was staring at the glasses, and that was true … though not for the reasons he thought.
    Vampire senses were designed for hunting in the dark, their pupils dilating to take in far more light than a human’s could sense; that meant that bright lights hurt them, and they had found as technology continued to take over their lives that working in front of monitors for hours could cause a vampire as much eyestrain as a human. They recovered from it much more quickly, of course, and there was no long-term damage, but David had begun to have severe headaches after the network was extended throughout theSouth, and he spent so much time calibrating it that Miranda had suggested, half jokingly, that he get glasses.
    So he did. They weren’t prescription, but antiglare, and had a magnifying strip along the bottom for when he was doing delicate work with his lasers and soldering irons. They looked like everyday human eyeglasses … and Faith had finally allowed herself to admit that they made him unspeakably attractive.
    She took a long, slow breath. Oh, for fuck’s sake, Faith.
    “I know they look weird,” David was saying, “but Novotny’s lenses have really done wonders for me. I’m having him make pairs for the other network monitor Elite, too, so they don’t lose productivity to migraines.”
    He looked up at her, and again she was struck by how the glasses completed his face, finally made him look like the genius he was. Put together with his seemingly endless collection of geeky T-shirts—tonight’s bore an engineering schematic of the TARDIS from Doctor Who —it was a good thing he only wore them in his workroom. Faith wasn’t the only person in the Haven who had noticed, and she was fully aware that Miranda had pinned him to the lab table more than once with a “Talk nerdy to me, baby.”
    There was a series of clicks, and David said, “I think that’s got it. Now, on my mark, I want you to hold your arms out to your sides and turn very slowly in a counterclockwise circle.”
    “What is this accomplishing, again?”
    He sighed. He hated repeating himself. It amused her to make him do it. “I’m refining the camera technology that projected Miranda’s image into that fake mirror for her Rolling Stone interview. I need to be able to use it for other