《The Taste of You》


 Chapter 1：One

    Prologue


    I felt relief even before the first drop of blood splashed my tongue.


    He squirmed, but he was kept from struggling by disbelief or fear or the hope that if he just lay here with his eyes closed, all the monsters would go away.


    I shivered and drank deep.


    One


    "You can''t be serious, Annie," Dr. Parrish said.


    "Why?"


    "How can you not know how you became a vampire?"


    I sat in a dim psychologist''s office full of deep earth tones and fluffy furniture with rounded edges. The babble of a desk fountain was the only noise besides the scratching of a pencil on a notepad. My chair had no doubt been carefully chosen for optimum comfort (and minimum corners on which to bash one''s head), but it could''ve been made out of cinder blocks for all I cared.


    I answered, "I went to sleep in Palm Beach. I woke up in Denver three days later, alone, and very thirsty." And naked. And terrified. On top of a black, t-top Trans Am.


    He kept staring at me. Dr. Parrish was young for a Phd. Sheltered, skeptical, but rarely predictable. For example, instead of, "How did you end up living here in San Antonio?" or even, "What happened next?" he asked, "Can I get you a glass of water?"


    "No, thank you," I said. "I can''t drink water."


    "Ah. I wasn''t aware of that."


    "I doubt that is the extent of your ignorance, Dr. Parrish. No need to apologize."


    "You can''t remember anything about those three days?" he asked, just like that. I''d insulted him, not very well, but still, he just carried on.


    "Nothing," I said.


    "How are other vampires made?"


    I shifted, though it had been a long time since I''d felt any lack of physical comfort. "I don''t know."


    He put down his notepad and stared at me past his oversized nose.


    He didn''t wear glasses. I''d almost walked away during my first meeting, four months ago now, when I saw that he had contacts pressed against his eyeballs instead. All psychologists should wear glasses, if for no other reason than so young women could examine their reflections in the glass: smooth their shoulder-length dark brown hair, bat their average brown eyes, admire their soft, pale skin.


    "Why do you wear contacts?" I asked. When he looked straight at you, he looked like a near-forty Shia LeBouf, which wasn''t bad, but surprising. He spent so much time looking at his notepad, then suddenly, he looks up and has a personality. I wondered if his other clients felt that way.


    "Glasses smudge and shift on your face," he answered. "I don''t have to think about contacts once they''re in."


    Not vanity, then. Practicality. Not surprising.


    "Don''t you know other vampires, Annie?" he asked.


    "Of course."


    "And you''ve just, what¡­never asked?" He was still staring at me, his floppy brown hair brushing his eyebrows. I flicked my eyes toward his notepad, and he remembered it and went back to scribbling.


    "Vampires aren''t stupid, but we tend to be¡­impulsive. The judges keep the knowledge to themselves because they don''t want young vampire impulsiveness to wipe out the food supply."


    Dr. Parrish knew about the judges. He''d asked about vampire "law" during our second session. Not the aspect of the supernatural that most humans were interested in. Perhaps it was Dr. Parrish''s unusual lack of banality that kept me showing up for my twice-weekly appointment.


    "The¡­?"


    "Blood cows, Doctor. People. A world full of vampires would starve. They would have no prey. Even a world half of vampires would suck the other half dry in a few days."


    "So you have a kind of," he struggled for a phrase, "population control?"


    I nodded.


    "What''s the percentage, if I may ask?"


    "Point zero zero zero eight percent of the human population. Enough to keep the vampire population strong, few enough so that we stay out of sight and so there''s plenty of prey for however many centuries we live, taking into account a certain range in case war or famine or plague lowers the population before we do."


    "So vampires always kill when they feed?" He glanced up and back down to his notebook.


    "Of course not," I said, watching the fountain flow. It was placed where we both could see it, the ball eternally spinning, the water endlessly circulating. "But it is much more satisfying."


    The pencil scratching sound paused, then continued. "Centuries," he said, "but not eternity? You''re not immortal?"


    I smiled. "I''m immortal compared to you. But no, not immortal."


    "Vampires can die of natural causes?" he asked.


    "A few."


    "And they can be killed?" Dr. Parrish glanced up.


    I could only see the wound. A black wound like a round burn in the middle of a kind white chest.


    When the office reappeared, I stood. "I''ll see you Monday, Doctor."


    "I''m sorry, Annie," he said. "I didn''t mean to offend you."


    There was concern in his face, but not fear. So he didn''t yet believe me. No rush. He was playing the game, and that was enough.


    "Don''t worry about it. Have a nice weekend, Doctor," I said, then left.

 Chapter 2：Two

    I walked home, even though it was late. Or I guess it would be more accurate to say that I walked home because it was late. There was no uncomfortably glaring sun, no full crowds of chattering people. There were people out, but they huddled together as they walked, talking quietly, not looking around them. At night people believed in monsters, and at night, monsters could hide nearby until they were ready to be seen.


    But there was another, bigger reason why I enjoyed my walk from the psychologist''s office on Tenth Street to my apartment on Thirty-First: the normal, human woman I used to be never could''ve enjoyed it. She wouldn''t be out at this hour alone, and if she was out, waiting for a well-lit bus or a lonely taxi, she would stand with one hand on her purse, the other gripped around a can of pepper spray, and all the time, she would be thinking, I''ll squeeze the nozzle and nothing will happen. I''ll struggle, and he''ll still get me. If he wants my bag, he can have it. He can have anything. I can replace it. But he won''t just want my cash and credit cards and earrings. And I''ll fight but it won''t make a difference.


    And her eyes would try to take in everything at once. She would be looking around like an animal in the street. Like prey. And every predator would be able to tell, just by the way she couldn''t stand still, just by the way that she shivered on warm nights, that this woman was a victim waiting to be victimized. And it wouldn''t have been hard at all.


    She probably would''ve fumbled getting the pepper spray out of her purse. If she needed to use the pepper spray, she would''ve realized it too late, or she would''ve pressed the top down and popped it out of her hands and into the street.


    She was afraid, so afraid, that even when she got on that well-lit bus, even when she was locked up tight in her own apartment (three locks on the front door, two on the bedroom, a phone by the bed, the closet light on), she would be too scared to close her eyes. That kind of fear never left a woman who knew how vulnerable she was. That kind of fear wakes you up at night, imagining, not vampires and under-the-bed ogres¡ªchildren''s monsters¡ªbut the sound the deadbolt makes sliding open, the sound of footsteps in the hallway.


    She was why I walked at night.


    I pitied and loved her like a sister too young to fight with, and I weirdly wished that she could see me now, see how I didn''t bother looking around as I walked, how I didn''t reach a careful hand to my pocket to make sure my money and keys were still there, how I only tied my dark brown hair to the sides in pigtails, to keep it out of the way.


    I wished she could see me enjoying my walk and the night and San Antonio''s daytime businesses closing while others came to life, passing so many people with such endless mundane reasons for being out at this hour. They didn''t notice me. I didn''t look like a predator. And they didn''t notice me for any other reason. I lacked the glamour of movie vampires. And my hair was in pigtails. It''s hard to look glamorous in pigtails.


    I passed dark alleys. I nodded at tall men walking alone. I crossed in and out of "bad" parts of town. I lived, now, in a "bad" part of town, in a cheap apartment with six locks on the door. I never locked one.


    Tonight, I smiled as I walked, remembering that young sister and enjoying things that I often forgot to enjoy, not just my stroll, but my tatty Converse shoes, my jeans, my green Hogan''s Heroes T-shirt and dark jacket. God, did I used to endure high heels? And panty hose? I almost laughed out loud.


    And then my favorite part of that dark night stalked up behind me and grabbed me around the neck. Finally.


    I yelped, "What are you doing? Let me go!"


    He laughed, and I laughed too, which confused him. I went limp.


    "What the fuck¡ª"


    Then I jolted my legs straight and sent my head into his chin.


    He let go. They always let go.


    I didn''t want a scene tonight, so I grabbed his throat and dragged him into the alley he''d slinked out of. He made gasping, choking sounds and grappled at my hand. His face started going red, and he kicked, trying to get his feet under him again.


    This, this was what I really wanted that other Annie to see.


    The man''s eyes went wide, and when one of my teeth scraped his wrist, he screamed like he was on fire.


    It didn''t hurt that bad. Like a paper cut and just deep enough that a drop of blood beaded on the surface. No severed arteries, no gory squirting. When you order caviar, you don''t cram your mouth with it and smear it all over your face. You don''t let it fall to the ground and get all in the carpet.


    You savor. You eat every bite as though you are intimately aware of how much each teaspoon costs.


    Another thing, you don''t spare a moment''s thought for the little eggs'' suffering. You don''t think about the fish crying in the ocean because Paula and Jimmy and Wendy and Paco and Rob and Angelina are gone forever. Because they''re food. They were created to be eaten. You were created to eat them.


    With similar convictions, I licked the little cut and sucked it slowly. His heart was still racing, so the blood had that fresh, fast taste. I wondered if adrenaline made the blood taste like that.


    Will would know. No creature alive had more fascination with itself than he did. You pull him out of the library, turn your back for one minute, and you find him in the lab. I tried to get him to join a bowling league, take some business classes, even get a penpal, but he was hopelessly focused. Poor guy.


    The creep twisted and started crying like an agitated little goat.


    The neck is nice, warm, but also kind of personal. The wrist is better when you''re after the blood and don''t want more contact than is necessary. I couldn''t imagine pressing my face up so close to the creep''s, burying my lips in his neck like a lover. In fact, he smelled bad enough that I was no longer enjoying my meal as much as I had been.


    I drank until there were only dribblings of blood left in the veins. He had stopped twitching and crying at some point, but the smell hadn''t faded. I imagined it would just get worse from now on.


    I took a Zippo from my back pocket and lit the front of his shirt. In a world in which forensic scientists were near-superheroes, at least on television, my kind couldn''t be too careful.


    Luckily, no one paid too much attention to charred thieves in alleys.


    I licked my lips, straightened my clothes, and turned my back on the growing flames.

 Chapter 3：Three

    I''d been living in my tiny apartment on Thirty-First Street for more than a year now. There was no furniture except the one hideous couch and single bed, no television, of course no plates or silverware or cookware in the kitchen. I had a closet full of clothes and shoes, a toothbrush, assorted hair clippies, and dozens of soaps and bottles of bubble bath.


    I tried to keep Will from coming over because he always made comments about the apartment: it was Spartan, it was unhealthy, it was no way for a woman to live, no way for any creature to live. It was so empty of my tastes that I couldn''t feel comfortable there. I might as well have gone to live in a cave after that crazy lady burned my house down.


    I reminded him, I intended to go live in a cave. And he told me that he wouldn''t allow it. He actually said, "You''ve got to be kidding me. If I ever find you in a cave, I''m dragging you out by the hair and locking you in a professionally decorated townhouse until you come to your senses."


    I think I replied something like, "If you hadn''t been hitting on me constantly since the day we met, I''d think you were gay."


    And I think he''d said something like, "You just want me to be gay so you can snuggle me without thinking about where it will lead."


    And I probably answered him snidely while secretly thinking he had a good point.


    Will''s apartment would put Martha Stewart to shame, he tells me. There''s a remarkable degree of color-coordination happening there. He has a couch, a TV, surrealist paintings by local artists, and several little tables that each have specific names: end table, coffee table, nook table, breakfast table. He even has a fully stocked kitchen, "for guests."


    And he rarely goes home. When he''s not doing research, he''s chairing a committee to stop domestic violence or doing an art-for-peace fundraiser. But he''s usually doing research. He''s brilliant, really, for someone less than a century old. I wouldn''t be surprised if he were made a judge one day or kidnapped by a secret government agency and forced to work in their lab.


    Astute humans think Will is a little creepy. Not-so-astute ones find him interesting, hence the stocked kitchen "for guests." Only a vampire desperate for companionship would have human friends.


    But Will did have friends. Despite being both creepy and a loon, Will threw excellent parties and listened when people talked.


    Maybe if I''d been a better friend to him, Will wouldn''t have needed to collect people like stamps. But I wasn''t, so he did, and for the most part, I think he''s happy.

 Chapter 4：Four

    When I got home after my hour of counseling and my man-snack, I stared around at the white walls, at the ugly brown plaid couch that Will had bought and had delivered to my place when he saw my apartment was still empty six months after I''d moved in, but that had been years ago, now.


    Three years, I realized, three years with that ugly couch that couldn''t be hidden in the closet with the paintings and rotting potted plants that Will had brought over one at a time, saying they would make my cave a little more livable. Plain white walls, pale tan carpet, and the world''s most hideous, least-often used couch.


    I sighed and went to draw a bath.


    "Annie, you have a disproportionate concern with hygiene for a semi-immortal creature," Will had said once.


    I decided on a raspberry-vanilla combo and ran the water super hot. I threw a towel down in front of the closed door to hold in the steam and the scent.


    I looked into the mirror for a minute before the steam clouded it. I had a drip of dried blood on my chin. I laughed at myself a little and scratched it away.


    I took my dark brown hair out of its pigtails and combed it with my fingers. It was shiny, almost pretty now. I bought really nice shampoo and conditioner and this smoothing cream. I hadn''t been able to afford them in my pre-vampire days, not smoothing cream or any of the bubble bath and salts and milks that lined the bathtub now.


    I don''t know why I bought it all. I think maybe it was the last remnant of my girlishness holding on with claws. Somewhere along the way, I''d stopped buying makeup and dressing up, even flirting. My girliness had run out on me, leaving me with a steaming raspberry-vanilla bath and a fluffy pink bath mat.


    I''d mentioned it to Will once, obliquely, wondering if it was a vampire thing¡ªlosing our human selves as time passed.


    He didn''t think so. He was more of the opinion that we change as we grow older¡ªwhether we''re vampires or humans or viral infections. Just because our bodies aren''t aging, that doesn''t mean that we stop aging, maturing.


    I swiped the steam from the mirror for one more look at my plain eighteen-year-old''s face, made a kissing expression, winked one brown eye, and went to my bath, sinking into the hot water with a moan.


    I hoped Will was right. I hoped I was still maturing. If I was, there was hope that I could move on, too, that grief was temporary and that as time passed I would forget it or move on from it or accept it or whatever it was that happened when the feeling didn''t overwhelm you every time you stopped moving.


    I ducked underwater, believing that the hot water was washing out every pore, cleaning every bit of grime and destroying every bacterium that I''d met that day. I stayed under until the water was tepid, and later, that''s the reason I would give Will when he asked why I didn''t pick up the phone.

 Chapter 5：Five

    "Right on time, Annie. As always," Dr. Parrish said. "Are all vampires this punctual?"


    "No." I answered, then remembered what Dr. Parrish had said during our first meeting: therapy won''t do you any good if you insist on giving one-word answers. So I added, "Older vampires find it difficult, maybe because they start to feel out of touch with the world, or maybe it''s just hard for them to care. They get grumpy. Younger ones are usually better, if it''s something they think is important."


    "How old are you?" Dr. Parrish asked.


    "Excuse me?" I felt my eyes close to slits like my mother''s did when I''d said something rude.


    "I apologize. Is that still rude to ask, even though you''ve finished aging?" He was looking at his notebook, but he raised his eyebrows until they disappeared in his floppy hair. He was right out of a clich¨¦ therapy movie, minus the glasses. I don''t know why that was so important to me. I tried to imagine him in glasses, the way they would magnify his eyes a little.


    He glanced up at me.


    Maybe I thought glasses would add seriousness to his funny face.


    Maybe I was so preoccupied with his absent glasses because I secretly thought he was cute. I suppressed a giggle. Poor Dr. Parrish. Neither cute nor appetizing. Lucky he was interesting, or he''d be short three hundred bucks a week.


    I thought about his question and replied, "I guess not." I pulled a thin wallet from my back pocket and handed him my driver''s license. State of Florida. 5'' 5" Brown eyes. Brown hair. But it was the date, of course, that caught the good doctor''s attention.


    "You''re forty-five." He looked up at me, actually looked me up and down like a centerfold. I would''ve blushed if I could.


    "Valid ID, Dr. Parrish. Keep it, if you want. I really can''t use it anymore."


    He looked at the date, then at the picture, then at me.


    "I was eighteen in that picture. My lost weekend was later that year," I explained.


    I was cuter in the picture, which I''m sure isn''t something many people can say about their driver''s license photo. But I had such a cheerful smile, and my eyes crinkled. I weighed a little more in those days. Notice, I didn''t point out that detail to the doctor. I don''t remember now if it


    was the whole transforming into a vampire thing or the blood diet thing that finally dropped off that last tenacious little bit of baby fat. But other than that, I was the same as I had been. No extra glamour or charm in the vampirification process. No superhuman sexiness.


    Dr. Parrish was still staring at the picture. He probably thought I was cuter then, too. I suddenly regretted telling him he could keep it. What was he seeing, staring at it that way? Did he realize that he was seeing my face, my stats, but a whole other me?


    He set my ID on the table beside him, not between us, where I could take it back.


    "Lost weekend," he mumbled, turning back to his notebook.


    "It''s my friend Will''s term for it."


    "Will is a vampire too?" That kept impressing me, how he just took it all in stride, seemed to believe even though I knew he didn''t. That psychology program must have really been something. 1+1=8 . If your client says it, it must be true.


    "Yes."


    "Tell me about him."


    About our long friendship? About the two years I didn''t see him or speak to him? About how he used to come visit Keats and me in our perfect little house (perfect, except for the circles on the kitchen floor, onto which some crazy woman had glued her boyfriend''s CD collection)?


    "Will is a scientist," I said.


    "What kind of scientist?"


    Will would think that was a limiting sort of question. He was a scientist, and I was fairly sure from looking at the spines of his books and from the few times I''d seen his lab that Will didn''t consider science to be a divided thing. So what to call him? Physicist, chemist, botanist, anthropologist, and perhaps most of all, "Biologist. Of sorts. He calls it necrobiology."


    "Biology of the dead," Dr. Parrish said.


    "Yes. He studies vampires."


    The doctor twirled his pencil, eyes still on his pad. "''Biology'' means the study of life."


    "Yes." The study of the life of the dead. King of sarcasm that amuses no one.


    "Does your friend Will know how vampires are made?"


    "Probably."


    "And he''s never told you?"


    I gave a short laugh. "If Will knows, he wouldn''t let on to anyone that he knows. The judges keep their secrets for a reason."


    "The judges. They would kill him?"


    "They have a range of punishments. I don''t know much about it."


    "What do you know about them, Annie?"


    I gave a little cough. "They''re magic."


    "Really," Dr. Parrish said.


    "I don''t know. That''s what people say, but people are notoriously idiotic."


    He gave his notepad a small grin.


    "The judges are supposed to be the oldest vampires. Right, I told you that already, and about how they make and enforce law and think of themselves as gods. But there are also these stories about¡­" This was ridiculous. I was going to pass on vampire fairy tales to this mortal unbeliever? One more checkmark on the "Reasons to Force Annie into a Mental Health Institution" list.


    Dr. Parrish looked up and answered my thoughts, "All cultures have myths, Annie. You don''t have to believe them to pass them along."


    I nodded. "I''m pretty sure the judges made this stuff up to make people fear them more. The stories never talk about the judges as a group, or how they came to be judges, or what the judges actually do besides slap our hands when we''re naughty. Come to think of it, they may not exist at all."


    I pondered that. How blasphemous.


    "And the stories are strange, it''s always The Judge in the story, no names, no distinguishing between the judges. Reminds me of Prince Charming. He just shows up again and again, the horny little prince who goes around making out with cursed girls."


    Dr. Parrish let his notepad fall to the side of his lap. Ah, the "you''re rambling" sign. Didn''t take me long to learn that one.


    "Sorry," I said. "Stories say The Judge crafted the first vampire from his own flesh. Sound familiar? The Judge also saved humanity when there was danger of vampires eating it all. But my favorite¡­The Judge holds the memories of our race. He takes the memories of all vampires into his jar of souls and keeps a record for us. Kind of a Santa Claus historian. If you''re very good¡­if you prove that you''re worthy by some great act or great goodness, The Judge will tell you truths."


    "What truths?"


    I shrugged. "Whatever truths you want. Whatever truths you need. Or maybe it''s a weapon. He overloads your mind with information until your head explodes."


    "You''re very sarcastic," Dr. Parrish said. I was about to reply with a "Duh," but he continued, "But I think you believe that story. Or that you want to believe it at least."


    I nodded. "Sure. It''s kind of nice to think that someday someone will reach into my brain and take all my memories for the betterment of vampire-kind. It''s nice, but I don''t really believe it."


    "Too much magic for you?"


    "Yeah," I said, then almost laughed. "I guess I''m a skeptic, and finding out firsthand that vampires are real didn''t change that much."


    The pencil went back to the paper. I crossed my legs, suddenly wishing I could kick off my shoes and wondering what he would do if I did. Probably nothing. Probably just make a little note and go on with the interrogation. I guess it wasn''t fair to call it an interrogation. I was paying him for it. And I probably wasn''t his most focused or loquacious client. I wondered if I was his most interesting. I wondered if he really would suggest that I spend some time in a clinic. Was electroshock therapy still used? That would be fantastic.


    "I like your blue carpet," I said.


    He glanced up at me, then away. "Will doesn''t trust you enough to tell you how vampires are made?"


    I thought about it, thought about how much time Will spent in his lab and how few secrets he had told me throughout the years. "He probably would, if I really wanted to know. But he wouldn''t offer up the information. Too dangerous."


    "So he''s more worried about your safety."


    "Yeah. I guess you could say that."


    "Were you and he ever involved in a romantic relationship?"


    "No."


    "Do vampires have lovers?" What a question.


    "Yes."


    "Can you reproduce?"


    "Of course not."


    "Are you a monogamist? Or I guess I should say, is there more serial monogamy or just¡­."


    "Wild vampire humping?"


    He gave a tilted nod that meant, "I wouldn''t have said it so colorfully, but yes."


    "It varies. Most take advantage of the benefits of being a vampire¡ªno STDs, no risk of pregnancy. There''s a lot of free love in the vampire community, but there''s a good deal of commitment, too, though a few centuries is a long time to put up with one person. Plus, it''s difficult to get a marriage license when the system says you''re a hundred and seventy years old."


    Dr. Parrish nodded as though it all made sense. "In which group would you place yourself?"


    "I¡­." One love. One man for life. What an absurd idea. Who could make a decision like that? Or stick to it? It was just sex, after all. Just sex, just companionship. Human rules are for humans. "I don''t know," I said, then because I knew he''d lock onto that like piranha jaws, I added, "What about you, Doctor? Monogamist? Have a girlfriend?"


    "A wife," he said. "Your friend Will, is he involved with anyone?"


    "No," I said.


    "Does he have many partners?"


    I felt a little uncomfortable. "He doesn''t tell me," I said, which was true enough.


    "Can I ask you a few more questions about vampires?"


    "Sure."


    He tapped his pencil on the notepad. "Can they¡­you¡­can you turn into a bat or a¡­pig?"


    "A pig, doctor?" I asked.


    He shifted position as if he was uncomfortable, even though I had tried really hard not to mock him. "In Moravia," he explained, "there are were-pig legends. In gypsy lore, there are were-melons, but I figured that was a little bit of a stretch."


    I held back a smile. "Hm. Yes. That would be a stretch." I imagined being attacked by a cantaloupe. "I don''t know anything about were-things, though, doctor. Not were-pigs, were-melons, or even were-wolves. And I can''t turn into a bat. There may be shape-shifters out there. There are enough legends about them all over the world that it wouldn''t surprise me to find out a few of them are true. But it doesn''t seem likely to me that they would announce themselves to the vampire community if they did exist."


    "That¡­makes sense."


    "Any other questions?"


    "Can you be hurt by exorcism or decapitation or a stake through the heart?"


    He was asking if we could be killed those ways, but the last time he''d said the word "killed" to me I''d freaked out and left his office. Same question, different words. Was it a real, if skeptical, interest, or was this therapy, trying to get to the root of my varied and deeply buried issues?


    "Not exorcism," I said. "Unless it involves decapitation. A stake through the heart¡­depends on what the stake''s made out of."


    "Really? Hm. Are you affected by sunlight, silver, crucifixes, holy water, garlic?"


    "We''re mildly allergic to sunlight, but not so much that we have to sleep in coffins. Well, most of us, anyway. No to silver, crucifixes, garlic, holy water, though some vampires have an aversion to water in general. Not me, though. It''s steel, actually, that really bugs us. No one knows why."


    My answers were mostly true. I didn''t give him any of the reasons behind any of it though. I didn''t tell him that you can kill a vampire by locking it in a room long enough. I didn''t tell him that the reason decapitation and steel through the chest (or stomach or head) worked was because losing your head and the violent reaction to steel through the body would both make a vampire unable to feed. And doing that¡ªkeeping it from feeding¡ªthat was how you killed a vampire.


    Dr. Parrish palmed his pencil, then gripped the top of his notepad with the same hand, squashing the pencil and notepad together. I recognized the gesture. It meant that he wasn''t going to write anything down right away. It meant that he had a question he wasn''t sure he should ask.


    I leaned forward. These were always the best questions.


    "What is vampire sex like?"


    I laughed. I didn''t try to hold it back. I loved these moments, when Dr. Parrish went into real-person mode instead of psychologist mode. Self-contained as he seemed, I bet Dr. Parrish could party after hours. He could probably rock a game of Scrabble.


    "Like snuggly teddy bear love, Doctor. What do you think?"


    "So it''s more violent?" He looked so serious. I wondered if my ID had actually convinced him. Nothing like the power of a little plastic card to change an American mind.


    "It can be. There''s often a lot of biting involved. But it can be gentle, too. Soft." I looked down at my hands. I kept my nails short. I''d had them that way in my other life because I spent a lot of time typing in those days, and long nails slowed my speed. I don''t know why I never grew them long. I didn''t even own a computer now, probably couldn''t figure out the system.


    It suddenly made sense to me in a way that it never had before, the way older vampires withdrew from human society completely, surrounding themselves with relics of the world they remembered best. It''s not that we couldn''t learn. Will had. It''s just that most of us were too preoccupied with the thirst to bother, and once you were out of touch long enough, it was hard to get back in.


    But my hands, my nails were half here, half in the past, in a vision of slow touches, soft scratches on a back and face and arms.


    I breathed all my air out and back in, silently, and added, "There is a lot of fetishism among vampires, too. I guess when everyone close to you knows that you feed off human blood, it seems futile to hide something as comparatively innocent as liking to screw in a group with whips and Nixon masks."


    Dr. Parrish snorted, then recovered himself. "So there''s variety, just like among the rest of the world."


    "Sure." I thought he was about to ask me how I liked to screw, but he shifted back into detached psychologist mode and started asking about my childhood, an incredibly boring topic, no doubt in search of the root of my neuroses.


    I told him everything, which basically consisted of the fact that my parents were normal Christian folk who would''ve preferred that I not listen to Janis Joplin, which I played when they were around because I didn''t want them to know I was really listening to Metallica.


    I thought he might ask me to get the Crayolas off the shelf and draw my family portrait¡ªwhich I would have done gladly, portraying my mother as a floating angel surrounded by lurid green vines and my father as an iguana being eaten by a shark, just to see his reaction¡ªbut he didn''t, just listened to me ramble on until our hour was up.


    Then I left, feeling, as I always felt, a little lighter, a little understood.


    I glanced back from the door of his office.


    He had picked up my ID and held it in both hands, looking into it past his massive nose. His thumb cleared the plastic over my picture. His notebook and pencil lay in his lap, forgotten.

 Chapter 6：Six

    I saw Will when he walked into the coffeeshop, watched him look around before he saw me in the corner, face half hidden by a mystery novel. I pretended to sip my latte, smelled it instead. Was there latte-scented perfume? Latte bath salts?


    Will saw me and stomped over. "Do you ever answer your cell phone, Annie?"


    I patted my pocket. "Forgot it."


    "You left it at your apartment, didn''t you? I bet it''s sitting right there on the kitchen counter next to your house phone, as always. What''s the point of having a cell phone if you keep leaving it there?"


    "My house phone gets lonely. I tried to set her up with the microwave, but he''s a little hotheaded."


    He humphed and took the chair across from me.


    "Were you calling for any particular reason, or just to nag me?"


    He was staring at my latte. "You''re not drinking that are you?"


    "No, of course not."


    "Good because I''m not going to hold your hair back all night."


    He would, though, if I needed him to, and it wouldn''t be the first time.


    Will leaned forward and smelled my latte, then wrinkled his nose. "I want you to come to my party Monday night."


    No. "I can''t. It''s a weeknight," I said.


    "So¡­you have to be home by curfew?"


    "Who has a party on a Monday night?"


    "People who don''t have to wait until Friday to have fun," he said. He gave me a partial smile that always made me think of Riker on Star Trek Next Generation.


    Damn, I had to stop hanging out with him. He was turning me geek.


    He continued, "Starts at nine. Don''t eat my guests."


    "You''re inviting cows?"


    "Don''t call them that, Annie. It''s gross."


    "Why are you inviting me to your cow party?"


    He sniffed at me, but he didn''t realize how badly I didn''t want to go to one of his parties, how long I had avoided going, had even avoided him when I knew one of his legendary bashes was approaching. He didn''t understand the memories that would bite at me if I tried to sit in his living room and not imagine that night so many years ago, the night of what was, in my opinion, Will''s only worthwhile bash ever.


    I bet he would even be serving Bloody Maries. Damn him.


    He was saying, "¡­low these days. I have to get some new or semi-new faces to show up or we''re going to end up playing Pictionary and snacking on low-fat pretzels."


    My head tilted to one side.


    "An analogy, of course," he said. "Please come."


    "Will, I just¡ª"


    "I''ll invite Hyuck-Joo."


    "You hate Hyuck-Joo."


    "Yes, but you love him."


    "I don''t love him," I stated.


    "Annie, he is one of the few people you will go out of your way to talk to. He even got you to go to a football game once, remember? You tolerated it for¡­for¡­."


    "For twenty minutes of great conversation."


    "That''s pretty close to love for you," Will said, but he said it gently.


    "I go out of my way to talk to you."


    "Of course. You love me. I''m not implying anything romantic. Though if you want¡ª"


    I gave his sleeve a light touch.


    He shut up. For an entire two seconds. "Just please come. I miss seeing you at these things."


    "You have never once looked in my direction during one of your parties. You''re always deep in some philosophic or scientific debate with someone you end up calling a moron."


    "I''ll hang out with you the whole time if you come," he promised.


    "No, you won''t."


    "I''ll talk to you for a full five minutes."


    I ran my fingers down the side of my coffee cup. I''d loved Will''s parties once. I remember loving them, so surely it must have been that way.


    I said, "I''m going to spend the whole evening in a corner of the room wishing I were somewhere else."


    "So long as you show up, lemon drop. That''s all I ask."


    Will stood to leave, tipping me one of his let-me-charm-you-baby grins. Then he dropped it, stepped around the dime-sized table, and hugged me.


    I don''t know what I''m supposed to be anymore.


    Will whispered, "You remember that navy blue dress with the slit up the side?"


    I growled at him, but hugged him tighter for an instant before I let him go.


    What would''ve my life been without him?


    I might''ve needed two therapists.

 Chapter 7：Seven

    And thinking about what-ifs always made me think about the big one. On the bus home from the caf¨¦, I thought of little else: what if I''d never awakened naked on top of a black, t-top Trans Am in a west Denver neighborhood?


    I caught my reflection in the dark window. I''d be nowhere near as sexy, that''s for sure. I''d be getting older, not wrinkles- and arthritis-old, but old enough that I''d start to worry about that


    fading sex appeal.


    I might be married, though. I might have kids. I was, in fact, headed that way when everything changed. I had two super-serious boyfriends, one of which had told me he would do anything to be with me forever, a statement that even all these years later made me belt out a laugh.


    A young woman and her daughter boarded the bus, the daughter staring shyly into every face she could see, the mother hurrying her along, gripping her hand in one hand and three shopping bags and a purse in the other.


    A husband, children. No, those weren''t laughable things.


    But they were the only things I was missing.


    I just wished I knew why. The "how" of it didn''t obsess me nearly as much as it interested Dr. Parrish and Will. I figured there was some technique: being bitten Bram Stoker-style, being drained and drinking Anne Rice-style, being excommunicated from the holy catholic church seventeenth century-style. It didn''t particularly matter to me. I wanted to remember, of course. But I didn''t stay up nights thinking about it.


    The bus lurched to another stop. Bodies of little interest entered and exited in flocks.


    I stayed up nights wondering if I had been "chosen." I guess that''s a weakness even vampires are prey to: wanting to be special, wanting to be one of the elect, not wanting to believe that we are just a handful among masses, and that whether we live ninety years or nine hundred, eventually we will pass out of the world, and the world will forget us.


    Anyway, I was probably just a passing fancy for a traveling clan. They probably had a good laugh about it, leaving me there in a maze of identical houses to wake up confused. And thirsty.


    Except. Except whoever vampirized me had to know how to do it. And there were not very many who knew how.


    And it was then, on a grimy, smelly bus, twenty-something years and two thousand miles from my awakening as a new creature, that I decided I really did want answers, not in the desperate way Will wanted them, but I wanted them all the same.


    Not so I could undo what had been done. Hell, no. But just to know a little more about my existence, like an adopted kid searching out her biological parents. I wanted to know where I came from. And I kind of wanted to know why I''d been abandoned by the adult vampires who''d created me.


    And that thought led me back to Will again, my first vampire friend.


    It wasn''t like I didn''t know what I was when I woke up on the Trans Am. I mean, you can only come to so many conclusions when sunlight is bothersome, you develop a sudden allergy to steel, you can''t eat real food without becoming so ill you think you''re about to die, and people smell like dinner.


    You don''t believe it at first, of course. You still think vampire existence is restricted to comic books and gory movies and the world''s most absurd romance novels. But a part of you recognizes the symptoms. And if your choices are between thinking you''ve gone crazy or believing you''re a vampire, well, you''d be surprised how easy it is to accept the existence of something so obviously imaginary.


    And the first time, ah, the first time the blood slogs down your throat in thick drops¡­it''s like making love for the first time, without all the awkwardness and pain. It''s so exciting you just about pass out with disbelief.


    If there''s any doubt in your mind up to that point, it disappears with that first drink. It doesn''t matter that you just about had to die with thirst before you took the drink. It doesn''t matter that you can''t get your mind to accept what you''re doing. It doesn''t matter that when you''re finally full and you sleep, nightmares of screaming bodies torment you.


    Because once you drink, you never want to stop drinking. And there are enough bad people in the world that you can drink from them alone, if your conscience bothers you. For most people, that concession is enough. For most people.


    But I was thinking about Will, about how, when he found me, I already knew that I was a vampire. Though having someone else confirm it provided an odd kind of relief. I''m not crazy, not demon-possessed, not evil. Just a vampire.


    Will had found me in an alleyway, of course, where I was sucking dry the last guy who grabbed my ass as I walked past. He watched me finish, nodded, gave me that smile of his, and we were friends.


    Later that night, we were walking across an empty baseball field and heading toward the swings.


    "Do you know how great this is?" I asked him.


    "You really like it that much, being a vampire?" he asked, trying to eye me without being obvious about it.


    He laughed. "Yeah, I guess you could say there are lots, and no, we''re not the commune type. There are some who like to live close enough to other vampires to visit. Others like living alone."


    "What kind are you?" I was fascinated by him. He seemed so in control, sure of everything, content. I wanted to know everything: how often he ate, what kind of meal he preferred, what other hidden benefits to my new life I hadn''t yet discovered. And Will, so brilliant, such a wonderful researcher and teacher, answered everything.


    He was more than willing, too, to instruct me in all the specifics of vampire love, but it took Keats''s laugh, and his bowl of oatmeal, of course, to convince me it was time to explore that benefit of my new life.


    And poor Will was stuck with the hard parts, introducing me to the intricacies of the vampire life and introducing all the vampires he knew to me. There wasn''t anything I asked that he didn''t answer. Sometimes his answers were "You''re probably better off not knowing that, Annie," and sometimes, "Why don''t I show you?" But somehow between the teacher-student relationship and the blatant innuendos, I found Will.


    He''d been a vampire longer than I''d been alive. He''d been a medical researcher in his other life, and he''d stayed at his job as long as he could, until people started to wonder how the handsome young researcher could''ve stayed young and handsome for so many years, without even an extra gray hair to show the passage of time.


    He''d only ever talked about it once¡ªabout the day he''d had to leave work, leave everything. I''d never seen him talk with more enthusiasm than when he was talking about the body''s proteins and the genetic whatever-he-said. Then he told me about designing and building his own lab, and that enthusiasm didn''t compare to anything, not even his parties, not even his latest lady-love.


    He did give up on me pretty fast, even before his geeky friend Keats came along and stole me away forever. Will never did care for the hunt unless he was sure he would win.


    There was a what-if there, too. What if it had been Will instead of Keats? But it never would have been, not in any version of the universe that I can think of.

 Chapter 8：Eight

    I went over to Will''s apartment Sunday night to tell him I wasn''t going to be at the party Monday. "I''d have to cancel therapy," I told him.


    "You go to therapy at nine o''clock at night?" he said. We sat down together at his dining room table, which was devoid of all the crumbs and wayward royal blue crayon marks that I remembered from the table of my childhood.


    "No," I said. I wished I had a good excuse. Of course, the fact that I had no better excuse was testament to how badly I needed to go to a party, or get a job, or start attending church, something to fill the void of time I spent reading mystery novels and staring out windows.


    A job would be best. I needed to stop living off the money Keats had left.


    Keats had been an excellent investor. He took the money he''d saved from real work and bought stocks or bonds or whatever it is you buy that means, when you do it well, that real work is henceforth optional.


    But then we spent five years traveling. We bought a house and furnished it. And even though there were some expenses we missed, being vampires (health and life insurance, groceries), our life together had drained both of our savings to the four-figure mark.


    Will was saying, "You have therapy at six-thirty, Annie. You have time to go to therapy, grab a meal, and attend a yoga class before the party starts." Will crossed his arms and looked at me as though he had just proven some irrefutable point. He needed to start getting more sleep or hunting more. He looked a little tired, a little dry around the mouth, a little restless, and he was annoying me.


    I examined him, then propped my feet up on the chair across from me because I knew he hated it. "But¡­but at nine, the moon''s reflection of sunlight is at its highest. I might get hurt."


    He grinned, ignoring my feet. "You''re talking crap, and you know it. You wouldn''t know the moon if it bit your ass."


    "Are you really picturing that?" I said.


    "And that wouldn''t be a good excuse even if it were true. You have a higher tolerance for sunlight than anyone I know. And even if you didn''t, you''d still have to come to my party."


    I whined and kicked the underside of the table. "But I''ll get a sunburn."


    "Wear a hat and some SPF five thousand. It''s been good enough for centuries of vampires, Annie; it should be good enough for you."


    "I doubt SPF five thousand has been around for centuries."


    "Since we only have SPF eighty or ninety these days, I''d say you''re right," he said. "SPF five thousand would be¡­a roof."


    I watched Will, watched him leaning back in his dining room chair, wondered why he had a dining room set, wondered why we always sat there instead of in the living room with the fluffy couch and matching armchairs. Even though they were no more comfortable for our kind than these straight-backed chairs, surely there was some sort of psychological comfort in squishy furniture. Aren''t the curves more reminiscent of nature? Weren''t those seats the first to be taken when the apartment began to fill with people during any one of the hundreds of parties Will had thrown over the years? Even hundreds seemed a low estimate. Surely there had been thousands.


    "Why is it important for me to come to this party?" I asked.


    Had Will ever dodged a direct question? I couldn''t remember.


    "It''s my birthday," he said.


    Damn. "I''m so sorry, Will. I totally forgot."


    "It''s no big deal, really. And I''m not throwing myself a birthday party tomorrow, nothing so pathetic as that. I just didn''t want to be alone that night, you know? And I didn''t want to sit around here with a handful of people and bemoan the passage of time. I did that last year, and it wasn''t so great."


    "I remember."


    "So," Will said, tapping on the table, "I just want to have a nice party with a good group of people. And I want you to be there, but I don''t want you to say anything about it being my birthday, okay? And no presents."


    "How about no public presents," I suggested, "but maybe something mysteriously left on your bed?"


    "You?"


    "Never mind. No presents. But I''ll be there."


    "Good," he said.


    He rubbed the side of his face as though it itched, but I knew it didn''t. We didn''t itch, didn''t grow stiff with stillness, weren''t bothered by heat or cold, weren''t truly bothered by anything but thirst.


    "Hey, does adrenaline affect the taste of blood?" I asked, remembering.


    Will''s whole face lit up, and I was sorry I''d asked. There was no one-word answer forthcoming. There was an explanation the size of a doctoral dissertation coming my way.


    "And not a short one, either," I told him. "A dissertation that destroys whole forests and brings the next ice age ten years closer."


    Will leaned forward and tapped the table in front of me. "Hey, Annie, it helps us non-telepaths if you say the first part of the conversation out loud and not just in your head. That way, when you chime in with the second half, we''re not all confused."


    "Do you think we''ll be alive to see the next ice age? I mean, barring a late night drunken fight with a stake-wielding vampire hunter?" It was all of a sudden really important to me. And then, just as suddenly, it didn''t matter at all. I realized I was thirsty.


    Will was shaking his head at me. "I¡­Annie, wouldn''t you rather talk about how adrenaline affects the body?"


    "No. I would rather talk about whether or not it makes blood taste differently."


    "Short answer?" he asked.


    "God, yes."


    He raised his eyebrows and continued, "When the adrenal gland¡ª"


    "Shorter," I said.


    "Right. The answer is yes, in theory at least. But I''ve never bitten anyone who wasn''t afraid or¡­running. So I can''t say, you know, empirically."


    "That''s all I wanted to know," I said. "Thanks."


    I evaluated just how thirsty I was and decided it could wait.


    It was nice to have a normal conversation with Will.


    Nearly a year ago, we had been sitting at that clean table. And without flashing warning lights or showing me how to use my seat as a flotation device, he''d said, "You want to go to dinner tomorrow night?"


    "We don''t eat," I''d said.


    "Well, no, but¡ª"


    "You want to go out on a date."


    "Yeah," he''d said.


    Ten points for a straight answer. But¡­. "No."


    "But¡ª"


    "I''m sorry, Will."


    He looked at me, really looked, like he was trying to see into my brain. "Because of Keats?"


    That day, a year ago, I''d wanted to say that Keats was just part of the reason. I''d wanted to say that it was complicated, that even if I had romantic feelings for Will, which I did not, there would be more considerations than just whether or not I wanted to go have a fake dinner with him.


    But it was easier to just say, "Yeah."


    He put a hand over mine, and if he hadn''t been such a good friend, I would''ve been really annoyed. You tell a guy no, and then he goes and tries to¡ª


    "I''m sorry, Annie. You know, sometimes I think, if I had been around more, back then, if¡ª"


    "Stop," I''d said. He did. He even let go of my hand. "You have always been amazing. You''ve always been there. We both¡­we both loved your visits."


    He''d given a cute half-grin.


    "I have to go," I''d said.


    "Okay," he''d said. And because he said it that way, I''d stayed, played a game of dominoes, watched a late-night Mystery Science Theater rerun, and went home just as the sun was beginning to rise.


    A year ago.


    But it had been the end of some things. Will had been so good at shielding me, and not making me think about all the moments that had led up to now, that when he stopped shielding me, it was as if I''d found myself naked in a hailstorm.


    I didn''t call him or seek him out after that night. I stayed away from places I might see him. I started trying to build my own flimsy shield.


    But the vampire world is small.


    And after a while of seeing him around, of small talk and avoiding eye contact, some of the weirdness fell away. Will wasn''t really into me.


    Now, after a year of getting back to where we''d once been, I thought that maybe it could all just be forgotten.


    But that night, we talked about adrenaline, then the ice age, then a mechanical problem at Will''s lab that left several burned surfaces and made the whole place smell like broccoli.


    Then I left, even though it was still early, and blamed it on the thirst.

 Chapter 9：Nine

    Sometimes Will is Napoleon in my head. He conquers one part, one memory, one hemisphere, and from there, he launches his next attack.


    If I had been around more, back then.


    But we hadn''t wanted him. We''d wanted our moment to last and last.


    Keats brought me a bowl of oatmeal, and from that day, there was no one else in our world.


    Will met us from time to time, in dozens of maybe-clean cafes, in dozens of cities. If we knew he would be within a few hours'' flight of wherever we were, we made sure to see him.


    But if Will hadn''t been around, Keats and I wouldn''t have noticed it much.


    We went to every continent, even bought passage on a science ship and spent a week chasing penguins and doing night dives into the clear waters of Antarctica¡ªimpossibly cold to the scientists, but not dangerous to us, and beautiful, beautiful in the white moonlight.


    We hiked in the Andes. We went deep-sea fishing. We went on safari.


    And from time to time, Keats whispered, "Tell me more about Inez."


    And I would laugh and shake my head.


    I spent hours kissing Keats. He was talented, with excellent technique. Kissing him was addictive. Since the first time, I never wanted to stop. If I''d met him in my earlier life, our lips would''ve chapped, our jaws grown sore, and I still wouldn''t have thought of stopping.


    A maid would knock on the hotel room door in Auckland or Madrid or Lima, and I would yell, "Come back later," or "M¨¢s adelante!" So I could kiss him for a few more minutes.


    Keats would only laugh and pull me closer.


    I never knew someone who laughed as much as him, not in an annoying way, not at things that weren''t funny, though he often found things funny that other people didn''t, sometimes that I didn''t. It was a lovely laugh, strong and low, never loud, never jarring. Sometimes I tickled him awake to hear it, a lullaby that would send me off to dreams. His laugh would fade into a growl; he would roll over and go back to sleep, too, most of the time. Other times, he would bite me awake and we''d make love there, whether it was midday and the light pierced cracks in our dark curtains or midnight and our sounds were the only sounds.


    But I was wrong when I said that he laughed more than anyone I ever knew. That was early Keats. Later Keats, Keats in those last years, laughed little, and every laugh seemed to drop off at the end, as though he were afraid that if he kept laughing, the sound would turn crazy at the end.


    I tried not to be funny in those last years.

 Chapter 10：Ten

    Dr. Parrish''s office always seemed to open like a book when I walked in, as though the plot was suspended when I wasn''t there. Nothing happened, so everything was the same from the time I left to the time I returned.


    I also thought Dr. Parrish probably had seven of the same suit and tie because I could never distinguish one from another.


    "You''re tense," he said, instead of "Hello."


    "I have a party later," I said. Dr. Parrish''s plot must be on a continuum with my personality, which remains suspended just outside the door of his office until I pass through and reclaim it. Somewhere, something is always not in motion.


    "A vampire party?" Dr. Parrish asked, with almost a smile. He looked about ready to ask for an invitation.


    "A vampire birthday party," I said.


    "Birthday parties make you uncomfortable?" he asked.


    "I''m afraid of frosting," I told him. "Gives me nightmares."


    He tapped his pencil against his immense nose and stared at his notepad.


    "It''s been a long time," I said, "since I was at a party given by this particular friend."


    "Will," he said.


    "Yeah," I answered, but there was a question in my voice.


    "He''s the only friend you''ve ever mentioned."


    I wanted to say that wasn''t true, but couldn''t.


    Dr. Parrish continued, "What happened at the last party you attended?"


    I thought about it. "I don''t remember. I¡­surely sometime after¡­I don''t know."


    "No problem. What''s the last party you remember?"


    The desk fountain made a happy, rushing noise. I wanted it to overflow.


    "Annie? The last party you remember?"


    It''s not a hard story, I told myself. The beginning is easy. And the middle is easy. And telling the beginning doesn''t mean that you have to tell the end. Or if you do, it will be months. With the way Dr. Parrish drags everything out, it could be years.


    "Fifteen years ago. I know there were parties after that. Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. But the one I remember best was fifteen years ago. I thought Keats was¡­."


    I thought Keats was a scrawny little geek when I met him. He was a scrawny little geek, actually. Everyone thought so. He walked into Will''s apartment in too-long slacks and a shiny button-up shirt. I had to teach him how to dress, once we were together. It was a long and painful process.


    Will wouldn''t start having mixed parties for a few years; we were all vampires that night. And we mostly knew each other. We stood and sat in comfortable groups, introducing friends to other friends who had seen each other at Will''s before but hadn''t had the chance to talk.


    Within an hour, the comfortable pleased-to-meet-you conversation would often lead to a shared Bloody Mary or a Dance Dance Revolution contest. Just as often, it led necking on the couch, to subtle sex in a corner of the room, or to an invitation to join a group in one of the back bedrooms.


    So Keats arrived, a stranger at a family picnic.


    I saw him as soon as he walked in the door. His head-bob walk and pseudo-casual lean against the refrigerator were enough to make me wish that the instant cool, sexy, confident vampire myth was real, if only to save me from witnessing his incredible awkwardness. There were even a few acne scars across his face, to complete the image. No active acne existed, of course. Out of the million benefits to being a vampire, that one ranked in my top ten.


    "Did Will invite a snack?" Nat asked from the chair beside me, eyeing gawky refrigerator-boy.


    Lydia answered him, "Your v-dar sucks, Nat. How long have you been a vampire? Ten minutes?"


    "Hey, I¡ª"


    "Fifteen?"


    I snorted, and so did several other people, especially Lydia''s newfound love, Kevin. Kevin with the lemur eyes.


    No one had approached refrigerator boy yet, and I could almost see his isolation tightening around him, suffocating him like a witch''s corset. He was almost cute, once you set the gawkiness aside. His light brown hair was a little too long, a little too messy, and it had a curl to it that you could tell he wanted to subdue. Green eyes that were pretty, but not remarkable. I wasn''t impressed, wasn''t interested, but I hadn''t yet heard him laugh.


    After five minutes, he turned and headed for the door, defeat in every muscle''s movement.


    I got up to go stop him from leaving. I really did.


    But then, a beautiful, exquisitely beautiful, vampire slunk through the front door and into the party. Beauty like that was even rarer in the vampire world than in the human one. Blame population control. Blame our awkwardly mysterious method of reproduction. I would blame anything if it meant more of that in the world.


    I''d laughed once, reading a vampire romance novel someone left in an airport lounge, when a moronic mortal woman unclothed her immortal vampire sweetheart for the first time and described his chest as a sculpture cut from marble, as Michaelangelo''s David. I busted out laughing so hard that two people with giant carry-on bags and dripping slurpees gathered everything up and moved to the other end of the room.


    Vampires weren''t marble sculptures. We weren''t David. We were more like something drippy-clock Salvador Dali would have created. I can imagine his thought process¡ªyes, we have this normal, mundane human being. But let''s screw around with its DNA and make it cooler.


    But I was apparently wrong. Michaelangelo did make a vampire, one that looked a good deal like a mildly unhealthy, un-grunge Kurt Cobain, but even hotter. If I''d been able to drool, I would have. But then I would''ve been too humiliated to walk up and introduce myself.


    Are there shy vampires? There must be. But most of them get over it pretty fast.


    "Hi, I''m Annie," I said. I''d sauntered up to him like I didn''t care that I looked like a too-tightly-wrapped burrito in the dress Will had picked out for me.


    "Hello, Annie," he said, and he looked me up and down without trying to hide it. And a leer spread across his face like fish paste on toast. And I thought, hm, not Michaelangelo''s Kurt Cobain. More like Marvel Comics'' Captain Slimeball.


    "Sorry," I said, before he could introduce himself, "but I was talking to someone behind you," and I reached around him, grabbed an arm, and pulled out Bill Gates. Except, no, this was Bill Gates'' geeky little brother. And it took me another second to realize that this was refrigerator boy, whom I''d been walking over to save from social pariah-hood when something shiny caught my eye. Refrigerator boy still hadn''t made it to the door through the crowd. I tightened my grip on his arm.


    The Captain accepted my answer, probably thought it was better to be lied to than outright rejected. He walked away.


    "Hi there," I said to refrigerator boy.


    He couldn''t have looked more shocked, staring right into my brown eyes like he''d fallen in love. Cute.


    "I''m Annie," I told him. "Would you like a Bloody Mary? Will made a whole batch. He thinks it''s hilarious."


    He nodded, then nodded again. "I''m Keats," he said. "We can''t have vodka, can we?"


    Too cute. "How long have you been a vampire, Keats?"


    "Few months. Actually, a year, I guess, but I had to¡­figure it out."


    "Not a story for a party, I''m guessing."


    "Right."


    "They''re virgin Bloody Maries. Two cups of human and a celery stick." I led him into the kitchen, where Will was pouring a new batch, deep in an argument about something to do with cellular decay or RNA with a girl who looked like all the color in her clothes had seeped into her blue and green hair, leaving her torn shirt and pants a heavy black.


    He slammed the empty pitcher back onto the counter, too busy to notice Keats and me, and said, "Reread your college biology textbook, Dorn."


    I reached around Will for two full glasses and took them back to my new friend.


    "Careful," I said, handing him one. "It''s disgusting."


    He took a drink and gagged.


    I saw the Captain making progress with Lydia, across the room, while Kevin watched and pretended not to care. Too funny.


    I turned back to Keats and sipped my drink. "Is it the vegetable taste or the temperature that''s worse for you?"


    "Cold as fuck," he sputtered, and I had to laugh.


    And then he laughed, too. That engaging, mystifying laugh. "Keats," I murmured, and smiled.


    Keats brought me flowers that next Friday after Will''s party, showing up just after sunset with a dozen each of three species of lily.


    I opened the door, saw him standing there, said, "No thank you," and closed the door. Gawky kid needed to know where he stood. Besides, plants did not do well around me.


    Saturday, he brought chocolates.


    I cracked a smile, though I really didn''t want to. "Why don''t you go right ahead and eat those yourself. I''ll see you in a week, when you''ve started to recover."


    Again, I closed the door on him.


    Sunday, he showed up with oatmeal. Steaming hot, cinnamon oatmeal in a brown glass bowl.


    He knocked on the door, then held the bowl out when I answered, like a child offering up an awkward hunk of clay that''s supposed to be an ashtray or a UFO or Abe Lincoln.


    I just stared, laughed, and let him inside.


    He never went back to his old apartment.


    Dr. Parrish had stopped writing at some point, and he stared at me while I talked. I think I''d wanted him to have glasses so that some of his emotions would be hidden. I think I wanted a glass wall to separate me from that look of expectant pity.


    I didn''t have to tell him the end of it all. I would eventually, of course. But there was foreshadowing in my voice, every time I said, "Keats." I couldn''t hide it any more than Dr. Parrish could hide his reaction to it¡ªbelief that maybe this was the tragedy that had led his patient to her vampire hallucinations.


    Maybe one day I''d bite him for proof.


    "Thank you, Annie," Dr. Parrish said. He opened his mouth and closed it, a water beast in dry, dry air, drowning and teased by the happy desk fountain.


    Finally he added, "I hope you can enjoy your party."


    I nodded and left, realizing when I passed the hula hoop-sized clock on the lobby wall that Dr. Parrish had let me talk fifteen minutes over my time.


    I felt a little bad for thinking of biting him.

 Chapter 11：Eleven

    I paced the sidewalk in front of Will''s apartment. It was almost ten o''clock, and Will would be ticked if I didn''t show up soon. Will''s Rules of Proper Party Etiquette stated that you should arrive between fifteen and thirty minutes late. You could leave when you wanted, so long as you stayed long enough to greet everyone, have a pleasant exchange with the host and/or hostess, and devise a subtle exit strategy.


    I wanted to show up an hour late, talk to no one, and bolt for the door after ten minutes. But mostly, I wanted to stamp my foot into the concrete and shout, "I won''t go."


    But it didn''t matter. In the end, I''d still go inside, still hug Will, whisper a happy birthday in his stupid ear, and pretend to enjoy myself.


    I remembered that I hadn''t always been so hermit-like. I''d been quite a party girl in college and in my early vampire life, mostly because I was hanging out with Will, and that''s what Will did. Science and celebration. Biology and bash.


    I tried to imagine a pre-vampiric Will, twenty, a student by day, hippie by night, sure that freedom and love and heroin were what kept the earth spinning, sure that if he were still and quiet enough, he could feel it spin. That picture made sense with the Will I knew, but I didn''t know if it was true. Maybe his nine-to-two parties emerged later as a way to show off his boringly clean apartment.


    Go inside. Don''t think about it. Just think about the stairs. Just think about how you walked up them just last night and there was nothing more terrifying than poorly-conceived innuendos at the top. And those only hurt for a little while. Then you can go home to Mary Higgins Clark or M. C. Beaton. Make a cup of apple cider to make the house smell pretty, then wash your mouth out with it before you pour it out. It''ll be like Christmas.


    I kicked a lamppost and climbed the stairs.

 Chapter 12：Twelve

    Will''s apartment vibrated with bodies. People stood, sat, leaned, lay, and walked on every surface but the ceiling, which was annoyingly out of reach.


    I used to walk through all the rooms when I got to Will''s, see who had shown up, which bedroom had turned into a strobe-lit orgy, and whether Will had given up serving his disgusting cocktails.


    Two steps into the living room, and I knew all the answers. Everyone, the larger of the two (the door to the smaller bedroom stood open, and I could see someone dealing cards), and no.


    Will was standing in the far corner of the living room, one arm resting on a shelf of a full dark oak bookcase. His back was to me as he talked with someone I couldn''t clearly see, and I thought that if I hurried and inserted myself in a subgroup, he could think that I''d gotten here on time.


    A group clustered around Lydia and lemur-eyes Kevin in the dining room, so I went to join them. I couldn''t remember the last time I''d seen Lydia or Kevin or any of the faces around them, but we''d all been tight once, back in the day.


    Lydia saw me walk over, and her smile held surprise and more welcome than I''d expected. I never thought that I would be missed from this clan.


    They were a smushed-together group, each trying to get a look at whatever Lydia was holding, and they all made ooh and ahh noises that might not have been out of place in most of the world, but which were never heard at a vampire birthday party.


    "Want to see?" Lydia handed me Kevin''s wallet. In the picture in the little plastic sleeve, a pudgy baby reached out with fisted hands and stared at me. Its wide eyes and mouth looked ready to suck on anything that came near. I shivered.


    "How¡­." I pointed to Lydia, then to Kevin.


    "Oh, we adopted," she said, beaming.


    Oh, man. "It''s human?"


    She nodded.


    Telepathy is a funny thing. Sometimes you really wish you could have it (the first time you sleep with someone, college exam week, whenever politicians speak), and other times, you know what everyone''s thinking without having it. At the moment, their minds broadcasted with the clarity and sound of professional equipment: "What the fuck?"


    But they stayed silent beyond their oohs and ahhs, content to let Lydia and Kevin do whatever they wanted. They had their own worries. But then, they probably didn''t have to make themselves show up tonight. They weren''t shaking dead memories awake. They weren''t still preoccupied with the thought of biting their therapists.


    Despite all that, I was the only one who said it aloud.


    "What the fuck? How did you get someone to agree to that? You know you have to feed it right? God, what''s going to happen when you wake up thirsty and no one''s around to watch it? One of you watches it while the other hunts? Hope you don''t get too desperate in the meantime.


    What about when it grows up? Won''t it notice that you haven''t gotten any older in its entire life? You going to keep moving around, changing its schools, so that no PTA mom gets suspicious and decides to swipe at you with a steel knife just to make sure you''re not disciples of the dark prince?"


    After I stopped talking, I realized I''d been a little loud, and I now had the attention of half the apartment. Not Will''s though. He was still in the corner in deep conversation with someone''s breasts.


    "We''ve thought about all that," Lydia said, her voice defensive.


    But she hadn''t thought about it. It was Lydia. She hadn''t thought about anything, and now she had an infant, for as long as she could keep it alive. Surely there would be social services people checking in now and then, to make sure the thing was being fed and changed and entertained with moronic goobling words, wouldn''t there?


    I leaned in close to her. "It''s just a baby, Lyd. Why don''t you give it away before you break it? You know how upset that would make you."


    Her voice wavered when she answered. "But I want to be a mom."


    She looked near tears, and I knew she was glad, as I had been on several occasions, that crying in public was no longer something she had to worry about.


    But she wanted to be a mom. What do you say to that? You''d be a lousy mom, totally screw up whatever chance the kid has of a normal life, even if you don''t eat him before he''s grown?


    "I''m sorry," I said.


    Kevin helped her to her feet, and they left.


    I should check up on them in a couple of days, I thought. They would get rid of it. They knew it was the right thing to do. No decent creature likes killing babies.


    It''s a shame that when the vampire in us robbed us of the ability to have kids, it didn''t also rob us of that need to love and nurture something. But Lydia would be okay. She would buy a plant.


    The rest of the oohing and aahing crowd dissipated into other parts of the party after that, none of them wanting to talk to me. I wondered if they would hold it against me permanently. I found that I didn''t care.


    Will had said he would invite Hyuck-Joo, and I didn''t doubt that he had invited him, but Hyuck-Joo still hadn''t shown up. I wasn''t surprised. He was already starting to fade from the crowd when I stopped coming. Disturbing how much the vampire community resembled high school, with its shifting cliques and transfers of power that meant nothing because none of us had any.


    Will had also promised to talk to me during the party, but it was three hours before he finally made his way over to me in the kitchen, where I stood examining his refrigerator magnets and wondering exactly how magnetism worked¡ªsomething I''m sure I was taught once and forgot, if I understood it to begin with.


    "Do you think there''s a connection," I asked when Will entered the kitchen, "between the magnetism of magnets and Hyuck-Joo not being here?"


    "Yes," he said. "Want to try my new creation?" He took a pitcher from the freezer, stirred it, poured a glass, and lifted it up. "Frozen daiquiris!"


    "How is it different from a Bloody Mary?"


    "No celery," he said.


    "Sounds good."


    "And a prettier glass."


    I took it from him and sipped it. "Disgusting," I said. "But, an improvement. Happy birthday, by the way."


    He glanced around to make sure no one heard, then said, "Thanks."


    I followed him back into the living room and sat with him on the squishy sofa.


    "Speaking of strange connections, I have a new conspiracy for you," Will said.


    "Great! It''s been awhile. Does this one have ogres and beams of heavenly light and secretly programmed DNA and eerie coincidences?"


    "Just eerie coincidences. And maybe the eeriest ones yet." Then he was serious. "I''ve been thinking about it for awhile. Annie, look at us," he said, gesturing at all the people in the room, all with their pale skin, their tinge of shadow under their eyes, as though they didn''t sleep well. I wondered if that''s what he meant. Then I started thinking about how few non-vampires there were here tonight. I guessed that only two or three of the people I could easily see were cows, though of course, I couldn''t know for sure without asking them. Still, they looked too tan to be nightwalkers.


    Only three. Supply must be getting low.


    I looked back at him and shrugged. Will''s parties always looked like this, like a gathering of slightly ill people drinking dark cocktails.


    "We''re young," he said. "We''re all young."


    "So?" I asked, tracing the lines on the sofa with my fingertips.


    "So becoming a vampire doesn''t reverse the aging process. You were eighteen when it happened, weren''t you? Did you get younger after it happened, develop knobbly knees and acne?


    Neither did I. No one did. But there are none of us, none that I''ve seen among any vampire group, ever, who was younger than fifteen or older than twenty-seven when they changed."


    "Geez, Will. Is this what you''ve been working on when you put on your little lab coat and disappear for days at a time? It''s the judges, of course. They''ve controlled the process for as long as anyone knows."


    "Not as long as anyone knows," Will said. "The judges have only been in power for two hundred years or so. That''s nothing."


    "So there''s a vampire conspiracy," I said in my shady undercover agent voice.


    "Maybe," he said, unsure now, turning on the sofa so that he faced the rest of the room, not only me.


    "Vampires were created by an evil scientist to make a bloodthirsty young army for his own dastardly plans."


    "Stop," he said. "Don''t make fun of this."


    "But we turned against him, and now we secretly rule the world through mind control devices in potted plants in the office of every president and prime minister and dictator on earth."


    He was glaring at me now.


    I thought he might be really angry, so I only added, "Kim Jong Il is not going to be happy about this. He''s going to have to get rid of his yucca," then stopped.


    Will seemed to want to keep glaring in silence, but he really wanted to talk about this, I could tell. And I realized that I was probably the only person with whom he''d shared these ideas. There were much smarter vampires out there, and there were a freaking plethora of vampires who were more interested in conspiracy theories than I was. But there weren''t many vampires Will trusted.


    "So what you''re wondering," I said, leaning further into the back of the sofa, pretending that I had never mentioned Kim Jong Il, "is where all the older vampires are."


    Will struggled with it, deepened his glare, then gave in. "Right. Or, sort of right. I can accept that people who don''t fit into the age range might just not survive the process. I can see how there might be a part of the brain or of our DNA that allows our age group to accept the change, and I''m sure there are exceptions out there. I don''t have proof that that''s the reason we''re all young, and I may never have proof, but that''s enough of an answer to let me sleep at night."


    I tried not to snort.


    "Okay, sleep at day. Whatever. But what really bugs me is where all the older vampires are."


    I stared at him. Hadn''t I just said that?


    "Two hundred years," he said, and I understood. The older vampires. Not older when they were turned, but older in our terms, vampires who had been vampires for more than just a decade or two.


    No one knew how old the judges were, but there were only twenty of them. Or, there were twenty of them according to other vampires, none of whom had any firsthand knowledge of the judges. But the age thing, that was something to think about. Of the dozens of other vampires I''d met, not one of them was more than two hundred years old. Even if all the judges were ancient, which was what most of us assumed, there should still be many, many more ancient vampires.


    "You think the judges killed them all," I said.


    Will''s eyes went wide. "No," he said, leaning toward me and glancing out into the crowd. "Fuck, Annie. Are you nuts? Don''t say things like that out loud. And no, actually, that thought hadn''t occurred to me."


    I thought about that. "You think that''s the end of our natural life span? About two hundred years? And the judges aren''t ancients?"


    He nodded. "Maybe. Or maybe a thousand other explanations." Will paused and sighed, pressing the back of his head into the squishy sofa. "You know," he said, "until a few years ago, when I first started noticing this, I had been really looking forward to some answers."


    "Answers?" I asked. Someone across the room said something over the music, and everyone around him laughed.


    "Who built the pyramids? Was there really an Atlantis? How did it all start¡ªwas the first vampire really the Indian goddess Kali? Or was it something else, some genetic mutation or virus that we haven''t yet detected?"


    "You know what I wondered about for years after I became a vampire?" I asked.


    Will shook his head.


    "Whether male blood and female blood really tasted different or if it was just my imagination."


    He laughed, but I didn''t. I wanted, weirdly, to cry. I felt like something had been lost. And I wasn''t sure if it was because I''d never thought to ask those questions, or if it was because now I knew there was no point in asking them. God, had I never thought about any of this at all? Had I been so overwhelmed with the coolness of what I was that I never asked the hard questions, the good questions?


    But when I remembered how so much of my vampire life had passed¡ªwith whom I''d passed it¡ªI felt a little better. I''d been in love for ten of those years, and grieving for five more.


    But I still didn''t know if it was grief or a new awareness of my self-centered, uninquisitive nature that made me want to crawl under the coffee table and hide there until everyone left.


    "But now," he was saying, "Now, Annie, I know there''s no one who can tell me anything about the past. I might talk to someone who knew Dickens, but that''s about all I can hope for."


    "And Dickens is pretty dull," I mumbled.


    "Right," he said.


    Could those ancient vampires have told me something about the meaning of existence? Particularly, why I was so happy to be miserable and had no plans to try to emerge from the goo of that misery? I mean, I was pretty sure that if I ever did pull myself out of the muck, I''d be a better creature than I was before. I would''ve evolved.


    But there''s something about near-immortality that just makes decisions like that impossible¡ªdo I grieve for another day, another year, or do I decide that this un-life is precious, too precious to waste in wallowing? And do you ever make a decision like that, anyway? Or do you just keep doing what you''re doing and one day realize that you''ve already swum up and out of the muck and are now working on Wall Street and taking out a second mortgage on your McMansion? Who could tell me if any of that was true? No one, I thought. But if someone knew, if anyone could tell me, I had an idea who might.


    "You could ask the judges," I said. "Maybe they know about Atlantis and the pyramids and vampire history, though if it really is a genetic mutation or a disease, I doubt they''d tell you that."


    He grinned at me. "Can you imagine that? ''I''d like to request an audience with the judges.


    My reason? Well, I just don''t think that entire countries usually sink into the ocean without help.'' They''d probably jab a steel bar through my chest for asking."


    I flinched before I had time to consider that I shouldn''t. And all other thoughts¡ªall other ponderings about the judges and what they could tell me, or what questions I should be asking¡ªevery thought drowned itself in that part of my mind that had been screaming for years, until that''s all I heard in my head. Screams.


    "I''m sorry, Annie," he said, his voice soft. He put a hand over mine, and it was larger and older-looking than a twenty-year-old''s hand should be, as though the wisdom of Will''s sixty years was housed there.


    I opened my mouth to tell him what I was thinking about because suddenly there was a thought there, an image to go with my mind''s unstoppable radio, but then I realized, I''d told him this story before. I couldn''t remember when, but sometime in our near-twenty years as friends, I''d told him everything.


    Maybe one of the first stories I told him was that I was ten when my grandfather died of a stroke. My grandfather had been magnificent¡ªtall and strong and willing to listen to endless inane stories about my school friends.


    When my parents told me that he had passed away, I didn''t know what to do. I paced. I tried to distract myself by kissing Tony Edwards behind the high school band hall. I put my hands over my ears whenever my parents talked about Granddad or about the funeral or about Grandma, who was alone now.


    I was opening my math book on my desk at school when it hit me, that he was gone from me forever.


    So many tears came, so fast, that I was drenched before I made it to the classroom door.


    I spent two days at home in bed, sobbing, enduring the glasses and glasses of water my mother left on my nightstand.


    And when it was finally over, when I had cried out every tear my body held and when I had exhausted every muscle with my sobs, I slept without dreaming all night and half the next day. And when I woke up, I could think about him again. I could remember him. It still made me want to throw myself off the roof, but I could hear their plans for the funeral and pick out my dress and open my math book again.


    But when (I wasn''t saying anything; Will was looking into my face now, looking horrified, looking as dejected as he had on the day it happened) Keats died, I had no tears, no Tony Edwards. I sobbed, but my tear ducts were dry, empty. I never felt more dead than I did then.


    But, I remembered, it had been Will who had given me the solution, and Will who saved me from the solution he gave.


    So I gripped the hand he gave me and said, "Don''t worry about it. Tell me more about your theories. Who killed JFK?"


    Will ignored his guests for an entire hour, told me who he thought had killed JFK, plus what he really thought about the moon landing, the CIA, and this one brand of imported beer.


    And I told him what Lydia and Kevin had done, and what I''d said to them, which was far more interesting to him than the JFK assassination was to me.


    "So they''re really going to find the kid another home?" he asked.


    "Sure, they are," I said, clasping my hands so he couldn''t see that they shook. "They just needed someone to help them see how crazy an idea it was."


    He got this look on his face that I recognized because I''d made that face before, more often to Keats than to Will, and more often accompanied by the explanation, "Wow, you''re na?ve for a vampire."


    "I''ll check up on them in a couple of days," I said. "Just to be sure."


    Will nodded. "I know a couple who take in foster kids, in case they haven''t found anyone yet."


    I nodded, too, paused, and said, "Do you think it''s crazy for them to want a kid?"


    Will stared out into the party of people that we''d nearly forgotten as we talked. "Of course not. It makes sense, doesn''t it, Annie? Every other creature lives to produce offspring. Every other kind of being can. But us¡­well, we''re a genetic dead-end, aren''t we? We aren''t meant to exist."


    "God, that''s depressing. I just wanted to know if you ever wanted kids of your own."


    He gave me a half-chuckle, half-sigh. "Sure. But I can''t imagine that any vampire would make a decent adoptive parent."


    "Few of us even have pets."


    "Right. I should get back to hosting, Annie."


    "Of course."


    "Are you going to be around for awhile?"


    "Of course."


    He tilted his head and looked at me the way you look at a stack of dishcloths when someone tells you it''s art.


    He went back to the crowd, and I went straight for the door.

 Chapter 13：Thirteen

    Too impatient to take the bus, too lazy to walk, I took a taxi back to my apartment. I always wondered if public transportation was one of the factors that led vampires to congregate in big cities. Carrying change for the bus is easier than getting a fake driver''s license that says you are the age you look. Except, maybe it only seemed like there were more big-city vampires. Maybe there were millions of small-town vampires, country vampires who went cow-tipping with the locals on Friday nights. It''s not like we took a census.


    And it wasn''t like we could tell by sight, unless they''d gotten their teeth sharpened, and then there was always the possibility that they were really just wannabe vampires, pitiable people who embraced the "culture" without believing.


    But all in all, v-dar was no more accurate than gay-dar. Unless they''re really flaunting it, it''s hard to tell, and if they are flaunting it, that doesn''t mean it''s true.


    I was convinced for years that Courtney Cox would turn out to be one. But after years passed without hearing about a single sucked-dry corpse in connection with her, I realized I must be wrong. The tabloids usually pick up on that sort of thing.


    The taxi driver began a unique feat of maneuvering without taking his foot off the accelerator.


    "Racecar driver in your last life, buddy?" I asked.


    He ignored me or couldn''t hear me over his balalaika CD.


    Probably ignored me because a few minutes later, he stopped four blocks from where I asked him to drop me and waited for me to pay him.


    I did.


    "Peace and long life," I said as I climbed out of the backseat.


    He sped off as soon as the door was closed.


    It''s hard to feel alone in a city of over a million, but I managed it from time to time. Probably my charm that kept people away.


    I thought of Lydia and Kevin, going home together to their baby-for-the-moment. And I allowed myself thirty seconds of jealousy.


    Then I went into the first convenience store and bought a pack of menthols. Not like I could get emphysema or cancer. Not like I could drink my troubles away. I could go on a blood binge, but the thought of being awake half the day with a stomachache didn''t appeal to me either.


    I paid for my smokes and a new lighter and a new shiny silver Zippo for my collection, and I lit up as I was walking out the door.


    A guy with great hair and a slightly too large nose glanced at me as he passed, and I had a brilliant idea.


    Well, first, I thought about taking him to bed, and then I had a brilliant idea.


    Dr. Parrish kept his office open late three days a week, mostly for his clients with nine to five jobs, but also, I suspected, because when you only work four days a week, the extra evening hours away from your family can be relaxing, even if you''re stuck in a Pleasantville office with a vampire and her dozen neuroses.


    I wasn''t sure how late he stayed, and even when I glanced at a wall clock through a water-spotted store window and saw that it was three in the morning, I thought I would check to see if he was still around, just for fun.


    I chain-smoked all the way there, burning through the whole pack but one, which I stuck behind my ear cowboy-style.


    The nicotine went beautifully to my head without bothering my stomach the way it did in my innocent days. Sometimes I wished vampires could do heroin without dissolving into a puddle of slime. I always wanted to try heroin, just once. Of course, you can''t do heroin just once, right? So I would''ve been dissolving into a puddle of slime several times a week. How inconvenient.


    I giggled.


    Dr. Parrish was gone, of course. The parking lot lights shone on grease spots and discarded cans of Red Bull, nothing else.


    But since Dr. Parrish wasn''t around and I was, I decided to break into his office.


    I checked all the doors, but someone had remembered to lock up. The windows were all locked too, but the small window to Dr. Parrish''s office, which was always covered by a thick blue curtain, looked easy enough to jimmy.


    In minutes, the window stood open, and in another minute, I had crawled through and was lounging in the dark in Dr. Parrish''s counseling chair, kicking my feet up on the little coffee table. The whole room looked different from this angle, though I could only make out shapes in the dark. I turned on the miniature lamp in the middle of the table, and a light so dim it was almost darkness shone out onto the tan walls. Dr. Parrish''s counseling chair was much more comfortable than the patient chair adjacent to it.


    When that got boring, I went to his huge desk in the corner of the room and sat in the huge leather desk chair. I searched for the doctor''s ever-present notebook, carefully avoiding the steel pyramid paperweight beside his computer. Scratching myself on that thing would hurt.


    Dr. Parrish had probably locked the notebook up somewhere. Or he slept with it under his pillow.


    I felt a little guilty going through his desk drawers looking for it, but I didn''t look at anything else. Except a picture of an early-thirties woman in front of a castle somewhere, wrapped in a bright blue coat and scarf. She had a light, joyful smile that shone in every feature. This had to be the wife. She was too pretty for him.


    He would say that when he met her, he loved her face first. She would say she loved his sense of humor first, loved the way he looked at the world. Then they would argue about whose family to visit on Thanksgiving and whose on Christmas. He would say that she nagged him all the time. She would ask how he could possibly know that when he never listened to a thing she said. Months of anger. One of them goes out one night to pick up a dozen eggs, ends up sleeping with the next door neighbor. Repents in tears. Messy divorce. Alimony. Then she finds someone else she thinks has a great sense of humor, and he finds someone else whose face he loves.


    I put the picture away and went to look through his books. Will thinks that you can learn everything about a person by what''s on his or her shelves.


    I found the expected psychology books, but also a row of psychoanalysis texts, including one on dream interpretation, though I didn''t imagine Dr. Parrish took it too seriously. Even if he did, I had more respect for him than for people who swore that all questions could be answered with a microscope. I flipped through the dream interpretation book for a while. Apparently every symbol in my dreams meant death.


    Dr. Parrish had several Joseph Campbell books, too¡ªthe mythology of this and that. What did Joseph Campbell say about vampires?


    On the bottom shelf, mostly hidden by his desk, was the fiction section. Dr. Parrish loved his Stephen King novels. He was a Harry Potter fan, too. I loved the vampire that turned up in the sixth book. So funny.


    Dr. Parrish also had a few books by someone named Jhumpa Lahiri, whom I''d never heard of. But I loved the name. I said it out loud a few times in the almost silent office. "Jhumpa. Jhumpa Lahiri."


    Almost silent. I looked up and noticed that Dr. Parrish had forgotten to unplug his bubbly desk fountain. The sound seemed to equal this place in my mind, so while I''d been listening to it since I climbed through the window, I hadn''t realized that it was an accidental sound this time.


    I took a Jhumpa Lahiri from the shelf and went over to the fountain. It bubbled up with so much shining joy that it reminded me of the picture in Dr. Parrish''s desk, of the wide, wide smile of the woman, and I was convinced that she had bought this for him, maybe even brought it into his office and placed it here, so that the sliver of a gap in the dark curtains would let a line of light fall across it at the right time of the day.


    I imagined Dr. Parrish sitting in his counseling chair, glancing toward the fountain and watching the knife edge of day slide across it as his clients talked at him for all those hours. He probably felt relieved when the light line disappeared, knowing that he could lock the door soon and read Jhumpa Lahiri for an hour before the smiling woman expected him home.


    I unplugged the fountain. It burbled for a few more seconds as the last of the energy passed through it, and then the burbling stopped.


    Silence.


    I couldn''t hear the cars on the road or a clock ticking or mice in the walls, as though Dr. Parrish''s world was a black hole of sound. No wonder he wanted a fountain. I didn''t want to say anything or move in a way that would make a noise. If I did, this whole place might shatter around me, the roof slicing me up as it fell in shards.


    Had I ever smoked nineteen cigarettes in a row before? I was pretty sure that I hadn''t. I couldn''t remember ever feeling quite like this.


    I plugged the fountain back in, and I could hear the metal prongs grind into the outlet, the explosion of the plastic of the plug slapped against the outlet cover. The gurgling water started flowing again, sounding even happier than before, as though it had expected bedtime was near but was allowed to stay up an extra hour.


    I went back to Dr. Parrish''s desk chair and switched on the bare metal lamp there. It was so bright that I had to let my eyes adjust, and even then, I pointed the bulb toward the ceiling to dim the glare on the desk.


    I opened the Jhumpa Lahiri book and realized it was a short story collection. I thought I''d read one, put it back on the shelf, and then leave, maybe taking the fountain with me. It could be the second thing in my living room. I would set it right beside the ugly couch, and when Will came over and told me, again, that I lived like a monk, I could point to the fountain and say, "No, I have two things now. You can''t make fun of me anymore."


    Or maybe I''d make some art, none of the deep symbolic stuff that looked like men giving birth from their nostrils that Will bought for me, but something with blue and water¡ªmaybe a painting of the little fountain. And then I would have three things.


    But first, a bedtime story. And then another.


    When Dr. Parrish came in at ten that morning, I was halfway through the last story.


    "This is incredible," I said.


    His briefcase fell, making a soft thudding noise against the carpet at the same time that Dr. Parrish gasped and put his hand to his chest.


    "Sorry," I said. "Have you read this? I mean, it''s on your shelf but that doesn''t mean that you have read it. You might be intending to. Or someone might have given it to you and you''re putting it off while you finish reading," I picked up the book that rested against his laptop, "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell." I held it up for him to see. "Is it any good?"


    "Annie, what are you doing here?" He hadn''t moved from the doorway or picked up his briefcase.


    I explained how I''d smoked all but one cigarette out of the pack I just bought, showing him the one I''d saved behind my ear as proof, then I told him how I was bored and lonely and how I''d left Will''s party kind of early. And somehow in the midst of telling him about Jhumpa Lahiri, I remembered that I didn''t have a good excuse or even a decent explanation.


    "I''m really sorry," I told him. "It won''t happen again."


    Dr. Parrish was still staring at me. I hadn''t realized I would scare him so much. I wanted to grin at the way he stood there like a frame in a comic strip, but I didn''t.


    Instead, I put down Jonathan Strange and picked up Jhumpa Lahiri''s short stories. "Mind if I borrow this?" I asked.

 Chapter 14：Fourteen

    My next appointment wasn''t until Thursday evening, so I spent two and half days worrying that Dr. Parrish''s assistant would call and tell me that Dr. Parrish had referred me to another psychologist. Despite the possibility of ending up with one who wore glasses, I didn''t want to change.


    I''d picked Dr. Parrish out of the phone book four months ago. Actually, it might be more accurate to say that Will picked him out of the phone book. Will chose him, asked around about him, and then called and made my first appointment.


    Will thought I seemed depressed. He never used the term suicidal around me, though I knew he thought it.


    Will also came to my apartment half an hour before that first appointment to make sure I was dressed (I was impressed that he''d taken himself away from the lab at that time of evening¡ªWill had very specific rules about work time and play time, and work time lasted until there was no more work to do, and then Will planned a party).


    Will escorted me to Dr. Parrish''s office and sat in the waiting room with me while I filled out paperwork. Then Dr. Parrish''s secretary told me that I could go in.


    "I don''t want to go," I told Will.


    "It''s good for you, Annie."


    "You going to make me eat broccoli, too? Let''s just go. Let''s go see a movie. My treat."


    "Annie, look at me."


    I did, but not without making faces.


    Will grabbed my chin. "I would not have brought you here if I thought you didn''t need it. Damn it, the only utensil in your whole house is a stainless steel carving knife. And yeah, you''re an idiot for leaving me alone in your kitchen. And your hunting is¡­well, it''s not healthy, the way you do it. I''m afraid of what that will lead to. I can''t lose two best friends, and I''m worried about you. Now, go talk to this guy because I love you and I''m asking you to."


    So I did. I went for a month and a half because of Will. And I went the two and a half months after that because by that time, I''d realized that he was right.


    I got rid of my kitchen knife and the three others I had hidden around the house. I started sleeping better. And I acted as normal as I could when Will was around.


    Will thought Dr. Parrish was a miracle-worker, a real saint of psychology. He thought that the doctor was helping me "fight my demons" and "deal with my issues."


    Maybe. Or maybe I''d just been lonely. And now I had a twice-a-week friend who would stick around as long as I needed him to.


    Either way, I hadn''t expected that breaking into Dr. Parrish''s office would screw things over for me so badly.


    So on Thursday morning, I bought a nice thank you card, wrote a nice note of apology and repentance and nicotine hysteria, and I took the bus to his office and left the note with his secretary.


    I went to Will''s apartment afterward, but he was either gone or asleep. I stood at his door for ten minutes, willing it to open. But it didn''t.


    And I didn''t have anyone else.


    I left, pulling my hat low to block out the sun, keeping my hands in my pockets. I walked up and down every street in the area, thinking maybe Will was out somewhere. But I didn''t see him.


    I wanted to talk to someone. I needed someone to acknowledge my existence. I thought of the floppy-haired, big-nosed man who''d passed me outside the convenience store, and I started wishing that I really had taken him to bed because maybe now I could call him and he wouldn''t be too busy to talk to me.


    I walked up the streets and down the streets.


    I wanted to cry, but I couldn''t of course.


    So I did what I did when I couldn''t cry. I hunted.


    Two old white guys, a woman who was yelling at someone on her cell phone.


    It was daylight, but who could stop me? I snatched and devoured like an immortal monster from a Greek myth.


    A man with a gold Rolex watch. A man with bruised knuckles.


    I consumed the life force of humankind. I was the destroyer of worlds.

 Chapter 15：Fifteen

    My bathwater was pink.


    I took a breath and submerged. In my warm, silent, womb-like world, I rested.


    I put my hands over my stomach, ballooned with blood. I looked like I was halfway through a pregnancy. Even now, though, my body was absorbing the blood, shrinking my body back to normal¡ªa pregnancy backward, like everything else in this second life.


    I stayed underwater, felt along the edges of the bathtub for my sponge and soap and when I had them, scrubbed away every bloodstain.


    I had to leave soon, if I was going to be at counseling on time, so I unplugged the bath with my toes and toweled off while the water drained away. I sprayed it down with shower cleaner and then hid the shower cleaner under the cabinet behind extra bottles of bubble bath. Will joke about me enough without that kind of ammunition.


    Wet, my hair was almost black, and the contrast with my pale skin, even flushed as it was with my large meal and hot bath, made me look ghostly in the stripe of mirror I''d cleared of steam. I combed my hair into a ponytail, rubbed moisturizer with sunscreen into my face and neck, grabbed my lipgloss, and went to pull some clothes from the closet.


    Dressed and glossed, I took the bus to Dr. Parrish''s office, feeling uncertainty twist my too-full stomach.


    I sat in the waiting room, staring at the giant clock behind Dr. Parrish''s assistant, sure that at any moment, she would say, "I''m sorry, Annie, but I don''t have you written down for an appointment today. Is there some kind of emergency?"


    And then I would say, "No. My mistake." And I would leave and never come back, spend the whole night walking around, lamenting my inability to live in the moment, always dwelling on the past and future and¡ª


    "Dr. Parrish will see you now," the assistant said.


    I stood and walked into the office out of habit, not realizing until I was halfway through the door that I should be celebrating. He was seeing me. I wasn''t being kicked out.


    "Nice to see you again, Annie," Dr. Parrish said.


    "Nice to see you too," I said, as politely as I could.


    "Thank you for the nice note. Can I assume this means that you won''t be breaking into my office again?"


    "Yes. No, I won''t break in again," I said.


    "Excellent. Now tell me how Will''s party went. You said you left early?"

 Chapter 16：Sixteen

    I tried Will''s apartment again after counseling was over. My stomach had been twisted up so tight all day that I still felt it, even though I knew Dr. Parrish had forgiven me. Maybe I just needed a television, something to fill up the silence of my apartment when I was there alone.


    Will was home this time, but as soon as I opened the door, I realized I should''ve waited for tomorrow.


    He looked me up and down and said, "You''ve been hunting too much again."


    My hand went to my stomach without thinking about it. I could feel the bulge, though slight now, under my jeans. "Bad day," I said. "But it''s okay now."


    "Dr. Parrish still doesn''t believe in vampires," I said, but Will and I both knew that didn''t matter. The doctor was helping me. "I broke into his office Monday night, and he caught me."


    He laughed a little before he realized I was serious. Then, he said, "Damn, Annie. Why?"


    "Why did I break in? I don''t know. I was bored." I didn''t mention the cigarettes. Will wouldn''t approve.


    Then I noticed what he was wearing. Button-up shirt and slacks, shiny shoes. His black hair neatly combed. A small bouquet lay on the table next to his wallet and keys.


    "You''re going out," I said.


    "Date," he said, not meeting my eyes as though he felt guilty for taking someone else out, as though he thought we were involved, or would be if he wasn''t on his way out the door to see someone else.


    "Well, have fun," I said, heading for the door.


    "Annie, if you need me to¡ª"


    "Don''t be silly. I''ll see you next week sometime. Okay?"


    Will didn''t say "okay" back, but I''d probably just walked out before he could.


    Funny that there were still people dating in the world. How long had it been since I went out on a date? Had the whole world really stopped for me after Keats? But it had been¡­I counted¡­five years. Five years. Wasn''t that time enough by anyone''s calendar?


    Never mind that I''d spent two years of that time in such a fog of hunting that the body count caught the attention of the police, then the local news stations, who then reported an unusually high number of mysterious and seemingly random deaths. They nicknamed their serial killer "Fire Man" because his victims were burned so thoroughly. Not very creative. And no one seemed to realize that the bodies burned so well because they were significantly drier on the inside than most bodies.


    I went to my apartment from Will''s and slept the rest of the night and all the next day, not strange after a binge like mine. Dreams woke me up twice¡ªamorphous dreams that disappeared as soon as I awoke, terrified, convinced that I couldn''t possibly go back to sleep. The first time I fell back asleep before I could make a decision about whether to get up. The second time I did get up, turn on all the lights in the house, and hum the "Genie in a Bottle" song because it was the only one I could think of.


    I ended up falling asleep in the bathtub, my head propped up on a bath pillow, and I slept there until the water was cold. I woke up shivering, drained the tub and refilled it with hot water, and when I was warm again, I drained the tub a second time and got out, wrapping myself in a fluffy white robe.


    Then I opened the blinds in the living room, sat on the ugly couch, and stared out at the other apartment buildings and the street, three stories down.


    And then I was bored.


    I usually counted on Will to provide me a way out of boredom, but he wasn''t being too useful these days.


    Therapy was useful for relieving boredom, but therapy was only twice a week.


    Maybe I needed a job. Almost a year had passed since I''d walked out on my fry job at Corndog Heaven. The manager had yelled at me for my seeming inability to produce corndogs of a proper golden hue. And then he accused me of stealing fries.


    I told him that everyone could see from his face to his waistline that it wasn''t me who hoarded greasy crap in my desk drawer and wolfed it down when no one was watching.


    Then I took off my apron and my Corndog Heaven t-shirt, dropped them into the fry vat, and walked out the front door in my bra and blue jeans.


    The cashier, Mindy, told me that sales went up for a while after that.


    San Antonio enjoys year-round warm weather, and I was glad because when I got outside, I realized I didn''t have a car or a spare shirt, and I ended up walking four blocks to this shop called Rainbow Joe''s Vintage Ts and buying a Hogan''s Heroes shirt in this great olive green. It''s still one of my favorite shirts.


    The kind cashier took off the price tag so I could put the shirt on while she rang up the price.


    But I hadn''t worked a day since then, unless you include writing deliberately snotty and controversial letters to the editor of the San Antonio Express-News.


    It wasn''t as though I needed a job right away. Keats had left me quite a bit, and I had a lot saved from my pre-vampire days, too, when I thought I was saving for a house and a family.


    That savings, minus whatever I spent on rent, therapy, and bubble bath in a month, seemed to always be shrinking. I worked random jobs, and I added the cash from the wallets before the wallets and their owners coincidentally burned to ash. I felt a little bad about that, robbing them all, but they weren''t going to be using it anymore. Most months, I could pay rent on what I collected.


    But the numbers of my savings account still dropped like a rollercoaster on the downhill side.


    So that would be something to do to fill the time. I could work.


    I let my head fall into the pillowed back of the couch as I watched the cars pass.


    I could work.


    Or I could just sit here.

 Chapter 17：Seventeen

    Keats became a vampire about four years after I did. He was twenty-one, taking classes at Alamo Community College, working for some sort of computer programming/hacking company run by wealthy old men who couldn''t find the "on" switch.


    They thought he was just brilliant. And he was, though not quite as widely brilliant as the man who worked in the lab across the hall from the hacker office, a man Keats knew only as Will.


    All the rumors about Will had to do with his extraordinary work ethic, how a man who worked all day and half the night, who seemed to be perpetually in that lab next door, even when someone came in on a Saturday to pick up a forgotten birthday present, would surely be a millionaire before he was forty.


    No one seemed to notice that he didn''t eat the green-frosted cupcakes when they invited him to the annual St. Patrick''s Day party.


    Keats noticed that every delivery girl seemed to drool as soon as she saw Will, and that not one of them looked twice at him. Keats tried not to blame them. He still looked like he was the captain of a high school chess team. He would only tell one person, ever, that one of the best years of his life had been the year he was the high school mascot because everyone loved the giant shell of a Brahma, and he could hide inside the costume and be someone other than himself.


    Keats never said it, but I imagined that he spent nearly as much time at work as Will did in those days. It would have been his Brahma mask¡ªHacker Keats was a persona that was appreciated, even admired. He would have been the company''s most valuable employee. And Keats did love his job.


    That''s probably one of the things that made his new life so hard to accept. Before I became a vampire, I worked as an intern at a big advertising agency¡ªso big that the head of my project never actually learned my name. In the evenings, I went straight from the ad agency to Telemarketing USA, where I was an assistant manager. It was my job to yell at all the flunkies who used company phones to call their girlfriends in Japan and all the other employees who could never seem to meet the outrageous quota set by an upper management who hadn''t dialed a number in decades.


    So when I woke up naked on top of a car in Denver and realized how many days of work I''d missed, that was a plus for me. Maybe I''d been brainwashed, carted halfway across the country, dumped with no money or ID, left to find my way impossibly home. But at least I wouldn''t have to go back to work.


    Keats loved his job.


    Then one day, he woke up on the front step of Benaglio''s Salad and Pasta Bar. The sun stung his skin, as though someone held a lit lighter against a sunburn. He crawled out of the sun before realizing that he wasn''t sunburned, and the sun was still low in the sky. But he was shirtless. And pantless. A Furniture Emporium Liquidation Sale flier on the sidewalk told him that he was in Lubbock, Texas. He covered himself with the flier and told himself that screaming was not a productive option.


    Maybe there''s a reason that we''re transformed so far from home and left so destitute. But why would the judges steal our clothes? It''s just mean. I always imagine them stripping an unconscious new vampire in the backseat of a limousine, pausing to chuck him out on the street, then speeding off, laughing so hard they can barely breathe. I wonder if there''s a vault of vampire underwear somewhere or if they wear our clothes after they abandon us.


    Keats was lucky. Within ten minutes, a kind old man had found him, assumed he was the victim of some cruel prank (neither yet knew how cruel), and led him to an old gray pickup truck. Keats sat in the passenger seat and covered himself with the man''s cowboy hat. They drove to Wal-Mart, and the old man went inside and bought Keats new clothes and shoes.


    Keats felt like crying. He couldn''t, but he wouldn''t know that for two more hours.


    The old man got into the driver''s seat and handed Keats the bag of clothes. Keats got dressed as quickly as he could.


    "Thank you,??? he said. "I just can''t even¡­thank you."


    "Don''t mention it, kid," the old man said. "I just hope you get even with whoever left you like that."


    "I would. If I knew who it was."


    The man chuckled. "Well, then, I would recommend drinking a little less on the weekends."


    Keats tried to laugh, too, but he couldn''t remember drinking anything for months, not since Fernando brought a bottle of Stoli''s to work and passed it around in Dixie cups.


    "I hate to ask you for anything else, but if I could just have a couple of quarters to make a phone call¡ª"


    "What''s your name, kid?" the old man asked.


    Keats told him.


    "Peculiar. Anyhow, Keats, I''m not about to go dropping you off in the middle of nowhere with nothing to your name."


    Keats shook his head. "You''ve already¡ª"


    The old man cranked the key and the ignition seemed to explode before it settled into a steady rumbling. "Well, I''m Leonard. And that''s enough with your manners," he said. "I think we need breakfast, and then we''ll talk about getting you home."


    Keats wanted to argue, but he was starving.


    Leonard drove him to a greasy little buffet, and Keats piled his plate full.


    In between swallowing and minimal chewing, Keats answered all Leonard''s questions. He lived in San Antonio, he said. He couldn''t remember how he''d gotten here, what had happened, who he''d been with. The last thing he remembered was watching a Get Smart rerun as he went to bed. Nothing else. No, he didn''t have family near. His parents had lived in Alamo Heights, but they were dead now.


    His friend Fernando had a sister in Lubbock. Keats had met her twice. If he could call Fernando and get the sister''s address, he could go spend the night on her couch, maybe wait there and have Fernando overnight his bank card and ID to him. Four hundred miles was too far to ask anyone to drive and pick him up.


    Leonard grinned. He took a drink of his black coffee, nibbled a dripping piece of bacon, and said, "You decide all that in the hour since I found you?"


    Keats nodded.


    "Well, it sounds like a good plan to me. Tell you what, let me give you a little cash to hold you over, and I''ll drop you off at that sister''s house once you find out where it is."


    Keats agreed, on the condition that Leonard also pass along his mailing address so that Keats could return the money to him once he got home. Leonard didn''t like that, but he gave in when he realized that Keats wouldn''t.


    Leonard slid a couple of quarters across the table, and Keats went to the pay phone in the back of the diner. He dialed the office number from memory and asked Manuel to connect him to Fernando.


    "Man, where the hell have you been?" Fernando asked. "What happened?"


    Keats explained as well as he could.


    "But," Fernando said. "You''ve been gone four days. You remember nothing?"


    Keats dropped the phone and scrambled to pick it up again. "I don''t know," he said. Then, trying not to think of anything but getting home, he told Fernando what he needed, and Fernando gave him the address, told him he would call Gabriella to tell her Keats was coming, and promised to get the bank card in the mail within the hour.


    Keats went back to the table and told Leonard that everything would be fine.


    But four days. How was that possible?


    By that time, Keats had devoured two plates of food. He was starting his third when the nausea hit him.


    "Excuse me," he said, then ran for the restroom.


    Keats vomited everything out of his stomach, and he was still heaving when Leonard helped him to his truck and handed him the empty sack that had been full of Keats''s new clothes half an hour ago. Keats held the sack under his chin, thinking that it wouldn''t be fair to repay the old man''s incredible generosity with a vomit-covered dashboard.


    Leonard drove to a drugstore next. He brought out a bagful of anti-nausea medicines, but by the time he made it through the checkout line with the world''s slowest cashier, Keats had finished heaving and was starving again.


    Again, he wanted to cry, but couldn''t.


    Four days.


    When Leonard took his place behind the wheel again, Keats insisted that they head toward Gabriella''s house. Leonard had done too much for him already.


    They listened to an oldie''s station¡ªPatsy Cline lamenting long-gone lovers. Keats didn''t want to talk, and Leonard let him have his silence. The buildings and cars whipping past the window made Keats ill, so he focused on the knees of his stiff new jeans, then let his eyes wander over the inside of the truck.


    One of those green, tree-shaped air fresheners stuck out of the otherwise empty ash tray. A picture of a little girl in a fairy costume hung from the rearview mirror on a string strung with painted macaroni.


    Leonard sat as though he spent his whole life in the truck, one tanned arm propped up against the side window, the paler arm draped over the steering-wheel so that he drove with his wrist. He stared ahead as though there was something interesting out there, not miles and miles of flat, boring road.


    Keats watched him. He could almost see the pulse in the man''s thin neck, could definitely hear it. It was a sound that spoke straight to his stomach, bypassing the brain because it might tell him that his thoughts were worse than crazy. They were murder, and worse than murder.


    But somewhere on the road to Gabriella''s house, Keats''s mind faded into his hunger, and the warning that his brain might have given him was lost in the sound of the engine and of Leonard''s thrumming pulse.

 Chapter 18：Eighteen

    The animal fog cleared from Keats''s mind some time later.


    Leonard''s eyes still stared out at the forever road. The truck idled, two wheels in the road, two on the shoulder. Thick, spattered blood covered Leonard, Keats, the windshield, the side window, and the picture that hung from the rearview mirror.


    That''s when Keats learned that it was impossible for a vampire to cry.


    Keats would never go near another old man. We could be so thirsty we were about to bite each other, and Keats would insist on letting the old men walk on, would wait for anything else, even a pre-teen girl. I''m pretty sure that Keats thought pre-teen girls had earned that fate. But every time an old man passed, Keats watched him walk by.


    Once, a mugger attacked an old man just a few feet past the alley where we waited. Keats was usually a humane killer, snapped the neck, so that if his food knew what was happening at all, it was only for an instant. Keats gave the old man all the money in the mugger''s pockets, then he drained that mugger slowly.


    I went to find another meal, and when I got back to that alleyway, Keats was still drinking him, still looking straight into the guy''s eyes so that both of them knew how afraid the mugger was.


    Keats went home happy that night, happy even that he was a vampire.

 Chapter 19：Nineteen

    "Do you ever feel guilty about killing people?"


    Somehow, it was Monday again, two weeks since Will''s birthday party, and I was in Dr. Parrish''s blue office again, contemplating things I rarely bothered to contemplate. "No," I said. "I usually stay away from children and¡­nuns. Otherwise, I have to eat."


    "Doesn''t it bother you to choose your life over the life of your¡­prey?"


    I sniffed. "Nope."


    "Really?"


    "Look, I''ve met very few people I didn''t want to eat. If it helps you, I go for the dangerous prey when I can, the burglars, the guys on their way home to beat their wives."


    Dr. Parrish nodded, tapping his pencil against his notepad and looking at me over his huge nose. "Other vampires hunt at random?" he asked.


    "Most. They choose teenagers on a date, mothers on their way home from work, infants. But you have to eat to live, and one cow now and then isn''t going to diminish the herd."


    His eye twitched. Apparently everyone was offended when I called people cows.


    "Will goes for old people," I said, more quietly. "People who have already enjoyed the healthy, ''exciting'' years of their lives. At least, that''s how he sleeps at night."


    "You couldn''t eat animals instead?" he asked.


    "Maybe. But humans are easier to catch."


    He almost laughed. "So the myth that vampires are faster and stronger than humans is true?" Dr. Parrish said.


    "No," I said. "At least, mostly not true. But in a decade or two of hunting, you learn how to fight, how to take one body from a crowd without being noticed, how to be strong and fast and quiet."


    "Your ''healthy and exciting years'' last a little longer than ours."


    "Lots of benefits to being a vampire, Dr. Parrish. Long life, fast healing, freedom from acne and shoulder tension and all of mankind''s other plagues."


    "I''ll keep that in mind. Any downsides to becoming a vampire, Annie?" he asked with a smile.


    "Technology," I said. "We can''t keep up with it. But there always seems to be enough new vampires around to keep us from completely sinking into the dark ages. And there are vampires like Will, who keep up amazingly well. The rest of us spend so much of our first five vampire years feeding that we fall out of touch with everything else. And with the way the world moves now, five years is huge. I bought a computer magazine in my sixth year as a vampire and didn''t recognize a thing in it. I''m out of touch. I still only use my cell phone for calling people."


    "Will keeps up with technology and throws frequent parties," Dr. Parrish said, as though these two things were incompatible.


    "I always have thought that was weird," I said. "Will just isn''t the partying type. Even at his own parties, he ends up talking to every guest one-on-one or in small groups, as though he would prefer meeting them that way but could only lure them in with a party. But maybe that''s how he keeps up with it all¡ªbringing in new vampires and drilling them on what''s new in the world."


    Dr. Parrish scribbled away in his notebook. After a minute, I realized that even if he was copying down what I said verbatim, he should be finished by now. He was adding observations. I could picture them: More to the story, or vampire delusions seemed detailed, perhaps even rehearsed, or Will sounds fascinating¡ªconvince Annie to bring him to meet me. Or maybe nothing like that. Maybe his page was filled with compulsive drawings of tiny people, running along every line toward the edge of the page.


    And at the same time that all this nonsense was spinning through my head, I was also trying to figure out how to convince Dr. Parrish that I was, in fact, a vampire, without biting him. I could bring in his secretary and bite her, but that probably wouldn''t go over too well either.


    It wouldn''t matter¡ªproving it to him¡ªexcept that therapy was helping, and I was afraid that, unless he believed me, my counseling would eventually reach the end of its usefulness. He couldn''t help me work through my issues unless he accepted that what I was telling him was true. Soon, he would want to know more about Keats, and nothing about me and Keats made sense without that one little detail.


    "How can I prove it to you?" I finally said.


    Dr. Parrish looked up with a frown, setting his pencil and notepad down immediately. We''d been pretending that he believed from the start. I wondered if pretending along with him for so long had hurt my case.


    "How can you prove that you''re a vampire?" he asked.


    I nodded.


    "Do you think I don''t believe you?" he asked.


    I grinned with a head tilt that said, "I''m not so delusional that I think you''d take me at my word."


    Dr. Parrish, still watching me, said, "Fine. So what do you think would be a good way to prove that you''re a vampire?"


    I told him the two options I''d already disregarded, then said, "I''m not sure what else would be sufficient proof."


    "Why don''t you think about and ask your friend Will, and maybe you can prove it to me on Thursday. In the meantime, tell me more about Keats."


    I wanted to say, "Not until you believe me," but that wasn''t really fair. There were dozens of stories I could tell him before I got to the big, final story, and most of the stories in between didn''t require a belief in vampires.


    So I told him about how Keats became a vampire, and about how Will was so drunk on his research that he didn''t notice what was happening to the kid in the office next door for eight months.

 Chapter 20：Twenty

    Keats retreated to San Antonio in terror. Every time he closed his eyes, Leonard''s kind face seemed to be there, offering him breakfast.


    Keats had been fired from his hacker job, but after a week of begging (a week that his supervisor probably spent interviewing inept young men and women, a week that Keats spent pacing and waiting to be arrested), he was allowed to go back to work.


    He was sure that that was the end of his trouble. Some demon had gripped him and forced him to attack an old man, but no one knew, and now he could forget about it and continue with his life.


    He couldn''t seem to eat, but he blamed that on the flu. He could smell the blood in everyone around him. He ignored it.


    But it kept getting worse.


    As part of his denial technique, Keats didn''t think too hard about the way his pulse now seemed hard to find or about how his skin hurt whenever he touched the pots and pans and cutlery in his kitchen. He stayed out of the sun, telling himself that it was time to start thinking about skin damage and the danger of UV exposure. He bought a baseball cap and a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses and gloves, and he wore them all, even though San Antonio was rarely cold enough to warrant long sleeves.


    Keats thought he could live with all of this. But the thirst kept building on him, and he noticed that his face, though clear of blemishes except a few scars, was beginning to look too thin, like a long-time drug addict who had forgotten that food was also necessary for survival.


    Keats went back to work and sat beside his coworkers all day long, trying not to breathe in their appealing scent and ignoring how easy it was not to breathe.


    Later, he was only thankful that he was out of the office when the thirst took him over for the second time.


    He stumbled into a situation I looked for; a drunk man tried to pick a fight with Keats as he was heading home from work.


    Keats tried to avoid him at first, tried to keep walking, but the drunk stumbled after him.


    Keats felt the monster taking over again, the horrible brightening, his dry throat demanding relief.


    The monster walked into an alley, leading the drunk away from the crowded sidewalk. The monster shredded the veins in the drunk''s neck and drank the blood as fast as he could suck it out.


    Keats screamed between swallows.


    Because he knew what he was.

 Chapter 21：Twenty-One

    I hadn''t seen Will in over a week, not since I dropped in and found him on his way out to pick up his date. So I decided to drop in again after therapy.


    Will was opening the apartment door to leave as I knocked.


    "D¨¦j¨¤ vu," he said. "How''s it going?"


    "Never mind. It''s nothing important. I''ll see you later," I said.


    "Nah, Annie, come in for awhile. I''m not going anywhere special."


    "No date?" I asked.


    Will stepped back inside his apartment and waited with raised eyebrows while I decided to stay, then decided to leave, then decided to stay again. I finally went inside and followed him to the kitchen table, where I sat in my usual chair and propped my feet up on the one across from it.


    "No date," he said, and it took me a moment to remember that I''d asked. He added, "I was just going out for a new keyboard. Mine broke."


    I turned to his desktop and saw his keyboard scattered across the desk in pieces, the cord dangling over the edge like a suicide''s arm off a bed.


    "Broke?" I asked.


    "Well, stopped working adequately. And then I threw it across the room. Then hit it with a hammer for a while."


    "You might want to make an appointment with my therapist," I told him.


    He made an exhaling sound through his teeth that meant, "Whatever."


    "Hey, are you okay?" I asked.


    Will looked at me with focus, but after a few silent seconds, I realized that he wasn''t focusing on me but on whatever new idea had burrowed into his brain. He sighed and said, "Do you think it''s possible to find the judges? Do you think they genuinely exist?" He shook his head as soon as he asked the question.


    "Will, are you trying to find them?" I asked, leaning toward him. "That''s dangerous, don''t you think?"


    "Never mind. It''s not important. Just a thought. How was therapy today?"


    I didn''t want to change the subject, but I found myself telling him about my conversations with Dr. Parrish anyway, skipping over the details when I got to the part about Keats. Will knew the highlights of that story, anyway. He''d heard them before I did.


    Will laughed when I told him that Dr. Parrish and I had been discussing the benefits and drawbacks to vampirism.


    "That''s a good hobby for you," he said, "trying to convert the masses. Sad that you can''t actually convert them." His face lost expression, but after a moment he found it again. "What have you been up to these days?"


    "Oh, you know. Same old thing. Taking walks. Taking baths. Staring out the window."


    He shook his head. "Come on," he said.


    He stood and grabbed his keys, and I followed him out the door.


    "You need to get out more," he said. "Do something. Why don''t you get a job? Or join a knitting group? Get a pet?"


    A pet. A puppy. The thought teased something in my memory, and I searched for it. Brown puppy eyes, but not a puppy face. A baby face.


    Lydia and Kevin and their momentary baby. I remembered that I hadn''t gone to check them like I''d meant to. The party had been two weeks ago now. I hoped they were okay.


    Tomorrow, I would visit them, no more forgetting it or putting it off. I would tell that Lydia I was sorry for the way things turned out, sorry that it was impossible for her to be a mom. Commiserate a little.

 Chapter 22：Twenty-Two

    Another two days passed before I remembered Lydia and Kevin again, and as soon as I remembered, early Wednesday night, I got up off the ugly couch and went to their apartment. I needed to hunt, but I could wait until afterward.


    Their building was nicer than mine: less graffiti inside and out, fewer people living in the halls, less potent marijuana odor. Instead, the halls smelled like they were long accustomed to tasting Indian spices, as though generations of tenets had made curry and dal and raita and bhaturas here. It was enough to make a vampire drool with nostalgia.


    I knocked on Kevin and Lydia''s door and waited. I could hear music and televisions and voices and movement all around me, but I couldn''t tell if it came from their apartment or from one of the others.


    I was wondering whether I should knock again or come back later when the door opened so hard that I could hear the inner knob slam into the stopper on the wall.


    "What are you doing here?" Kevin roared. His eyes bulged out at me.


    "I guess I should have called ahead," I said. Then I saw how his skin looked tight along the jaw, as if the muscle and fat there had grown tight and dry.


    "Why haven''t you gone hunting?" I asked. "You look like you''re about to fall over."


    "Went to work, came home," he said, and I could see it in his movement, hear it in his voice, how everything was a struggle, how the clarity of his mind was disappearing. "Was going to hunt, but Lydi fell asleep on the couch. Didn''t want to wake her. Had to watch Humphrey."


    They still had that thing? Damn, Lydia was a bigger idiot than I''d ever imagined. "You named the kid Humphrey?" I said. "That''s just mean."


    His teeth clacked together.


    "Why don''t you go, go away, and I''ll look after¡­Humphrey until Lydia wakes up, okay?"


    He stared at me, as though he was translating my words. After a few seconds, he said, "You know anything about babies?"


    "Sure. You dangle them over the garbage disposal until they do what you want, right?"


    I was a moron for joking with him. He probably wasn''t faster than me, but it was too close to call, especially when one of us was in desperate need of a drink.


    He only snapped once though, his teeth closing near my ear. I elbowed him in the jaw, and he stepped back, nodded, and left.


    I went into his apartment and closed the door behind me, shutting out all the sounds and smells of the hallway, and took a look around.


    The apartment was filthy. Not only were there clothes and bottles and toys everywhere, but there was a film of dirt or formula or some unidentifiable bodily substance all over the walls and carpet and chairs. One of the chairs was broken; a leg was missing, and it sat tilted on two legs and a caved-in third, like an old man leaning on a crooked stick.


    And a smell seemed to come from all around me, as different from Indian cuisine as a smell could be, as though the air was infected with this odor of sickness and rot.


    And I couldn''t hear anything at all. Not one bubbly baby noise, not even a cry.


    I walked further in.


    Lydia was there on the couch, passed out. Not asleep. She had that same tightness around the jaw that I saw on Kevin''s face, but worse. I glanced around for the kid, but still didn''t see it.


    I went over to Lydia, opened her eyelids, felt her tongue. I wasn''t quite sure what I was looking for, but I examined her and compared her state to mine when I''d been needing to hunt for awhile. I thought she was pretty bad, but not so bad that I needed to open up a vein for her. Kevin could take care of her when he got back.


    I needed to find the kid.


    The mess and destruction worsened as I walked deeper into the apartment. My sneakers cracked rattles and crushed Cheerios. I searched every room, expecting to find the kid under a newspaper or a pile of dirty laundry.


    I found him on the floor of the bathroom, lying face up on the damp bathmat.


    He didn''t move.


    The air seemed to be rushing in and out of my lungs fast. I hadn''t been breathing, to keep out the smell, but now I couldn''t stop.


    He was so small. He was a baby, just a little thing, something to be held close and protected and kept away from open flame and sick people, not something to be left on the bathroom floor, on a soggy mat.


    I didn''t want to get close to him. I bent my knees just far enough to reach him and touched his shoulder with my index finger. He was warm. He even made a little sound. But this baby was nothing like the eager, sucking face in the picture I''d seen at Will''s party.


    I bent closer and looked him over. He was thin and pale, dressed only in a diaper that made the whole room smell of ammonia.


    I lifted him up. He cried, a tiny, pathetic noise.


    I held him close to me, imagining that he could get some warmth from my room-temperature body.


    Then I glanced up into the mirror and almost dropped him.


    Along his back and sides, on his shoulders, even in one place on his thigh, were bite marks.


    Some were almost healed. One dripped fresh.


    They were shallow, all of them the result of someone desperate to feed, desperate to do as little harm as possible, to take as little as needed until bigger, fuller prey could be found. The emaciated look of the kid''s adoptive parents was still more proof¡ªthey had self control, just not quite enough.


    I swallowed and breathed slowly.


    There was a blue bunny-print bag near the door with a few diapers, a few empty bottles, an extra shirt. I changed the kid, dressed him, and set him in his crib. I packed the bag with all the clean clothes and diapers and blankets and unbroken toys I could find, trying not to think about what I was doing.


    Then I put the bag on my arm, lifted the baby as carefully as I could from the crib, and held him against me.


    In the living room, I stared for a few moments at his adoptive mother, the side of her face pressed into a pillow.


    I could imagine her, lying here and listening as the kid screamed from the bathroom, as his adoptive father bit into his thigh.


    I made sure Humphrey was secure in one arm, and with the other hand, I grabbed Lydia by the hair and lifted her head and torso off the couch. Her eyes fluttered for a second, then opened.


    "Pay attention," I told her, our faces an inch apart. "I''m taking the kid away. You or Kevin show up at my apartment, and I''ll kill you both."


    I dropped her hair, and she fell back onto the couch, her skull thudding against the arm.


    Her eyes stayed open, followed the baby as I carried him from the apartment.

 Chapter 23：Twenty-Three

    I had plans. They weren''t brilliant, foolproof plans. They were more like I-bet-we-can-get-this-boat-across-the-bay-and-damn-the-hole-in-the-bottom type of plans, but they were plans nonetheless.


    I''d called Will. After yelling at me for forty-five minutes, he told me that he knew a couple of foster parents, so the squishy little rat in my arms did have someone who would take him, at least until permanent parents could be lured in. But Humphrey, with his bite marks and malnutrition, couldn''t go there yet.


    There were laws of secrecy, of course, laws that were passed from vampire to vampire throughout the world. You couldn''t have a stable semi-dead society without secrecy. And if I took Humphrey to the foster home in this condition, Will''s friends would have to contact human authorities, an investigation would be opened, our vampire judges would find out, and eventually, Lydia and Kevin and Humphrey and I would all be called in for a hearing that none of us would survive.


    And as much pleasure as it gave me to think of Lydia and Kevin dying of thirst in locked coffins under six feet of earth, I didn''t particularly want to join them.


    So, having no idea if I would be any better at childcare than they were, I had to nurse the little thing back to health before I could give it over to someone else.


    That was the first part of the plan.


    The third part involved balancing all the bags on the handles of the stroller without tipping it over, so that he could ride in the front and so that I could get all that crap back to my apartment. The crib would be delivered in a few days.


    The stroller almost tipped over five times, but I eventually made it back to the apartment, lifted him out of the stroller and let the rest of the damn thing fall right over like it wanted to.


    I laid him on the ugly couch Will had bought, and I watched him while I spread a blanket on the floor, ready to rush over if it looked like he was about to roll or climb off the thing. But he was still too weak to do anything but lay there and stare at me. He had the darkest brown eyes. Didn''t all babies have blue eyes? Who had told me that? I''d have to ask Keats if it was true.


    I got him positioned on the blanket, and when I was sure that the worst thing that could happen was that he would roll halfway across the room and bump his head on the wall, which probably wouldn''t hurt too much unless he really got up some speed, I went back to the kitchen. I dug formula and a bottle out of the bags. I was pretty sure that I was supposed to sterilize the bottle, but I would have to figure all that out later. The kid needed to eat. I ended up washing it really well and zapping it in the microwave that was built in over the stove.


    I hadn''t used a microwave in twenty years, not since I bought one for my parents and taught them how to use it, less than a year before I went over to the dark side. They made popcorn in it and refused to use it for anything else.


    I punched several buttons and let the bottle spin around for a while. The microwave made an awful screeching noise, and the rotating plate periodically shuddered to a stop. Amazing technology.


    "Good enough," I said. I took the bottle out, read the instructions on the can of formula, and fixed him a bottle carefully, having no idea if I was doing any of it right.


    The finished product looked like a pale chai latte and smelled like vomit. But when I held the nipple up to the kid''s face, he sucked like there was no tomorrow. He closed his eyes and gripped the bottle as tightly as he could.


    I wanted to sob and throw something. I picked him and the blanket up and sat there on the floor, holding him close in my near-empty apartment, listening to the little suckling noise he made, and staring at that couch, the only thing in the living room but me and a sad, hungry little boy who had no home and no family, no one at all.


    Humphrey couldn''t finish the whole bottle, of course, not with his stomach shrunken from the hours, even days, when he didn''t get to eat. The bottle was still half-full when he fell asleep; the power-sucking exhausted him.


    I held him, and he slept all night.

 Chapter 24：Twenty-Four

    Thursday. Therapy, usually the only thing I did on Thursdays. Today, I was fixing bottles, changing diapers, organizing clothes and blankets and toys, trying to figure how the hell I''d gotten myself into this situation and how I was supposed to get out again. I still hadn''t hunted, and Will hadn''t answered the phone the last three times I called. I needed someone to watch the kid, but there was no one.


    Yesterday, rescuing Humphrey had seemed the good option, the only option. Now I could hear what my mother would say if she were here instead of in her kitchen in Florida, yelling at my father to leave that damn boat alone and come take out the trash. He kept the garage radio turned up.


    She would say, "Annie, dear, you''ve never had a hamster survive a week. You''re the reason I don''t even have houseplants. Or a son."


    Except in twenty years, I bet she''d bought some houseplants. Probably not in the first year, but before five had passed she would have realized that I might not be coming back. She would have vines growing up her own legs if she could manage it. There was no chance now of going back. Even if I thought they would understand what had happened, why their daughter hadn''t changed since the day she disappeared from her apartment over the garage, I wouldn''t go back. I wanted her to have her plants.


    Inez probably had new plants now, too. I hoped so.


    Humphrey lay on a blanket on the floor, surrounded by toys he didn''t touch. He stared at the ceiling.


    I didn''t know what else to do with Humphrey that evening, so I took him with me to Dr. Parrish''s office.


    "I''m sorry," I said when I walked in. The thirst made my throat feel dry and prickled, as though I needed to cough.


    Dr. Parrish looked up, but it took his eyes a moment to travel from my face to the little wrapped bundle in my arms. "Well, who''s this?" he asked. I sat down, and Dr. Parrish leaned forward to look into the blanket.


    "His name''s Humphrey," I said. "He was adopted by some friends of mine, and they weren''t¡­weren''t able to keep caring for him."


    Dr. Parrish leaned back, his hands gripping the pencil and notepad in his lap. He examined me, and I thought Humphrey and I probably made an interesting tableau. The sad, lonely vampire and the tiny orphan.


    Finally, he said, "You can''t just take custody of someone else''s kid, Annie." But I knew what he was really saying: you can''t have custody of a kid in your unstable condition.


    "They were biting him," I said. "What was I supposed to do, just leave him there? Besides, we''ll be fine. I think my biggest challenge might be finding someone nice to take care of him while I¡­while I''m out." Bringing up hunting at this point didn''t seem like the best idea.


    "They were biting him," Dr. Parrish repeated. He stared at Humphrey. "Annie, you have to let social services take him."


    "I will when those bite marks heal. It''s just too big a risk, handing over a baby with vampire teeth marks all over him. What if they investigate?"


    "Vampire teeth marks," he repeated. He shook his head and sighed and shifted position¡ªevery symbol of exasperation he could squeeze into that five second silence. "This isn''t a game, Annie," he said. "I think you should let me take the baby."


    I didn''t want to let my arms tighten around Humphrey, almost crushing him into my chest, but they did anyway, and Dr. Parrish saw it.


    I had to prove it to him.


    "I have to prove it to you," I said. He wouldn''t understand anything until I did.


    He sank further into his chair.


    "Relax. I''m not going to bite you." I looked down at Humphrey and forced myself to think of a plan. I wished mirrors didn''t reflect my face, wished for retractable fangs or an aversion to garlic or any of a thousand superstitions that could make this test easier.


    "Look at my skin," I told Dr. Parrish. "No blemish. No tan. Feel my wrist. No pulse."


    I shifted Humphrey to one arm and thrust the other one toward Dr. Parrish. He didn''t move.


    I was close to assaulting him. I thought about shoving his head against my chest and asking if he heard a heartbeat there, but instead, I offered him my wrist again, holding it up to his face as though I expected him to see the absence of a pulse there.


    He wouldn''t touch me. Psychologists apparently have rules about that.


    Proof. Proof.


    I stood, Humphrey still in my arms, moved to Dr. Parrish''s desk, and grabbed the tiny pyramid paperweight from Dr. Parrish''s desk.


    "Steel?" I asked.


    "Yeah," he said, "I think so." He was half-turned in his chair, watching me.


    I pressed the paperweight against my cheek. It tingled my face and fingertips, then prickled, then seared. I stared at Dr. Parrish, who looked uncomfortable until I dropped the pyramid back onto his desk.


    Then he could see the triangle of charred skin beside my mouth and the blackened fingers I held up for him to see.


    His face whitened. He seemed to fall up to his feet, a fast, focused motion. He grabbed my Humphrey-free hand, looked at the burns on my fingers, then felt my wrist. He felt it with both hands, felt it at every angle. Then he put his hand around my throat, a gesture that would have terrified me as a human, but as a vampire, I knew he couldn''t do anything with that little hand that would hurt me much.


    It took me a second to realize that he wasn''t about to start shouting bible verses at me. He was feeling for a pulse there, too, then he was just standing with his hand at my throat while he watched the charred triangle on my cheek redden with healing and begin to fade. It would take hours to disappear¡ªnothing like the instantaneous healing in the movies, but still pretty un-fucking-believable.


    The triangle burned, but I would have slit my throat to give him proof today.


    Humphrey shifted in his sleep, a weak turn of the head.


    Dr. Parrish let go of my throat and backed up until he was across the office from me.


    "Shit," he said. "Shit." He was starting to hyperventilate. "There are no vampires," he breathed.


    "I will bite you to prove it, if I have to, Dr. Parrish," I said with a slightly shaking smile.


    Minutes passed, both of us listening to the desk fountain burble, but it sounded like someone drowning now.


    "Everything you''ve said to me," he said at last, but he couldn''t finish. He alternately stared at me and stared away.


    Maybe it''s easier to believe if you''re living it. Maybe there''s something about the transformation, the first thirst, the first kill, the desperation for an answer that makes a vampire believe it. Some of us, not Keats, but some of us, believe it quickly because it''s the only answer. Something in us knows this.


    But how can a human, even one with dream interpretation books and Stephen King novels, believe it? Where can the answer root itself if there is no faith already burgeoning inside?


    "Sit down," I said. "I''m not going to hurt you, moron."


    He obeyed, falling back into his chair in the same quick passage as before. His notebook lay on the ground at his feet. He didn''t reach for it.


    I wondered if he would feel the same about his notebook after this. He recorded everything, and I thought that he must get his answers there, looking back through all his pages after he locked the door at night.


    But his notebook had never told him that the stories this delusional patient revealed weren''t delusions.


    I took the chair across from him again.


    He tried very hard not to flinch as he met my eyes. Then he looked at Humphrey again. "You have to give me the kid, Annie," he said.


    "What?"


    "You can''t take care of a baby."


    "But I have to," I protested with a nervous laugh. I didn''t want to laugh. It seemed like the most ridiculous thing in the world to do, but I did it, chuckling out into the quiet office with foolish, cheerless cheer.


    "You''re¡­you''re something different, and I just don''t think¡ª"


    "I''m a fucking vampire, Dr. Parrish. Do I still have to bite someone to make you believe?" Hadn''t I said a minute ago that I wouldn''t hurt him? I tried to swallow, but there was nothing there to be swallowed. I needed to hunt.


    He shrank back into the cushions of his chair, until I could imagine him flat against the surface, a Dr. Parrish stripe on ugly office furniture. But he persisted, "You said you were only going to keep him until he was healthy anyway. I can do that."


    "And what do you think your wife would think?" I protested, not sure why I protested or why I knew that I must protest.


    His eyes flickered to his desk, as if he too were remembering the picture and the bright blue scarf and how her joy was a floodlight that outshone anything he or I could feel.


    "Would she accept a baby with bite marks all over its body?" I asked. "Or would she nag you until you ended up calling social services and everyone who has tried to help this kid ends up being prosecuted for child abuse?" I had no idea what I was talking about. I sputtered anything I could think of, but I said it all insistently, as though it were my conviction and not my logic that mattered.


    But I think bringing up his wife had been enough.


    Dr. Parrish sat staring at the two of us, and concern replaced his terror. I wondered if he had set the terror aside to deal with at a more convenient time. I couldn''t have done it, but surely psychologists had tricks like that.


    "I don''t know how to help you," he said.


    "I didn''t ask," I said, my head tilted up so that I looked down on him. "I have other people who can help if I need it. Will."


    We sat in near-silence, both knowing I was a liar. I had no one.


    Eventually, Dr. Parrish jolted to his feet and left the office. He returned with a phone number on a sheet of orange memo paper.


    "My secretary, Maria, uses this babysitting agency. Her kids really like their babysitter," he said.


    He handed me the memo, and I took it from his hand.


    "Thank you," I said.

 Chapter 25：Twenty-Five

    The energetic voice on the phone continued blabbering. If that woman had been here instead of halfway across the city, I would have bitten her without hesitation, right on the windpipe so that I could save the world from that voice forever.


    She was saying, "We try to match each family with the same babysitter each time, so the children can become comfortable and get to know¡ª"


    "Great," I said, "then¡ª"


    "Of course, you can choose from any of our simple payment plans, though most of our customers prefer paying by credit card. Childcare Inc. keeps your information in a secure file and bills your credit card monthly, relieving you of the hassle of¡ª"


    "Also fantastic. When can she be here?"


    "Oh, we don''t discriminate on the basis of gender. All of our¡ª"


    "Fine. When can he or she be here?"


    "Well, first we''ll need your phone number, address, emergency contact information¡­."


    I glanced toward Humphrey, sitting on his penguins-in-scarves blanket, surrounded by a stuffed zoo. I''d helped him sit up, but he kept it up on his own, seeming stronger and happier every hour.


    Now, though, he wasn''t smiling. He could probably hear the growl in my voice, see how I tried not to look at him or breathe in the smell of his small, small body of blood.


    I interrupted the mad-with-power voice with my best imitation of her, "Would it be possible to send the paperwork with the babysitter? My little one''s getting fussy."


    Her voice grew to double-cheeriness. "Of course! Just let me get your address. Would you like me to send the babysitter over now?"


    "Yes, please," I said, as politely as I could through a dry throat and clenched teeth. I gave her my address and hung up the phone.


    I stayed across the room from Humphrey, both of us watching each other. I went through a pack of Juicy Fruit, careful not to swallow any of the sticky syrup. The smell of it masked the other, human smells, and I breathed deeply, then didn''t breathe, then turned my back to him, then faced him.


    And then, the little boy with the wide brown eyes disappeared, and all I could see was the thing, the thing that would take away the thirst. The thing that would bring me back to myself, clear the animal from my brain. The wad of Juicy Fruit fell from my mouth. I was almost panting now. I tried not to, but the more I tried not to, the faster my breath went, my lungs whipping it inside and thrusting it out.


    And without knowing why it was happening, my feet were moving toward it.


    It lifted a tear-wet face, and I kneeled down.


    My teeth punctured its arm, and it screamed. I could smell it, the hot, iron smell of food, of life. I was desperately thirsty. I was going to die.


    The blood, thick and hot and almost sweet, trickled down my throat.


    Farther up its arm, close to my eyes, two other puncture marks were half-healed, the bruises around the marks still clear.


    I would die.


    But that was acceptable. This, this was not. I widened my jaw, letting my teeth slip out of the holes they''d made, determined not to tear his skin.


    His smell was everywhere now, in my lungs and stomach and throat, in every molecule of air. I stopped breathing and patted his cheek with my monster''s claw. He sobbed.


    I went to get a towel and tried not to breathe or look too much at the blood as I dabbed it away. I had no antiseptic.


    Once his arm stopped dripping, I threw the towel away, dressed him in a long-sleeved shirt, and went to stand across the room again. From there, I told the kid how sorry I was and savored the persistent flavor of his blood.


    He kept crying, a louder wail than I''d heard from him before today. He was stronger. That was something.


    Eventually, someone knocked on the door.


    I opened it to a woman in her early twenties with crooked teeth and long black hair.


    I said, "I''ll be back in two hours. Three." Then I left, running for the stairs.

 Chapter 26：Twenty-Six

    The nicest bar on Third Street served shots in grimy glasses.


    I chose it because it was near and because someone was always at the bar, lamenting the uselessness of his life, the purposelessness of her job. I found a use and a purpose for them all and stacked them neatly in a stall in the men''s restroom. Before an hour passed, the smell of blood and bodies rose above the smell of urine and mold.


    Their blood alcohol level made me woozy, even diluted with the man who headed for the restroom before ordering a drink.


    I overindulged a bit, but I''d been thirsty for days.


    I might''ve killed Humphrey. With the animal in me now caged, I saw it: saw myself so clearly breaking his little neck that for several tipsy moments I was sure that I had.


    A spotted mirror hung over the sink. In it, a sad woman stared forward in confusion, her skin mottled in the yellow fluorescent light.


    I thought I was a saint, helping the kid. I thought he would never survive Lydia and Kevin. I hadn''t realized that he wouldn''t survive me.


    Dr. Parrish knew. A few months, a few dozen visits, and he knew that I was incompetent. Too self-absorbed, too changeable to be an adequate guardian for a chihuahua.


    I would take Humphrey to him. I would let Dr. Parrish handle it because he was strong. He was capable.


    But the woman in the mirror knew that I was a liar.


    I stripped the cash from the corpses'' wallets. One hundred seventy-five and a near-full punch card for The Coffee Bean. Not my best day''s work, but enough to pay the babysitter.


    The bar stood halfway between my apartment and Will''s. Since dinner only lasted an hour, and since I didn''t want to stumble half-inebriated into the apartment after stumbling half-starved out of it, I headed for Will''s place instead.


    My knock at the door brought no one, as usual. Bastard.


    When I got home, Humphrey was cheerful again, and the babysitter was in the midst of an all-out puppet show, complete with voices and plot.


    "Oh, hello!" she said when she saw me walk in. "I didn''t get a chance to introduce myself before. My name''s Namid."


    Namid was lovely. The crooked teeth were all I''d noticed before, but even they were charmingly crooked.


    Sated and almost bubbly, I suddenly wanted to know everything about her.


    But first, I went to Humphrey and swept him up in a hug, whispering, "I''m sorry," again to him, though I knew he didn''t understand.


    He pushed away from me and looked at my face. I smiled, teeth hidden. He seemed to relax a little, but he looked toward the babysitter as though he would rather be held by her. I didn''t blame him for that.


    "Poor thing," Namid said, and I felt the breath go out of me. She knew. All my caution, and now I would have to kill the babysitter. She continued, "Chicken pox when he''s so little, had to be miserable."


    "Chicken pox," I said, my voice stuck at a whisper.


    "Looks like he''s getting over it now, but it left some scars."


    I almost laughed. "Yeah, he had it pretty bad. Sorry, I guess I should have mentioned that to the woman on the phone." I set Humphrey back down with his toys. "Sorry for the empty refrigerator, too. We just moved in."


    Namid seemed to be relieved by that answer, as though she couldn''t believe anyone would choose to live this way. I thought about adding that we''d left my abusive husband with his mistress in Vegas and didn''t have the money yet to furnish the place.


    "You have paperwork for me?" I asked instead. "If you don''t mind waiting, I''ll get it all filled out and you can take it back with you."


    "Sure," she said. She went to the door, where she''d left her bag, pulled a folder from inside and handed it to me.


    "Humphrey really seems to like you. Would it be possible for you to come three times a week? Say, Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays?" That would cover my counseling sessions plus hunting time, and I could keep extra blood in the freezer for the days in between.


    "Sure," Namid said again. "Humphrey is a sweet little boy."


    What was the proper reply to that? Yeah, I know, I tasted him? I settled on, "Thanks."


    When she left, I tried Will''s phone again, thinking that this was the third day I''d tried to call or visit him, and he didn''t seem to be anywhere.


    Will loved cell phones. He would wear the same pair of shoes until the soles deteriorated, but he always had the newest phone, the kind with internet access and a multi-language translator and dozens of games and a few laser guns on the side.


    It was difficult to imagine Will without the phone bulge in his back pocket. And I could count the times he hadn''t picked up.


    But this week, he hadn''t answered, and he hadn''t called me.


    Since my first vampire months, I hadn''t been without him. I might''ve been halfway around the world, but if I needed to chat, I could call, and he would wake up, stop working, or make excuses to his girlfriend-of-the-moment.


    Now, I had the sudden, startling feeling of being trapped on a rainy island with an infant and a traumatized psychologist, and no best friend to help me make a coconut phone.

 Chapter 27：Twenty-Seven

    The next time Namid came, I greeted her with a smile. The blood in the freezer worked incredibly well. I''d had to buy a cast iron pan and heat the blood on the stove to make it drinkable, but my snack kept me sane in between Namid''s visits.


    This time, I''d had to snatch a guy from the hallway to fill my blood bags.


    I''d settled Humphrey in his crib, and he screamed at me from behind the closed door while I snatched, drank, and siphoned. I wished I''d grabbed the guy before he went to my neighbor''s apartment. At least then I could''ve kept whatever cash he''d paid for the bag of coke in his pocket.


    Once I''d filled and sealed my bags and placed them in the freezer, I went back to the corpse in the living room. I untwisted the purple twist-tie from the bag of coke, which was probably half baking powder, sprinkled it all over his face, poured the remainder into his mouth, then carried him to the other side of the living room and threw the dude out the window into the alley below, taking care to swing his body to the right so that he lay under my neighbor''s window, not mine.


    Then I vacuumed the living room and scrubbed my hands.


    I peeked into the bedroom, where Humphrey lay, sucking his thumb while the other hand clutched Se?or Elephant.


    For a second time, I vacuumed any spot of the tan carpet where the coke might have spilled.


    Then I called Will, not because I needed anything but because I couldn''t remember now if it had been two weeks or three since I''d heard from him, and Will didn''t disappear like that. I disappeared, calling from Bermuda or Quebec after a month had passed to let him know that I was fine and that he should come see me and sample the local cuisine. But Will had his lab and his parties. He didn''t vanish; he rarely went across town without calling me first.


    But I told myself it was still too soon to worry.


    I still had a little blood left when Namid came again. I hid the blood in opaque cold pack bags for injuries and used a steam re-sealer to close the cold packs. My one remaining blood bag was in the back of the freezer, behind the ice cream pops and canned juice and freezable teething rings.


    Besides ice cream pops, canned juice, and teething rings, I''d stocked the kitchen with dishes, canned foods, potato chips, and sodas for Namid, plus formula and baby food and sugarless baby-friendly juices for Humphrey. I''d thought about buying juice boxes. Juice boxes epitomized childhood innocence for me. But vampires have long led the campaign for environmental awareness, and I was sure that if Will saw them, he would ensure that I repented of buying things in convenient packaging.


    The kitchen looked like a real kitchen, for once, the kind you might see on a TV show about the joys of nuclear family life.


    The living room still stood bare except for the ugly couch, but we seemed to be making progress toward "moving in," so Namid would be satisfied.


    Humphrey babbled happily when she arrived, which seemed to comfort her almost as much as it comforted me. If he was happy, nothing serious could be wrong.


    "How are you, Namid?" I asked, ushering her into the living room.


    "Fine," she said, smiling her crooked-toothed smile.


    "Can I ask, do you babysit full time? That must be exhausting."


    "Part time," she said. "Exhausting enough," sardonic smile, "plus I''m a full time student."


    "Really? Which college?"


    "Cheap is good," I agreed. I almost told her that I knew someone who had gone there once.


    Namid said, "I''m transferring to UTSA at the end of the year, if they''ll take me. I want to be an education major."


    She looked like an education major. "What do you want to teach?"


    "I want to get certified to work with special-needs children."


    I stared at her.


    "My cousin has Down''s Syndrome," she said. "I''ve just¡­always wanted to¡­you know."


    I tried to stop staring and to come up with a reply that didn''t include the words "angelic" or "noble.??? I couldn''t imagine choosing a career path like that. My whole goal in my pre-vampire life had been to find a career that would require as little of me as possible and enable me to retire young enough to enjoy my Bermuda beach hut.


    So I stared at Namid, feeling that she and I had as much in common as Gandhi and Hitler.


    "I have to go," I said at last. I shoved my feet into shoes, then gave Humphrey a good-bye hug. "If my friend Will comes by, please try to convince him to wait for me here. Handcuff him or something. I''ll only be gone a couple of hours."


    I left, plastic freezer bags bulging in my pocket, thinking both that Humphrey would be fine with Saint Namid and that the inventor of Zip-locks would never know what a service he had provided to the vampire guardian of a brown-eyed little boy.


    My appointment with Dr. Parrish began soon. Strange how I worried after breaking into his office, sure that he would refuse to keep me on as a client, yet now, having recently proven to him that vampires existed and that I was one, my nervousness had vanished. He would see me today. We had ended the charade between us.


    So long as I found him sane, I knew he could help me more now than ever.


    As soon as I walked into the waiting room, the assistant, Maria, told me to go on in.


    Dr. Parrish brooded in a silent office. The room had never been well-lit, but now a mourning darkness dimmed the few shining bulbs.


    He showed me the expression he''d prepared for me when I took my chair. He said nothing.


    Awkward.


    The bruise-like bags around his eyes showed that he hadn''t slept much since Thursday, either because he lay awake at night thinking of monsters or because he''d been up rereading his notes on our sessions. Or some mixture of the two.


    "I called the number you gave me," I said. "I left Humphrey with the babysitter."


    His face continued like a painting of a face by someone who should''ve gone to business school instead.


    "Namid," I said. "That''s her name. She''s nice. An avenging angel sent to judge humanity for its inadequacies, I think. But nice."


    Nothing.


    "I guess Humphrey probably won''t notice the whole avenging angel thing right away. Probably not for a few years. And I won''t have him that long, so it doesn''t really matter at all."


    A shift of the eyes, a lip in a minutely different position.


    "It''s kind of cruel, isn''t it? I mean, he''s spending all this time with both of us, Namid and me, and we''re just temporaries. He''s forming whatever connections his little mind can form, whatever attachments, and then all that gets torn away. Again. God, how many times has it happened to him already? Then he has to do it all again, make those new connections. Do you think eventually kids lose the ability to do that? Do you think it''s going to, I don''t know, stunt him? Emotionally?"


    Dr. Parrish scrutinized my mouth movements. Maybe he''d suffered real psychological harm from my little revelation.


    "Can I get you some water?" I asked.


    He stared at me for a few more seconds and nodded. I hurried into the hall and filled a cup with water from the dispenser, the kind with the bottle that goes upside-down into the top, a design invented to confuse and infuriate those who had to replace empties with fulls.


    Then I crossed the hall to talk to Maria, who stared at her computer screen as though trying to decode alien transmissions.


    "Is Dr. Parrish feeling okay?" I asked her.


    She gave me a wary smile and apparently judged me among the saner of Dr. Parrish''s patients because she said, "I asked him if he was sick this morning, but he didn''t answer. He''s been at home for the past two days. Today, he came in but told me to call and cancel every appointment but yours. He looks¡­." She twitched. "He looks like he''s about to throw himself off a building." Maria hesitated. "I don''t know if I should have told you."


    "I''m sure he''s fine, Maria," I said. "He mentioned that he wasn''t feeling well when I saw him Monday, but I''m really¡­going through something. He probably felt that he couldn''t cancel on me."


    Maria''s mouth drew into a square, like she felt something slimy in her shoe.


    "I''ll leave early tonight," I assured her. "That way he can go home and get some rest."


    "Don''t tell him I told you," she said.


    "Of course not," I said.


    In the office, I handed Dr. Parrish his water and watched him drink it.


    "I''m sorry," I told him.


    "Don''t worry about it," he said.


    "Hey, you can talk! That''s an improvement. See, you just needed a little hydration."


    He tried to smile. "I''ve been dreaming of searching for my keys while I''m falling off a cliff, and at the bottom, I''m paralyzed and I burst into flames."


    I gave him a grin and said, "Wow."


    He said, "Do you know what it means to dream of searching for keys, falling off a cliff, being paralyzed, and bursting into flames?"


    "No," I said, though I thought I could guess.


    He tightened his lips against his teeth twice before he answered. "Searching for something lost, falling, and being paralyzed symbolize that the dreamer feels out of control. Fire, according to Jung, represents transformation."


    "Transformation?"


    "The kind of transformation that takes place when everything you know about the world has been stripped away and replaced with the script of a bad horror film."


    "Dr. Parrish¡ª"


    "Annie, what did you think when you first realized what you had become?"


    I wondered if I would ever hear him say the word, "vampire." I answered, "I thought, ''whoa, that''s weird,'' closely followed by, ''cool.'' I read a lot of fantasy novels when I was a kid, though."


    He gave me a snorting laugh. "I''ve been thinking, this isn''t possible. And if it is possible, which it must be because it''s true¡­well, then everything I know is wrong, isn''t it? If you''re a vampire, then Bernard might really be from one of Jupiter''s moons. Rick might really be Hamlet. Hell, Zoe might be Jesus."


    "I''m sorry," I said again.


    "I''m supposed to play along, you know? I''m supposed to keep you talking until we uncover the deep issues, the problems that might make you believe this fantasy, and face them, deal with them. And the point is that eventually you won''t need to believe you''re the fucking tooth fairy anymore, and you can lead a normal life instead of spending the rest of it sharing a bunk bed with Elvis."


    He thrust his hands into his hair, then pulled them down and hid all his face except that beak of a nose poking out from between his fingers.


    "And I keep thinking," he said, "of all my stupid notes."


    My eyes searched for the notebook, but didn''t find it. Now that I noticed its absence, Dr. Parrish seemed vulnerable without it, shieldless.


    "You know what I wrote?" he asked.


    I shook my head, but didn''t say anything, understanding that he only needed to talk, realizing suddenly that I was the only person he could talk to about this. I''d made him as lonely as I was.


    His face dropped toward his lap as though he could read his notes there. "''Absorbing story. Seems convinced by it. Consistent in details. Creative. Explore the story of "Keats." Will may be an actual friend. Shares delusions with him?''" He stopped, chopping off his recitation, and leaned toward me. "It was an absorbing story," he said. "I even thought it would be neat if it was true."


    Dr. Parrish shook his head and leaned back again.


    I watched him, listened, wondered if being a psychologist made it easier or harder to accept something impossible.


    But mostly, I only listened as he talked about his confusion, his inability to believe or disbelieve, and what that meant for him.


    Eventually, he finished talking, and we listened to the silence together, both of us listeners now, united in this and so many other things.


    Then I realized that no burbling sounds, no happy trickling interrupted the silence. No one had plugged in the desk fountain.


    Once I noticed the quiet, it became almost eerie, like a sound from another room when no one''s in it. I dredged words up from the muck of my mind so that I could give sound to the room, but Dr. Parrish still sat back against the cushions, a frown on his disheveled face. So I allowed the words to sink back into the sludge.


    Then Dr. Parrish said, "Tell me more about Keats."


    I twitched when his sound hit the quiet air. I''d sunk so deep in my own muck that seconds passed before I processed what he''d said.


    "Keats?" I asked.


    Dr. Parrish looked at me, not his psychologist look¡ªa look that was full-aware of notebook and pencil, when they were present¡ªbut a conversational look, not friendly, not the look of a casual questioner, but a look that said, "I want the same answers I wanted before you slapped my steel paperweight against your cheek."


    "Tell me what really happened," he added. "Skip all the details, all the foreplay. Just tell me what happened."


    "I will," I said, and I examined every bit of sludge before I flung it out there. Dr. Parrish deserved no half-truths from me, even if he were about to fling himself off a building. "But not today. It''s more than you can handle today."


    Despite careful sludge-screening, there it was anyway: my half-truth.


    It was more than he could handle today. But it was also more than I could handle.


    "Besides," I said, "that''s not how you tell a story. You have to lead up to it. You need more information¡ªplot, character development, suspense¡ªbefore you get to the climax. Foreplay is important."


    He almost smiled.


    "Okay, Annie," he said. "I can wait. Tell me when you''re ready."


    He moved his hand like he was reaching for his pencil, then put it back on the arm of the chair.


    But he didn''t crush himself into the cushions like he had been. Instead, he waited for whatever story I would bring him.


    Maybe I''d taken away some of his innocence about the creatures that lived in his world, but at least I could give him back this: I still needed him.

 Chapter 28：Twenty-Eight

    Our momentary silence stretched into minutes. I was supposed to be telling another Keats story, continuing the series. But what could I say? Dr. Parrish waited to hear it, both of us aware that this was the first story he would hear as a believer.


    I wanted to say, that''s all there is. He was kind. He became a vampire. Sometime later, he loved me. The end.


    I wanted that to be the end, to be the whole story.


    "What happened to Keats from the time he became a v-vampire to when you met him?" Dr. Parrish asked. "It was about a year, right?"


    I accepted this time frame. Not Keats, the later years. Keats, the early years, the easy years.


    "Yes," I said. "It was a year, almost to the day. I think that was why Keats went to Will''s party that night. Didn''t want to face all those hours alone, remembering. But first you need to know how Will and Keats met."


    I told him how Keats suffered through those first few months. Trying to figure out what happened during his three missing days almost turned him crazy. And he spent all his time wondering how to live with himself.


    He suffered from his parents'' voices in his head much more than I did. Every time he drank from someone''s wrist or neck or thigh, his parents'' voices shouted that he was an abomination, he was on the road to hell, he should cover himself in lighter fluid and strike a match and let the impurities in him burn away.


    And since both his parents had died in a communal suicide ritual years ago, he couldn''t shout back.


    "Communal¡­" Dr. Parrish interrupted.


    "Arsenic bubblegum. Pretty creative, I thought. They just passed it around and chewed their lives off."


    Dr. Parrish faded into his own thoughts for a minute, then said, "Okay, I¡­. Okay."


    "Keats suffered the way we all suffered, maybe a little more than most."


    And Will was a compassionate man when he wasn''t possessed by the laboratory demons. But the demons grip tight, and they don''t let go for a long time.


    Eight months passed. Keats struggled alone.


    Will found the UPS guy dead in the hall between his lab and Keats''s office late one afternoon, a package still in the man''s hands.


    Will looked around, listened, then kneeled beside the man and touched his face. There was warmth in him still, and he was pale enough to be made of paper. Will checked the man for bite marks and found one on the side of his neck, not just a little two-tooth mark, but a full set of teeth marks, deep.


    A young one, Will decided, one who hasn''t figured out his feeding schedule yet, one who still waits until he can''t control it, attacks whoever or whatever''s near.


    Will took care of the body, then went back to the building and walked through the offices. Most of the chairs stood empty at this hour. Will checked desks and trash cans for half-eaten sandwiches, burrito wrappers, cookie crumbs.


    In the whole building, nodding as he passed the few stragglers, Will found three desks with not so much as a crumb or a cup of water or a spoon. He remembered the desks'' owners by sight, two of them by name.


    Will never forgot a name. He missed my birthday four times and twice missed his own, but not names, not faces¡ªthose remained in a neat mental spreadsheet forever.


    After the desks, Will checked the restrooms. The young vampire might be home by now, but he or she also might still be around, trying to decide whether to go back for the UPS man, wondering if anyone had found him yet.


    There, in the only men''s restroom with a working hand-dryer in a two-block radius, Will met Keats, who stood with his hands gripping the sides of the sink, trying to extract the courage to look up from the sink and into the mirror.


    Every day, Keats was sure that he would look up into the mirror and see no one there.


    "Hey there, Keats," Will said. "You feeling okay?"


    "Flu," Keats said. "Can''t seem to shake it."


    Will checked him over, noticed the darkness under the eyes and the pale skin. Those weren''t rare traits among hackers, but maybe...


    "Hey, Keats," Will said, watching. "Did you hear about the UPS guy?"


    No one had ever taught Keats how to lie. I learned this soon after I met him. Do you like my new shoes? I didn''t ask unless I really wanted to know.


    Will watched how Keats didn''t say a word, didn''t move any part of his body, didn''t change the expression of his face, and he realized that Keats was trying to decide how to act, what he could say that would sound normal, believable.


    Will crossed to the far wall and pretended to use a urinal. "They took him out a few minutes ago. I''m surprised you didn''t hear the ambulance." Will lied as easily as he breathed, and almost as often.


    Keats murmured something.


    Will washed his hands.


    "Kid," he said, "if you''re going to protect the secrecy of the vampire community, you have to learn how to lie."


    Keats stared into the dingy sink. Then his head snapped up, his eyes meeting Will''s in the mirror.


    Will almost laughed. "I took care of the UPS guy, so don''t worry about that. If you''ve got time, I think we should talk."


    In the quiet of Will''s lab, where he had spent decades doing research of the kind that would never be published in any journal, Keats talked for an hour, hiding none of his shame, even celebrating in his suffering because here was someone who understood.


    Will listened, and then he told Keats about all the basics of the vampire life.


    At work the next morning, Fernando slapped Keats on the back. "I haven''t seen you smile in weeks, kid," he said. "I kind of missed your jolly mug."


    Dr. Parrish listened, occasionally biting his lips together, as though reminding himself that interruptions weren''t welcome.


    I paused after the bit about Fernando, waiting for questions.


    "Will didn''t invite Keats to the vampire parties right away?" Dr. Parrish asked.


    "He did," I replied, "but Keats was glad enough to know one likeable vampire. I think he wasn''t quite ready to chance the rest of us yet. Keats describes Will as his savior. He says¡­said¡­that he owed Will everything, that if it were possible to give a vampire an organ transplant, Will could have all of his."


    "They were always friends after that?"


    "Yes. Always."


    Dr. Parrish observed me and said nothing.


    "What?" I said.


    "I was just thinking," he said, "that you''re awfully na?ve for a vampire."


    I raised my eyebrows at him and waited.


    "How long were you and Will friends before you met Keats?"


    "About five years."


    Dr. Parrish scratched his mammoth nose and said, "For five years, you and Will were friends. Were you close to him? Back then?"


    "As close as someone can be to a walking biology textbook."


    "Did you sleep with him?"


    "Will? No way. We were buddies."


    Dr. Parrish nodded.


    "Don''t nod at me like that. Tell me what you''re thinking." I sounded angry. I didn''t know why.


    "I was just thinking," he said again, "that you and Will were close, with no barrier, nothing to obstruct your becoming intimate. Except. Except, he was your first vampire friend. For a while, he was your only vampire friend. Just like he was Keats''s. Keeping him as a friend meant keeping him forever, but to risk something more¡­." He held up his hands and shrugged.


    I crossed my legs and burrowed into my chair. "People don''t just sleep together every time there are no obstructions."


    "Yes, they do. Five years, then Keats shows up, and you get everything you''ve been hoping for. You get to keep your close vampire friend. And you get the relationship that you want."


    "Your point, Freud?"


    "What kept you and Will from forming a relationship once you and Keats were no longer together?"


    "The fact that neither of us was interested in the other, to start with. And since Keats had¡­so recently¡­."


    "How many years has it been since you were with Keats? Six, isn''t it?"


    Not for another two and a half months. Then it would be six years. "Will isn''t interested in me," I said, as firmly as I could without shouting.


    "How do you know?" Dr. Parrish said, and I realized I''d made the wrong excuse. I should have said that I wasn''t interested because that was something I was sure about. I opened my mouth to say it, but another word sprang out.


    "Humphrey," I said. "All your blathering doesn''t matter right now. I have to take care of Humphrey, and I have to tell you the rest of what happened with Keats. By then, you''ll know how wrong you are."


    "Bet you five bucks that Will is totally in love with you."


    My mouth fell open. "You''re my therapist," I protested. "Surely there''s some kind of rule about betting with your patients. And five bucks? What kind of cheap-ass gambler are you? Make it twenty."


    We shook on it.


    On my way out, I passed Maria''s desk and said, "I think he''s feeling better now."


    She smiled at me, and I tried to smile back, but all I could think about was hunting fast and going home.

 Chapter 29：Twenty-Nine

    I stopped at the nearest Kwik-E-Mart for a canvas shopping bag and a couple of lottery tickets.


    I harbored no secret benevolence toward any living being that night. My therapist was a nutcase, and my best friend had taken off on a secret expedition without calling me. I happily grabbed two middle-aged men and relieved them of their burdensome existences.


    I drank the first and took his money.


    Blood from the second filled my Zip-lock bags. I whistled the Friends theme song while I siphoned him dry, then I took his money, too.


    I pushed one of the bodies on top of the other. A little distraction in a murder investigation could go a long way. Middle-aged alleyway lovers. Cokehead. I set them on fire then packed the blood in the canvas bag and headed home.


    I stopped by Will''s apartment, but the door was still locked, and no one answered my door-pounding. I kept knocking until I was sure that he was gone and not just ignoring me in hope that I''d get bored and go away.


    I kicked the door a few times, hoping to break in without too much effort, but the door held.


    Will would call soon from Venice, surely. Or Kuala Lumpur. Or Melbourne.


    I headed home.


    Saint Namid was shuffling a stack of board-thick flash cards and teaching Humphrey color words in six languages when I arrived. Humphrey held "JAUNE" and gnawed the edge.


    "Oh, hello!" Namid said. "Sorry we made such a mess."


    "No problem," I said. "Kids are messy."


    I helped her gather her flash cards and puppets and light-up games.


    "Ice cream bar for the road?" I offered.


    She grinned and nodded, and I fetched her one, noting that the blood bags in the freezer hadn''t moved while I was away.


    I took the ice cream bar to her. "Any big plans for the weekend?" I asked.


    She made sure she was out of Humphrey''s reach, then ripped off the wrapper, wrapped it around the popsicle stick, and said, "My roommate''s throwing a kegger, so I''ll probably haunt the library until it closes then sleep at my friend Marcy''s apartment. Why? Need a babysitter?" Her eagerness was cute.


    "Nope. Just curious," I said. "Envious, too. College days seem eons ago."


    "Well, if you want, you can go to Jeanne''s party then take my colonial history exam at eight the next morning."


    "Wow, look at that¡ªnow my college days don''t seem far enough away."


    Namid laughed. "See you next week." She paused, then added, "Annie."


    I smiled. "Have a good weekend, Namid."


    She slung her bag over her shoulder with her ice cream-free hand and left.


    I turned to Humphrey. "Well, kid¡ª"


    He gave a random squeal of happiness and almost fell over.


    I rushed to steady him, laughing.

 Chapter 30：Thirty

    The next day, I ended up falling asleep when Humphrey did, around six in the afternoon, and we both slept straight through to three in the morning. Neither of us was good at keeping a regular sleeping schedule.


    We had breakfast¡ªHumphrey from a bottle, me from a bag, then performed a long, complicated drama with Se?or Elephant and Humphrey''s left shoe.


    When the sun came up, I bundled Humphrey against the cool of the morning and strapped him into his stroller, which he didn''t mind too much so long as I did a dorky song-and-dance while I put my own shoes and jacket on.


    We took a walk to the park, played on the swings and the short slide, and learned not to eat leaves or hypodermic needles.


    When we grew bored, I said, "Let''s go see if Will made it home yet."


    Humphrey seemed okay with that, so I strolled his stroller to the bus stop. Then I decided that trying to maneuver both Humphrey and his stroller onto the bus was too large a parenting challenge, so we walked instead.


    Before we finished a mile, Humphrey was asleep, his little head bobbing against the padded seat as I wheeled him down the rough sidewalk.


    "You''re not very good company when you''re catatonic," I told him.


    He pouted his lips and wrinkled his nose, then his face went slack again.


    "Yeah, yeah. Stop chattering at me while I''m trying to sleep. I get it."


    We passed shattered storefront windows and immaculate hundred-year-old houses. We met few other people on the sidewalk, though buses and cars crowded the streets everywhere, honking and spouting a metallic taste into the air.


    I considered covering Humphrey''s mouth and nose with something to filter the air, but I doubted it would help much.


    As the sun brightened the city, I pulled a gardening hat, sunglasses, and gloves from the pouch in the back of the stroller. I looked ridiculous in them, but walking was much more pleasant when the sun wasn''t faintly stinging every exposed inch of my skin.


    The light and the heat bothered me less than other vampires, but I was dreaming of people-sickles by the time Humphrey and I finally reached Will''s apartment building. We took the elevator up to the sixth floor and breathed air-conditioned air all the way down the hall. The cool air woke Humphrey, and I stopped in front of Will''s door to find Humphrey''s juice bottle and hand it to him.


    I knocked. Humphrey slapped the door, making a sound so quiet that Will wouldn''t have heard it if he''d been standing right inside.


    But none of our noise brought Will to the door.


    "Where is he?" I asked Humphrey.


    Humphrey looked up at me and tried to fit his fist in his mouth.

 Chapter 31：Thirty-One

    "Hey, Namid. How did the colonial history exam go?" I asked, passing Humphrey into her arms as she walked into the apartment.


    "Wonderful, Annie. Thanks. Turns out that Jeanne''s keggers are good for my study habits."


    "That''s excellent. See you in a few hours." My shoes already on my feet, I stepped out the door and reached the stairs at a run.


    If I hurried, I could hunt before therapy, then again after. I thought that I could use the mood-lifting effects of the blood today, if Dr. Parrish was expecting another Keats story.


    I hunted and drank, delighting in the taste of fresh blood, not blood that had been stored in my freezer for days and heated over the stove.


    Giddiness so overwhelmed me that I apologized to the stranger before I lit him on fire, and I wiped his leather wallet clean of my fingerprints and left it outside the flames so that identifying him would just be a matter of checking his driver''s license.


    I considered it a mark of the gods'' approval that I found five hundred dollars in the wallet, plus a pair of gift certificates to a day spa. Namid would appreciate those.


    I pocketed the money and the certificates, then stepped into a computer store to check the time. I had plenty of it.


    The Bath and Body Works near Dr. Parrish''s office had a new window display: Cherry Dreamland. I bought the bubble bath and the skin yogurt, then wavered between vanilla and berry-wonderful lip glosses.


    Keats was partial to vanilla. One Christmas, he bought me a gift basket of Warm Vanilla products. The basket hardly fit on the bathroom counter, and although the bubble bath and body mud and gloss were all long gone, the skin yogurt, body spray, and five other varieties of vanilla were still lined up in the cabinet under the sink, next to extra bottles of my favorite bubble bath, Lemon Berry Paradise.


    I bought both lip glosses, then went on to therapy.


    I had Dr. Parrish''s waiting room to myself, so I slathered cherry-scented yogurt on my arms and neck while I waited.


    A few minutes later, I entered his office smelling heavenly and feeling twenty shades lighter than I had an hour ago.


    I saw the notebook before I saw Dr. Parrish, who was half-hidden behind it. I welcomed it back. The fountain, also, had returned to normal. It bubbled with the joy of the resurrected.


    Without the eerie silence and focus of Dr. Parrish''s gaze, I fell comfortably into my chair.


    Dr. Parrish''s notebook hadn''t moved. I examined what I could see of him. He seemed to be adjusting well, except that he hadn''t combed his hair, and it had lost some of its floppiness.


    He smiled, though he still didn''t look up from his notebook, and said, "Nice to see you, Annie. How are you today?"


    "Fine, Dr. Parrish. How are you?"


    "Fine," he said, then he looked up from his notebook in time to see me raise my eyebrows. "Fine enough," he said. The flippancy was gone from his voice.


    "Rough week?" I asked.


    He gave a sigh that was half a laugh.


    "Have you talked to your wife about all this?" I asked.


    "Can''t," Dr. Parrish said. "Confidentiality laws. Even if I could¡­."


    "She wouldn''t believe you."


    "Would you?" he asked.


    "No way. I would suggest you see a therapist."


    He smiled. "I don''t know any good ones."


    "It might not be a bad idea to talk to someone though. I mean, I can sign something, if you need¡­."


    He was shaking his head. "How about I talk to you, if I need to talk?"


    "Okay," I said, though we both knew that wasn''t good enough. If someone hits you with a lead pipe, you don''t go to that person for stitches.


    "But not right now," he continued. "Now, I want you to tell me how things are going with Humphrey, and then I want you to tell me more about Keats. Or Will." He said "Will" the way I would say "Kurt Cobain" to my Nirvana-freak friend Suzanne in high school. But one''s therapist would never tease one, so I must have misheard.


    I told him everything was going wonderful with Humphrey, that being a surrogate mother was far more exhausting than I''d expected, but also far more wonderful. And I assured him again that I would pass Humphrey along to more capable parents as soon as he recovered. Then I allowed myself a few moments to brag on how well he was doing, how happy he seemed, before I moved on.


    Dr. Parrish listened with his poker face on, making notes. When I first started therapy with Dr. Parrish, I thought his poker face meant that he was bored, so I started slipping nonsense sentences in the middle of stories to see if he was paying attention. He caught me every time.


    "A story about Keats, now?" I asked. Strange, how eager my voice sounded. Hadn''t I been dreading this a little? Hunting and lotion must be better for my mood than I''d thought.


    "Yes," he said. "When you left off, Keats was having trouble adapting to the vampire lifestyle."


    "Right. Keats waited a full week, sometimes longer, between hunts. He wouldn''t drink until the animal part of his brain took over and forced him to hunt. He tried cow blood and rat blood and bird blood, but they didn''t have all the nutrients he needed, and more often than not, they just made him sick. So he waited until he could hunt without thinking about it. After he moved in with me, we argued about it often."


    I won the arguments, but nothing changed. Keats would give in, tell me that I was right, of course, but he continued waiting too long. I would watch him, see him try to sleep night after night, then see him give up, see him start to pace, then while I was in the next room one evening or late one night, the door would slam. I would sit at home, not knowing whether it was the thirst or something I''d said that had driven him out. That first year, I took up yoga, then knitting, then voodoo, all in an attempt to occupy myself while Keats''s inner animal rampaged the city.


    Then he would come home, six or seven hours after he left. He would be grinning, bouncing toward me, his stomach stretching his blue jeans out as far as they would go.


    That blood elation, the joy of feeding, would wear off before the sun set again, and I would hear Keats in the bathroom, trying to sob silently. I think he felt like even more of a murderer when he couldn''t cry for those he''d killed, as though repentance could change anything.


    Most vampires controlled the thirst as well as they could, eating much more often than necessary to stave off that horrible loss of control and the half horrible, half fantastic feeling of having drunk more than their bodies can absorb.


    Keats needed that loss of control. If he hadn''t become a vampire, I think he would''ve been an addict of some other, more desperate, kind.


    But he became a vampire, and some time later, he moved in with an opinionated woman, and we fought about his feeding habits more than we fought about anything else.


    "It''s not healthy to wait until you''re near starvation before you give in. And why does it make such a difference to you?" I asked once. We stood face to face in the blue kitchen of the little house we???d bought together. Our voices were loud, but our neighbors, accustomed to all sorts of sounds coming from our house, never complained.


    "Healthy?" he said with a laugh. "I don''t have to care about being healthy anymore. I can eat greasy burgers and chain smoke and quit exercising. I can get tattoos with hepatitis-infested needles. Fun, right?"


    "Have at it. Be the first fucking vampire to die of lung cancer or heart failure or stupidity. Will hasn''t proven that it''s impossible."


    He stopped arguing. He always did when Will was mentioned. Sometimes I was tempted just to shout the name randomly in the middle of our fights¡ªour word for "peace," "ceasefire," though I never knew why.


    Keats walked away, heading for the front door.


    I, however, wasn''t finished. "You didn''t answer me, Keats," I said. "Does it make a difference to wait to feed until you can''t control it? Does it make you less of a murderer?"


    He walked out, of course, even though he knew (or maybe because he knew) that I was only mocking him. I didn''t think we were murderers. But he did.


    I threw lots of things while he was gone. We had things to throw then, a whole houseful of useless crap.


    I broke all the bowls, the cookie jar in the shape of a fat penguin, and the last surviving houseplant.


    He should have known better than to buy plants. I never touched them, never watered them, and tried not to stare in their direction. And I''d killed every one.


    Three hours passed before I realized that I was terrified that he wasn''t coming back. After all, he''d left his apartment when he moved in with me. Packed nothing, never went back to his place. It would be so easy, easier, to do it again. This time he wouldn''t want to take anything with him. Everything would remind him of the fucked up young woman he''d tried to love.

 Chapter 32：Thirty-Two

    Keats didn''t come home for days.


    After two days had passed with no word, I called Will, thinking that Keats was surely sleeping on his couch.


    "He''s not here, Annie," Will said, and I must have made some kind of humiliating mewling sound, because he added, "Don''t go anywhere."


    The sun was rising when Will came in, hugged me, whispered comforting words, then sat with me on the couch, his arm around my shoulders.


    "He''ll come back, Annie," he said into my hair.


    "No. He won''t. I wouldn''t."


    "Well, you''re stubborn and, frankly, mean. But Keats isn''t. He''ll come back and continue to argue with you for years to come."


    I closed my eyes and relaxed into him, begging God and the universe, even the judges, to bring Keats back and give me a chance to learn not to be such a bitch.


    Will snuggled me closer and spoke close to my ear. "Tell me more about Inez," he said, trying to tease me.


    I elbowed him in the stomach.


    Will and I both fell asleep with the early sun shining dimly through the miniblinds.


    Darkness pervaded the room again when I woke up. Had I slept the whole day on the couch? Most vampires could do that without a problem, but I never could keep a regular sleeping schedule.


    Then I realized that something had happened¡ªsomething had slammed me into consciousness, but several moments passed before I noticed that the front door stood wide open.


    And there was Keats.


    I jolted to my feet, and Will, who had leaned against me as we slept, fell to one side and woke up as suddenly as I had.


    But I hardly noticed. My arms flung themselves around Keats, and if I''d been able to, I would''ve sobbed into his shirt. As it was, I thanked all the powers in existence for bringing him home. I took time to appreciate everything: the feel of his cotton shirt against my cheek, the way he seemed thinner than he was with my arms around him, the incredible security of being wrapped up in him.


    I found it impossible that he had come home, that he had decided I was worth coming home to. Surely the second he was away from me every woman in the city would rush to stand in line for a chance at doing this, at hugging him, forgetting all the rest.


    Keats hugged me back, but said nothing, and after a minute, I began to feel like he was no longer paying attention to me. Nothing in his body changed, but I could almost taste the absence in his hug.


    I pulled away.


    Keats and Will were staring at each other, but in my emotional swamp, I couldn''t tell what it meant. Were they apologizing? Were they challenging each other? Were they communicating telepathically? I had no idea.


    But Keats didn''t try to pull me close again, and neither of them looked at me.


    Then Will found the smile he''d been looking for, pasted it on, and said, "Welcome home."

 Chapter 33：Thirty-Three

    When I finished the story, Dr. Parrish said, "You miss them."


    "I miss Keats," I said, confused.


    "Will, too. You miss seeing him all the time, miss him coming to your rescue."


    "Well, sure," I said. "Yeah. I miss Will."


    "And since he''s not here to help, you''re doing everything yourself. You''re handling all the problems you''ve never had to handle before, and more because you have this new responsibility."


    "Point, Parrish?"


    "No point," he said smiling. "Just a thought. I don''t think you''re good for Humphrey. You know that. But I think he''s good for you. And Will''s absence is good for you, too. You were alone at first, as a vampire, and you adjusted. In fact, you adjusted far more efficiently than the other vampires you''ve mentioned and, I suspect, far faster than any of the vampires you know. But you don''t depend on yourself when there are other people around. That''s not good."


    "I''m depending on you," I countered, but silently, I was applauding him for saying "vampire" without flinching.


    "How?" he asked.


    "Well, I¡­talk to you¡­."


    Dr. Parrish grinned. "You talk to me. If that helps you, I''m glad. But the big events in your life, the big challenges¡ªyou turn to Keats and Will, and they face them for you."


    I stared at him, waiting for him to continue, or waiting for him to make me angry enough to hurt him.


    "Now you have this challenge," he said. "Maybe the timing is perfect. This time, you have to go it alone."


    The fountain chuckled.


    I said, "Would you be offended if I thought you were full of shit?"


    Dr. Parrish sighed. "Never mind. I should write things like that down and keep my spoken comments to ''mmhm'' and ''very interesting.''"


    "I think that would be best."


    "See you Thursday?" he said.


    "Of course."


    I left.


    Dr. Parrish had stomped on my cherry-scented buzz. Had I truly been relying on Keats and Will for everything? I couldn''t think of a single time when something had gone wrong and I hadn''t turned to them, but was I not supposed to? Was I supposed to slog through it all on my own just to know that I could?


    Moronic. Yet, I had called Will as soon as I''d taken Humphrey from Lydia and Kevin''s apartment. And I''d called him and went to his apartment dozens of times since then, hoping he would be around to help, if only to watch Humphrey for an hour so I could do something normal like take a bath alone or hunt. Every time he wasn''t there, I was more ticked at him for not being there because I needed him. But I should''ve been worried that he was hurt or that something had happened. Those concerns had drifted in and out of my mind, but they had only swirled around the rock in my head that was shaped like needing him because I couldn''t do this alone.


    And naming those swirling concerns, and realizing that I''d again left my cell phone on the kitchen counter, I headed home in a rush.


    Then I remembered the Zip-lock bags in my pocket. Damn. I hunted quickly, not pausing for one sip of fresh blood. I piled the blood bags and the cash from the woman''s wallet into the canvas bag, which had also been folded and stuffed in my pocket, then I took a taxi to the apartment.


    Buildings blurred past.


    What would I do without Will? Forget it. That was a dumb question.


    I rushed Namid out of the house, telling her that I wished I could chat, but I had some important calls to make.


    She looked as suspicious as I knew she must be, but I didn''t care. I closed the door when she was an inch outside.


    Humphrey sat on his blanket, playing with his toes. I grabbed my cell phone, the phone book, and my little yellow address book and went to sit with Humphrey on the floor.


    Will''s cell number still reached no one.


    Calling all the local hospitals would be a waste of time, so I began by calling all the morgues. Then police stations, fire stations, then the hospitals, just to be sure. Then the U. S. consulates in Will''s twelve favorite countries.


    I would''ve called everyone he knew, but I only had one phone number from my days in Will''s gang. I don''t know why I hadn''t kept up with any of the other numbers. Maybe there was a paper-hungry brownie that lived behind my refrigerator, and just in case there was, I cursed him for leaving me this phone number, and no others. But it was probably just a mistake. When I had been ripping pages out of my yellow address book after I lost Keats, I''d probably just missed this one. If I had figured out how to put numbers into my phone instead of just memorizing the ones I used most often, I probably would''ve thrown the address book away, then this whole crushing decision of whether or not to dial the number I was staring at would never have to be made.


    I gave a frustrated growl, and Humphrey''s head snapped to face me, a little whine escaping his tiny mouth.


    "Sorry," I said in a cheery voice. "How about a nap?"


    I scooped Humphrey up and put him in his crib with Se?or Elephant, told them both to be very quiet, and stood in the kitchen with my head against the freezer while I called Lydia, Humphrey''s worst foster mother.


    She cackled into the phone before she said hello. Music and voices filled the background.


    "Hi, it''s Annie," I said. "Have¡ª"


    "Who?" she shouted


    "Annie," I shouted back, knowing that this was ridiculous and pointless and potentially painful. "Have you seen Will?" I added.


    "Annie?" she said, and I could hear her spitting my name and knew that I couldn''t believe anything she said. I would be a demon to her forever.


    I thought about hanging up, but I stood there instead, my phone compressed to the side of my head, the front of my head rhythmically pounding the freezer door.


    "Yeah, he''s here," she said with a giggle. "Close enough to lick."


    I hung up. Then I wondered what to do next.


    Then I realized that I could do nothing.

 Chapter 34：Thirty-Four

    I returned Humphrey to his mat on the floor and went to fix him another bottle. The bites had almost vanished, and he was getting stronger, making constant baby gurgling sounds, even crying. Twice I''d found him in his crib turned-over, and several times he''d pushed himself up on all fours and rocked, grinning at me like he''d really accomplished something.


    And I, a moron just like the rest of them, applauded and scooped him up and kissed him and told him what an amazing little boy he was.


    At first, I thought he was progressing rapidly, but no, kids his age had already rolled over, sat up, crawled across the room. I hadn''t seen these things at first because by the time I retrieved Humphrey from Kevin and Lydia''s bathmat, he was too ill and weak even to cry properly. Now, as he grew stronger, he seemed to be progressing through all the baby stages for a second time.


    Now I was pouring formula into a bottle when I heard a happy vowel sound behind me.


    I turned and there he was, a yard away from where I''d left him. He looked around the corner with an O for a smile, proud of finding me all on his own.


    "Wow, look at you!" I said.


    His grin got even bigger, and he was again the chubby little infant in the picture Lydia and Kevin had brought to the party. The little ghost of a person I''d found on their bathmat was gone.


    He squealed like a little pig when I whisked him into the air.


    "See," I said. "We''re doing fine. Just wait until Will gets back from wherever he''s run off to. He''ll be impressed with our progress, won''t he?"


    Humphrey grinned, healthy and content.


    It wouldn''t be long now, and he would be ready for a new home.


    I cuddled him close.

 Chapter 35：Thirty-Five

    "Do you have another story for me today?" Dr. Parrish asked on Thursday.


    "I''m not sure."


    "Not sure? I''ll take any old tale, Annie. What happened when you and Keats first moved in together? Were you ever self-conscious hunting around him? Or something about Will. Were you friends with any of Will''s girlfriends? What do the girlfriends think of the way he always drops everything and, superhero-like, comes to your aid?"


    "Well, I''ve had another fight on my mind," I said.


    "Fist fight or argument?"


    "Argument. Keats and I. Not even a bad one, but I''ve been thinking about it often, partly because it''s never made a lot of sense to me."


    "And you want me to make sense of it," Dr. Parrish said.


    "That''s what you do for a living, right?" I asked.


    "No. You must have me confused with a translator or a code-breaker or an algebra professor."


    I stared at him. "You were a lot less snotty before you believed I was a vampire. Do you paint yourself with honey in bear territory?"


    "Your metaphor implies that you find snottiness appetizing. Interesting."


    "Acerbity, irony, wit¡­yes. Snottiness, not so much. It just makes me want to bite you."


    "Tell me about your argument," Dr. Parrish said, grinning.


    I did.


    Keats refused to argue about anything at first. I provoked him weekly that first year, trying to stomp out that passivity. Keats walked out, more often than not, usually spending a day or two on Will''s couch before coming home with apologies.


    I don''t know why I was so determined not to let him be a doormat. I mean, women dream


    about that, right? A guy who tries to do everything right and would rather walk out than argue. It''s not that I wanted to argue with him. But I did want him to stick up for himself. I didn''t want to be able to take advantage of him. Maybe I didn''t want anyone else to be able to either. Or maybe that''s just what I tell myself now that he''s not around to argue with me.


    My project took more than a year. Sometime between our first year together and our second, Keats would at least shout back a few jibes before leaving to go sleep on Will''s couch.


    One morning during that second year, Keats and I began arguing about what we argued about best and most often: hunting.


    "I''m fine," Keats said, turning away as though the conversation were over.


    "No, you''ll be fine once you''re no longer starving. We''ve still got half an hour before the sun even starts to rise. Let''s go," I cajoled, pulling on my shoes.


    Keats yawned. "Too tired. I''ll go tonight."


    "Damn it, you always do this."


    "I''m not doing anything," he said, a snap in his voice. Nothing snappier than a thirsty vampire. "I just want to go to bed."


    "Food first, then sleep. We''ve gotten into a rhythm, you jackass. Now, don''t make me eat alone," I said.


    "God, Annie, you''re not my mother. Just go. I''ll see you when you get back."


    I thought about slapping him, about trying to drag him out the door, but my strength matched Keats''s¡ªit didn''t surpass it. We would end up, as we always ended up, in a standstill that was only broken when one of us started caressing the other''s private parts.


    But then it would be hours before either of us ate, and I was starving, even if the jackass


    claimed he wasn''t.


    "Forget it," I said. "We have this argument so often that I could jab a fucking pencil into my ears and still not miss anything."


    "Just leave me alone, okay?" he spat.


    "You got it, Keats. You know, I just won''t come home. I''ll be the one sleeping on Will''s couch for once."


    A clumsy, giant-footed silence crashed through the house. I finished tying my shoes and looked up. Keats stared at a blank spot on the wall.


    "You can, you know," he said, his voice suddenly a whisper.


    "Can what?" I shouted.


    "Move in with Will. He wouldn''t mind, and I wouldn''t do anything to¡ª"


    "You''re such a fucking moron, I don''t even want to talk to you."


    I returned in an hour, almost giddy in fullness, bearing a bag of blood for Keats. I would entice him to drink it later so I didn''t have to deal with his crabbiness.


    "So, what do you think?" I asked Dr. Parrish


    "What do you mean?" he asked.


    "Well, I told you that our argument never made much sense to me. I mean, the start of it was clear enough, but by the end, I didn''t know what we were arguing about or why we weren''t arguing anymore." I felt stupid, now that I''d told him. I didn''t know how to explain that it couldn''t possibly mean what it sounded like it meant.


    Dr. Parrish scribbled something in his notes, then looked up at me. "Annie, you told me once that Keats said¡­." He flipped a few pages in his notebook. "If it were possible to give a vampire an organ transplant, Will could have all of his."


    "What is that supposed to mean?"


    Dr. Parrish gave me his best pro-psychologist expression and said, "What do you think it means?"


    It meant that as much as Keats loved me, he loved Will more.


    ???It means," I said, "that Keats had a secret ambition to be a surgeon."


    "Annie," he said, shaking his head at me like a scolding parent.


    "It means that I need to spend some time at the batting cages," I said.


    "What?"


    "Working out aggression, relieving stress. Hunting is good for that, but there''s also something special about whacking something that can''t whack back, you know?"


    Dr. Parrish stared at me, and I thought: I''ve finally made him speechless. Now my life is complete.


    "Time''s up," I told him, standing and heading for the door.


    "See you next week, Annie?" he said, his forehead crinkling at me.


    "I don''t know. Maybe."


    He was saying something else as I walked out, but I didn''t hear.

 Chapter 36：Thirty-Six

    That night, I dreamed that Will and Keats fought. They punched and bit each other, both bloody, both ignoring broken bones and torn arteries to get in one more hit. They snarled like animals.


    I watched them, unable to help.


    Will clawed one of Keats''s ears from the side of his head. I saw it fly toward me, landing at my feet, a pale, curled thing, like a fetus.


    Keats roared and his hand was a bear''s paw when he brought it against Will''s face; Will''s head wrenched to the side at an angle.


    I heard Will''s neck snap and saw his face slacken, all thought and feeling and self vanishing from his expression. He fell to the ground.


    Keats, bloody and broken, looked at me and laughed his beautiful laugh.


    I woke up just in time to stop myself from screaming.


    I called Will when I woke up that day and every day, sure that he would eventually pick up the phone so I could yell at him.


    I tried not to think about him, tried not to worry, even though a list was building in my mind of places he could be and reasons why he hadn''t told me he was going.


    Secret government project in Washington. Kidnapped by aliens or neo-Nazis. Kidnapped by pirates and kept in the brig until he agreed to say the pirate pledge of allegiance. Fell in love and shut himself and his ladylove in a hotel room less than a mile away, forgetting that anyone else in the world existed, a scenario not vastly different from what had happened when Keats and I met.


    And the most and least likely answer to Will''s disappearance: the judges. His research


    uncovered something that the judges had sworn to keep secret, and Will revealed his discovery somehow. Perhaps one of the judges came to test him. Knowing Will, I thought he might have used the opportunity to ask about his information, volunteering what he should have kept hidden to see if the judges would tell him if his assumptions were correct.


    I could too clearly imagine that situation:


    The judge appears in long black robes that billow majestically in Will''s windless lab. The judge stands in a sparkling aura of light, and in a voice like thunder, he says, "Make an accounting of your works, my son."


    "My works?" Will asks, terrified.


    "You are a brilliant scientist. What has your research shown you?"


    "I believe vampires are made by a careful switchamathingy of chromosomes that transmogrifies the mitochondria. Am I right?"


    The judge comes forward, dragging his aura along with him. "Yes, my son," he says. "Have you told anyone else of this discovery?"


    "No, sir. Of course not."


    "You understand that this is a great secret that must be hidden at all costs?"


    "Absolutely, sir," Will says with a serious expression.


    "Then you understand why I cannot accept the smallest chance that you might reveal this secret."


    "Are you going to kill me?" Will asks.


    "No, my son. But you will be incarcerated in a damp dungeon beneath the Holy City for the rest of your existence."


    Will trembles. "Alone?"


    "Of course not. There are hundreds of fascinating individuals beneath the City: Michelangelo, a few Popes, Kurt Cobain, Marie Curie, Marie Antoinette, two of the Beatles. I''m sure you will immensely enjoy your first hundred years in the dungeon."


    "Oh," Will says. "Well, okay then."


    The judge doesn''t have a one-phone-call rule, and Will doesn''t ask to use his cell phone before he''s deposited in a damp room twenty feet under the surface. If he thinks to use his cell phone there, it won''t work.


    Otherwise, he would have thought to call me eventually. Will always called eventually.


    I began carrying my cell phone with me from room to room, and if I walked out the door without it, I turned back to get it, even if Humphrey and I were already downstairs. I slept with it in bed beside me, hoping.

 Chapter 37：Thirty-Seven

    Humphrey and I were playing with alphabet blocks the next time Namid knocked on the front door.


    I stood to let her in, leaving Humphrey to knock over my vowel tower.


    "Hello, Namid," I said. "Did we finally get that cold front?"


    She walked in with her hands in her jacket pockets. "Yeah, it''s finally stopped being blistering hot. Strange when seventy degrees feels like winter."


    "Where did you grow up?"


    "Half Massachusetts, half here, but I never get used to the heat." She dropped her bag off her shoulder and shrugged out of her jacket. "Have you always lived here?"


    "No. Florida, most of my life. Here for most of the last twen¡­several years. A few other places in between." I sat next to Humphrey again. "Hey," I said to him, "you almost spelled ''supernova.'' Good job, kid. You want to be a scientist one day, don''t you?" I tickled his feet, and he kicked the supernova into nonsense.


    Namid took my spot when I went to put on my shoes and stuff my pockets with Zip-lock bags again. I sighed as my pockets bulged with them. One day, I wouldn''t have to bother with this. But then I realized what that would mean, and I looked at the Zip-lock bulge with sadness.


    I left the kitchen, gave Humphrey a hug, then went to the front door. I stood for a while there, my hand slowly twisting the knob all the way to the right, then all the way to the left.


    I could skip therapy today. I could stay here, or I could spend a few hours walking in the city, hunting, reading in the cafe.


    I could stop Keats''s story here, never get to the end. Dr. Parrish wouldn''t mind. I would become the blank hour on his schedule. And he would forget about me completely in a few weeks. Maybe he could even stop believing in vampires.


    The stupid arguments about nothing would be the last thing Dr. Parrish would ever hear about Keats.


    Or I could go to therapy today and a few more days and finish the story. Dr. Parrish deserved that for all he''d tolerated from me, and he did want to know how it ended. He''d asked for the ending, and I''d told him he had to wait. It would be wrong to end it here, with nothing decided.


    Then I could tell Dr. Parrish that he''d cured me, that I had no more need for therapy, and he would understand that our meetings had only ever been about this, about making sure that someone else in the world knew what had happened when Keats came into my life, then left it.


    I let go of the doorknob and went to touch Humphrey''s soft baby skin one more time, then I said good-bye to Namid and walked to Dr. Parrish''s office.


    "I don''t think I have a story today," I said, crossing my legs, then uncrossing them, then crossing them again.


    "Tell me more about your sex life," Dr. Parrish said.


    "What the fuck, Dr. Parrish¡ª"


    "What? Does that offend you?" His eyes looked out with innocence over his mythological nose.


    "No, I just want to know what the hell that has to do with anything."


    "You''ve been tellingly reticent about your sex life," Dr. Parrish explained. "I was just trying to fill out the picture. So?"


    "I really don''t want to talk about this," I said. I should have hunted before I came. I hadn''t known how much I would need that euphoria.


    He glanced down, making a note.


    "Don''t make notes," I said.


    He put down his pencil. "Okay," he said. "What about your last relationship before you...changed? Will you talk about that?"


    I took a breath and nodded.


    "Inez," I said, and then she was in front of me, her dark brown eyes and black hair, like a goddess. She cut her hair herself, always this cropped, wild look, the kind that''s designed to look like you just rolled out of bed, and I remember¡­she would roll out of bed in the morning, and her hair would look neater than it had looked the whole day before.


    "How old were you when you met?" Dr. Parrish asked.


    "Seventeen. She was twenty."


    "How long did it last?"


    "We were together two years."


    Dr. Parrish lifted his pencil into writing position, then remembered and set it down. "How did it end?"


    "She said I killed her plants."


    "Did you?"


    I considered that. "Not on purpose," I said.


    "She broke up with you because her plants died?" he asked, not smiling.


    "She was studying to be a botanist. Our relationship was doomed from the beginning. I even warned her, but by the time I thought we were serious enough for a warning to be necessary, we were too serious to break up over something so¡­hypothetical."


    Inez, a little unreliable, vibrant. I wanted to leave her early on, when I missed the first half of a Fountains of Wayne concert because I was waiting for her outside, or when I sat at home calling her, knowing she wasn''t home when she said she would be. I wanted her to be both things: to be unpredictable when I wanted her to be unpredictable and reliable when I wanted her to be reliable.


    Instead, I went to movies without her. I brought a book when she said she''d meet me at a restaurant. I copied her apartment key and never again slept in the hallway outside while I waited for her to come home from work.


    "Will and Keats both know about Inez?" he asked.


    "I told Keats," I said. "He told Will."


    "Didn''t that upset you?"


    "I glued Keats''s CD collection to the kitchen floor when I found out. He was pissed. Said he thought Will already knew."


    Dr. Parrish seemed to be trying not to smile. "How many CDs?"


    "About two hundred. They covered the kitchen floor, so I had to glue a couple of them to the ceiling."


    Dr. Parrish lost the battle, and his smile broke through. I was so happy to entertain. "Super glue?" he asked.


    "Elmer''s glue. Most of them were still playable after we scraped them up. Floor was ruined though. I don''t know what kind of cheap flooring would be destroyed by school glue and a paint scraper, but there were small torn circles everywhere until I moved out."


    "Until?"


    "I heard the place burned down not long afterward."


    He nodded. I listened to the fountain talk in the quiet until he found another question to ask. It seemed to take longer without his notebook. I wondered if he had them all written down there, lists and lists of questions for every contingency. A "Best Friend/Potential Sweetheart" page. A "Gluing CDs" page. A "Lesbian Lover" page.


    "How did you meet Inez?" he asked.


    "At a bakery. We both reached for the last low-cal cherry Danish."


    Dr. Parrish tilted his head and studied me. "No, you didn''t."


    "What?"


    "You didn''t. You''re screwing with me. I can hear it in your voice. You do that to me all the time, don''t you?"


    I grinned. "Yes."


    "Did it ever occur to you that that might be a counterproductive thing to do in therapy?"


    I thought about that. It really hadn''t occurred to me. "We met at Chili''s. I was her waitress. Her date eyed me all evening. I wore thicker bras and lower shirts back then. When I brought their check and his second frozen margarita slammer, he brushed his hand across my breast, blatantly, and then apologized like he''d groped me accidentally."


    "And you hit him?" he said, leaning forward.


    If only all my relationships could be like this: a twice-a-week meeting in which I only talked about myself. I could hear Will''s voice in my head, saying, "Wait, your relationships aren''t like that?"


    I held back a laugh.


    "You have no subtlety, Dr. Parrish," I said. "I didn''t hit him. I accidentally knocked his frozen margarita into his lap, then dropped the napkin-holder on his head in my eagerness to help him clean up the mess."


    "And Inez¡­?"


    "Said I was her hero, asked for my autograph and told me to go ahead and put my phone number under it."


    Inez shined. She was what movies led you to believe movie stars were: people with personalities of their own, who really lived that life and did those things that made you laugh and cry and applaud and shell out thirty dollars for popcorn and two sweet hours of distraction.


    It wasn''t just charm. "Charm" implies a lack of authenticity, implies effort or a magic spell. Inez spilled over with easy, true lovability.


    I could see her sitting in the red restaurant booth under the dim table light, and I wanted to touch her hair and her skin, to be touched by her, to hear her voice, to see every expression her face could make. But more than that, I wanted to be her. I wanted to step inside her skin suit and flaunt that lovability for an hour.


    But with me inside, it would only have been charm.


    "You really met Inez that way?" Dr. Parrish asked, scrutinizing me.


    "Yes. I repent of screwing with you," I said, raising my hand as an oath. "Oh, and she wasn''t studying to be a botanist, by the way. So we weren''t doomed. She wasn''t studying anything. She made hideous jewelry and worshipped Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell pencils and stationery and toothbrushes and socks and underwear and purse and a tiny Tinker Bell tattoo on the back of her neck¡ªnot in color, just black, and just lines that didn''t connect so it was like an eye-teaser; you didn''t see it, and when you did, you wondered how you could''ve missed it."


    Dr. Parrish listened, tapping his foot. The foot tapped out five beats of silence. Then he said, "Did you really glue all of Keats''s CDs to the floor?"


    "Yes. But I used super glue. And they were all ruined."


    And Keats was furious for months. We still talked and laughed and made love, but there was this difference between us, this off-color something like a television that gave everyone caramel faces.


    Keats stopped going into the kitchen. He used to read in there because the bar of


    fluorescent light under the cabinets lit up the low countertop, and he would bring in a kitchen chair and lay his book on the counter and read for hours.


    But while he was angry with me, he went to the library to read, or to the park, or somewhere he knew I wouldn''t find him.


    I told him to stop being so passive-aggressive and to yell at me if he was angry, but he wouldn''t say anything, just exhale and let the force of breathing out carry him into the next room like an untied balloon.


    I called him Grumpy and Mopey and Scrooge, but he still wouldn''t argue or move on.


    One morning, he crawled into bed next to me, put an arm over me, and said, "Tell me more about Inez," and I knew that he''d finally forgiven me.


    And I told him about how Inez smelled like honey and wildflowers, so that you were always sure she''d just walked in from a wild-growing field somewhere.


    And I told him how she seemed to forget that there were bad things in the world, so that once I found her weeping over CNN one morning, and half an hour later, she was making pancakes in the shape of penises and laughing until she couldn''t breathe.


    "Do you ever wonder about her?" Keats asked, his cheek against my shoulder. "I mean, about what she''s doing now?"


    "Sometimes," I said, but I didn''t really want to hear about her somewhere with her husband and their kids and their summer vacation plans. I didn''t want to hear about her growing older. I didn''t want to realize one day that she would certainly be dead by now. So I tried to keep her out of my head.


    That''s what I told Dr. Parrish when he turned our discussion back to her: "I''d rather keep her out of my head."


    "Okay," he said, picking his notebook back up.


    I imagined him asking something vague next: Are you happy, Annie? Any regrets, Annie?


    But he only said, "What else did you and Keats fight about?"


    "Nothing significant. We argued about his feeding habits, occasionally about how much money to spend, how much to save, whether legal marriage was important to either of us¡ª"


    "Was it?" Dr. Parrish asked.


    "No. Well, yes, but not so important that we actually did it. Will told us that divorce might be difficult if we both looked twenty or thirty years younger than our legal age, but we just laughed at him."


    "Will didn''t want you to get married?"


    "No. I don''t know. Maybe that''s why we didn''t. Keats would never have entertained the idea if he thought Will disapproved. But it didn''t really matter. We had ten years together. Being married or not being married wouldn''t change the number."


    Dr. Parrish let his notebook drift to the side of his lap. Then he asked the question I had been sure he would ask earlier:


    "Are you happy, Annie?"

 Chapter 38：Thirty-Eight

    I stopped calling Will.


    Three weeks had gone since I last talked to him, and there was no point in wearing out my cell phone battery listening to the ringing on his end of the line.


    Maybe he was busy. Maybe he was preoccupied. Maybe he was dead. But I couldn''t keep going through the possible scenarios in my head. Every time I thought of him, which happened more and more often as days passed, a feeling of slow panic crept into my stomach, and I had to spend twenty minutes assuring myself that he was fine before I calmed down again.


    Instead of scenarios, I thought about Humphrey, and I talked to Humphrey, and I took long walks in the city holding Humphrey or pushing his stroller. I collected his laughs. I bought a disposable camera from a filthy convenience store and took pictures of his wide brown eyes.


    And I tried not to think about what would happen if I had to give Humphrey up and Will never came home.


    I also thought about what else I would say to Dr. Parrish. I''d committed to continue meeting with him until Keats''s story ended, but the end seemed closer than I''d thought, just sentences away.


    I continued leaving Humphrey with Saint Namid on therapy days, continued scheduling my weeks around those Mondays and Thursdays, continued filling the time in between with deliberate distractions, continued searching my memory for stories of Keats that would keep me from reaching the end.


    On my next Monday meeting with Dr. Parrish, I found him sitting in his chair with a cheery smile. I wanted to strangle him immediately.


    "Any status reports on our bet?" he asked in a chipper Santa Claus voice.


    "None," I said. My voice sounded more like Exhausted Chain-Smoker Elf''s. "I can''t make any definitive statement about Will not being in love with me when I can''t find the fucker."


    Dr. Parrish raised his eyebrows. "''Can''t find the fucker?'' Will disappeared?"


    "Vanished."


    "Do you think he''s okay?" he asked.


    I felt my teeth grind against each other. "Sure. People around me disappear all the time. Of course, they are usually dead when that happens, but there aren''t that many vampires out there who feed on other vampires. It has about as much appeal as secondhand gum."


    "I only meant¡ª"


    "I don''t know if he''s okay. I don''t know where he is or what he''s doing or who he''s doing it with. Let''s just talk about something else."


    Dr. Parrish nodded, a bobble-head in an earth-tone room that was too small today, too dry.


    "How is Humphrey doing?" he asked.


    I closed my eyes. "Much better."


    "So you''re going to find another home for him soon?"


    Do not bite your therapist.


    "Will was supposed to be helping me with that," I said.


    "I can ask around, if you like," Dr. Parrish offered.


    "That would be swell."


    "Annie, you know it''s for his own good."


    I took a few breaths, put a hand in my pocket to count my remaining cigarettes, and said, "Keats was never one of those guys who checks out other girls in bars."


    Dr. Parrish raised an eyebrow, then flipped a page in his notebook and started scribbling.


    I took a deep, deep breath.


    The girls I knew in high school were always complaining about guys like that. The worst ones would even point it out: Look at that ass. Check out those melons.


    I had one date like that, in college, but I ended up breaking the guy''s arm when he shoved his hand up my skirt later that night, so it was totally worth it.


    But Keats had an almost worshipful respect for higher life forms. I could more easily imagine him laying his coat on a damp bench for a woman to sit on than using the word, "melons."


    He checked me out when we met, but with an expression of awe on his face that told me that both "melons" and "tap that" were far from his mind.


    Keats was sweet. I wouldn''t have spent ten years with him if he wasn''t.


    Once, we were in a theater watching one of the awful new Star Wars movies, and a guy two rows behind us whistled as Queen Amidala came on screen.


    Several people laughed, but Keats only leaned close to me and said something incredibly geeky about how that guy would never appreciate what a great ruler Amidala was, what amazing sacrifices she made for her people.


    "So you don''t think she''s hot?" I asked.


    He shrugged one shoulder. "I don''t like the weird hair. You''re hotter."

 Chapter 39：Thirty-Nine

    Rain bulleted down on me when I left Dr. Parrish''s office, not a pleasant warm rain, but a rain that was probably ice when it left its cloud home. I ran for the covered benches at the bus stop and had to crowd into the little cubicle with a dozen other people. A man in a bright yellow rain slicker got a little too cozy with me, so I ended up standing in the cold rain to avoid contact with his pelvis.


    The bus was just as crowded of course, and even though Mr. Friendly Pelvis didn''t follow me into it, I was still jostled around inside, tossed against people as the bus driver swerved his drunken route through the city.


    I ran the blocks from the bus stop to my apartment building and let out a giant sigh of joy when I saw my front door.


    Namid sat with Humphrey on the floor, no toys in sight.


    I closed the door behind me, and Namid''s head jerked around, and she examined me.


    I took another look at their tableau. No toys. No flash cards. No puppets.


    Just Saint Namid sitting with Humphrey as I dripped rainwater onto the carpet.


    He looked up at me and babbled.


    "Hi," I said to him, picking him up but holding him away from my soaked clothes.


    Namid took him out of my hands. "He''s been yawning," she said. "I think I''ll go put him in his crib."


    "If you don''t mind watching him for a few more minutes, I should change clothes."


    She nodded on her way to the bedroom.


    I took a quick, steaming, beautiful shower and put on the pajamas I''d left on the bathroom floor a few hours before.


    I didn''t hear anything when I left the bathroom. I looked at the closed bedroom door, then I went to the kitchen and opened the freezer. One of the blood bags had been shoved underneath the others. I pushed the others aside and pulled it out of the freezer. Someone had opened and clumsily resealed it. Blood was partially frozen around the rim of the opening.


    "Sorry, Saint Namid," I said, and turned around.


    She left the bedroom, closing the door softly behind her as though she believed Humphrey was already asleep.


    She saw me holding the blood bag, and the nervousness that had surrounded her like a halo from the moment I came home pervaded the whole room now.


    "I knew there was something weird about you," she said, her voice trembling. "I couldn''t put my finger on it at first. But there were so many bizarre things. You live in an empty apartment. There''s nothing in your kitchen but a few random food items that never change because you never eat them or buy more. There''s nothing in the trash, ever, except baby things and maybe an empty tube of lip gloss or a broken shoe string. No food containers, no drink containers. You don''t seem to have a job unless it''s a twice or three times a week job that you can do fast. I thought you might be a prostitute at first, but you always look exactly the same when you come home, not a button or hair changed. You even smell the same, which is like nothing. You don''t smell like anything except bubble bath."


    She took a breath, and I realized I''d been clumsy.


    Namid went to the living room and sat on the couch to put on her shoes.


    "And you always leave looking stretched-thin and like you need a fix, and you come back looking full and cheerful and years younger. I thought you might be a drug addict next, but I''ve never seen track marks and you don''t seem to have nose problems like a snorter would, and you seem generally healthy." She stood and started moving toward the door.


    I moved an inch closer to her, not because I doubted that I could catch her before she reached the hallway, but because I was growing eager for her to get to the point.


    "Tell me what you decided, Namid," I said, feeling my words draw out like a predatorial hiss. "What am I?"


    "You''re a monster," she whispered.


    I whipped toward her and broke her neck before she''d even reached for the doorknob.


    I used her blood to fill more Zip-lock bags.


    So unnecessary, I thought, slamming my fist into her chest to pump her still heart a few final times, to harvest as much blood as I could.


    If I''d known how to make someone into a vampire, if it wasn''t some fucking national secret, Namid could''ve lived. She couldn''t have been Humphrey''s babysitter anymore, not a new vampire who didn''t know how to handle herself yet, but she could''ve lived, gone on to teach special-needs students and hunt the kids who made fun of them. Namid would''ve had a good time with that, I think.


    I pushed the bedroom door open a crack, to see if Humphrey was asleep. He was. I opened the door the rest of the way to pull his sock back on and to check that crazy Namid hadn''t done anything to him.


    Humphrey made a protesting sound. I kissed his forehead and returned to the living room.


    Namid''s driver''s license said she lived on Wright Street. She had only two keys in her pocket: a post office box key and an apartment key, which meant she hadn''t driven here.


    I picked her up, carried her out into the hallway, and locked the door, hoping that Humphrey wouldn''t wake up while I was gone.


    I tossed one of Namid''s arms over my shoulder and carried her Weekend at Bernie''s-style.


    "No more vodka for you, honey," I said, as I pulled her into a taxi with me.


    "Don''t let her puke on the seat," the driver grouched.


    "Chariot Street," I replied, two blocks beyond Namid''s Wright Street apartment.


    The driver broke thirty laws getting us there and screeched to a stop at the corner. I paid him, then dragged Namid out.


    I took her twelve blocks back the way we came, talking to her about the importance of attending every A. A. meeting and consoling her about losing her job and not getting that modeling gig she''d really had her heart set on.


    Namid''s head hung down, her hair covering her face.


    The people in the street would only remember a drunk girl with a nice friend.


    I took her behind Ace''s Bar and left her beside the dumpster.


    I took the cash from her pocket before I lit her on fire.


    "Sorry, Namid," I said silently. I wanted to stand and watch her burn, to say a few words over the ashes when it was finished, but I had to walk away, had to get clear of the area before someone noticed the smoke.


    In two or three days, someone would call, asking if Namid had shown up to babysit for me that night. I would tell them, yes, she was here. Namid is always so responsible. But she rushed right out of the house when I got home. The exact time¡­hm, let me see. Namid''s okay, isn''t she? You can''t find her? God, I hope she turns up soon. She said something about meeting someone at a bar, which I thought was strange because she never seemed like the bar-type, you know? Oh, please let me know if I can help in any way. Namid is a lovely girl. An angel, really. Could you send someone else during her usual time? Yes, I''m afraid I have an appointment I really can''t miss. Please tell Namid to call me and let me know she''s okay when you find her.


    And I would be more careful next time.


    I took a taxi home and ran upstairs.


    Humphrey lay just where I''d left him. I sat on my bed and stared into his crib for an hour, trying to communicate to his sleeping brain that I was sorry for killing his babysitter, sorry that there was no stability in his life whatsoever, sorry that his life would never be stable so long as I was his surrogate mother, sorry that I was having such a hard time deciding to let him go.

 Chapter 40：Forty

    "It''s the end of the story, today," I said.


    Dr. Parrish sat up straight, set aside his notebook and pencil. He would be itching to take notes, I knew, but he wouldn''t today, and I appreciated it.


    "Go ahead," he said.


    I breathed in and out and tried to relax. I wanted to tell this story, and I wanted to do anything to keep from telling it. But I needed to hear myself say it, and today was the day.


    Keats and I celebrated his tenth year as a vampire alone. Will wanted to throw a party, but Keats and I had faded from the party scene years ago, and we had lost touch with almost everyone. Instead, we agreed to meet up with him over the weekend, just the three of us.


    But on the day of the anniversary, Keats and I wanted to celebrate alone. We went out to a movie, went bowling, pretended to be a normal young couple in a world of normal young couples.


    Keats allowed me to plan everything, went along with it, but the depression that seemed to have been creeping behind him since we met had closed its hands finally around his throat. He hardly breathed all night, hardly smiled.


    "Are you okay?" I kept asking.


    "Fine," he kept answering.


    In the light of the theater, his face looked dry and tight, like the skin of a dehydrated apple.


    Had I stopped insisting that he hunt with me? Sometimes I remember that I had, sometimes not.


    Sometimes I remember that night, and I''m sure that every body we passed must have been hell for him. Sometimes I wondered if my body was hell for him.


    As the sun rose, Keats and I slept in the bed we''d shared for ten years.


    When I woke up, hours before sunset, Keats was gone.


    At some point while Keats was working on his fourth family, his self-awareness overcame the thirst.


    His mind had blanked for the second time since he became a vampire. The first time, he''d been new and lacked the self-control that came with time. The last time, he hadn''t fed, not a drop, in five weeks.


    I can picture him in that last house, his mouth around an artery, face and hands dripping with fifteen, sixteen, seventeen people''s blood. I can see his stomach firm with it all, sloshing around inside and waiting to be absorbed into the rest of the body, to keep it moving, to keep it lifelike.


    I can see the drinking slow. I can see his eyes closing. I can see him dropping the body, stepping away, looking around at corpses, looking out the window and knowing there were more next door, and next door, and across the street.


    I can see him counting, recounting, wishing he had names to give them, glad that he doesn''t know their names, glad that he''s never met these people, afraid that the others watched as their family was sucked dry, afraid that they heard their neighbors scream, that they heard the screams getting closer, house by house, that they had gathered here in the largest bedroom so that they could feel safe, together.


    I would''ve run, sure that if I got far enough away, far enough separated from this, I could live my life as though it had never happened. I would be wrong, but I would''ve tried it, would''ve tried anything.


    Keats knew that running would do no good.


    Maybe he''d been running all the time, since the moment he first looked at a young woman and smelled her blood instead of her perfume.


    I can feel what he must have felt, the grief and horror and sickness fountaining inside. I would''ve run.


    Keats knew better. He knew that this second life had gone on long enough, and that he couldn''t control it and couldn''t live with what it forced him to do.


    He found a stainless steel butter knife in a china cabinet drawer and drove it into his chest, pounding his palm against the handle''s end until it was flush with his skin, a line of steel through his heart, the tip of it poking out of his back.


    The reaction began at once. The skin swelled, and as the blood ran through the body, across the steel and infected cells, the infection continued into the rest of the body. Soon, pain and swelling and the liquid in his joints made him incapable of movement.


    But that''s all I know for sure. I don''t know if he was conscious in the next hours, when all the blood he''d ingested flowed from his chest. Or in the hours after that, when his bloodless body digested all its own liquids. Or in the hours after that, when his skin grew tight, when the incredible metabolism of the vampire began to digest his own muscles and bones for sustenance. And then his skin.


    The police came after neighbors reported breaking sounds and screaming. They went into the house across the street first, after the night and the morning and most of the afternoon had passed, when a friend realized that neither the man nor the woman had shown up for work, giving no explanation, and that the son, too, had been missing from school, and swore she saw blood through the dining room window.


    The other three houses were left alone for three days, until friends called in with similar


    concerns: missing from school, from work, and no word from anyone in the family.


    When the houses were opened, when gurneys were rolled in and out, in and out, every other house within miles locked up tight and hardly slept.


    Fifteen remarkably undamaged corpses. One mangled beyond recognition.


    Keats was gone.


    It was the worst thing that had ever happened, the most terrible thing the world had ever seen, and I couldn''t cry. I screamed instead. Broke everything I could lift high enough to throw. Sobbed dry sobs. Roared an animal roar when anyone came near the house. Paced, growled, destroyed.


    I could see everything that happened. I replayed it again and again until it was as vivid as though I''d been there. I knew what pictures hung on the walls in that last house, what the children looked like, how the oldest one had new calluses on her fingertips because she was learning to play guitar, how the youngest had a Cabbage Patch doll with black, braided hair.


    I never felt for any living children the way I felt for those dead ones, not until Humphrey. But I felt for them because they saw the monster in an otherwise kind and honorable man. Kind and honorable. And every other beautiful word I can think of.


    Most of all, I see Keats, standing among the bodies, unable to accept what Will and I and every other vampire we knew had accepted within days of our transformation: the monster is not just within. The monster is not separate, is not containable or destroyable. We are the monsters.


    Will says that all human beings are monsters, but few ever have to face it.


    Keats couldn''t.


    When I had broken everything there was to break, when I had cut long slashes on my thighs to watch them bleed someone else''s blood, and cut them again when the slashes healed, when I hadn''t slept or bathed or hunted in a week, Will found me. He had to break in the back window because I wouldn''t open the door.


    I must have been terrifying¡ªbloody, unwashed, half bald from ripping out my own hair as I slept, flicking a Bic lighter, trying to catch the carpet on fire. I was sobbing or screaming or growling, and I''m sure that when Will came in, I attacked him.


    But Will took me in his arms, and as always, always, held me, and whispered in my ear something I only half understood. All I remember now is the word, "hunt."


    So I hunted. I hunted at all times of day, women and men and children, barely registering their faces, hardly taking time to touch my lighter to their clothes before I hunted again.


    I grew strong. I ran between meals, feed and sprint, feed and sprint, until I was exhausted, then I slept wherever I was, devouring whoever woke me, whether policeman or social worker or potential thief. I slept, then fed and ran again.


    A cycle that seemed endless, but that never grew dull. And I never thought of stopping. I might never have stopped.


    But Will came again, again held me, again whispered, the voice forever in my head, "Come home, Annie."


    And I did.


    I went to Keats''s and my little house, which Will had paid rent on for the year I spent wild in the city. Could it have been a whole year? He said it was, so it must have been.


    I went to the house, our house, and this time, I did get the carpet to catch fire. Carpet, then curtains, then furniture. Last, the sheets on our bed.


    I stood and watched until I was sure that every room would burn.


    I stood until the clothes on my body burned away and my flesh crackled.


    And I took nothing with me when I left, dropping even my lighter into the flames to hear the pop as the pressure changed, to see the burst of fire when the lighter fluid ignited.

 Chapter 41：Forty-One

    "I still expect Keats to call.


    "It doesn''t matter that five years, almost six years, have passed and that the logical part of my mind understands and accepts that he''s gone; I still think sometimes that his voice will be on the line when I pick up the phone.


    "I''m sure you''ve heard people say that a million times. And you''ve heard people say that they see him in other people''s faces, sometimes people that look nothing like him on second glance, but at first, he''s there, and in one second you''re angry because he tricked you, but you''re also overjoyed because he''s alive. Even if it was all a ploy to get away from you, even if he faked his own death to dump you, you''re thrilled because it means he''s in the world. And because someone, somewhere, gets to hear the stories about your life together. Gets to hug him. Gets to hear him laugh.


    "Because the burden of carrying all those things alone, of knowing you''re the only one who remembers him, is too massive. You can''t breathe under something that solid.


    "And so you''d take the lie in an instant, if someone told you they''d seen him, talked to him. You''d lean into their words and try to memorize the fact that he has a wife in Seattle and that they just bought a widescreen TV and a Saturn that gets excellent gas mileage. It doesn''t matter if he never mentions you, thinks of you, at all. It doesn''t matter if he''s forgotten your name, so long as he''s there, out there, alive. And not just vapor, just bones, just sound and fury. Just ghosts."


    I looked at Dr. Parrish, and he looked at me.


    There was nothing else to say.

 Chapter 42：Forty-Two

    Humphrey and I took a long walk the next day. I successfully thought of nothing while we strolled the streets.


    We sat at the park when he got hungry, and he kept dropping his bottle because he would look up at me and laugh.


    "I''m glad you think I''m funny, kid," I said. "Though it doesn''t say much for your survival instincts."


    He giggled again.


    We went back to the apartment that afternoon. I stopped the stroller right inside the door and unbuckled a sleeping Humphrey, lifted him out, then turned around.


    "Will," I breathed. I set Humphrey down on his blanket so my shaking arms didn''t drop him, and I rushed to kneel beside the couch where Will lay, sprawled as if dead.


    Again, I heard the snap of his neck as Keats''s paw tore across his face. I shook my head to clear it.


    I poked Will hard, repeating his name. No response. So I rammed my fist into his stomach.


    He grumbled something and changed position, and I would have cried if I could''ve. I threw my arms around his sleeping body and pressed my face into his chest. He was home. He was safe, perfectly fine except for a small stomachache.


    For a fleeting, foolish moment, I hoped to lose my bet with Dr. Parrish.


    I smiled into Will''s shirt, and then the foolish moment passed.


    I heard Humphrey giggle behind me. My attempt to wake Will must have woken him up, too.


    I turned to him and thought I would be sick.


    A woman held Humphrey, smiling at his giggles.


    I was on my feet and taking him from her before the thought could form in my mind: she, whoever she was, had brought Will home.


    Then I thought, maybe she had taken him away, too, and without taking my eyes away from her face, I moved Humphrey a few steps away from her.


    Her hair was a white-blonde, her face sweet and gentle, though far from beautiful. She stood very still, as though she knew how nervous she made me. When she spoke, there was the slightest hint of Irish in her accent.


    "You have to give him up, Annie," she said, with a sad smile. Maybe it was something she had worked to achieve, but something about her made me think she''d experienced this before, that she understood what an awful, impossible thing she was asking me to do.


    "I know," I said, assuming she was talking about Humphrey, not Will. "I knew that from the beginning. I was just getting him well enough to¡­to be¡­."


    She was watching me, and she didn''t care that I was lying to her now, that I was telling her the same lie I''d been telling myself.


    "Okay," I said. "Okay."


    "Will was making phone calls for you when I came for him," she continued. "He called the foster parent friends first, but they can''t take anyone else."


    I gripped Humphrey tighter.


    "But there''s another couple, a little younger, who are wanting to adopt a baby. Will has it all set up now for you. He called while we were waiting for you here. They''ll be expecting you to bring them Humphrey tomorrow evening."


    "Tomorrow," I repeated, horrified.


    "Yes," she said, and she fixed her gentle eyes on me for several long moments.


    After a while, I nodded. I wanted to protest, but I felt I''d done all the protesting I could. She had been so kind, so understanding. I didn''t want to argue with her, when she obviously knew what was best for us.


    "I''m sorry, Annie," she said. She stepped forward and brushed Humphrey''s cheek. He smiled at her, and I relaxed a little. "I''m sorry, Humphrey," she said.


    "Thank you," I said, though I wasn''t sure what I was thanking her for. "Is Will going to be okay?"


    She turned to look at him, sprawled across that hideous couch, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. "He''ll be fine. He came wanting answers, you know. I hope I gave him some. He may sleep for a long time, and he may be disoriented when he wakes up. I thought it would be better for him to wake up here, with you."


    She looked from Will to me, staring into my eyes again, and I suddenly believed things I''d never believed before, first about the existence of the judges'' "magic," and then about myself and my life¡ªthat I wasn''t as screwed up as I thought I was. That I really would be okay, that I was nearly there already. That handing over Humphrey wouldn''t tear me apart. And maybe the strangest one¡ªthat Will loved me and would love me however I needed him to, as long as I would let him.


    Then, I realized that her eyes weren''t there, just empty space. And the place where she had been standing had been empty space for a long time now.


    I looked at Will on the couch, and I wondered if that was what was happening to him, on a larger scale. Processing. But processing so much that he wouldn''t be conscious again until his brain had caught up.


    I sat on the floor with Humphrey and played with him, reaching out every few seconds to fix a sock or smooth his hair or wipe away drool.


    What had my life been like before him? Had I ever done anything, accomplished anything at all? Was this near-immortality wasted on me? The answer to that question, at least, seemed clear. But there were so many others.


    How could I pass Humphrey along, continue the ridiculous and horrifying game of hot potato that he''d endured all his life?


    What would I do when he was gone? It wasn''t like I had plans, dreams, ambitions that the kid was hindering me from fulfilling. I wasn''t a scientist like Will or an artist like Hyuck-Joo. I had no calling. And very soon, I would have nothing at all.


    I looked at Will, who had started to snore at some point. Humphrey looked at him too.


    Maybe the judge had given Will answers, too. Maybe some of his answers could help me figure out what was next, save me from feeling like a lab rat who has managed to hit the right button to release the cheese only twice in its life, and who was now desperate to figure it out again, sure that if it doesn''t, it will starve.


    Humphrey was asleep in my arms again when Will finally woke up. I was pretty sure the kid was suffering from narcolepsy.


    As much as I wanted to keep holding him as long as I could, I knew he needed to rest, and Will had no volume control when he was excited, and if he wasn''t excited yet, he would be as soon as he got talking.


    I laid Humphrey in his crib. He did the little whining thing he always did when anyone bothered his sleep.


    "Sorry, formula-face," I whispered, then tucked his penguins-in-scarves blanket around him and went back to the living room.


    "So did you find whatever you wanted to know?" I asked Will. He was sitting up now, one hand rubbing his eyes, and he looked up at me when I came back in. I sat beside him on the ugly couch, sitting cross-legged and leaning against the arm of the couch so I could face him.


    Will nodded, then shook his head. "Maybe. God, I have a headache. How long have I been asleep?"


    "Eight hours here. But you were dead asleep when she brought you in, so probably a lot longer. So what did you find out?"


    Will turned sideways on the couch, like me, so he was facing me. He reached out like he wanted to touch me, then seemed to remember that there was a Do Not Disturb sign hanging from my nose, and dropped his hand.


    "I know some things now," he said. "I know...I know that a war ended two hundred years ago, and that when the judges were all that remained of the vampire world, they made peace." He looked behind me, as though checking to make sure we were alone. "Not too long after that," he went on, his voice quieter, "they made their laws: the process of making a vampire was a secret; the judges would interfere to prevent war or to give their ''children'' guidance or keep them out of trouble, and," a proud smile emerged from his frown, "they would make themselves impossible to find."


    "So how did you find them?"


    "I took a census." His grin kept getting wider.


    "A census?" I asked.


    "Every time I met a new vampire, I would meet all his or her friends, then all of their friends. I kept records of key data: age, ethnicity, occupation, sex, marital status, hometown, and when and where they were changed into vampires." He looked so smug I wanted to flick him between the eyes.


    "Twenty years of parties?" I said. It was a question, but it wasn''t really a question. Why else would a geek throw a party?


    "Thirty-five years of parties," Will said. "You were only around for the last twenty."


    "So how many vampires took part in your sneaky census?"


    "Ten thousand."


    My mouth fell right open, like a cartoon character who had only just realized that those tricky sheep were dressed up as wolves. "Ten thousand? How is that even possible?"


    "Two parties a week, on average. Thirty-five years. Between one and five new vampires at every event. And remember, that when you and¡­when you were traveling all over the world for five years, I was too. Actually, I left about a month after you did, and I didn''t get back for almost a year after you came home. So I''ve met vampires in New York City, Los Angeles, S?o Paulo, Mumbai, Seoul, Tokyo, Manila, Istanbul, Jakarta, Shanghai, Paris, Berlin¡­and twenty more, every city I could hit in six years."


    I didn''t ask why his trip had coincided with mine and Keats''s. I told myself it would be easier to make up my own reasons¡ªcoincidence, he didn''t want to miss his friends, life in San Antonio was too boring without us.


    "And then so many parties here, too," I said.


    "Lots of vampires come through San Antonio. Cultural hotspot and all that."


    I went to check on Humphrey, then came back and sat beside Will on the couch again, a little closer than before. "So what did you find out from all your census-taking?"


    "Well, part of it I''ve already told you," he said. "Everyone is between fifteen and twenty-seven when they become vampires. No one has been a vampire for more than two hundred years, except the judges, of course¡ª"


    "Did you find out how old any of the judges are?" I asked.


    Will''s face went serious. He was still excited, still bouncing with things to tell me, but serious now, too. "I only met one. She didn''t tell me, exactly, but she gave me this image. Or maybe she didn''t mean for me to see it."


    He looked at me, and I nodded to tell him that I understand what he meant.


    "She was running. I could see through her eyes¡ªdecapitated heads hanging from horses'' necks, the heads bouncing as the horses ran. And all around her, men on horseback, men running, all of them with shining blonde hair, running naked into battle. They all carried spears topped with bronze heads. Pre-iron age. She was a Celt."


    "A Celt," I echoed, amazed. "Well, she can''t tell you about Atlantis, but I''d bet she has some stories worth hearing."


    "I don''t think I''ll ever see her again," he said, and there was sadness in his voice, like he was talking about a lover, and I remembered the kindness in her eyes when she had looked at him.


    I nodded, squeezed his hand. "So what else did you learn from the census?"


    After a pause, he continued, "Vampires match the proportions of the world population: gender, ethnicities, a mixture of jobs and talents and lifestyles and marital and parental statuses. But the most important point, what helped me find the judges, was geography."


    I glanced toward the bedroom, listening. A gurgling sound met me.


    "I''ll go check on him," said Will. He jumped up and went to the bedroom and brought Humphrey out a minute later, wide-eyed but groggy, clutching Se?or Elephant.


    I held out my hands for him, but Will ignored me and sat down with Humphrey, who looked perfectly content, in his lap. Something twinged in my body that hadn''t felt anything but thirst in so long. But it had to be psychosomatic or something. My ovaries hadn''t worked in two decades. Their chemical control over my brain should be at an end. Except, I realized, this wasn''t a reproductive twinge. It was about the picture we made, the family we made. The temporary family.


    Will started talking again, and I had to rip my mind out of its fantasy and focus again.


    "¡­chart the locations. It was only in the last year that the pattern really came clear. My sampling, after all, has been skewed in just about every way it''s possible to skew data, not the least due to my limited linguistic ability. I was unsure for two months whether this one guy said Mandalay was his wife or where he had become a vampire, or both."


    "Okay, so you''re saying that finding out where people were made into vampires told you where you could find the judges?"


    He made Se?or Elephant dance, which was a popular technique with this audience. "It would be more accurate to say it told me where I could start looking." He waited for Humphrey to stop giggling, then said, "Mexico City."


    "That would not have been my first guess," I said.


    "That''s probably part of the reason they picked it. You''d think the rulers of the vampire world would be in, I don''t know, Transylvania."


    I snorted. "Actually, I was thinking their own little island somewhere. So there were a lot of people changed into vampires in Mexico City?"


    "No," Will said. "There were none."


    "None?"


    "And none who are from there originally. And none who live there now."


    "None living there??? I asked.


    "Well, twenty. But those twenty never came to any of my parties. Or if they did, they lied about where they lived."


    "But," I said, watching Humphrey jam Se?or Elephant''s head into his mouth, "surely there are lots of cities without vampires."


    "None the size of Mexico City. Twenty million people and zero vampires? Not likely. And the longer I thought about it, the clearer the answer became: this isn''t a statistical anomaly. It''s a clue."


    I shook my head, but not because I didn''t believe him. I was still marveling at all he had done, all the work and all the years, and he had found them. "So you''re saying that the judges keep all vampires away from Mexico City? They, what, set up immigration checkpoints and do a blood test?"


    "All I''m saying is that the judges don''t make vampires close to home. It''s like why serial killers don''t usually kill their next door neighbors," Will said.


    "And then the neighbors always say what a nice young man he was, always kept his grass cut, brought a pie to the community bake sale."


    "Right," Will said. "Avoiding suspicion. Making themselves invisible. But most of all, I think they realized that we''re still social creatures. So they could stay hidden if they only made vampires from other places, in other places, because it was unlikely that a vampire community would spring up where no vampires had any connections."


    "That makes sense. You and Lydia¡ª" I didn''t say, and Keats, but I paused long enough that I knew he would hear it in the air anyway. "¡ªall lived here and were changed here. I ended up here because of you." That alone was enough to skew the numbers, I realized. San Antonio had a disproportionate number of vampires because it had permanent vampire residents to begin with. And we, apparently, flock together.


    "But what does my census record say?" I asked. "I was living in Palm Beach, but I woke up, changed, in Denver."


    Will nodded. "I listed both places, thinking there might be a clue there."


    "And was there?" I asked. Humphrey was licking his lips and squirming. I would have to move the conversation to the kitchen soon to fix him a bottle.


    "Sort of. I noticed that you weren''t alone in that. Most started their vampire life thousands of miles from where they were living. None were left in the same city."


    "None?" I asked. I stood up and paced. There was too much information here to take sitting still. "None?"


    "Want to hear my theory about why?" he asked.


    "Yes," I said.


    Will made a face at Humphrey, who stared at his face as though trying to decode it. "Sympathy. What did you do when you first woke up as a vampire?"


    "I tried to figure out what the hell happened."


    "And when you realized that you were really, really thirsty and Slurpees made you vomit?"


    I stopped pacing. "I hunted."


    "And if you had been near your family and friends when that thirst hit you for the first time, when you just couldn''t help but hunt because the part of your mind that would have told you how sick and evil it was couldn''t be heard over the part of your mind that was determined to survive¡ª"


    "I would''ve hunted them. I would''ve killed my family." Instead of sending them a nice note every Christmas full of lies about my successful career in advertising.


    Will picked up the sock Humphrey had kicked off and pulled it back onto his foot. "I think that''s what happened to the judges," he said. "Maybe not all of them, but probably most, before the process was a secret. Someone, maybe just for fun, turned them and left them, and before they understood what had happened, their family was a pile of corpses around their feet."


    For the first time, I thought I might love the judges. What kind of lives must they have led, what kind of horrors survived, before they brought order to their kind? How difficult was it to decide the rules¡ªhow much harder to implement them?


    "Do you know why they chose us?" I asked.


    Will understood. Were we special? Were we chosen? "No," he said. "As far as I can tell, they avoid changing people who are naturally violent or have any kind of mental instability." He didn''t look away from me when he said it. He knew that I''d been perfectly stable at the end of my human life. "The age range¡ªI think it''s probably optimum for physical transformation, and I think people around those ages are more likely to be able to accept what''s happened."


    "They''re breeding a healthy, stable, peaceful society for themselves," I said.


    "I think so. I think they couldn''t stand being the only ones left. Or maybe, they were afraid that they weren''t the only ones left, that there were still those left in hiding who were eager to restart the wars and to make vampires everywhere they went."


    "But there aren''t any of those left, are there?" I asked.


    "I don''t think so. But who knows? When you''ve been alive for thousands of years, maybe you don''t mind waiting a few hundred for the time to be right to rise to power again."


    Humphrey whimpered, and I went to fix a bottle. Will stayed in the living room with Humphrey, and as I poured the formula, I realized that even though we were a supposedly stable and peaceful (at least toward each other) culture, I wouldn''t leave any vampire but Will alone with Humphrey, not even for a minute.


    Which is why when I heard a shriek from the living room, I was so shocked that I knocked everything over and ran to see what had happened.


    Se?or Elephant had been dropped to the ground. Will had set Humphrey on the couch to retrieve his elephant friend, and Humphrey was ticked about not being held anymore and was protesting loudly.


    I didn''t walk any farther into the living room than that, just watched from the doorway as Will picked Humphrey back up, saying, "Sorry, dude. I had to save the elephant. There are dangerous predators in these parts."


    Humphrey almost cooed in happiness, and I went back to the kitchen.

 Chapter 43：Forty-Three

    "Do you want me to come with you?" Will asked.


    We had talked all through a day and a night. Now, he leaned against my front door, staring at me as though waiting to see if I would lie. He was on his way home to shower and change clothes and return a few of the hundreds of messages that waited in his voicemail.


    I had a few hours left with Humphrey, no more. I was holding him as he napped, and Will tucked his blanket around him more tightly.


    "Thanks, but no," I said. "You''ve been around for all my nervous breakdowns. I think I''ll try this one on my own."


    He raised his eyebrows, I knew he was thinking that my appointments with Dr. Parrish had been a good investment.


    I wanted to push him or stick my tongue out at him, give him some sign that he was a pig-faced know-it-all, but I couldn''t. I just gripped Humphrey close and leaned against Will for a second. Then I straightened, made myself as tall and strong as I could, and told Will to go home.


    I packed as many of Humphrey''s things into the diaper bag as I could, crushing clothes and toys and Se?or Elephant as flat as I could, then maneuvering the zipper closed. I talked to Humphrey about the great family he was going to meet, a family with regular sleeping patterns, a family who would never harm him, a family who wouldn''t kill his babysitter.


    I tried not to think words like "abandonment" and "forever," though I knew they were both true. Never mind that Humphrey would be better off without me; I was abandoning him. Never mind that he wouldn''t remember me long enough to hate me for leaving him; I was abandoning him forever.


    "You''ll need someone to cheer from the sidelines," I told him, "not someone who''s imagining how good a cheerleader would taste."


    My tongue licked my upper lip without my permission.


    "Besides," I told him, "you''ll want to bring a date home someday, you know. And you can''t bring anyone here." I gestured to the hideous couch and the otherwise empty room, empty except for Humphrey, who watched me from his blanket, listening as though he believed me, believed that I believed my encouraging nonsense.


    I could keep him. I could take him away¡ªwe could run away, buy wigs, acquire black market passports, and hide in a small town in Italy. I could pretend that I''d always been his mother.


    I hung the diaper bag strap on my shoulder and bent to pick up Humphrey. He was heavy, squirming, and I was small, standing there. Small and powerless.


    I wanted someone to see our last hours together. I wanted a grizzled old painter to take down the details so we could remember, so we could keep on standing here while his paintbrush slipped and he swore and had to go out for a new canvas and vodka.


    I stood holding my warm Humphrey, my only baby, until he was quiet in sleep.


    Then we left together, not because I''d promised the judge or Dr. Parrish or Will that I would find him a better home, but because it was best for Humphrey. And because for the first time, I wasn''t powerless to help the one I loved.

 Chapter 44：Forty-Four

    On my way over, I thought about how much easier it would be to stop and buy a picnic basket and line it with his penguins-in-scarves blanket. That way, I could leave him in it on their porch. Ring the doorbell and run. Because the thought of handing him over, watching someone take him¡ªI wasn''t strong enough for that.


    I was sure that my skin wouldn''t pull away from him. My hands would stick themselves to him, and I would just have to take him home again.


    I looked at him as he napped in my lap. The bus rumbled through the streets, tossing us like an ocean lifeboat, back and forth, with every start and stop.


    I wanted to tell him so many important things, but I didn''t know what any of them were. And he wouldn''t remember, anyway. Thank god he wouldn''t remember anything. Thank god he''d never know how he was passed from hand to hand, family to family, like a sick relay race, until he wound up stuck with me. A detour, nothing more. He would have a family soon, a real won''t-suck-your-blood one, to care for him and love him and teach him.


    I tightened my arms around him, feeling how warm and round he was. Healthy, now. About to be safer than he''d ever been, as soon as his new mother separated us. As soon as I could rip my skin away from his. It was impossible to be a human in a vampire family. I''d told Lydia and Kevin that in the beginning.


    I got off the bus and walked the four blocks from the bus stop, Humphrey in my arms, the diaper bag slung over my shoulder. Will had called them, so I knew they''d be waiting, probably there now with their faces against the window, eager to add a new member to their cult.


    I found the house too easily. It was nice, too cookie-cutter, too perfectly landscaped for my tastes, but nice. The smiling-dog knocker made me cringe, but Humphrey and I survived it.


    I set the diaper bag down on the porch and looked at his face again. He was still sleeping, his cheek flat against my chest.


    That was good. He would go to sleep seeing me, wake up seeing them. Maybe he''d believe that everything up to now was a dream.


    And there was no need to wake him up, really. He wouldn''t understand good-bye.


    I wiped invisible slobber from his chin and said, "You managed to charm a vampire, kid. I''d say that bodes well for your future."


    I didn''t mention that potty training and intelligible sentences would help. He would figure that out on his own.


    A clean young couple opened the door, both of them. I hadn''t knocked. They''d been waiting. They were younger than I expected, though probably about as old as I looked to them.


    They said something to me, but I was wrapping Humphrey''s blanket tighter around him, making sure he hadn''t lost a sock.


    I should have told him that this pair might be duds, and he should be prepared to deal with that. I should have told him that when he''s seventeen and he gets in a fight with his mom about breaking curfew, then he could come talk to me about it. I should have said that my empty apartment was always open if he needed a place to stay, or money, or even a soda. I could buy soda.


    I squeezed him for a second, then handed him over, amazed at how my hands just seemed to let him go, as if we weren''t connected by flesh after all.


    I leaned down to hand over the diaper bag, but it had already been taken inside, hauled away into the sanitary depths of that fortress.


    They were still talking to me.


    But my job was done. I turned and walked back down the driveway.


    I made it eight steps before I turned back, just to look at the house again.


    The door was still open halfway, the couple facing each other, Humphrey''s face toward me. He was awake. I got one last look at his big brown eyes before the door closed.

 Chapter 45：Forty-Five

    Will was sitting on the floor in front of my apartment, when I got back.


    "Leave a baby, find a baby," I said. "Crazy world."


    "You still have the crib and everything set up inside?" he asked.


    "Yeah."


    "I know someone who needs it, if that''s okay with you."


    "Can you get it out of there soon?" I asked.


    "Tomorrow," he said. "Why don''t you stay at my place tonight?"


    "Fine, but I''m sleeping on the couch."


    He grinned. "Lucky. So am I."


    I opened the door, and walked into Dr. Parrish''s office.


    He looked up from his notebook and smiled. "I wasn''t sure I would see you today."


    "Something wrong with your eyes?" I asked. I took my usual chair, but I couldn''t lean back into it. I sat hunched forward, staring at my hands.


    Dr. Parrish waited.


    "Humphrey is¡­with his new family now," I said, each word coming forth like an idea of its own, spaced and slow. I was afraid he would say, "That''s good," or "You know it was the best thing," both of which were true, but unnecessary.


    Instead, he said, "I''m sorry, Annie."


    I nodded, and leaned back to see him watching me, concern in his face. He was a kind man. I was lucky to have known so many kind men.


    "Will''s home," I said, and I told him about meeting the judge and about everything that had happened afterward.


    Dr. Parrish and I talked, and I realized I was glad I''d never bitten him.


    At the end of our hour, he asked, "Any word on that bet?"


    I smiled. "I''ll let you know."

 46 Forty-Six

    It was three days before I went back to my apartment. Will ignored his cell phone, allowing the messages to continue to pile up, and he stayed with me, chatting about every light and cheery topic he could invent. If I''d been human, I would''ve eaten gallons of ice cream and cried for three days, but neither of those were options for me.


    I had to get out of his apartment on the third day to hunt, and since I had to move from my perpetual spot on the couch anyway, I thought it might be a good time to go back to my apartment, take a bath, and try to remember what I did with my free time before Humphrey.


    I ate a little, all I could stomach, and left a young truck driver unconscious but very alive behind a highway truck stop with a neon Budweiser sign in the window and a state lottery advertisement on the door.


    I expected to go back to my apartment and be slammed with the absence of all the baby things. I expected to shut my eyes before I got too far inside and feel my way to the bathtub.


    But the absence wasn''t even the first thing I noticed.


    Will had decorated.


    I knew it had been foolish to give him my key, but I really didn''t think he would take advantage of my fragile state to redo the apartment. There was art all over the walls, some of it actually good. There were end tables and a coffee table, even a dining room table. He''d put up curtains and brought in bookcases and filled them with books and knickknacks.


    And in the midst of it all, there sat the hideous brown couch, and Will waited, sprawled over it and enjoying my wordlessness.


    Finally, I managed, "Did you sublet my apartment?"


    "If I say yes, will you move in with me?"


    I raised my eyebrows at him.


    "I just spruced up the place a little," he said. "Now it looks like someone actually lives here. And really tell me if you don''t like the paintings. I can get you different ones."


    "Will, I just¡­thank you. I really was fine with it the way it was before."


    "I wasn''t. If I''m going to hang out here, something had to change."


    "Thank you," I said again.


    I walked through every room.


    Even the bedroom was different, everything a lovely dark green that seemed cozy to me. I went to the nightstand and put my hand on the books he''d left there.


    Jhumpa Lahiri''s complete works.


    "I heard you liked her," Will said from the doorway.


    I turned to face him, but as I did, my eye found the little cupped indentation in the carpet that showed where Humphrey''s crib had stood. The new nightstand covered two of the marks, and the bed blocked my view of the third, but the fourth was there, a ghost from a borrowed life.


    He followed my eyes, then looked back at me. I didn''t believe he really understood, not in the way I wanted someone to understand, but that was okay.


    He took a step closer and put an arm around my shoulders.


    "Come to St. Petersburg with me," he said, staring down into my eyes.


    "Cancun is sunnier," I said, not sure what he meant.


    "Not a big draw for a vampire," he said, then explained, "I found someone in St. Petersburg who has been doing research similar to mine. We''ve been emailing for a few weeks, but we thought it would be better to meet and compare notes."


    Will had shown me his notes. He had two stacks of legal pads, each as tall as I was, with only a fraction of the information recorded in his computer. He didn''t need a Russian vacation; he needed a secretary.


    "I''m leaving tomorrow," he added.


    "How long will you be gone?" I asked.


    "A couple of months," he said, and the question was still there in his voice, and the arm that kept me close to him told me that he wanted me with him.


    My eyes flicked again to the crib marks in the carpet.


    "Annie," he said, his voice gentle. "Do you want to come with me?"


    "I don''t think so," I said.


    He drew his arm tight and hugged me. I closed my eyes against his chest.


    When he let me go, I walked him to the door.


    "Thank you," I said again. "The apartment looks amazing."


    Will opened the door and turned to me. "You''ll be here when I get back?"


    "Of course," I said.


    He took my hand for a moment, then I watched him until he disappeared down the stairwell.


    I stood, one foot inside the door, one outside, thinking, I don''t think so, again and again, until I knew it was a lie. I did think so.


    I looked back over my shoulder at my newly decorated apartment, an apartment where I could be comfortable, where I could wait for Will to come home from Russia, so we could take things slowly instead of impulsively running off together.


    Or¡­or it was a place to come home to after a long journey.


    I closed the door and ran after him.


    The End