Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 1

My name's Gabriel Sorenson, and I'm a vampire.

This might seem like a wonderfully exotic and powerful thing to be, and maybe it is when you're seven hundred years old or whatever, but I've only been a vampire for a few months and so far? It sucks.

You may be wondering why I bothered to become a vampire at all if I'm so down on the undead lifestyle, so I'll begin at the beginning. It all started with this guy I picked up at Chelsea's, the gay bar down the block from my overpriced San Francisco apartment. Now, I may not be the kind of guy who's looking for forever and a gold wedding band, but I won't turn it down if a really good one-night stand wants another round or two, either.

I privately thought of him as "the Biter", though his real name was Tom Collins, just like the drink. He was pretty small, shorter than my own modest five foot nine anyway, slender and wiry and almost a twink except for his age. I'd lie and say it was his eyes that caught my attention, but truth be told it was that mouth, pink as coral with lips just lush enough. It was wide, too, and he smiled like it didn't matter in the least to him who was smiling along, which made you want to be in on the joke.

Even his hands seemed small, narrower than mine and far more dexterous. I'm a pretty solid guy, myself, average all over with brown hair, brown eyes, and a six-pack only the gym can give me. I'm not the handsomest guy on the block, but I do all right, so I wasn't all that surprised when Tom came up to me in the bar.

"Ever had a Tom Collins?" he asked, and yeah, I'm sure he's gotten laid a thousand times off that pick-up line. I'm also sure I didn't care one bit if it was a line, because he licked his lips as he finished up with one of those grins of his, and I was totally hooked.

"Nope," I said, nodding toward his drink. "Is that what you're having?"

He smirked and stepped a little closer. "Maybe it's just what I want you to have," he said, and handed me his card.

Weird, I know, but it was charming, too. It wasn't a proper business card, anyway, more like one of those old-fashioned calling cards, all rounded corners and heavy paper with his name and a phone number printed on it.

I read it, got the joke, and laughed appropriately. "I'm Gabriel, Gabriel Sorenson," I said, holding my hand out for a shake.

The smooth bastard took it, shook it, then kissed the back of it before letting go. "My pleasure," he said.

"Or so we both hope," I replied, pocketing the card. "I haven't seen you here before; are you new to the neighborhood?"

Tom smiled and stepped a little closer, as though to hear over the noise. Except Chelsea's is a little local bar, and even though a fair amount of cruising goes on, it wasn't exactly loud. "I just moved into a townhouse nearby, the taupe one with the sepia trim."

A description only a gay man could love, and it brought the place to mind immediately. The former owners had spent a fortune remodeling it before they broke up and had to sell the place off when neither one would agree to let the other buy him out. I'd been jealous ever since the "sold" got added to the realtor's sign, but in my line of work a San Francisco mortgage is out of reach.

I'm a freelance writer, by the way. Wanna hire me?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Regardless, his place was just down the street from me, and I was definitely in a neighborly sort of mood. "That's a great place," I said, not bothering to hide my envy. "What do you do?"

"Investments, mostly," he said, shrugging eloquently.

Not a first date sort of question for him, got it. Some guys were weird about their work if being outed could be a problem for them. "Want a refill?" I offered, noticing his drink was getting low.

Tom's smile got a little predatory then, but I didn't mind at the time. In retrospect, I suppose I should have known better. Ah, well, you know what they say about hindsight. "I'd rather have a taste of you," he said.

He didn't have to ask me twice. "Your place or mine?"

"Yours, if you don't mind," he said, finishing off his drink and setting it on the bar. "I'm still getting settled, it's all boxes and dust."

I smiled, though I admit there was a little disappointment that I wouldn't get to see inside his place. "My place is fine," I said, and I meant it. I always cleaned up before I went out cruising, just in case, and the precaution had paid off many times over.

If only, just this once, I'd forgotten to change the sheets.

Ah, well, I'm getting off track. I had another sip of my White Russian and then abandoned it on the bar -- it was too sweet tonight anyway, I should've ordered a beer, but I hadn't wanted to seem unsophisticated. "Shall we?"

"Sometimes," he said, tucking his hand into my elbow like a 30s movie starlet, "I love the twenty-first century."

"Amen to that," I said, though it did make me wonder if he was older than he looked. I'd barely been born back in the '70s when queer was a real dirty word, and I'd spent most of my adult life enjoying the freedom of San Francisco's thriving gay culture to the hilt.

It was a mild, warm summer night, and we chatted about inconsequential local events as we made our way over to my building, then up and back to my pleasantly isolated apartment. "Come on in," I said when he hesitated at the door. "Would you like the tour, or..."

He stepped inside with a hungry smile. "I'm mostly interested in the bedroom," he teased, though our conversation on the walk gave me some hope he wasn't completely shallow. Honestly, he was hot enough I didn't really care if he was shallow, which doesn't say much for my own depths, but there you go.

"Your wish is my command," I replied, making sure we were locked in and then leading him into my bedroom. I didn't have the gorgeous bay windows or view of the city that you got from the front of the building, but I had privacy and blackout curtains on my narrow, high windows.

"Very nice," he said, and he seemed to mean it -- I kept the decor pretty spare, an abstractly sensual piece of art above the bed, lube and condoms on the bedside table, a covered trash can in the space beside it. The closet was closed to hide my sadly uninspired wardrobe, and the dresser held only the ceramic dish for my watch, keys and wallet. I kept my life tucked away from the sorts of guys that only wanted to see the inside of this room, and they rarely minded.

"It's home," I said, surprised at the pride in my voice. The one thing the room did have going for it was color -- the painting was tinged with warm browns and golds, and I'd decorated the whole room to match. It wasn't edgy or modern, but it was welcoming, which was more than I could say for a lot of bedrooms I'd been in.

"Thank you for welcoming me into it," he said, oddly formal like a number of things about Tom, but not in a bad way.

He's a charming bastard, I have to give him that.

I'm sure you can figure out what happened next -- he was a kisser as well as a biter, but polite enough to give me time to get my keys into the dish where they belonged. Too impatient to let me put my shoes away, though, and soon enough we were in the bed and I was marveling at how pale he was against the golden ripe-wheat color of my sheets.

He got cold really easily, which I somehow didn't wonder at at all because he didn't mind leaving the lights on and let's face it, I'm a guy. The visual of him writhing as I slowly sank into him was enough to overpower a whole lot of misgivings, had I even bothered to have any.

His mouth, I feel compelled to add, was just as magnificent as advertised.

I was a little disappointed when he left before morning, but it wasn't like he went far, or that he cheated me of the amazing night that confident smile had promised. I ended up with some fantastic marks, hickeys on my inner thighs and all around my throat, and I was so worn out I slept straight through my alarm and ended up blowing off my morning workout in favor of a greasy diner breakfast complete with orange juice and coffee.

What can I say, steak and eggs can make anything better. Well, could. Unfortunately, although I can still drink whatever I like, the culinary delights of the human world are now denied to me.

The marks faded over the next week, and I will admit I pined a little for my gorgeous neighbor, wondering if I could get away with a housewarming bottle of wine and offer of a repeat performance. I was pleasantly surprised to see him at Chelsea's the next time I went, and even more pleased when he let me join him. We actually talked for a couple of hours this time, getting into a long discussion about a shared hobby -- the evolution of American civil rights. He knew his history, too, from back when women were still considered chattel up to the fledgling movement toward legalized gay marriage.

"Slowly but surely, we're making the rich white guys acknowledge that we've all got the right to live and love, no matter what we've got between our legs," he said at one point, sounding as satisfied as if he'd had a hand in the last hundred years of social advancement.

Little did I know, right?

I have to admit, by this point I was reluctant to let him out of my sight -- he was both interesting and interested (there is a difference, and oh, what a difference), which isn't something I get a lot with men I've already slept with once.

So, of course, I took him home again.

The second time was even better than the first in a lot of ways. A little bit of the newness had worn off, but this time instead of being replaced with boredom it gave way to a delightful familiarity. This time I knew to spread my legs wider so he could bite and suck at my inner thighs before he made his way up to my cock. I knew that nibbling the back of his neck made him sigh, but stroking along his ribs made him laugh.

It was glorious, and I fell for him like Newton's apple.

He slipped out in the night again, but this time he seemed to regret it a lot more.

I didn't see him again for a few days, and eventually I hunted up his card and gave the number a call. It took a little convincing, but he agreed to meet me at Chelsea's for another drink, after whatever dinner thing he already had going.

Now, here's something I bet you didn't know -- that thing about being bitten three times and then turning into a vampire is partially true. It takes three exposures within a month -- well, a moon, but close enough -- to break down a human's resistance enough that they can be turned.

But that's not all that has to happen.

Apparently, Tom thought seeing me one more time was worth the risk, which is sort of flattering until you know what happened next. It's like the world's weirdest case of the clap, except instead of needing a dose of antibiotics to clear things up, it's changed me forever.

The second part of the equation is bodily fluids. Usually in the movies it's blood, but trust me, any vampire body fluid is good enough to complete the infection if you swallow enough of it.

I think you can see where this is going.

So, whatever it is they have in their saliva has to go straight into the bloodstream, and then you have to ingest whatever the other thing is to make a complete... something. I'm not actually all that clear on the theory, but it's some strange combination of science and magic having to do with essences and blood proteins and the human immune system.

Over time, the human body, miraculous machine that it is, will clear the infection out of the bloodstream, and the vampire can start all over if they want, or just move on to greener pastures.

That is, unless the human in question is a complete moron who can't read stereo instructions.

After that third night I was feeling pretty good about myself. Tom and I were really getting along well, and he'd even asked to see the whole apartment this time, stopping to admire my collection of local history books along one wall and the watercolor nudes in the bathroom. He even teased me about my new high-end speaker system, still sitting in its box where I'd left it after the cute salesman talked me into buying it. He'd promised to install it himself, but all our installation had gone on in the bedroom.

And yeah, it was totally worth it.

"You've made a good life for yourself here," Tom had said then, running his fingers along the glass shelf of my entertainment center. "Maybe someday you'll help me finish settling into mine."

That was as close as I'd gotten to an invitation to see his house, and it gave me a thrill of triumph. "I'd love to," I said, stepping closer. "But right now there's a room here that needs your special touch."

Yeah, it was cheesy, but so what? It worked.

It worked brilliantly, too, all the things we'd practiced those first two nights falling into place. It wasn't perfect storybook sex or anything, but it had a dreamlike quality that I can't really describe, but still sends a shiver up my spine to remember. A good kind of shiver, and a little bit of wistfulness for what might have been.

The next day Tom's teasing galvanized me into trying to install those stupid speakers, and let me tell you, of all the writing assignments I've dashed off half-cocked at the last minute, none of them were as incomprehensible as the manual for wiring up these speakers.

I woke up on my floor with the lights out and a nasty smell in the air, and after I reset the breakers I thought I was damned lucky to have survived what could've been a fatal accident.

Turns out, not so much.

The first thing I did, after showering away the stink of what turned out to be my own death, was fire up my email and check on how long I'd been out.

A couple of angry emails and a jam-packed RSS feed told me it was a lot longer than I had thought. Three days, in fact, and I'd woken up just as the sun went down on the third day, my transformation complete.

See, here's the thing -- if a human is infected with three bites, then they swallow the vampire's fluid, they still have to die in order to become a vampire.

Just my luck, huh?

I answered the emails with my profuse apologies and some crap about the stomach flu, and then got off my ass and spent much of the night finishing up those neglected assignments. Three days lost or not, I still had rent to pay. I figured I'd go get checked out the next day, just to make sure I hadn't given myself an aneurysm or whatever it is when you hit your head and hurt it on the inside.

After I finished the first assignment, I paused for a protein shake and to put in a call to Tom. He'd left me a surprisingly sweet message on my voicemail and I wanted to let him know I was still alive and very interested in his company.

Ironic doesn't even begin to describe it.

Anyway, I sheepishly told him about my accident, or at least I told his answering machine, and then I sat right back down and dashed off assignment number two. By that point I was getting really hungry so I took a break and got properly dressed, barely glancing at the mess in the living room on my way out to get something to eat.

Then I stopped, backed up, and watched Tom stare at the spot where I'd died.

"How did you get in here?" I asked.

Tom turned and his face was eerie, blank like I'd never imagined he could except for his eyes, which were drowning in guilt. "I never meant for this to happen," he said softly.

"Meant for what to happen? Me to screw up my stereo?" I hadn't bothered turning that breaker back on, but I had a sneaking suspicion I'd fried a lot more than a few neurons when I had my little accident.

"Meant for you to become like me," he said. "You were so alive, Gabriel, so warm, and now... Now you'll be cold forever, just like me."

"Melodramatic much?" I said, getting testy. "Did I leave the door unlocked?"

"You invited me in," he said, and then I blinked and he was standing next to me. "You're going to have to feed tonight, Gabriel, or things will go badly tomorrow."

"I was just going out," I said, gesturing down the darkened hallway. "Why don't you come with me and you can explain why you've suddenly gotten all weird on me?"

Tom sighed and shook his head. "No, we need to do this here. You can feed from me for tonight, it'll be good for your development, but you'll have to hunt with me tomorrow."

I just stared.

He stared back, and then something dawned on his face and he slapped his forehead. "You haven't figured it out yet!"

"Clearly not," I said flatly, wondering when my sweet, charming lover had turned into a raving loony.

He opened his mouth, and I swear it was just like watching movie effects. I mean, his canines had always seemed sharp to me, as the marks on my thighs and neck could attest, but I was watching them grow from sharp for a normal human to honest-to-god vampire fangs.

"Holy fucking shit." What? I'd like to see you be original when there's a vampire in your living room and you already let him give you a blowjob. I swear my cock had a moment of pure terror at the sight of those teeth, but it didn't last.

"I infected you," he said, talking around the teeth without any sign of a lisp. He tells me it's a matter of practice, which is good, because I still sound like a moron. Anyway, he waited a heartbeat for me to react, but I was still at the staring blankly phase of shock, so he plowed on. "I figured you'd be safe enough, you live a quiet life, live in a safe neighborhood, you don't play in traffic. I should have waited a couple more weeks before our third time, but we were just so good together."

That gave me a little flush of pleasure that reminded my cock of how much fun it'd had while it was inside that mouth, fangs or no fangs.

"So if I hadn't shocked myself three days ago, I'd be fine?" I asked, incredulous.

"If you hadn't killed yourself hooking up your stupid speakers, you'd have been back to normal right after the full moon," he said with a sigh. "But you did, and now you're a vampire, and I'm going to be in deep shit for turning you without permission."

I blinked again, and all sorts of things I thought I knew got turned on their sides and inside-out. "You need permission to make more vampires?"

"If we turned every lover we thought was something a little special, eventually we'd outnumber humans," he said.

I blushed, because clearly I'm an idiot. "You think I'm something special?" I said, unable to focus on anything of actual import.

Tom chuckled and kissed me, his lips warmer than I remember but just as strong, and my cock informed me that it had totally forgiven him for the fangs, and was still fully functioning. "I think you need to drink from me, because my blood will help your body adjust to the change."

I sighed, and tried to push the stupid relationship stuff aside. "Will I like it?"

"Oh, yes," he said, rubbing against me in a way that was making much different hungers awaken. "And so will I."

"How do I make my... Oh," I said, feeling a brief ache accompanied by a very strange motion in my mouth. It was disturbingly like getting an erection, only with my teeth. "That'th neat."

Tom snickered.

"Bathtard," I said, nuzzling at his neck.

"Just bite down gently, like you did when we made love," he said, threading his fingers into my hair. "Your fangs will be sharp enough."

He smelled just as good as he had the first time we made love, and my tongue flicked out to taste the salt of his skin. I didn't bother to ask more, the directions seemed simple enough, so I fitted my mouth to his neck and bit.

I want to say it went smoothly and ambrosia filled my mouth, but that just wouldn't be me, would it? My fangs skittered along his smooth skin, catching too shallowly to do more than scratch, and we both swore.

"Thorry," I lisped, already tired of the new dental work.

"It's okay, Gabe, just try again," he said, wiping the spit off his neck with one hand.

The second time I really thought about what I was doing, not just a bit of erotic biting, but trying to pierce skin and get to the sustenance underneath. "How much?" I asked, pausing with my lips hovering above his skin.

Damn, he smelled good.

"You'll know," he said confidently.

It was a good thing one of us had some confidence, anyway. I opened my mouth and bit down again, and this time the fangs caught and sank in, and blood flowed. I had one panicked moment of thinking, "I have blood in my mouth," before instinct took over and I swallowed. It slid down my throat like the best cognac I'd ever had, burning with life all the way to my rumbling stomach. Two more swallows and the hunger was nearly sated, so I pulled my fangs away and lapped at the wounds.

It was really strange to feel them closing under my tongue as I swallowed the last of his blood.

"That wasth fucking bizarre," I said, though it was mostly bravado.

Tom chuckled, then kissed me again, his tongue teasing deftly over and around my fangs. "If you feed at least once every three days, that's all you ever have to take," he said, stepping away with a flash that I thought was regret.

Now, I think I was probably fooling myself.

"And if I wait?" I asked, ready for the unpleasant punch line this time.

"The hunger will grow exponentially, until you go crazy and kill someone." He looked at me sadly and said, "There's no coming back from that, either, so don't let it slide."

"What happens if you get a guy who isn't into biting?" I asked, remembering the brief moment of protest I'd had the first time he bit harder than a little nibble.

"Most of them like it too much to complain," he said with a shrug. "It's like anything else, you learn which guys are really going to enjoy it, and which ones have too much self-loathing or a wife tucked away and won't be happy if you leave marks."

"Yeah," I said, thinking of the few times I'd had dates go bad. "Makes sense."

Tom swallowed and looked nervous for a moment, but then he straightened up and grinned that charming grin of his. "You'll have to be introduced, and I'll probably have to pay a penalty for the accident," he said, biting his lip. "Tomorrow, I think, after your first successful hunt. I know a club where we can pick up the sort of guy who won't object to a threesome."

"So you're, uh, not worried about disease much anymore?" I asked, unsure.

"I'm already dead," he said with a shrug. "What else can happen?"

---

I thought he'd leave me then and go on about his business, but instead he had me pack up a few days' worth of stuff and bring it to his place.

It was just as gorgeous inside as I'd imagined, with an old-world elegance that seemed as effortless as his other affectations. Which made sense when you thought about it, him being presumably old enough to be the original owner of the antiques so tastefully displayed. "It's really beautiful," I said, looking around.

"I was born in 1850," he said.

I blinked. "Did you read my mind? Can vampires do that?"

He laughed. "No, no, it was written all over your face," he said, taking my hand and leading me upstairs. "I'm really glad you like it, though," he added, with a shy, boyish charm that made me feel special all over again.

"So why didn't you show me before?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I wasn't ready," he said.

When I saw the second floor, I understood.

Downstairs was understated sophistication, every item complementing the house as a whole in some way without being flashy or obsessively historical.

Upstairs was a fortress.

He punched in a keycode just slightly too fast for me to see and the door slid open, letting out a hiss of air. "This floor is lightproof," he said, leading me through the spartan sitting room and into the back room, where a wide, comfortable bed was the only thing in there besides the overhead light. "We'll sleep here from sunrise to sunset, literally dead to the world."

"We?" I said, understanding now why he'd never stayed overnight. My blackout curtains kept it dark, but they still let in some sunlight at the top.

"Until we can get your place set up, yeah." He looked me over and then gestured. "There's a bathroom through there. You'll find that you only need to eliminate fluids if you drink things other than blood, and solid food just comes right back up if you try to eat, so don't bother trying."

"Oh," I said intelligently, setting my bags down. "Do you have wireless?"

He laughed. "Yeah, of course. I'll go find you the password. I keep it on a post-it."

I think it was the absurdity of that, a vampire with his passwords written down on post-its like some secretary, that made me totally lose it. I was still laughing when he came back, sitting on the edge of the bed, hysterical and breathless.

"Just let it out," he said, gentle instead of impatient for once.

I swallowed down the last of my laughter and looked up at him wiping away tears. "I'm breathing," I said softly.

"It's habit," he said. "Plus, you have to breathe to talk."

"Oh, right." That was a weird thought, and I reached up and took my pulse. Or tried to, except there wasn't one in my neck, or my wrist, and when I looked back up at him he was wearing this expression, this strange wistful pity that took the last of the fight right out of me.

"I'm sorry," he said.

I shrugged. "I know you never meant for this to happen." What good would it do me to hate him when he was the only other vampire I knew, the only one with the answers I needed?

That's what I told myself then, anyway.

Now, I've come to realize that even though he's not the only vampire in town, no one ever really has the answers.

---

You know that feeling you get, where you're just on the edge of sleep and you can't move at all, but you're not really all the way asleep? That always gives a moment of pure panic before I either wake up, or my body winds down enough to slip into proper slumber.

Falling asleep as a vampire is a little like sleep paralysis, only scarier.

Tom made sure we were tucked into bed, chastely wearing pajamas though I have no idea why, given everything we'd done together. He put out all but one nightlight, and then let me settle my hand in his -- neither of us was much of a spooner. I felt the life going out of me, not switched like a light, but a draining away of energy and mobility, my limbs going still and numb and my breathing slowing to nothing and then, finally, my consciousness snuffed out like a candle.

And then it was morning, and I was awake and breathing and I could feel his hand in mine, and it would have been like no time had passed at all if it wasn't for the memory of that awful stillness coming over me.

"Good evening," he teased, smiling softly and using a silly fake-Dracula accent.

"Wanting to drink my blood already?" I teased, rolling over to look at him without letting go of his hand.

"Let's start with a kiss," he suggested.

I wasn't about to object. He'd been weird about affection since he found out he'd accidentally turned me, and I didn't want to lose that along with everything else. I scooted closer and our bodies fit together and licked my lips, pleased to find that vampire morning breath was pretty minimal. "Sounds like a great way to start a day," I murmured, then I closed the small gap and kissed him.

He made a sound that was almost surprise, as though he hadn't expected me to still be willing after everything, but then he kissed me back and it didn't matter what he'd thought. His mouth wasn't warm, precisely, but it was the same temperature as mine which gave the illusion of warmth, enough to spark desire in me and get my blood flowing.

Or, well, whatever it was my blood did now.

Maybe it was some latent hetero impulse in me, but I can admit even now that I always loved the way he fit in my arms, his slight build and shorter stature just enough to make me feel big and manly when he melted against me like that. I slipped my thigh between his legs and rubbed just a little, one hand sliding down to cup his round, tight ass in those silky pajamas. "I guess even vampires get morning wood," I said teasingly.

He grinned and even though it wasn't sleepy, precisely, there was something vulnerable about him like this that I found really appealing. I still do, when I let myself think about him, but I don't usually admit it.

"It's a wonderful life," he said, which made me think that he'd probably seen that movie when it came out, that he had so much to teach me.

At some point during our kissing his fangs had come out, and so had mine, but it only added more spice, a drop of blood here or there as one of us nicked something accidentally or on purpose. We really did heal fast, too; I didn't know if that was vampire spit or powers or what, but right then I didn't care too much, either.

He let me undress us both, pliant and a little warmer than before, though whether that was friction or metabolism I had no idea. When we came together again his skin felt so silky and smooth under my fingertips it was like discovering him all over again. Sometimes we'd get so caught up in the kissing that we'd forget to breathe, and I have to tell you I was already thinking about the possibilities for that trick, at least once I learned to control my fangs a little better.

"Just like this," he whispered, nipping my ear and pulling me on top of him. He shifted so I was cradled between his spread legs, and each downward thrust of my hips made our cocks kiss and rub against each other, sensitive and eager. I was so wound up from everything that it didn't take long before I felt that familiar tingling in my spine.

"Soon," I gasped out, taking in a deep, useless breath before diving back in to kiss him again.

He made a sound that I chose to take as agreement and rocked faster, breathing just so we could make the sort of noises that sound exquisite when you're responsible for them and ridiculous at any other time. Our skin grew slick, precome and sweat that added to the sensation, and when he half-moaned my name, that was it.

I threw my head back and let go, spilling heat and wetness between our bodies that was quickly joined by his release. I kissed him again, looking down at his mussed black curls and startling blue eyes, and for just a minute I didn't mind that I'd had to die to experience that moment.

"I trust you'll still have it in you to pick up a snack later?" he said, smirking.

Apparently, the moment was over.

"You know I will," I said, rolling my eyes and myself off of him. "Shower?"

"Yep," he said, standing up and stretching. "It's big enough for two, but we should save a repeat performance for the club."

"What club?" I said, echoing his motions. It felt good to move, my muscles stiff and strange from lying in the same position all night. "I didn't bring club clothes."

He snorted. "You don't have clothes for this club," he said, tugging me into the bathroom. "I'll buy you some hunting clothes as a welcome to undeath present."

"Does this make yesterday my unbirthday?" I asked, allowing myself to be led.

Tom laughed, and it felt good to have been the one to make him. "Yeah, I guess so," he said. "But don't expect a party at Chuck-E-Cheese next year."

I made a face. "Ugh, kids."

He looked disturbingly relieved at my reaction, but we shared a laugh anyway waiting for the water to warm up. "So, why doesn't my mouth taste, you know, bad?" I asked, since I couldn't think of anything smarter.

"Plaque thrives in living mouths, not dead ones," he said. "Yet another human ailment you've left behind."

"I think I'll still brush," I said, though I was grateful that I wouldn't be looking for an all-night dentist.

The water, once he pulled me under it, was almost as exquisite as the frottage had been. "Oh, god, I don't think I've enjoyed a hot shower this much in my life," I groaned.

He had one of those two-person rain showers that cost a fortune and used a ton of water, and it was worth every penny to try to drown myself in the warmth of it. I was like a cat in a sunbeam, and I could feel the heat sinking into every pore, every muscle and sinew, all the way down to my cold, dead bones.

"I thought you'd enjoy this," he said with a grin.

"Does it always feel this good?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, pulling me close for one more kiss, "It always does."

Well, chalk one up for vampirism.

Eventually we stopped basking and got washed, and he did something arcane with his hair and mine that ended up looking terribly stylish and nothing at all like it normally did. "I'll get dressed now, and you'll wear your clothes out of the store," he said, disappearing into another room I hadn't noticed before that was apparently the world's biggest walk-in closet.

"What'll I do with the clothes I wear into the store?" I asked. He hadn't said anything yet about the source of his income, but I had a feeling that being a vampire didn't come with a fancy bank account any more than being gay came with a stylish wardrobe.

"Oh, we'll leave those in the car," he said.

I blinked. "How do vampires get driver's licenses?"

Laughter preceded him back into the room. "We've got that taken care of. We're a small society, but we look out for our own."

He looked, in a word, edible. He was wearing low-slung black vinyl pants with a matching crop top, some serious bondage boots, and he'd added a winking sapphire earring that I had a sneaking suspicion was real.

"A goth club?" I hazarded, watching as he went to one of the cluttered side tables and fished out a wallet and some black lipstick.

"Best place to find a boy who is both easy and into biting," he said with a wink.

I chuckled. "I'll stand out, even if you dress me up."

"Standing out isn't always bad," he said, sliding up and kissing me sweetly.

Fortunately for me, he hadn't put on the lipstick yet.

---

"I look like an idiot," I said for the fifth time, staring at myself in the mirror of the painfully edgy boutique.

He and the clerk had put their heads together and discussed me like I was a piece of meat, finally sending me off to the dressing rooms and handing in clothing one article at a time. When I came out, I was wearing a pair of black leather pants, a flowing white poet's shirt, and a crushed velvet frock coat that could not have possibly looked more gay.

"You look great," said the salesboy, stealing the tags off all three items. "Just let me grab you some boots."

"You don't look like yourself," said Tom, sidling up with some jewelry and finally deciding on a giant pewter cross encrusted with skulls and roses, and a couple of oversized rings. "But that's the point."

I sighed, but I could see what he meant. Between the hair style, the clothes and the jewelry, no one I knew from my mundane life would have recognized me, at least not in a dark club.

"All right, I give. But I draw the line at those boots," I said, pointing to the thigh-high pirate boots in the sales boy's left hand. "These are fine." I slipped on the calf-high pirate boots from his right hand, and still felt like an idiot. At least they were comfortable. "All right?" I asked, standing and taking one last look at the pod person in the mirror.

"You'll have no trouble finding some fresh meat," said the sales boy. He looked just a little pouty, as though he'd been hoping to play that role himself, but he rang us up readily enough and even put my old clothes in a bag.

"What would we ever do without you?" said Tom, shooting him a wink.

The sales boy laughed. "You'd commit fashion faux pas left and right, I'm sure."

It was a pretty short drive from the shop to the club, and Tom impressed me by pulling off a genuine San Francisco miracle -- he found parking. "It's good to know all the secrets," he said with a laugh.

"So, where will we take this boy we're going to molest, anyway?" I asked, suddenly imagining some scrawny goth kid sprawled out on the soft gold of my expensive sheets.

"Don't worry, there's hotels nearby," he said.

I finally gave in and asked. "How do you afford the vampire lifestyle, anyway?"

"Investments," he said with a shrug. "You'll learn, but there's a reason I'm picking up the tab this time."

"Oh," was all I could think to say, and then he was dragging me into the club.

The room was filled with black, black and more black, twentysomethings trying for a whiter shade of pale and only occasionally pulling it off without looking like they were wearing clown makeup. Our entrance got more attention than I had expected, but once I got a better look around, I understood the appeal -- they were all bored of each other, and I was fresh meat.

Tom managed to snag us one of the round booths along the wall, and he ordered drinks for us both. "What if I wasn't in the mood for a Tom Collins?" I asked, stroking the slick vinyl on his thigh.

He chuckled and kissed me, making a show of it for the kiddies. "You know you love the taste of me," he murmured.

I could feel my fangs coming out this time, just from the memory of it.

"Yeah," I said, sliding my hand up to cup his crotch, "I really do."

"So is this a private party?" asked a voice, and we looked up to find a boy that couldn't have been more than twenty-one. "Or can anyone join?"

"Not just anyone," purred Tom, flashing his fangs like an extra accessory, "but you'd be welcome."

"Are you thure he'th old enough?" I asked Tom, in what I thought was a quiet whisper.

"I'm old enough for this," said the boy, sliding in on my side and draping himself over me.

Tom gave me a raised eyebrow and I let it go. If this kid thought he wanted to sleep with a couple of older 'vampires,' then who was I to contradict him?

Besides, I was hungry.

"So, what's your name?" asked the kid, one leg practically in my lap and his lips close to my ear.

"Gabriel," I said automatically. I didn't even lisp.

He and Tom exchanged amused looks. "Really?" he said.

I rolled my eyes. "My parenth were way ahead of the goth fashion curve," I said, and Tom laughed.

"You can tell him your real name, Jerry," said Tom, and the clue finally hit me that people here used pseudonyms or something.

"I'm Clancy," said the kid with a wink. "They all call me Snowball."

I managed to get my fangs back in with a force of will much like banishing an inappropriate erection, at least long enough to ask, "Is that because you like to snowball or get snowballed?" I was already warming up to the idea of licking my own come out of his eager mouth.

He laughed. "Not that I'm opposed," he said, "but it's actually because I hit on guys I shouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell with -- and score."

"I'm Nick," said Tom, reaching across me to do something that made our little Snowball groan. "Are you open to threesomes?"

Snowball snort-laughed, and it was disgustingly cute. "Would I be here if I wasn't?" he asked. He crawled right across my lap and settled himself between us, one hand on each of our thighs.

"And you like biting?" I asked, flashing a little fang while Snowball felt up the more traditional sign of my arousal, presumably doing the same to Tom on his other side.

He whimpered. "Oh yeah," he said, rubbing harder. "Wherever you like, as long as I can cover the marks at work."

"Nothing above the collar line," promised Tom, nipping at his neck teasingly.

"Damn, Snowball, how do you do it?" said the waiter, dropping off our drinks.

Tom paid him, and Snowball shrugged. "You never know if you don't try."

"I get off in an hour, if you feel like making it four," said the waiter, shooting us a wink.

"He's just angling for tips," said Snowball with a pout.

I licked the delicate shell of his ear, fascinated by the tiny tracery of veins just visible under the thin skin there. "We've already got what we want right here," I assured him.

He melted just a little, turning his head and tilting it up, mouth just begging for a kiss.

I obliged him, trying to be careful with my fangs, new to them as I was. There was no way they were going back in with him practically begging me to taste him right then and there, so I worked around it and hoped I didn't sound like too much of a wannabe.

That would be just too ironic.

"Finish your drink and we'll head to the Madrid," said Tom. That was the cheap hotel near here, which I suppose made sense if all you wanted to do was eat and run.

Snowball looked a little pouty. "If we all chipped in, we could do the Palace," he said, making puppy eyes that probably got him into a lot more places, and people, than he'd admit.

I sipped my drink and shrugged, since it was Tom's treat tonight. "Planning to order room service?" teased Tom, stealing a kiss from Snowball that curled the boy's toes.

Snowball shook his head. "I live in the East Bay," he admitted shyly. "I can book the room on my phone, look," he said, whipping out a shiny new iPhone and showing that he probably could afford his third after all. "Here, see? I can get a last-minute room for only $119 'cos it's so late."

Tom laughed. "Fine, fine," he said, taking a sip of his own drink. "But you get to tip the maids."

"Awesome!" he said excitedly, booking the room in his own name. Clarence Shabotsky, no wonder the kid went by Snowball.

"Put it on your card, and we'll give you cash," said Tom, slipping his wallet out of his impossibly tight pants. "Here, this is $120, that way if you get the urge for late-night snacks you can still afford it," he said with a wink.

Snowball blushed but took the cash, and I glanced around, pleased that no one seemed to notice the exchange. Tom was actually more subtle than I'm making it sound, slipping the money to him under the table so it didn't look like we were buying anything from Snowball, whatever it was he might be selling.

"Let's go," he said, bouncing between us with an excitement that was a little much for anyone over the age of five.

And yet, I was still planning to feed on him, and probably fuck him while I was at it, so I guess I've got a little more dirty old man in me than I like to admit.

I downed some more of my drink, but I was prepared to abandon it completely as soon as Tom gave the signal. He took a long, slow sip that promised more sucking in the very near future, then pushed his glass away. "All right, you two, I can tell you're both too wired up to let me enjoy the rest of my Tom Collins."

"I'll get you another one later," I promised, and he laughed.

Snowball's enthusiasm got us out of the club and halfway to the hotel before I remembered Tom's car. "Are we parked in a safe spot?" I asked Tom quietly as we walked.

"Yeah, it'll be fine for as long as this will take," he said, eyeing Snowball's ass with proprietary interest. "D'you think he bottoms?"

"I think he does whatever feels good," I said, familiar enough with the type since I was one, though not quite as easy or excitable as little Snowball.

Well, not anymore, anyway.

"You should bite him early so you're not distracted by the hunger," he said, hopefully quietly enough that our intended snack wouldn't hear.

"All right," I said, because I totally agreed. Right now I was a mass of warring impulses, and all of them involved indignities visited on Snowball's willing body. Feeding right off would simplify matters greatly, and allow me to give a performance worthy of my very first hunt.

It took a little finagling to get us checked in dressed the way we were, but Snowball did a passable impression of someone's rich kid stuck in the city after BART stopped running, and eventually they had his credit card number and we had keys to an out-of-the way room on the eleventh floor.

Snowball clearly enjoyed the posh surroundings, and I have to admit his enthusiasm was pretty contagious. He kept pointing out little details like the brushed steel ice buckets and extra-wide King bed, and finally I shut him up by kissing him until his knees gave out.

We all kissed a little longer, passing Snowball back and forth like a sweet treat until he was melted and pliant, and practically vibrating with need. "I'm going to suck your cock," announced Tom, sliding down his body and opening his pants.

I slipped his shirt off and spooned around his back. "I'm going to bite you," I said, just as matter-of-factly, and I was amused to see it had almost the same effect as Tom's offer.

Consent achieved, I gave myself a few moments to savor him. He didn't smell anything like Tom, or anyone else I'd ever been with, though I figured out later that part of that was the whole new vampire thing. Still, I'll never forget the warm, cinnamon-and-copper scent of his skin, or the salt tang of it against my tongue with a tiny hint of the delicious treat waiting just beneath it. I set my fangs well, careful not to hit anything too major, and then bit down hard. Feeling them slide into his warm flesh was almost as erotic as sliding something else inside him would be, and the warm glide of his blood down my throat was incredible.

Snowball's blood was hot and thick as the very best hot chocolate you've ever had, sweet but also salty and metallic just like every memory of licking a blood drop off your skin. Only it was better, a thousand times better, because this was food, this was life, and I could feel a small fragment of his life slipping into me with each swallow until I was full up with it. I felt like I was glowing as I pulled back, licking at the tiny wounds until they closed up a little, enough that they were disguised by the teeth marks around them and the hickey-like bruise I'd raised.

"Wow," said Snowball, turning his head to claim a copper-bright kiss. It was clear he'd come while I was feeding, and Tom looked smug and amused at once.

"That's just the beginning," said Tom, licking a stray drop of come from his mouth, then coming up to join us for a messy three-way kiss.

Snowball laughed weakly and said, "You two are going to be the death of me."

I slipped my hand down into his open pants and ever so gently began to coax his erection back to life. "At least you'll die happy."

---

Snowball was pretty resigned when we left instead of staying the night, but he laughed when I gave him one of my cards. "Your name really is Gabriel?" he said.

"Little did you know," I replied, stealing a last kiss. "Call me next time you're going to be in town."

"Don't worry," he said enthusiastically, tucking the card away in his wallet, "I will."

Tom led me outside and into the elevator before saying, "Are you sure you wanted to give him your real name?"

I shrugged. "You gave me yours, didn't you?"

He chuckled, then took a kiss, licking his lips afterward as if for a last, vicarious taste of Snowball. "You and he both do share a certain charm, I suppose."

"I'll call you if he asks for a repeat performance," I said, feeling pretty good about the whole vampire thing right then.

It's those little moments of optimism that make the reality checks so painful.

We'd showered after the sex, so my hair was more or less doing its usual thing, and Tom no longer had black lipstick smeared in interesting places. Once we got to the car, he had me switch out of the jacket and fluffy shirt to a more normal button-down and drive us to another club while he changed in the back seat, slithering out of the vinyl and into something more tame, black jeans and a silk shirt the color of his eyes.

This club had valet parking that didn't seem to be optional, but Tom got out and slipped something to the attendant and all I had to do was get out of the way. Unlike the last club, this one had a line and a velvet rope, but Tom led me blithely past the lot of them to the bouncer.

"Are they in?" he asked, glancing nervously inside.

That should've been my cue that this wasn't another pick-up.

"They're in," said the bouncer. He gave me a little sniff and then shook his head. "You're gonna be in deep shit."

Tom sighed. "Tell me something I don't know."

There was some feeble protest from the line when he let us in, but I wasn't worried about it, because I was too busy feeling really underdressed. This club was everything the last club wished it could be when it grew up, full of gorgeous people in exotic clothing dancing to the very latest music. I had never in my life been anywhere this hip, and I tried not to gape like a country cousin as Tom led me past the beautiful people and back to the VIP lounge.

"Oh, you've been a naughty boy," purred the first woman we passed. I sniffed, mostly out of curiosity, and suddenly I knew -- she was a vampire, like us.

Tom swallowed. "It was an accident."

"A freak accident," I said.

Whatever was happening here, I knew that having it go well for Tom was in my best interests.

"Do tell," said the man over in one corner, looking surprisingly unfashionable, all things considered. I mean, his socks didn't even match.

"I lost track of the moon phases and fed too soon," said Tom, leading me over to where he was sort of holding court. Everyone else in the lounge gathered around us, and it was incredibly creepy.

"Then I electrocuted myself installing speakers," I said sheepishly.

A slow blink ran through the room, and finally one guy said, "Seriously?"

I nodded, feeling like a total idiot, which apparently showed on my face because the main guy threw his head back and laughed.

"All right," said the geek king of the vampires. "Well, we're stuck with you now, and at least you're entertaining. I'm Percival." He leaned forward and held out his hand.

I shook it, and felt relieved that there hadn't been some sort of macabre gothic initiation ritual. "Gabriel, Gabriel Sorenson."

"Gabriel," he said thoughtfully. "Well, Gabriel, we'll get all your information from Tom here. I take it you've fed tonight?"

I nodded, confused at being dismissed. "Uh, yeah, Tom took me out before we came here."

"We left our prey happy and alive," said Tom evenly which got some nods that made me wonder how often that wasn't the case with new vampires.

Percival nodded, standing up and stalking around Tom in a way that made his geek act seem just that, an act. Whatever else he was, he was a predator that had been at the top of the food chain for a long, long time.

Tom pressed his house key into my hand along with one of his cards. "You've got cab fare?" he asked, stepping forward into a little pool of light I hadn't even noticed before.

I nodded dumbly, watching as the rest of the pack leaned in, practically licking their chops.

"Someone will be in touch," said Percival, not even bothering to look at me.

I knew a dismissal when I heard one, so I left. I didn't want to know what they were going to do to him for what he'd done to me.

I didn't want to find out if I'd enjoy it.

---

Meeting the other vampires was both scary and anticlimactic, a strange combination. The bouncer had a cab waiting for me and Tom had scribbled his alarm codes on the card, so at least I had somewhere safe to go for the day.

I mostly spent it worrying I'd never see him again.

Well, the parts of it where I was alive, anyway. I missed that anchoring hand like you wouldn't believe, slipping away into nothingness as dawn stole away my life. The bed that had seemed just right for the two of us was big and cold with just me, and that sense of anxious loneliness was still with me when I awoke.

I didn't want to snoop, so I distracted myself with the longest shower in the history of humankind. His hot water never seemed to run out, which I later found out was because of the crazy expensive system he had that heated it as you needed it, so I was still in the shower an hour after sunset when he got home.

"Oh, good," was all he said, shedding his clothes and slipping under the hot water with me.

I folded him into my arms anyway and he was cold, colder than I could ever remember him being, and I swear he was thinner. Even his eyes looked bruised, not like he'd been hit, but like you get when you've been sick for weeks and it feels like you'll never be well again. "Will you be all right?" I asked, worried all over again.

"I will be," he said, "in a few days."

Given the speed with which he'd healed my bites, that told me a lot about what he'd been through. "I'm sorry," I said, kissing his wet hair.

"I am, too," he said, and he sounded so sad when he did.

We stood there like that for a long time, long enough for him to get as warm as me. He finally stepped away, looked up and said, "I can't keep you here."

"Ruling from on high or personal preference?" I asked, trying to keep it light.

"I'm really not very good with long-term relationships," he said with a shrug. "Don't worry, I'll still teach you everything. And they're making me pay to set up your apartment, so you won't have to worry about that."

My bank account was relieved, but the rest of me was still reeling from the strange sort of break up. I mean, we hadn't really ever been together, but it still felt like being dumped. It wasn't me, it was him, and yet.

And yet.

"I guess if you're planning to be a vampire, then you set all that stuff up before," I said, swallowing the hurt.

He reached for the soap, nodding. "There's a lot of things that are normally done to prepare for it. Even back in my day."

"Snowball will be disappointed," I said. That wasn't what I had meant to say, but that's what came out of my mouth. I hate it when that happens.

Tom flinched, then shrugged. "He liked you better anyway."

I was already clean, so I let discretion be the better part of not rubbing salt in whatever wound they'd opened in him last night. Not to mention adding to the pain of losing someone I hadn't ever properly had to begin with. I got out and dried off, then went to find myself some clothes.

"No more than twice a month from any specific human," he said when he emerged from the shower.

I couldn't help but laugh, wry and cynical. "That's one rule I'm not likely to forget anytime soon."

"There's also the sharing body fluids thing. I mean, most guys won't find it too weird if you want to use a condom for some things, but sometimes it gets away from you, and come is almost as potent as blood," he said, slipping into what I thought of as his normal attire while he talked. Though, really, who knew what was normal for him, or if this was a different act he was putting on, just like the vamp-kitten tease he'd been for Snowball.

I tried not to think about it.

These days, I try not to think about a lot of things.

We met some very specialized contractors that night, and Tom agreed to pay their rush fee without batting an eye. I wasn't masochistic enough to invite myself for a longer stay at his place to save him the money, so I just agreed to everything and signed where they told me, and got a few more days' worth of clothes while I was there. Then I hid out in Tom's apartment and mooched off of Tom's wireless while the contractors were at work, catching up on every single piece of copy writing work in my queue. I might be dead, but I wasn't going to be broke on top of it.

We hunted two more times, but it was separate boys, separate rooms, separate tabs. It was still good, though not as satisfying as that first time. I tried not to think about whether that was because it was the first, because Snowball was just that good in bed, or because it was with Tom.

It took them less than a week to light proof my entire apartment. I didn't realize until I was in the bedroom how much I relied on that tiny bit of light that leaked in around the curtains, sun in the day and streetlights at night that lit my way. I made a note to buy some night lights, cleaned out my fridge, and did laundry, avoiding the big, empty bed without conscious thought.

Then the alarm went off to tell me it was almost sunrise, and I couldn't avoid it any longer.

The first day back in my own bed was both better and worse than sleeping next to a Tom that no longer held my hand. When I woke up, I could feel it settling into my chest. I was a vampire on my own, and it was time to make the best of it.

Chapter 2

It wasn't until the second night on my own as a newly-minted vampire that I remembered to check my mail. It had been piling up for a week, and I could tell the postman was getting annoyed because things got more crumpled the more recently they had been delivered. I managed to get it all out intact, mostly, and as I carried it inside, I realized. I'd never be able to make a quick trip to the post office again. Or the bank, for that matter. There were a number of checks in the pile, which had me thanking the gods of technology that I'd been turned in the era of ATMs.

It made me want to ask Tom what it had been like in his day, trying to run a life after dark, but I pushed that thought away. He'd made it clear he wanted nothing more to do with me now that my apartment was finished, and I wasn't the type to go crawling back.

There were more fish in the sea, and I had a whole city full of men to choose from and really good motivation to go back to my wandering ways.

I have to admit, my everyday life was already suited to becoming one of the undead. I worked strange hours, I didn't have many friends, and I avoided commitment like a disease. I guess if Tom was going to accidentally turn someone into his vampire boy toy and then ditch them like a dead battery, he could've made a worse choice.

Once the regular mail was sorted and dealt with, I resisted the siren call of Chelsea's and a cold beer. Instead, I sat my ass down in front of the computer and tried to pick back up on the project I'd been struggling with for the past couple of days. It was an upbeat, hip and clever marketing piece that would normally be right up my alley, except I kept tripping over the corpse someone had left lying on the pavement. And yeah, I know, metaphors like that are not the reason people pay me to write for them.

I was feeling a little dull that night, like the shiny had worn off my new state of being and reality was settling in, but I needed this paycheck, so it was time.

How do I write when I'm feeling un-clever? Well, my best trick is to write anyway, and make sure it's not anything due tomorrow. I pound on the keyboard like a caveman, putting out whatever comes to mind, and then I go back and edit it later. In editing I can tighten up the rambling, polish the jokes until they're actually funny, and make sure there's a point in there somewhere -- not to mention removing the macabre metaphors and unforgivable pop culture references. In a first draft, all I have to do is stay mostly on topic and try not to fall asleep at the keyboard.

The other trick is to read over old copy when I'm feeling the zombie brain syndrome, and then try to write original stuff once the caffeine has kicked in.

Which made me wonder both if zombies exist, and if caffeine still had any effect on me. If it didn't, I was going to be one sad vampire.

I made myself a cup of coffee anyway, as much for the comforting familiarity of the routine as anything else. I spent a lot of my mental energy in those first few weeks on not freaking out, and those little routines played a big part in helping me keep my shit together. Doing the laundry. Writing checks to pay the bills that didn't get paid electronically. Checking my email obsessively like every productivity blog ever written tells you not to. Finding porn on the internet and not bothering to jack off.

After a while, I set aside the marketing project and pulled up my supposedly clever guest post for some big freelance writer's blog.

I have to admit, I sent up a silent prayer of thanks when the phone rang, even though I didn't recognize the number. "Gabriel Sorenson, freelance writer. Brother, can you spare a line?" I said. Like I said, it really wasn't my day for clever.

The person on the other end laughed anyway, and I loved them just a little bit for it. "I can see I've reached the right number, anyway," said a woman's voice, smooth and with just a trace of exoticness that I couldn't quite place.

"And how may I be of service to you today?" I asked in my best professional flirting manner. She didn't need to know I was gay, after all.

"I'm just checking up on our newest community member," she said, tone rich with humor. "Tom tells me you've moved out already."

I sighed. "I don't think he was ready for our three nights of bliss to turn into the vampire version of fatherhood."

A moment of dead air, and then she said, "I expect not."

It rang false, but that could've been the connection. "He promised to tell me if there was anything really important, but so far not killing, turning or telling anyone seems easy enough." Of course, that was only until I ran out of stamps, or needed to mail a package. I took a second to add a postage meter to my growing list of necessary items for the sunlight impaired.

"Those are the basics," she said, and this time I could hear the note of cynicism getting past the cheer. "Usually we have more time to help arrange a young vampire's life to suit the change, you know."

"I know," I said. "If I said I was really, really sorry I bought those speakers, would you believe me?" I still hadn't looked at the carefully rearranged mess in the living room. Who knows, maybe Tom had gotten them fixed for me as a bonus.

At least she laughed again.

"My name is Marina, and you can call me if you need something done during the day. We have people willing to do us favors," she said, sounding all mysterious now.

"Like Renfield?" I quipped.

"More like Jeeves," she replied.

"Too bad surprise vampirism didn't come with a winning lottery ticket, then, or I could hire my own minions." I was doodling now, whorls and spikes that made awkward, angry mouths on the paper.

"If you'd had a chance to develop a more robust portfolio before your unfortunate demise, I might be able to help you with that," said Marina, sounding more mature. "I'm very good with investments."

"Must be a vampire thing," I said, remembering Tom's jokes about it. "I do have some savings, but nothing on that sort of scale."

I could almost hear her ears perk. I'd been saving up to try for a mortgage somewhere, but with my uneven income in this city, that was a lot of saving to be done. "Really?" she practically purred. "If you're willing to trust me, I could turn even a modest nest egg into something viable in a few years."

I hated for a moment that I couldn't ask Tom if I should trust her, because Tom was too busy hiding from the commitment I wasn't even asking him to make. "But we've only just met," I teased, not a real answer, but real enough for now.

"You'll understand eventually," she said. "You won't be able to keep up the life of a starving writer forever."

"I don't starve, and now I don't even need to eat," I retorted, a little too defensively. It hadn't been too long ago that I'd had my last period of famine, though I was ramping up toward feast right then. At least, if my schedule didn't mess it all up.

"Speaking of which," she said, "how have your hunts been going?"

That's it, I thought, that's what you really wanted to know. But why? "Fine, so far, though I haven't been out without Tom for backup yet. That'll be tomorrow night."

"If you ever need to go more than three days, call me," she said. "We'll arrange to send someone over."

"So, about that," I said, getting the impression this someone would be someone used to feeding vampires. "If three different vampires feed off of someone, does it still count?"

She laughed. "It's not like a speeding ticket, there's no hoping the cop doesn't show to your court date," she said. "Three exposures, plus ingesting enough of a vampire's fluids, plus death."

"Equals a newbie vampire," I said. "Got it." A heartbeat, then, "How can I tell?"

"If another vampire's been with your prey, you'll smell it," she said, sounding annoyed. "Tom should have told you this."

"He's been a little distracted since you guys tortured him," I said sharply. I didn't know why I was defending him, except that it was all true. Tom had been cheerful, attentive, even chatty before his visit with the other vampires.

There was a moment of offended silence. "Save my number," was all she said.

The phone beeped and went dead. Apparently, the conversation was over.

I saved her number.

---

The next night, I managed to get into the writing groove for an hour or two before it was late enough to go out on the prowl. Then I dressed in my pinkest, gayest shirt and tightest jeans, and sashayed out to the Castro. There would be a bar there where a guy like me could find a prize without having to visit the goth club again, which apparently was only actually a goth club on Tuesdays and Thursdays anyway.

I hit the ATM on the way out and deposited all those juicy checks, which may not have been much individually but as a pile amounted to a decent week's pay. Unfortunately, they'd take a million years to clear, and I'd have to ration my cash from now on with that in mind.

I got out $40 to fund my hunting party, and tried not to wince at the available balance left on the receipt. Eating out had always been an expense, but now it was my only real option.

The bar was hopping tonight, which was good because I was getting hungry. A glass of wine and I was posed and poised at one end of the bar, practically screaming out the availability of my ass. I sat there for a little while, surveying the crowd, and tried the come-hither eyes on a guy or two.

And sat, and sat, and suddenly I laughed to myself -- here I was in the yuppiest gay bar in the district, and I'd forgotten the first rule of gay. Be what they're not.

I finished the wine and got some imported dark beer, and shifted my stance just a little, adjusted a few things here or there.

I swear, every boy in the place got a little shiver on their radar.

Note to self, when swimming in a sea of bottoms, remember that the fish that gets his meal is the one who's willing to top.

It was strangely nerve-wracking to have almost failed my cruise, and the relief I felt when the first willing boy sidled up into my space nearly spoiled the whole act. I'd never needed to get laid before. I mean, I'd wanted it so bad I could nearly taste the latex, but not needed like I need food or air or... Well, not air anymore, I guess.

I didn't bother to be choosy, and to tell you the truth I was so hungry by the time the little fishy took the bait, I didn't care what he looked like as long as he was willing. He was shorter than me, about Tom's height, but round and brown and ordinary as an apple. He smiled and talked about his plants a lot, and blushed adorably when I invited myself over to his place.

Predictably enough, he lived within walking distance, on a little side street just off the main drag. He owned a condo in a building full of successful, fashionable young men and their tiny dogs.

I was really, really glad he didn't actually own a tiny dog.

Instead his place was festooned with greenery, and it made me smile and miss sunshine a whole damn lot more than I'd expected to. "It's great in here," I told him, gently caressing a cool green leaf. "I love all the plants, it's just so alive."

He loved to hear that, and loved even more the things I did between his legs, and he didn't even get mad about the hickeys and bite marks festooning them when we were done. "You're not going to stay," he said sadly, and for just a minute I hated myself for seeing him as dinner.

"I can't," I said, with honest regret. I'd have given a lot to be able to stay and make love to him among his plants with the sun shining down on all of us, but that option was gone now. "But I'll call, okay?"

"You will?" he said, and his surprise told me that the one-night lifestyle wasn't as much a choice for him.

"Yeah," I said, kissing him again just because I could. "I'll call, and even though I can't get away very much, I'd love to keep seeing you."

He blushed, then sighed and nodded. "You're not... married or anything, are you?"

It would've been so easy to take that lie, that out, but I just couldn't do it. "Not married, or cheating on anyone, just not really in a place where I could give you what you deserve."

Something of my regret must've shone through, because he smiled and kissed me again. "I'd like you to call anyway."

I promised again and left, and it was weird how having the choice taken away from me made it harder instead of easier. A month ago, I'd have felt a little bad for not being his Prince Charming, but I wouldn't have had this lonely regret that I couldn't even try.

---

I spent the rest of that night writing a piece about solar energy and green living, and I put in a special emphasis on house plants, just for him. I wondered if this was how a lot of them did it, got a stable of half a dozen of their preferred type and just went from one to the next, no more than twice a month.

I chuckled to myself, shaking my head. Fashionable club aside, most of the vampires hadn't seemed all that much like the ones I saw in the bad movies, neither sleeping buried in grave dirt nor keeping a herd of nubile victims to be drained on a whim.

I mean, look at me. Who knew vampires still had to worry about paying the electric bill?

Speaking of worries, I was starting to feel another famine coming on. I'd built a reputation for doing quirky pieces about Bay Area locales, anything from restaurants to gyms, scenic beaches to local events.

Local events, it turns out, mostly happen during the day.

I had to turn down three jobs because I couldn't do the research in person, and another one because you can't do a restaurant review when you can't eat the food. Maybe Neville -- that was the plant guy, Neville -- would let me take him out and watch him eat, feed him bites of luscious chocolate dessert or tender, rare-cooked beef.

In a fit of pique, I called Marina.

"Do all vampires go through this, this thing where all they can think about is the stuff they used to be able to do and can't anymore?" I asked when she picked up.

She didn't sound cheerful. "Of course they do."

"Tell me how it is you'd be able to send me someone who was used to being bitten, when they can't get bitten more than twice a month," I said, trying to figure a way around it. Neville and Snowball would get along, I thought, if only in bed.

I couldn't even remember the name of the guys I'd sucked and then sucked in a different way the last two times I'd gone out with Tom.

She sighed. "I'd send a whore, you idiot. They don't much care if you bite a little, as long as you pay."

"Oh," was all I could think to say.

Her voice softened a little when she added, "Some of us do maintain relationships, either with one of them, or one of us. If you've really found a puppy you want to take home and keep, arrangements can be made."

I thought of Neville and his house that would fill with sunlight, and shook my head. "No, I... No. I just wanted to know."

"You'll get over it," she said, moving toward some sort of crowd noise. Probably out hunting for her own late-night snack.

"Thanks," I said, and tried not to sound as ungrateful as I felt.

"For what?"

"For answering." This time, it was me who hung up. Petty, I know, but I needed a small victory right about then.

---

The checks cleared just fine, but the next time I tried to hit the ATM to get a little hunting cash, it ate my card.

Typical, right?

"I can't make it into the office," I said for the hundredth time. I was standing outside Chelsea's, where at least I knew I could get a beer on the promise of tomorrow. "I need you to mail it to me."

"I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to go into the branch to retrieve your card and reset your PIN number."

My teeth ground. "That's a tautology," I said, annoyed.

"I'm sorry?" Clearly, no one had ever given her a dictionary for her birthday.

"Never mind. Look, how can I get my ATM card back if I can't make it to the branch before closing? I have to be able to continue banking."

"You will have to go into the branch at which you lost the card if you don't want us to send you a new one."

I blinked. Progress! "Yes, please, send me a new one."

"I thought you didn't want a new one?" she said, confused.

"I want whatever will get me access to cash without going into a branch," I said. "If a new card can do that, go with it. Cancel the old one, send a new one, keep the same PIN."

"All right, sir. If you'll just verify your address?" She was on firmer ground now, and though it was tedious, she assured me the new card would arrive in seven to ten business days.

Now if only I could last that long.

I went inside. "Heya, Marty," I said, slinking around to the side of the bar and putting on my best poor starving puppy look.

"How long?" he asked dryly.

I grinned. "Just until my new ATM card arrives, and I promise not to abuse it."

He laughed. "If I didn't know you were good for it, Sorenson..."

"But you do, and I am," I said, leaning in and planting a fat, loud kiss on his lips. "You're a doll."

"Ew," he said, sticking out his tongue. Marty liked me, but not that way -- he was into bears, and I had none of the qualities he enjoyed in a man. Except that I always paid my bills.

"White Russian?" I asked hopefully, glancing around the bar.

"You want some cheese fries?" He pulled up a glass and reached for the Kahlua.

I shook my head regretfully. "Nah, I ate before the ATM did," I said wryly.

"Lush," he said with a laugh. I suppose it did make me look bad, running a tab just for drinks.

I grinned. "You wouldn't have me any other way," I said, accepting the White Russian with a nod that indicated the proper tip would be calculated in when time came to pony up the tab.

He shook his head and laughed. "You know the rules," he said, and I did. I moved away, leaving that corner spot open for those that wanted a moment of Marty's time and went looking for the drink I really wanted.

It might be risky, but Chelsea's was my most familiar hunting ground, and this time I had good motivation to make a catch. I wondered for a moment if my physical hunger would give me that stink of desperation that certain guys can sniff out a mile away, but it didn't seem to be the case tonight. I slipped myself into a group of guys chatting down near the other end of the bar, and by the time my drink was done, I'd also separated one from the pack and was working on closing the deal.

"Not looking to be the next Great American Novelist?" he was saying, and it pained me that he thought it had any chance of being clever.

I shrugged and played along because he smelled delicious on several levels. "Fiction is different," I said, leaning in. "I prefer to write about life."

It was a line, but he took it, and I reeled him in.

We had to drive to get to his place, and by that point I was having a hard time holding in my fangs, so I think my clever banter got just a little less witty. Luckily for me, he seemed like he was past the point of no return for the evening, and we made it inside. It wasn't spectacular, but he tasted just as good as he smelled, and he certainly seemed to enjoy the biting while it was going on.

I still left before he could see the marks.

---

I came to be very grateful that I didn't need to buy food, because the next night my printer cartridge ran out of ink. I'd managed to scrounge up about $30 from pockets and what was left in my wallet, and that was barely enough to pay for the replacement so I could print off a story for someone who preferred hard copy submissions.

Yeah, I can't explain it, either, I mean, I still had to email them the file after acceptance. But if you want the work, sometimes you have to accept the eccentricities of the request.

At least I had plenty of stamps.

I sighed at the thought of trying to pick up a guy with nothing but loose change in my pockets, then shoved the thought out of my mind. I had work to do if I wanted to have any checks to deposit once the ATM card came.

Instead, I made myself go out and find an Office Depot that was open after dark, which isn't as easy as it sounds. I slipped in at five minutes before closing and got a glare from the guy already counting out his till.

"Sorry," I said sheepishly, trying to be charming. "Ink emergency."

He rolled his eyes and closed the drawer with a clang. "What kind?"

I gave him the slip of paper with all the info from the old cartridge, and he went through the display with the slowness of teenage apathy. I pulled out my money and hoped it would be enough.

"Sorry," he said, with a slightly vindictive tone, "we're out of that one."

I looked around him, and spotted the forlorn empty hook in the spot where it would go. "Crap," I said, not wanting to swear in front of someone else's kid. Well, much.

"Sorry, man. I'd call around, but all the other stores are closed now," he said, moving to his till and looking annoyingly happy that he didn't have to redo his count to include my money.

"I'm painfully aware," I said, then made my retreat. Tomorrow was another day, and if I went out as soon as I awoke I'd have no problem finding a store that actually kept their stock current.

I hoped, anyway.

---

The next day held a little more triumph for me. Not only did I get my ink cartridge, but I found my checkbook and got an address where I could mail in deposits as long as I included a deposit slip. Not the most ideal arrangement, but at least that would mean I could pay a few bills.

I had a few checks and a rejection letter in my mailbox when I got home, which wasn't a bad ratio at all. I don't do a lot of spec work, but I'd sent in some samples to a magazine in the hopes of getting some kind of column or regular work.

Sadly, like everyone else, they were downsizing, not adding staff.

I'd lost a couple of good clients that way last year, and between my changing focus in life and my inconvenient schedule, I expected to lose more.

That in mind, I spent the rest of the evening on my single most hated task: marketing. I could catch up on work tomorrow night before I hit the bar, and maybe even after if I found a quickie, so I set myself down and got my marketing up to date. I even updated my website, which I hate a lot but don't have the cash -- ha! -- to get fixed right now.

I tried not to wonder how things would be if I'd been turned on purpose, and instead reminded myself that things could be so much worse.

---

When I went to Chelsea's, things got worse. I struck out.

I mean, it happens, it's not like it's a big deal or anything, except all of a sudden, it was. I was hungry, and tired, and Marty was looking like he didn't want to give me a fourth drink on my tab in one night, so I took myself home and stared at my phone, and contemplated the conversation I was about to have with Marina.

When the phone rang, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

"Um, hello?" I said.

"Is this Jer- I mean Gabriel?" said a tentative and blessedly familiar voice.

"Snowball?" I said.

I could practically hear his grin over the phone. "Yeah, it's me. You said to call..."

"I'm glad you did," I said, and I meant it. "You coming into the city tonight?"

"Tomorrow, actually," he said, sounding almost sheepish. "I thought maybe we could hook up, you know, instead of hitting the club."

I chuckled. "Don't feel like playing the snowball's odds?" I teased. "Tomorrow's great, though I think Tom's got plans. Are you up for a bit of one on one?"

"Absolutely," he said, with an enthusiasm that was totally unfeigned. That's what I liked about Snowball, he went with the flow and loved every minute of it.

Then a little wrinkle hit me, and I smacked myself in the forehead. "I lost my ATM card."

"Uh, so?" said Snowball, clearly confused.

"I'm basically out of cash until the replacement comes, so we won't be able to do much of, well, anything," I explained with a sigh.

"You wanted to go out with me?" said Snowball, sounding surprised. "We could just stay in, or, wait, if you trust me, I can take you out. I love doing the city on the cheap, and I can even treat."

I got a warm little glow from the idea, which quashed the guilt that had risen up when he thought I only wanted him for the sex. I mean, I did want him for the sex, but Snowball intrigued me. "I'd like that, but it'll have to be after dinner, I have a meeting."

"That's fine, I can eat here and come get you at your place?" he offered, voice uncertain.

"That sounds great. I should warn you, my place doesn't exactly scream 'child of the night' or anything," I said, practically drowning in the irony.

"D'you still have those fangs?" he asked.

"Absolutely." I could feel them wanting to emerge just from the thought of him.

"Then I don't care if your bedroom is pretty princess pink," he said.

I laughed. "Nothing like that." Except, crap. "I won't be able to keep you all night, though, I have an early morning work thing."

"It's cool," he said, though I could tell he was a little disappointed.

"I can show you where to park if you drive, though," I said. Technically it was my neighbor's spot, but I'd heard she was gone on one of her spiritual journeys and wouldn't be back for a few more weeks. I might be undead, but that was no reason to get behind on the building grapevine.

"Oh! Then that's totally fine, yeah, I'll drive out... What time?"

I checked the nifty electronic almanac that had been included with the rest of the vampire-proofing. "Sometime after eight?" I said. That would give me time to get myself in order and make sure the apartment was human-ready. "If you give me your email, I'll send you directions."

We exchanged info, and I hung up, grinning. Then I sighed and dialed Marina to make sure I wasn't going to be too hungry for one skinny kid to feed.

"Just one day extra?" she said, "You're sure?"

"This is day three, and I wasn't hungry yesterday," I assured her. "I won't hurt him?"

"You'll take more, but if you can spread it out over a few bites, it won't be so bad. I'll send over some food just in case," she said.

"Food?" I said, making a moue of distaste that she couldn't see.

Apparently she could hear it, though. "Not for you, for the boy. You shouldn't take more than half a pint or so, but he'll need nourishing before you send him home."

"Oh, right," I said. I'd forgotten my impulsive cupboard cleaning; there wasn't a single bite of solid food in the house. "Thanks."

"Cheaper than a hooker," she said, and hung up.

I laughed, and googled up directions for Snowball, and tried not to overanalyze why I was looking forward to seeing him so much.

---

I used my last two dollars to tip the grocery delivery boy, and then I made an effort to make it look like I was just one of those bachelors who didn't keep much food around, instead of a vampire who only got food in if his prey would need it to keep up his blood supply.

Yeah, my life was getting pretty weird.

The funny thing was, by the time Snowball actually came knocking, I had gotten into the zone on a project and totally forgotten he was coming. Which was, I suppose, good for both my nerves and my income.

"Hey," I said, feeling shy as I let him into the room. I'd thought about putting on the leather pants or something, but I hadn't made a decision before work ate my brain, so jeans and a t-shirt it was.

He was wearing pretty much the same thing, except his shirt said, "Co-ed Naked Mechanics. We'll check your fluids and service your parts." Mine was just a nice shade of blue.

"Hey," he said, looking just as insecure as I felt. "So, this is your place?"

"Yeah." I led him into the living room, then remembered about the stereo equipment. "I, uh, had a little accident while I was trying to hook up the speakers, so I'm not sure if anything works," I said, as sheepishly as ever. I don't think I was ever going to get over being embarrassed about that.

He grinned. "Maybe later I can take a look, I'm good with that sort of thing," he said.

"Later," I replied, grinning back. "So, I'm all yours now, what should we do?"

He laughed at the leer I couldn't quite keep out of my voice. "We can do that, but I thought you wanted to experience the wonder that is a date with Snowball?" he said, sounding almost shy.

"Like I said, tugging him close for a kiss, then snagging a jacket and pulling out my keys, "I'm all yours."

His face lit up at that, and even if it was boring I knew I'd enjoy whatever it was he had planned for us. "Okay, well, the first rule of cheap dating is, no driving," he said, stealing my keys. "I've got MUNI passes for two, I borrowed a friend's."

"I'm game," I said. "Just let me arm the alarm." I punched in the quick code that would arm the system, then shooed him out and locked up. "Our chariot awaits, I think the J line comes up Church, that's just a few blocks over."

"I know, I googled you," he said with a grin. He produced the tickets with a magician's pass and handed me one, then sauntered off for a few steps before turning back to say, "Coming?"

It was my turn to look smug. "Church Street's this way," I said, pointing down the street.

He laughed. "That's what I get for trying to be smooth," he said, coming back and tucking himself under my arm.

I rewarded him with a kiss for his trouble. "It's okay, I still lisp with the fangs in."

He laughed, and we walked arm in arm down the street.

We ended up walking down to Laidley and then taking these old wooden stairs up to Beacon. I'd never known this little romantic spot was tucked up in my own neighborhood, and Snowball seemed pretty smug about having been able to surprise me. The stairs were steep, but the greenery surrounding us made it feel like we were alone in a strange world together, and it was just what I needed. We stopped a couple of times to kiss like teenagers, leaning against the worn wooden railings and not caring about anything but each other.

When we emerged up on Beacon, it was like stepping back into the world, like no time at all had passed. I wasn't even out of breath or tired from the long climb, so chalk one up on the good side of vampirism.

"It's a bit of a walk from here to get a bus," said Snowball sheepishly, but I could tell he didn't mind any more than I did.

"Good thing we're all warmed up from the stairs," I teased, and he laughed like he was supposed to. We admired the buildings together as we wended our way up Beacon street and caught a bus up at the edge of Billy Goat Hill Park. It was really only about a block, but I teased him, anyway.

After that climb, I thought I had the feel of our evening, but I was totally wrong. We changed buses and ended up in yet another odd little neighborhood, this time at a coffee shop. "Do you know the band playing?" I asked, as we paused to get used to the volume before heading up to the barista to order.

"Two for one on open mic nights, gentlemen," said the girl behind the bar, and Snowball got that smug look again. "What'll you have?"

I looked up at the sign and grinned, spotting one of my favorite drinks, and one I almost never got to have now that I wasn't eating, well, at all. "Vietnamese coffee, please," I said, letting my delight show on my face.

"Two of those?" she asked, poised.

"Please," said Snowball, turning to give me a warm look. "How'd you know?"

"I didn't." I grinned, then glanced around before brushing a kiss over his cheek. "We just like the same things, I guess."

Fortunately for me, the barista just looked charmed as she put together a tray with everything we'd need for the complicated brew. "Will that be all?" she asked as she got the cups set up with a generous portion of condensed milk in the bottom of each, then set the special coffee filters to dribbling slowly down into them. A small pot of hot water, some spoons and plates and napkins, and we were all good.

"Nope, that's it," he said, and paid a mere four dollars, tip included, for our treat. "Thanks."

It was the least I could do to carry the tray while he hunted us out a table. "They're not bad at all," I said, nodding toward the band that was just finishing up their song.

"There's usually a pretty good mix here, and they try to space things out, you know, one comedian, one chick with her acoustic guitar, one poet, one band," he said, fidgeting with pent-up energy.

I put a hand over his and squeezed. "I think this is a really great date," I said, and his face lit up like a candle.

We couldn't talk much, but we did manage a pretty good running commentary on the offerings. It turned out we had pretty similar tastes in more than just coffee, though Snowball tended to like the overwrought poets, where I preferred the soulful guitarists. The coffee was delicious, and I was actually sort of sad when they kicked us all out around ten.

"So," I said as we wandered into the night with the rest of the displaced audience, "what now?"

Snowball grinned and tugged me towards another bus terminal. "One more spot, and then we'll go home and, y'know, celebrate our renewed acquaintance," he said.

I guess my growing hunger was starting to show.

I'd managed mostly to forget about it while we were in the cafe, the press of people soothing rather than arousing, the coffee warm and familiar on my palate. Now that we'd spilled out into the cool night air, though, my thoughts had turned inevitably toward the other reason I'd wanted Snowball tonight.

"I trust you," I said with a smile, managing to force my hunger to wait with promises of future indulgence.

Snowball pulling me into a shadow for a long, sweet kiss helped, in its own way.

We hopped the bus and headed over to the Castro, where one of the bars had extended happy hour on Thursday nights, and I laughed when the bouncer carded us both. "I'm young at heart," I said with a wink, when he noted the difference in our ages.

They both laughed at that, and soon enough we both had drinks in hand. "I've never been in here," I said, looking around at the bar. It reminded me of Chelsea's in some ways, except there was a dance floor with a pretty good assortment of guys writhing on it, as well as a pool table and dart board.

"It's in a weird spot, that's why he does the Thursday thing," said Snowball happily. "Word of mouth gets him more people, who come back on the weekends for better cruising."

I laughed, but couldn't disagree. I was already mentally putting it on my list for a future visit.

Once our drinks were gone, I let Snowball coax me onto the dance floor for a couple of songs before I was more than primed and very, very ready to be home.

"I need to get you to bed," I whispered in his ear between songs, "or I'm going to try to have you right here."

Snowball moaned and pressed up against me for a long, hot kiss, then dragged me back out to the bus as fast as he could manage. "So," he said, once we were settled in the plastic seats at the back, "do I pass?"

I laughed and kissed him, getting a face from one of the other passengers, which I manfully ignored. "With flying rainbow colors," I assured him. "I had a lot of fun tonight."

He grinned wickedly. "Not as much fun as you're going to have."

I laughed, and we snuggled the rest of the way home.

"D'you want something to drink or anything?" I asked as I unlocked the door; I wasn't sure how I'd get food into him later, but I figured acting the good host was a good start.

"Um, sure. What've you got?"

That got us into the kitchen, and I made him a screwdriver with extra OJ, and took a calming shot of vodka for myself. My fangs were determined to come out, so I made a show of fumbling with my mouth for a minute and let it happen, kind of like the point where you stop fighting the inappropriate wood and just resign yourself to walking around with a stiffy in your shorts. "How'th that?" I asked, inwardly cursing the stupid lisp.

He gave a little moan and downed the rest of his drink, then slipped right into my arms for a kiss. "Really sexy," he said.

It felt really good to hold him, but it was the smell of his skin that was driving me crazy. I'd let myself get addicted to the cinnamon-bright scent of him, all warm and alive, and now that we were out of the miasma of humanity it was sharper than ever. "Come to bed?"

He kissed me again thoroughly and said, "I thought you'd never ask."

We laughed at our own awkwardness, and then kissed our way down the hall to the bedroom. I had clean sheets and everything neat, with condoms and lube set out for later. Never let it be said I made a man wait to get what he wanted.

We stopped in the doorway so he could look around, and he grinned. "I love the painting, but I see what you mean about the decor," he said.

My sheets were a warm chocolate brown today, and the comforter was still the same sepia as the darkest parts of the painting. I just knew he'd look good spread out against the dark colors, as pale as he was. "I'm not a very good goth," I admitted, hands working at his clothing now. "It'th justh the biting I like, really."

He giggled. "I love that the fangs are still new to you, too," he said, running a finger over one of them. "It's great work, you can't even tell they're fake."

"My dentitht maketh them for Halloween," I lied, covering it up with a very heated kiss.

I was a crappy liar, but fortunately Snowball was easily distracted.

We were naked soon enough and we curled together in the warm space between my sheets. "Can I?" I asked, feeling almost frenzied with wanting, cock hard and fangs sharp and his whole body a feast I needed that last tiny permission to partake of.

"Fuck, yeah," he moaned, arching up and baring his neck.

Sometimes, it's really good to be a vampire, and this was definitely one of those times. I was a lot better at it now than I had been that first time, practice and the need to minimize the drinking blood parts, and I like to think he got a lot more out of me this time around. I teased us both by nipping first, tasting his skin and testing the firm young flesh of his neck.

My hand wrapped around his cock for a slow, wicked stroke as I sank my fangs in and began to suck.

He moaned and writhed, clinging to me, and I took just a few swallows, enough to dull the edge of my hunger, before licking the wounds and pressing a thankful kiss over the marks. "You tathte tho good," I said, not even caring about the way I sounded.

Trust me, he didn't care either.

"Please, please, more," he begged instead, his need and mine meshing together in a way that enticed all of my senses.

"More," I promised. I moved down, nipping all the way, going for his inner thighs where he'd so enjoyed our mouths last time. There wasn't even really a mark left, let alone scarring, which made me wonder if that was us or him. Vampires, I mean. All those scary movie moments with the two suspicious puncture wounds, rendered pointless by clean healing.

He spread for me, so willing and trusting, and I was really glad in that moment that I wouldn't need more than he could give. I'd never be able to look myself in the mirror again -- and that's another vampire myth down the drain, by the way.

I still have to shave, too.

My cheeks were nice and smooth just then, and I rubbed them against the warmth of his skin, burying my nose in his scent, drawing out the experience for myself as much as him. More nipping and kissing and licking, and I even sucked one completely un-bite-related hickey up in that tender crease where his hip and leg met before I gave in to both of our hungers and bit down again.

This time, I took enough that I could feel my fangs sliding back in, so I could move up and suck on a few more tender things that wouldn't appreciate the sharp points.

And yeah, I swallowed that, too. Tom tells me it's not sustaining in the same way, but it won't do me any harm, either.

When he was done, he was all warm and sleepy and sweet. "God, that was so good," he said, stretching like a cat, all arching curves and limbs every which way. "You're gonna fuck me now, right?"

I had to laugh, but I assured him that yes, that was the plan. We kissed for a long time after that, as long as I could make my cock wait now that my blood-hunger was mostly assuaged. I knew I'd be peckish enough for one more good bite, though, and I saved that for when I was inside him.

He appreciated it quite vocally, I assure you, and I silently thanked Tom for including soundproofing in with the rest.

Snowball was a very satisfying young man to make love to, I have to admit. He didn't hold back anything, every whimper and shiver totally genuine, so I always knew what I was doing right. I was already mentally slotting him into my rotation, hoping that he'd be content with bimonthly nookie runs even if I didn't have a real relationship to offer him.

That idea of a harem of willing boys came tumbling back into my head, but I pushed it resolutely away. That wouldn't be good for any of them, and I'd make myself let them go when they drifted away and got real lives.

"I've gotta go if I'm gonna get enough sleep before work," he said regretfully, some time later.

I sighed and kissed him. "I know. I'm sorry you can't stay, it's just..."

He grinned. "You're a child of the night and no mortal may know your daytime resting place," he said exaggeratedly. "Hey, where'd you put the fangs, anyway?"

"In your neck, and your thigh, and along this curve of your shoulder," I said, biting and caressing those places teasingly.

It did wonders to distract him.

"Grab something to eat on your way out so you don't fall asleep at the wheel, all right?" I got out of bed and padded naked to the dresser, retrieving the day's pajama pants. Let him think it was bedtime for me, too, and he'd stay safe to have around a little longer.

He grinned. "Yes, sir," he said, slipping his own clothing back on piece by piece.

"I want you to be able to come back for a repeat performance," I said, going to snag my phone out of its dish on the dresser. I flipped through to my received calls list and pulled up the one from him. "Is this your number?"

"Yeah, that's my cell," he said, stealing a kiss while I was within kissing distance.

"I'll call in a couple of weeks, maybe we can do this again," I suggested, adding his number to my contacts list under Snowball. If he didn't want to be Clarence or Clancy, I wouldn't force it on him. Besides, I kind of liked the nickname.

"Yeah," he said, shy again as he tied his shoes. "You... You don't want, you know, a boyfriend or anything, right?"

I kissed him again. "I can't even keep you for a whole night because of my schedule," I said regretfully. At least I was getting practice at that whole letting them down easy thing. "I couldn't ask you to commit to that."

"But you'll call, when you can?"

I nodded. "And if you're free, we'll do it again, fangs and all."

He let out a deep, shuddery breath and nodded. "I can do that," he said, then flashed a grin and added, "But you can't blame a guy for trying."

"No," I said, pulling him up into the sort of kiss that showed him just how much I appreciated the sentiment. "I really can't."

I padded out to the kitchen with him and plied him with snacks, and we chatted about things that had nothing to do with sex or biting for a while before he caught sight of the clock and made his final, regretful goodbyes. I made a shopping list with his name on it and emailed it to my phone so I'd be able to offer him sustenance when he visited, making a special note of the things he'd said were his favorites.

I waited for his car to pull out of the driveway before I called Marina and told her it had gone well.

"Sounds like a keeper," she said, smirking over the airwaves.

I scowled. "I can't keep him, though, I mean, I can't really keep any of them. How do you guys do it, hiding your lives from people you really like?"

"There's ways," she said, getting cagey the way she always did when I asked about some vampire way of life she didn't want to talk about.

"Informative," I countered dryly, and hung up.

---

My ATM card took eleven days to come in the mail, but if I complained I knew they'd just say weekends didn't count. My old PIN worked on the first try, and I nearly cheered when two crisp twenties slid out of the machine. I took it and went out for a celebratory drink somewhere I'd never been before, and picked up a self-absorbed ass of a guy who tasted a little like a bloody mary. I think it was his blood alcohol content, and I didn't care, because it went down smooth and I never had to see him again.

I hit the ATM again the next night, this time armed with the fruits of my mailbox. Checks went in, money came out, and life went on. I'd only had to hunt once between Snowball and my card arriving, and that time I managed to keep my cool and find someone in short order, so when I paid the tab, it was for six White Russians and a hefty tip.

"You're looking pale," said Marty, when I forked over the cash. He'd been giving me increasingly disapproving looks as the days went by and I didn't order any of my usual snacks.

I snorted. "I've been working nights lately. I feel more creative at 3am than 3pm."

He rolled his eyes. "Writers," he said with a laugh. "Well, you pay your bills, so I won't complain."

"I really do appreciate you letting me run a tab sometimes," I said, trying not to think about how much harder these past weeks would have been. How much I'd have had to rely on Marina, and a vampire society that I didn't even begin to understand.

Marty just grinned and waved me off, so I took the hint and left.

Banking in the modern age might have its ups and downs, but let me tell you, it was essential for life as a vampire.

Chapter 3

"I want to go through with it," I said, determined. The bouncer at the door to the vampires' painfully trendy club hadn't wanted to let me in at first, but apparently I could be just that annoying when I wanted to. I was standing in front of the much smaller group at the VIP lounge, looking from Percival to Marina and back.

"With what?" said Percival in his bored geek tone. I kept expecting him to call me a noob or start speaking lolcat.

"Whatever it is all the baby vampires go through before they grow up and get their fangs," I said.

"That's not really possible," said Marina, but Percival interrupted her.

"Why not?" he said, clearly amused by the audacity of my idea, if nothing else.

She glanced over at me. "Tom..."

"Tom will have to put on his big boy pants and cope," said Percival.

"You're not the boss of us," said one of the other vampires. "How do you know he'll do what you say?"

That was news to me, but I filed it away for future reference.

"He'll do it," said Marina. She clearly had doubts about something, but not that. "We'll have to modify things."

"No last sunset for our little newbie," said one of the other guys. He was wearing a t-shirt that said, "Keep out of direct sunlight," and a really irritating smirk.

"Do I have to learn to be an asshole just like you?" I said, tired of the posing. "Look, I didn't ask for this, Tom didn't ask for this, and frankly I have no idea what you asked for, but you clearly should return it and get your money back."

Percival laughed, at least amused that I was willing to hold my own against his cronies. "You've got bark to go with the bite," he said. "I'll call Tom, and we'll do this thing the right way. Vampire 101 is coming, so sharpen your number two pencils."

"Just as long as there's no scantron sheets," I said, turning to go. "I hate those fucking things."

Their laughter followed me out.

---

I called Neville.

"Gabriel?" he said when he picked up the phone, sounding as excited as I felt.

"Yeah, Nev, it's me," I replied, feeling guilty that I hadn't called sooner just to set up the date. "I was wondering if you were free tomorrow night?"

He laughed. "You don't give a guy much warning, but fortunately for you I happen to have no life. Did you want to have dinner?"

I thought of my fantasy from before, of taking Neville to a restaurant and feeding him just to enjoy the food vicariously. "Well, the thing is, I cracked a tooth," I said. "And I'm getting it fixed in a few days, so I'm just drinking my meals until then. But if that won't weird you out, I'd love to join you somewhere."

"Biting and a liquid diet," he said with a laugh. "Next thing I know, you'll be telling me you don't cast a reflection and sleep in a coffin."

I laughed along with him, but I felt the nervous shiver of excitement from skating so close to the edge. "You know very well I can use mirrors, you were teasing me about my hair last time," I said. "And I sleep in a very nice bed, if you'd like to come see it."

"Got a restaurant near you that you don't mind drinking at?" he teased, and it felt pretty good to hear that warm willingness in his voice.

"I was thinking maybe that new place over on Church Street. It's a bit of a walk from here but I promise to keep you safe." I had an assignment to review them that I hadn't yet been able to force myself to refuse, so I decided to use the reservations for a good cause.

"Incanto? I'd love to, I've been wanting to try it out," he said, pleasantly surprised.

"I can always enjoy you enjoying it," I said. "That's a pretty sensual experience all by itself."

He let out the sexiest little sound I'd ever heard; I think I found his secret kink. It explained his weight, which I was already starting to think of as adorable rather than unfortunate. "That sounds good."

"It really does," I said, just as sincerely. "Do you have a car, or should we meet there?"

"I can drive to your place," he said, sounding hesitant again, "but I probably can't stay."

Bless him, the sweet man. "That's all right, I've got an early deadline," I said. I could practically hear him relaxing another notch. "I wish we could sleep together, but we're both so busy..." I trailed off, letting him hear my wistful longing for a bygone day when I wasn't a slave to the sunrise.

"Yeah," he said, just as wistful. "You know, I... I thought about what you said, about not being able to offer me what I deserve."

"Yeah?" I felt my chest tighten.

"Well, I just wanted to say that if every few weeks is all you can offer, that's good enough for now," he said, so, so shy. "I mean, if you're..."

"I am," I said, interrupting. Did vampirism have some strange commitment gene? All of a sudden I wanted to cling to their sparks of life, hold them to me and never let go. "I'm offering, even if twice a month is all I can offer." I thought about what Marina had implied, about there being ways, and added, "For now."

He sighed a little, but he surprised me by saying, "For now, that's fine, as long as you don't expect me to sit home and pine for you the other 28 days."

I chuckled, shaking my head. "I wouldn't ask that of you."

"Good," he said. "Give me your address and I'll be there... What time?"

"I may have already made reservations for eight o'clock," I said, not bothering to mention it had been weeks ago, "so how about seven thirty?"

"Perfect."

I let myself smile at the thought of it, watching him eat luscious food and then getting to have him for dessert. "It will be," I said, letting him hear the longing in my voice. It would do him a world of good to think of himself as desirable. "See you then."

"Yeah," he said, sounding just a little bemused, as though he wasn't quite sure what to make of all this yet, "see you then."

I hung up, smiling and looking forward to my future for once.

---

"I don't care what Percival says, I have a date tonight and I'm not going to break it," I told Marina, annoyed. I mean, yeah, I'd asked for it, but that didn't mean I could drop everything on his whim, either.

She humphed. "Fine, but you get to call Tom and tell him you said so."

I growled, but it was getting precariously close to seven thirty. "Fine," I said. "Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," she replied, sounding as though she'd most definitely hold me to it. Then she hung up on me, as usual.

I was nervous about dialing Tom, afraid he wouldn't answer. Afraid he would. I'd already half composed my voicemail message when he picked up and said, "Hello?"

"Hi, Tom, it's Gabriel. Look, I already had plans with someone to feed tonight, so I need to put off our first lesson until tomorrow, okay?" I blurted it all out in one big burst so he couldn't interrupt.

"All right," he said, sounding confused. "Why are you feeding tonight?"

I flushed, realizing he'd probably fed yesterday if he was keeping to his schedule. "I missed a feeding last week, bad luck at the bar. Snowball came out the night after and made it up to me."

"Oh," he said. Then, after a pause, "How is he?"

"Still delicious," I said with a shy laugh. "I'm sure he'd love to see you, next time he visits."

Another, longer pause, enough that I checked to make sure the call was still connected. "-aybe," he was saying when I got the phone back up to my ear.

I smiled, soft and sad. "Maybe it is," I said, instead of a million other things that came to mind. "Eight tomorrow?"

"That's fine," he said. "We'll need to get our feeding schedules aligned again, though."

"Well, you can tell me the best way to do that. Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," he repeated. And then he hung up.

Apparently, bad phone manners are just a vampire thing.

---

Neville held my hand on the walk to the restaurant, and I think I fell a little bit in love with him then. He was just so warm and affectionate, without being clingy or desperate, though there was that sad edge to him that told me he really did think that our on-again, off-again romance was all he could expect for himself.

The restaurant was warm and welcoming, and the host was clearly aware of my original purpose there. "I'm going to do something different today," I told him, as he escorted us to our seats. "Neville's going to eat and tell me how it is, and I'm going to drink and take notes, because I'm on a liquid diet."

"He cracked his tooth blowing some guy with a Prince Albert," said Neville casually.

I blushed, even though it wasn't true. I'd told him about the article on the way, and he'd looked slightly hurt, but he warmed up again when I explained how very much I was looking forward to the food foreplay and sex finish. When I admitted I'd heard his reaction, and was nearly as turned on as he was, I was forgiven.

Well, mostly.

"Clearly, we have an open relationship," I said dryly, and the host laughed.

"Just as long as you give us a good review," he said with a wink, "I don't really care who you blow."

That set the tone for our evening, sadly. Well, not too sad, let's be honest. I figured out that I could almost enjoy the meal along with him with some deep kissing that made me, and the staff, glad we were seated in a corner. I was splurging as part of my apology -- and my expense report -- so Neville ordered a whole variety of foods just like a proper critic. Everything was amazingly fresh, local and seasonal, and it smelled exquisite enough to make me envy him all over again.

There were olives to start, rich and luscious, and when I kissed Neville after the first one it reminded me of the salty flavor of fresh blood, just a little.

"How are they?" I asked, licking the taste of him from my lips.

"Really good, there's this citrus note to them that really brings out the buttery richness of the olives," he said.

It was serious food porn. "I'm jealous, but that way lies pain and madness and not getting any tonight because I'm at the emergency dentist, so I'll stay resolute." I sipped the special protein drink the kitchen had sent out, which was rich and sweet with just a hint of salty, creamy and delicious. And then I tried not to think about what might be in it, when my stomach did a flip that told me I was skirting the fine line between food and drink a little too closely.

After that he tried several more starters, though he didn't finish anything, and finally two different entrees -- a savory pumpkin risotto, and pork loin in a rich reduction -- along with several of the sides. He described every bite in lush detail, and I got hard just sitting there listening to it.

Finally there was dessert, sweet and decadent. I kept him company with a dessert coffee, but it just wasn't the same. He got a lot of kisses then, and I cried a little inside that I'd never actually get to eat pumpkin jam doughnuts myself. But I consoled myself with the fact that I was going to get to take Neville back to my bed and have my way with him.

From the look on his face when we were done, I could have any way I wanted.

"We have to do this again," I said, playing footsie under the table. "This was the best way to do a restaurant review ever."

He grinned and it was just like turning on a light switch, his whole being lit up at my acceptance of his food thing. "You really think so?"

"Yeah," I said, squeezing his hand. "I really, really think so."

The chef came out at the end, then, and talked to us both about the experience. I tried to keep the lust out of my voice, but I think he twigged onto the foreplay aspect of the situation a little anyway.

I promised a good review, and he comped my protein shake. The bill went onto my brand-new ATM card, and I gave the patient waiter a good tip.

"Take it home," I insisted, when the bag of boxed-up leftovers showed up with the credit card slip. "I won't be able to enjoy it for a few days yet."

"You're sure?" he said, though he was clearly eager to give me my way.

"I'm sure," I promised, snagging the bag and leading him outside. "It's a cool night, we'll just leave them in your car so you don't forget them."

"Gabriel, I... Thank you," he said, pausing under a streetlight to kiss me, like some romantic moment in a movie.

I blushed, and kissed him again. "I should thank you, for helping me, and being willing to do this with me. For me."

He laughed and kissed me again. "That's why I'm keeping you, even if you're mysteriously unavailable," he said, dragging me out of the light and in the direction of my house. My bed.

The clean sheets were back to soft wheat-gold, and he was warm and tan against them. "No tan lines," I teased, running my hand down his flank.

He blushed. "I lay under my skylight," he said, "with the plants all around me. No one sees."

"Someone should," I said, imagining it. "I bet you're beautiful like that."

I followed it up with a kiss, swallowing any sort of self-deprecating protests he might have made. I just wanted to think of it for a few minutes, to bask in the memory of sunshine and the reality of him. He was so, so warm, and I kissed my way down his body, nipping as I went, fangs out and cock hard.

"God, it's like, fuck, like you're eating me, like I'm, ohgod," he said, and I groaned.

"Like you're the best dessert ever," I finished for him, spreading his thighs and biting down, getting my three swallows of sustenance so I could eat him far more thoroughly -- with the fangs optional.

I was very, very thorough.

When we were done, curled together panting in the sunless wheat field of my sheets, he turned to me with that sweet shy smile. "I used to fantasize about what it would be like, to be, you know, by a vampire," he said.

I blushed, and went still. "You taste good enough to be the finest cuisine," I said, forcing myself to relax, kissing him. "If I was a vampire, I'd want to have you as often as I could."

He grinned. "Good," he said, then pulled me close and kissed me like he could drown in it.

I was already totally drawn in by him, but after he left, I wondered what he knew.

I'd be bringing that up in tomorrow's lessons, too.

---

I admit it, I was nervous. Anxious, even. I mean, I'd liked Tom a lot before he turned me into a vampire and I'd liked him more right after, and I wanted him to keep liking me back. If he ever had.

Yeah, clearly I was having issues with the whole situation.

At least I'd finally cleaned up the living room -- after Neville left, I used the nervous energy to rearrange everything, leaving it all unplugged and non-functioning. Snowball might make good on his promise to look at it next time he was up, so I figured I'd be better off not risking a second round of fried vampire. I even made fresh coffee, despite having no idea whether either of them drank it.

The doorbell rang, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

It was Tom, Marina, and -- surprise, surprise -- Percival.

"Come on in," I said, gesturing for them to precede me down the entrance hall to the well-lit living room. I had the doors to the office and bedroom closed, figuring it would keep things impersonal if that's what Tom wanted.

Not that I had any idea of what Tom wanted.

"Nice place," said Percival, and I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not. I was betting on yes.

"Anyone want coffee?" I offered. "And does caffeine even work on us?"

"I'd love some," said Tom, looking shy and still a little pale.

Marina chuckled. "It's more psychological now than physiological, but most vampires do still get a small burst of energy from it."

"Red Bull's better," said Percival, "but I'll take a cup."

Marina shook her head, and I gestured for them to sit in the living room before ducking into the kitchen. Three mugs, and I even had a tray to arrange them on, along with sugar, cream, spoons and napkins.

"You're probably wondering why I'm here," said Percival.

"Are you going to tell me?" I asked.

He snort-laughed, then added about a pound of sugar to his coffee. "We're too used to keeping secrets," he said, "and slow to change. You're unfamiliar, so the instinct is to avoid and evade, when we should be telling you everything."

"As Percival so pointedly reminded me yesterday," said Tom dryly, "a new vampire needs to know a lot more than just how to hunt and not kill."

"Although those are very important," said Marina quickly.

"Yeah, I got that," I said, fixing my coffee the way I liked it and then taking the only seat left, on the couch next to Tom. "Why is that, anyway? I mean, yes, killing is bad and wrong, but you all act like it's more than just that."

"When a vampire kills from the hunger, it changes them," said Marina. "And then we have to hunt them down before bad things happen."

I nodded, surprised. So one dead victim and I'd be toast, got it. That was very motivating, which probably sounds cold, but the abstract idea of overeating someone to death is not the same abstract as the idea of having Marina kill me to death. "How does that work, anyway? What can kill me?"

Percival shot Tom a disgusted look, and Tom shrank into himself. "Don't," I said sharply.

Percival's eyebrows shot up, and Marina chuckled. "I told you he was protective," she said.

Tom gave me an unreadable look, but he also sat up a little straighter afterward, and answered my question. "Sunlight, fire, or destroying your brain and heart."

"Destroying the brain but not the heart will make a revenant, though beheading usually does the trick," said Percival. "And destroying the heart but not the brain often leads to your vampire coming back in a decade or two for some serious revenge."

"What's a revenant?" I asked. "And is this how it usually goes?"

"It's a vampire with no consciousness left but the hunger," said Marina.

Tom leaned in and added, "If you'd died in a messier way, you might have woken up a revenant. That's part of why..."

"Why you were punished so harshly," I said, wondering once again what had happened. I didn't think I really wanted to know, but I understood now that it had to be sufficient to discourage a bunch of self-centered vampires from breaking the rules.

Percival's eyes flashed, but it went by too fast for me to decipher. "And no, it's not how it usually goes, but I figured if we answered your questions first things would go more smoothly."

"Smart man," I said, sipping my coffee, contemplating my other questions. Neville seemed the most pressing, so I asked, "Are there people who know about us? Who aren't someone's, um, whatever. And how does that work, anyway?"

This seemed to make both Tom and Marina uncomfortable, so Percival took over again. "There are a few humans who know about vampires, mostly those who help us out during the day. Some of them are either hoping to become vampires themselves, or addicted to the feeding process, but others are just loyal hired help. Servants, if you will."

"Could someone who's addicted hide that he'd been fed on?" I asked, though I didn't think that was the case with Neville.

Marina shook her head slowly, as though only mostly sure of the answer. "Is there someone specific you're thinking of?"

So I took a deep breath, and explained about Neville. They asked me some really pointed questions, but eventually they concluded he wasn't anyone on their dangerous list.

"Still," said Percival, writing down Neville's info, "we'll look into him."

"Which brings me to my other question," I said, fidgeting with my cup. "What do you do if you really like someone, a human, enough to want more than twice a month with them?"

"Technically it's twice a moon," said Tom quietly.

"But twice a month is a good rule of thumb," interrupted Marina.

Tom sighed. "Well, you already know what not to do, anyway."

I couldn't help but laugh. I wanted to kiss that look off his face so badly, but I wasn't about to do it with the other two sitting there watching. "So, how do you handle it?"

"A rare few elect to become a permanent companion to a vampire, and then they're sheltered very carefully, and educated in the same way as a -- how did you say it, baby vampire? -- would be. They're brought fully into our society, basically as the vampire's kept man or woman. Not as a human slave, mind you, more like a mistress."

"So, sort of an 'I love you, you pay my rent' thing?" I asked, though I was sure that wasn't precisely right, either.

"It can be, though usually there's affection on both sides of the equation. The lover has to all but give up their mortal life, after all, reducing the risk of death rather than exposure in their case."

"Is it healthy enough? I guess a few swallows every three days isn't a lot of blood loss, all told," I said, answering my own question.

Percival chuckled. "Most of them take iron supplements and the like, and if they become ill the vampire will have to take other food for a time."

"All right. Are there other options between cloistered monogamy and endless two-night stands?" I asked, feeling frustrated.

"Of course there are," said Tom, sounding annoyed. "Sometimes two vampires pair off and drink mostly from each other. Sometimes a vampire with the means will keep a harem of willing lovers. Sometimes it's a few regulars sprinkled in with casual encounters to keep things fresh. Sometimes it's a combination of all those things."

"Well, how should I know?" I replied, just as tetchy. He flushed, then shrugged. "If you are seeing someone semi-regularly, but not as a love match or anything, how do you keep them from figuring out what you are?"

"Maybe we'd better start at the beginning," said Tom, taking a sip of his coffee. I saw the little flash that showed he was enjoying it, and felt warm inside as though I'd been the one to sip -- I'd treated myself to a better brand after I got my finances sorted out, since I no longer had much of a grocery bill. Even with going out hunting every three nights, I was still saving a bundle on food.

"All right, as long as I can keep asking questions as we go." I was a little dubious about the prescribed course, but at the same time, I needed them to stop treating me like an outsider who'd accidentally been given a VIP pass instead of the usual wristband for drinks. I wasn't going to go away at the end of the night, and if I had to accept me as a vampire, then they had to, too.

Tom and Percival launched into this back-and-forth history geek lecture about vampires and the way they'd blended into society over the millennia. Neither of them knew where vampires came from originally, but they were both certain that they'd been around as long as people had.

I think the most amusing part was how very sure they were that we were the top of the food chain, given that I had been just as sure until I accidentally got bumped up a notch.

"So right now, we hide, we blend, and make sure that any humans that are brought into our confidence see it as an honor," said Percival, sitting back and looking smug.

"Are all vampires kind of dicks, or is it just my luck so far?" I asked, tired of their superior attitude. After all, I'd been one of the human cattle not too long ago, and I wasn't really seeing the improvement that vampirism had brought to my situation.

Marina and Tom both cracked up laughing.

Ironically, things went more smoothly after that. It was as though, by being a dick myself, I'd broken through some social barrier and become one of their own in a much more real way than the fangs and sunlight allergy. I guess vampires are still people, and people are just weird sometimes.

"This does bring me back to my question about, you know, dating," I said. "How do I keep kicking these men out before sunrise and not end up making them suspicious?"

"Well, not everyone will add things up and get vampire," said Marina, but I shook my head.

"These two will."

"You do have a hiding space," said Tom. "You could always kiss them goodbye and lock yourself in, if you thought they could be trusted to putter around and leave again before nightfall."

"I do?" I asked, downing the last of my coffee and making a face. Cold, yuck.

Tom looked sheepish. "Yeah, I paid for a lot of little extras. I thought the contractors were going to show you around, but I guess they assumed I'd do it."

"You can show him now," said Percival, making a face at his own cup. "I'll make more coffee."

Marina went with him, giving us a very pointed look as we were left alone together. "Look, I, I'm sorry," said Tom.

I touched his hand, then stood and offered him mine. "It's okay," I said, tugging until we were standing. "I know you weren't expecting this, and I'm not asking you to commit to anything."

He made an exasperated face. "That's not really the issue," he said, then he shrugged. "I'm just better off alone, that's all."

"No one's really better off alone," I protested, but he waved me off and went over to the wall almanac. It was much cooler than it sounds, an electronic device that leeched off my wireless to give me sunrise, sunset, weather, time and temperature. There was even a built-in alarm, which had been set to go off 15 minutes before sunset every day.

Tom clicked open a hidden panel, then punched in the same code as my alarm on the little keypad, and the screen changed. "This is also the real control panel for your alarm system, and it shows you the different places you can hide if your outer wall is breached. You can even set it to leave the shutters open and seal you into one of the smaller compartments." He pointed to newly hidden spaces in the back of my closet, under the floor in the office, and a very tiny standing-room-only space in the entryway where the architecture had left a strange gap in the walls.

"That last one is for emergencies only, I take it?" I felt claustrophobic just looking at it.

He laughed. "Yeah, pretty much. That one has to be opened from here, or from a panel on the inside, and it's steel reinforced."

I paled a little. "Has that sort of thing been necessary much?"

He shook his head. "Every once in a while you get a wannabe Van Helsing, or a vampire who tries to make a power grab, but they're pretty rare."

My brows knit. "How rare?"

Tom shrugged. "There's three that we know of in the United States, a couple in other countries. There's some groupies, too, that got accidental glimpses of us and went the other way." He shuddered, as though the groupies were a fate worse than death. Or re-death.

Whatever.

I relaxed with a sigh, catching a whiff of his unique scent and a wave of longing with it. "All right, well, let's go look at the other two, in case I decide they need pillows or something."

He chuckled, then closed up the panel and led the way. First was the office -- I had a big, colorful rug in there from a trip I'd made to Peru. Pure alpaca, and soft as it was beautiful, it was definitely the most expensive thing I'd brought back with me. "Nice rug," he said, flipping it up. There was a pretty sizable gouge in one of the floorboards that I opened my mouth to complain about when he used it to open another of those hidden panels, this one just a simple number keypad. "This is why you can't ever forget your codes," he teased.

I flushed; I'd had to call him for his at one point when I left the card at home by accident. "Yes, dad," I teased, which got a satisfactory squirm out of him.

"Anyway," he continued, "you punch in your alarm code here and voila." He did so, and a whole section of the floor swung upward to reveal a cramped but comfortable-looking compartment. It was lined with padding and pillows, and even had a blanket folded up. "Might want to wash that stuff once in a while, even if you don't use the space regularly."

"How does a lightproof space gather dust?" I asked rhetorically. "Well, anyway, I'll put it on the laundry rotation."

We swung it shut, set the room to rights, and then I thought of something. "It'd be pretty obvious if I was in there, unless I had someone else to come along and move the rug."

Tom shrugged. "It's not perfect. You'll like this one better, anyway."

It was funny that I'd never even noticed my walk-in closet was less walk-in now, but I was just not that much of a clothes guy. "You're right, this is cool," I said, looking into the final compartment. It took up the back third of the closet, and instead of a bed there was a comfortable lounge seat, a security camera setup, and another blanket and pillow.

"It's pretty comfortable, and if you can wait for the human to fall asleep, you can slip in here and get some work done before daybreak." He showed me the cheapo little netbook that slid into its on little slot in the wall, nothing special but certainly good enough to write by for a little while, if need be. "Or if you're waiting for them to leave at sunset. Once you're a few years older, you'll be able to sneak out of the house without them noticing, but when you're new you don't have much control over your powers."

"I have powers?" I said.

He laughed. "Not yet," he said, shutting the compartment and leading me back out to the living room, "but you will."

---

I learned a lot that night about being a vampire, but I have to say, the thing that gave me the most food for thought was Tom. There was some history there beyond the accident or his punishment, but I had no idea what it was or how to deal with it.

The other useful thing I learned, I put into practice immediately.

"How much should I keep out as an emergency fund?" I asked Marina.

Tom and Percival had both left, promising to be back the same time tomorrow, and Marina was helping me invest my savings, just like she'd promised. When the guys found out she'd offered and I hadn't immediately taken her up on it, they both urged me to get to it before she changed her mind. Apparently, her advice was considered pure gold among the vampire set.

"None of it," she said, waving her hand. "One of the three of us will always be there if you fall a little short, and you want to start earning a return as soon as possible."

"I thought the stock market was crap right now, though?" I said, dubious despite the glowing recommendation.

She laughed. "That's on the short term. Now's a great time to buy if you're investing for ten or twenty years from now, which we are. You won't see anything on this money for what will seem like ages to you, but trust me, this is enough to start you out right for a very long life."

"How do you keep the money for so long?" I asked. I was envisioning some sort of scheme involving faking my death over and over, and willing it to myself.

"You just keep it," she said, shrugging. "You'd be surprised at how much banks don't care. As long as we keep updating your information and move the investments around every decade or so, you won't show up as a seventy-year customer on anyone's books."

I relaxed. "So the whole identity thing, you guys have that worked out? About getting driver's licenses and social security cards that don't say you're a hundred years old."

She nodded. "That's actually one of my departments. We're might not be a democracy or a monarchy, but we're a little bit of a meritocracy. Those with the most to offer rise to the top."

"How did I get so lucky?" I asked, knowing I was hanging out with some fairly big fish, at least in the local pond.

She grinned. "You'll figure it out," she said, gathering up the papers we'd printed out. "And I'll have all this filed tomorrow, so expect to get something in the mail in ten to fourteen days."

"Business days, or real days?" I quipped.

She chuckled. "It's banking, what do you think?"

---

I was starting to get really behind on my writing, so I was still typing away when the doorbell rang. I checked the clock and swore; not only were they here, they were a little late, and I was still bumming around the house in my jammies.

I answered the door anyway, sheepish about the lack of coffee or actual pants, and was surprised to find that Tom and Percival had left Marina behind and instead brought along a third guy I'd never seen before. "Um, hi, sorry, I lost track of time," I said, stepping back so they could crowd into the hallway. "If you guys want to go sit, I'll just change and start the coffee."

"Coffee? I love it," said the new guy, clearly amused by the whole situation. "I'll need to keep my energy up if I'm gonna take on all three of you."

That's when it hit me -- he was human. "Uh, yeah," I said intelligently, moving down the hall and flipping on the living room light. "I'm Gabriel, and you are?"

"Sticks," he said, "like Pick-Up Sticks, not like the band."

"Sticks," I repeated dubiously. What was it with these guys and their weird nicknames? Neville might have some strange fetishes, but at least he had a real grown-up name. "There's orange juice, too, and some snacks in the kitchen. Eat whatever you find."

Tom looked surprised and approving, though of course most of it had been the result of Marina's generosity. "I can make the coffee," he offered, pulling Sticks along with him.

"You might as well wait until we're done to change," said Percival, voice full of laughter. "I know you didn't oversleep, so..."

"I'm working," I said, heading back into the office with Percival following. "Actually, if I could have ten more minutes to finish this article, it'd be a big help in keeping me fed."

"So to speak," he said with a chuckle, looking nosily around the room.

I rolled my eyes. "Drinks don't buy themselves," I said, scooting up and trying to find my mental place. Fortunately I had a lot of practice dealing with interruptions to my workflow, and I slipped back in pretty easily. When I hit save a few minutes later, it was with a sense of accomplishment -- a good edit after they were gone, and that'd be more money in the bank, thanks to Neville.

"I had my snack yesterday," said Percival quietly when I closed the laptop, "and you were the day before, and Tom the day before that. You won't feel very hungry, but if you take a little, then we can all get on the same schedule for your lessons."

"Will it be that long?" I asked, surprised. We'd gone over a lot yesterday, mostly history, and a few things about blending in and lying to your boyfriends. And then a heartbeat and I added, "You're gay?"

I was a little put out when he laughed. "I'm old enough that it doesn't matter, though it's true I prefer women," he said. "And usually we take a year or two to ease someone into our lifestyle, so even the crash course will take a few weeks. We'll be meeting more of our own kind later on, too, once I'm sure you won't offend anyone too much."

It was my turn to laugh. "Will you ever really be sure of that?"

He rolled his eyes. "Sure enough to keep you out of hiding."

That was actually kind of ominous, so I let it go and followed him out to the living room, where Sticks was consuming a small mountain of my food. "You have some great stuff in there, man," he said, though thankfully he swallowed first.

I couldn't help but smile. He might be a hardened pro, but he wasn't above enjoying an assortment of the toaster-oven hors d'oeuvres that I'd picked out for Neville's next visit. I think he actually had all four boxes cooked up and out in front of him. "You're welcome to it," I said, sitting next to him and smelling the warm, dusty scent of his skin. He didn't have the spicy brightness of Snowball, or Neville's rich earthiness, but he still smelled good. Alive.

I felt my fangs coming out, and other parts of my anatomy perking up in response.

He ate in silence for a few minutes more, then looked around and flushed, swallowing. "Are you guys waiting on me?"

"Yeah," I said, figuring the truth was better. "But we don't mind, go on. I wouldn't have offered if I was in a hurry."

Percival looked impressed by that, and I tried not to feel hurt that he'd actually had doubts about how I'd treat a hooker. I mean, yeah, he was selling himself, but he was also willingly coming into my bed and providing me with an early meal. Even if he didn't know it yet.

"I'm getting kinda full," he admitted sheepishly, pushing the plate away. He'd managed about 2/3 of the pile, I'd guess, though I hadn't seen its original size.

"You can always reheat the rest when we're done," I said, getting up. "I'll just stick these in the fridge. Tom, you know where everything is in the bedroom, right?"

I was suddenly very happy I'd changed the sheets yesterday instead of waiting, and I made a mental note to toss the gold ones into the wash tonight. And then think about getting a couple more sets, if I was going to be changing them every few days.

Tom gave me an unreadable look and said, "Yeah, I can get us set up." We all stood and went our separate ways.

I put foil over the plate and stuck it in my mostly empty fridge, then scribbled a note to myself to restock the freezer. I didn't want to buy too many perishable things unless I knew I'd have someone over to consume them before they went bad, but frozen things seemed like a safe bet.

I rinsed the coffee cups, too, and put them in the dishwasher, then took a second to run it so they'd be clean for after.

Then I realized I was procrastinating, and went back to my bedroom.

I hated myself just a little for finding Percival damned attractive once he was naked and in my bed, something dangerously sensual peeking out now that the geek camouflage was gone. "I can see you're all waiting for me now," I said, taking off my t-shirt as I went.

"Hot damn," said Sticks with a laugh. "If only all my threesomes were this good."

"You haven't seen anything yet," said Tom, moving in close. He was the hungriest of us, having fed three nights ago, and I could feel my own hunger rising in response.

I shed my pants without another thought and crawled up between Sticks' legs, nipping at an ankle, calf, and then working my way up inside thighs that spread for me gladly. "Some days," he said, "I love my job."

We all laughed, as we were meant to, and I at least felt flattered, as I'm sure I was meant to. Then all three of our mouths descended, and we devoured him.

I remember, vaguely, the pleasure of being bitten. Tom says that we muddle the mind a little, we vampires, and that makes it both feel better than just normal biting, and fade in the memory afterward, glossed over in the haze of pleasure and need. Three vampires working on him, each with our own sort of glamour, and Sticks was in heaven. He didn't notice or care about the bite marks liberally scattered over his skinny body, or the few swallows of blood he lost. I only managed one good one before I felt done, and Percival barely took any at all, mostly making marks to confuse the issue.

Once my fangs slid back in, I slapped a condom on him and sucked him off, and he appreciated both. I was certainly getting a lot of practice at that lately, and let me tell you, not having to breathe has really upped the stakes on my technique. Eventually Sticks got busy getting us off, too -- I think half the reason Tom went through with it was because it would've been memorably strange if we hadn't asked him to. The whole thing degenerated into sex almost too athletic for my bed to contain. The evening was shaping up to be very educational already, and we hadn't even gotten to the lessons yet.

When I padded back into the kitchen to make fresh coffee and reheat Sticks' snacks, I was very amused to be adding condoms to my shopping list -- we'd used up my whole stash, and one of the ones Sticks brought as well.

"I'm glad I made you pay in advance," he was saying, when I set the tray down in front of him. They'd all moved to the living room, once they'd redressed and regrouped, and I was now wearing perfectly respectable jeans and a t-shirt. Sticks looked both impressed and rueful as he finished, "I might not've had the heart otherwise."

We all shared a laugh at that; it had been a pretty memorable experience, all things told. I'd even found myself kissing Percival once or twice -- and liking it.

I'd found myself kissing Tom more than a few times, too, and that brought up a whole mess of feelings I didn't think either of us were ready for. "Got a little Irish for that coffee?" asked Tom, confirming my suspicion. We couldn't really get drunk, but it would distract him.

"You eat," said Percival to Sticks, who was still sitting there looking amazingly well-fucked. "We'll get you a cab when you're done."

"Oh, yeah, all right," he said, moving the plate from tray to lap. "So, uh, you guys do this often?"

I chuckled. "Not that often, but if you've got a number, I'll take it," I said. I had no idea if I could afford his rates, but it would be good to have someone I could call in a pinch.

"I have it," said Percival, giving me a look that said he was someone else's emergency food, too.

I found I really didn't mind. As fun as Sticks had been, he was like the low-rent version of Snowball, both less sincere and less trustworthy, not to mention skinny as a rail. "I'll get it later, then," I said, just to keep up appearances.

"Cool," said Sticks, looking very pleased indeed with his night's work.

I couldn't blame him one bit.

---

I'd like to say that the information I got that night was as life-changing as the sex, but really it was more of the same. Actually, the best lesson I had that whole week came from Marina -- she claimed the next night and gave me a crash course in vampire finances.

"You've got the first part of it all set up already -- work for yourself," she said, sipping the expensive wine she'd brought with her. At least she'd been nice enough to share.

I nodded, chuckling. "Not that I get much chance to do that lately, with you guys taking up my nights," I said.

She shrugged elegantly -- she was dressed up tonight, and I was hoping it was for something that would take her away and give me the rest of the night off. "You'll find a balance."

"Are there a lot of blogs about work/unlife balance?" I asked.

That got a real laugh, which I considered a small triumph. "There aren't, but it's certainly a niche market that could be explored." She pronounced it like it was still a French word, neesh, which made it sound much more elegant than it was. "Actually, that's something I wanted to talk to you about without those troublesome boys hanging around."

"My niche?" I asked, making it rhyme with 'ditch.'

She made a little moue at my terribly American pronunciation. "Your internet savvy," she said. "Not a lot of vampires are good with computers."

"I bet Percival is," I said, thinking of his geek chic.

"That's why he's one of the top dogs, he adapts when others fail to do so," she said. "I think you could make a good living -- or unliving, as you call it," she paused to let me absorb her distaste, "by helping our kind into the modern age."

I raised an eyebrow. "Self-help websites for vampires?"

I think I almost made her snort her wine, but she was far too refined to let it show, a persona she'd slipped on at some point and wasn't letting slide tonight. "Books, to start with, and then probably websites to go with them." She proffered me a card, and I took it, bemused.

"Agent or publisher?" I asked, eyeing it dubiously. Much like Tom's calling cards, it held few clues to the person on the other end of the phone number.

"A bit of both," she said. "Vampires are a very niche market, and he's been working in our niche for a very long time."

I raised an eyebrow. "And you think I can be trusted to contact him on my own?"

She chuckled. "He's been prepped. He knows you're one of those cocky modern Americans, and has promised not to eat you before he sees some writing samples."

I gave her an unamused look. "What eats vampires?" I said, pocketing the card. A good referral was worth more than a pint of blood to a freelancer like me.

Her smile this time was grim and evil. "Older vampires, of course."

I was not reassured.

Chapter 4

Between one thing and another, it was a few weeks before I remembered the card Marina had given me. I begged off nightly lessons and tried not to be hurt that Tom looked relieved, but I had to get some writing done without them around to distract me. We rescheduled to meet on hunting nights, giving me two nights out of three to keep my rent paid.

Then one evening I sat down to write and found that I didn't have anything waiting in my queue, and after the familiar moment of freelancer's panic, I went and hunted up the agent's card.

"Horace Jackson," said the voice on the other end of the line.

"Um, hi," I said, feeling strangely nervous. "This is Gabriel Sorenson. Marina told me you were interested in some samples of my work?"

A pause. "Ah, the internet writer. Yes, I would like to meet with you if you have some time free."

I held back a sigh, thinking of the free time I both did and didn't have. "I'm between writing assignments at the moment, so I have plenty of time," I admitted. If he really was some kind of an agent, then the last thing I wanted to do was lie about my work prospects.

"Excellent," he said. It sounded uncannily like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons. I did not point that out. "Be at 455 Gardners Grove in half an hour, with printed samples."

I did some quick mental math. "I can't print and travel at the same time, sir, so it will have to be a little longer than that."

"Youth," he said, and then hung up.

Mysterious and rude -- clearly a very old vampire.

Fortunately for me, I keep a folder on my hard drive where I toss what I consider to be my best work once it's done, since people are always asking for samples. I sent half a dozen to the print queue, called a cab and took a quick shower. I dressed in my most businesslike clothes that weren't a suit -- dark slacks and a matching blazer over one of my ubiquitous colored t-shirts. It sounded like Horace was the old-fashioned sort, and I neither wanted to offend him nor give him false expectations of my future couture.

It took 41 minutes, and I could tell he was not impressed.

A human let me in, an honest-to-god butler whose name I didn't catch. I managed to not make any sort of stupid Jeeves joke, taking it in stride as he led me into the parlor where Mr. Jackson awaited me, sipping from a delicate china cup. "How do you take your tea?" he asked, nodding toward the set.

The butler stood poised, and I didn't have the heart to refuse, even though I really preferred coffee. "One sugar and a little cream?" I asked.

Horace made a face. "Milk," he corrected.

"Uh, milk, sure," I replied, knocked off balance by the strange ritual of it. "One sugar and a splash of milk."

"Very good, sir," said the butler, putting a sugar cube in a cup, adding some milk, and then pouring fragrant tea in on top. Even I could tell this was the good stuff, and I tried to treat it with proper respect.

There was a moment of juggling when he offered me the cup and saucer, spoon balanced precariously on one side, and finally I gave him the folder of samples to pass on to Horace so that I could hold onto the saucer and stir with the spoon, and not spill all over myself.

"You are primarily a writer of non-fiction, am I correct?" asked Horace, accepting the folder from the butler with a nod.

The butler faded into the woodwork in a way I'd only heard that good servants could do. It was actually a little creepy, given that he was still human.

"Yes, mostly articles for online publications, guest blogging, a little bit of print work. I've never done a book, though I have a few ideas," I said, finally taking a sip. I had a momentary flash of realization that I'd been doing tea wrong all these years, but it passed as I swallowed. Still, that was a very tasty beverage, and if I thought I had any hope of understanding the answer, I'd have asked how to replicate it.

"Online, yes, that is the subject at hand," he said, setting his cup aside and opening the folder. "Do you think you could write an informational series that would teach someone of great age to use the internet?"

"Well," I said, watching him skim through the pages I'd brought, "I'd probably have to start with teaching them to use a computer, just the basics. A lot of it is about mindset, actually, knowing the conventions. It's the same as learning that red usually means stop, except you're learning what a link looks like and how the idea of virtual pages works." My mind was already racing ahead, wondering if I could sufficiently verbalize those things that had become instinct for me to make it into a useful series of articles.

"I see," he said, closing the folder. "Your work is good, I'll give Marina that much. You have a clear, characteristic style that is both informative and entertaining. How long until you can give me the first article in your series?"

I thought about it; I really was between gigs right now, but if something urgent came in, I didn't want to have to refuse any more work. "I'll need to know a little more about my target audience first, do some research. And it depends on what the length and pay rate is that we're talking about here, too. Five hundred words takes a lot less time than five thousand."

He looked weirdly pleased by that, and I tried not to be creeped out. "You're thorough, I like that," he said, and then, "Barnes."

I guess that was the butler's name, because he stepped forward and said, "Sir?"

"Bring the gentleman a decade's worth of back issues of Modernize," he said, and my eyes must have bugged out a little, because he smirked. "Don't worry, it's a quarterly."

"That's still a lot of magazines," I said with a chuckle. "When would I need to finish the first article by, if it was for the next issue?"

"Three weeks," said Horace, swapping the folder for his tea. "I may keep the samples?"

"Yes, of course, though the rights are mostly still held by my other clients, so they're not available for reprint," I said, a reflex from too many emails asking to publish someone else's paid article on their own site.

"Understandably," he said. "A contract will be brought to you tomorrow with my terms, both as agent and publisher. If the first article is popular, I expect we'll do a book, though our print runs are necessarily low."

"You might consider doing two versions," I said, finishing up my tea with a small sense of regret that it was gone. "One for vampires specifically, and one for elderly humans who find technology just as baffling." I paused, and then remembered my manners and added, "Thank you for the tea, it was delicious."

"It's nice to see a youngster like yourself appreciating the finer things in life," said Horace, looking amused. "But you do have a point about widening the market. If we do construct a book, I will consider shopping a humanized version to a larger publisher."

"I imagine your market is specialized enough that the rights won't be an issue," I said, chuckling.

"Exactly," he said.

Barnes returned with a heavy-looking box containing the last 40 issues of Modernize Quarterly, and I could tell my time was done. I stood and said, "Thank you very much for seeing me, Mr. Jackson. And thank you, Barnes, for the tea and the magazines. I'll need to call a cab?"

"Marcus can drive you," said Horace. "I was under the impression you had a car?"

"I do," I said with a shrug, amazed that the box didn't feel as heavy as Barnes had made it look. Maybe there was something to the vampire strength thing after all. "I try not to drive it to places where I don't know the parking situation."

"Commendably wise."

Horace picked up the folder of samples once again, and I could tell I'd been dismissed. It was the in-person version of hanging up without saying goodbye.

Fucking vampires.

---

I was actually glad to have a lesson scheduled the next night so that I could grill Percival and Tom about the sort of vampires that might want to learn to use a computer. I needed some frame of reference for where to start, what sort of knowledge I could assume. I had gone home and curled up with a few issues of Modernize, but the articles were uneven in their assumptions about what the readership did and didn't know already.

Marina often skipped these days, but Percival seemed to find the whole idea of lessons very entertaining, so it was me and him and Tom for tonight's fun-filled discussion. Since it was all boys this time, once I'd grilled Percival on the vampire demographic we talked a lot about cruising and the various club scenes. They gave me a good list of hunting grounds and promised to take me out in a few days to not only feed together again, but sniff out a few of the marked cattle so I'd be able to tell the difference.

I couldn't help but be entertained by how very earnest they were in showing me all the effort that went into preventing accidents like me.

"Have either of you ever had a mistress or, um, whatever you call it if it's a guy?" I asked, hoping it wasn't one of those questions that would get me stonewalled. There weren't many these days, but I still sometimes tripped over something they weren't ready to tell me, either about vampires or about themselves.

"I have," said Percival, a little too quickly. A glance over at Tom showed me that, yes, once again there was something they didn't want to go into just yet.

I was pretty sure it had something to do with what was going on now, but I suppose I had all the time in the world to find out. "Girls, I presume?"

"Of course," he said. He'd been feeding off boys with the two of us whenever they felt like sharing, but sometimes I could tell he missed the things a woman had to offer.

Ick.

"My first mistress was Katherine, a proper courtesan, fiery and alive. She went out of her way to educate herself so as to provide me with entertaining conversation," he said with a sigh. "Women these days, they think it's just about spreading their legs."

Tom looked a bit wistful himself, which was weird, because I was pretty sure he was gay through and through.

"Men these days mostly only care about what's between the legs, not the ears," I said. Then I made a mental note to spend some time getting to know Snowball on our next few dates, and to ask more questions of Neville rather than letting the conversation ramble without telling me anything real. A part of me wanted for those two to stay real for me, despite the one-nighters and rent boys that had become my regular fare.

Tom and Percival both laughed at my joke, anyway, so that was satisfying. "Katherine knew what you were and didn't mind being kept cloistered away?" I asked, once the laughter died down.

Percival shrugged. "Things were different for women in those days, it wasn't much more restrictive than any other relationship she might have had." He took a sip of his coffee, liberally spiced with whisky tonight, and continued. "She had more opportunities than she might have otherwise, in fact, because I had scholars to visit who would include her in their conversations or give her extra lessons just for the privilege of time spent in her company."

"She sounds like quite a woman," I said, envious. I'd never known anyone like that, though I suppose I had time to polish myself up to be worthy of that caliber of companion.

"She was," said Percival. "I've had three mistresses total, but she was the first and the most amazing. She wouldn't let me turn her, either, she was determined to live out all the facets of a human life."

"Did it seem very short to you?" I asked.

Percival shook his head. "We live a long time, but each day is still set at a human's pace. It wasn't long enough, but it wasn't like owning a goldfish, either."

I laughed, and he laughed with us, but Tom looked pensive and withdrawn.

"Have you ever turned one of your mistresses?"

"The second one," said Percival with a smirk. "That would be Marina, the financial whiz from Prague."

"I wondered about that accent," I said, chuckling. "You two didn't stay together afterward?"

"We did for a while, but we grew apart," he said, shrugging. "Some people work better as friends."

I snorted. "Is there a lot of, I dunno, eternal vampire love, I guess? Where two vampires stay together for a long time."

"It's rare, but it happens," said Tom, everything about him radiating the most profound grief. "Forever is a long time, though."

I looked over at Percival, but he gave a single shake of his head. I laid my hand over Tom's and kept my mouth shut; now wasn't the time for a smartass remark, and I'd never even had a chance at the kind of love that could last for centuries.

A strange sort of stillness came over us then, wrapped up as we were in Tom's remembered pain. One by one we stopped breathing, stopped moving, all those little twitches and motions that show you're alive fading away until we were like statues. I tried not to think of us as corpses instead, left to rot there in that brightly-lit room.

Becoming one of the undead has definitely given me a morbid streak.

Eventually we snapped out of it and moved on to other things, but I was left with a deep, abiding curiosity about Tom's past, and how it might be impacting my present. I will admit that I was also having fantasies of healing his ancient pain or whatever, but they didn't last. I'm just not the Florence Nightingale type, and I'd look stupid in a nurse's uniform. I don't have the legs for it.

---

The next night, one of my regular clients wrote me a very polite Dear John letter, basically dropping me because I kept having to refuse articles that required eating and/or going out in the sun. Two others politely informed me that they didn't have any more work for me at this time, but they'd keep my information in light of the excellent work I'd done in the past.

I got to work on Horace's little project as fast as my little vampire brain could manage. Since we wanted to turn this into a book, I was very methodical about it, and I had a whole outline set up by the time Marcus the Driver showed up with the contract for me.

The terms were generous enough to make up for the loss of my clients, and I wondered how much this magazine went for, exactly. I hadn't missed that there was no bar code or cover price.

I guess if you were old enough to need help operating your appliances, you were old enough to have the money for a specialized instruction manual.

The reading I'd done was enlightening, too -- not only did the magazine explain things as varied as dishwashers and body wash, but it had articles aimed at people from different eras in history. I had a feeling that Horace knew every single one of his clients well enough to tailor the publication to their needs, and be able to charge whatever his greedy little heart desired.

Needless to say, I signed the contract.

I also made a copy of some of my outlined ideas and sent those along with Marcus, with a note that I would appreciate any feedback that Mr. Jackson had to offer.

I might think of the old guy as Horace, but I could tell he wanted me to think of him as Mr. Jackson.

Well, what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. Or me.

---

The evening after that was both a Friday and a special lesson night -- we were going clubbing, and none of us wanted to be too hungry, because we were going to be touring someone else's feeding grounds.

It worried me, a little, how easily I fell into that mental vernacular. Feeding grounds, prey, meals. People were still people, but it was hard to be entirely respectful of someone who was food to you, even if they were also going to be sex, and I promised myself I'd work on that. At least I still respected my two regulars -- I needed to come up with something better to call them, too -- and I even had a date with Snowball tomorrow night.

Horace had called just as I was getting dressed to say he was pleased with my outline, and promised to send over a suggestion for a few tweaks. In the age of email, I was bemused to find myself using a courier, even if the courier in question was just the client's chauffeur, but I agreed that Marcus could tuck the envelope into my door.

Interestingly, Horace seemed pleased that I was being taken out to observe the cruising habits of other vampires, something else I filed away for future reference.

"Ready to go?" asked Tom, looking livelier than I'd seen him in a while.

I grinned back at him, still unable to resist that smile, though I did resist the urge to steal a kiss and get smacked. "As long as I'm dressed acceptably," I said, giving a little twirl.

"Looks good to me," he said, stepping back to give me room to arm the alarm and lock the door.

"Oh, hey," I said, following him down the steps to Percival's car, a very swanky luxury model that always felt decadent to ride in. "Are we really stronger than people? Because I think I've noticed it, a little, but I wasn't sure if it was just my imagination."

"We're stronger and faster," he said, grinning a predator's grin for just a moment.

"Cool," I said, and then I stole shotgun. I might still have a thing for Tom, but that didn't mean I wanted to be stuck in the back seat, either. "So, when do I get to see your place, Percival?"

Percival looked amusingly surprised, and then he shrugged. "Maybe tonight, if we find an unclaimed bite."

"Don't," I said, and then I softened it with, "Please. I don't want to start thinking of the guys I sleep with as bites, meals, or food."

Tom chuckled from the back seat. "You didn't think of them as tricks, lays or ass before?" he asked pointedly.

I flushed, but shrugged. "I might have, but at least I still thought of them as people," I said. "Please?"

"All right," said Percival. "You have a valid point, and it would explain why I haven't had any luck finding a mistress. We used to use different terms, more circumspect, even amongst ourselves, because there were always servants watching and listening."

"Well, maybe we should use those," I suggested.

Tom's laugh this time was rich and sensual. "I don't know, I rather enjoy thinking of them as my little nibbles."

That got us all laughing, and somehow that became our agreed-upon term. It was both affectionately cute and suggestively sensual, which exemplified the way I, at least, thought about those men I had been lucky enough to feed upon. Especially Neville and Snowball, my most delectable nibbles.

"Why do some guys taste better than others, anyway?" I asked a few miles later.

Percival shrugged. "Chemistry, I guess. Yours and theirs," he said. "I've noticed you and Tom like the same sort of guy, but they never taste as good to me."

"Sorry," I said, though I wasn't, really. It wasn't like Percival couldn't go find girls on his off nights, or anything. "Maybe we can pick up one of yours tonight, since I've got Snowball coming over tomorrow."

"Snowball?" said Tom, a hopeful note in his voice.

I smiled to myself. "Yep, at eight. You're welcome to join us, he still asks about you."

A pause, and then, "I might."

Percival winked.

Inwardly, I cheered, and then felt a little pathetic for doing so. But only a little.

---

The club we hit reminded me a little bit of Percival's club -- there was valet parking, a long line of resentful beautiful people we skipped right over, and an easily annoyed bouncer who got a lot more respectful when he saw the two guys behind me.

I might be a tiny fish in this pond, but I was swimming with the sharks.

"Isabeau's expecting you," said the big man to Percival. "This your plus two?"

"You can count," said Percival.

Ah, there was the arrogant bastard I remembered from our first meeting.

The bouncer grunted and undid the velvet rope. "Go on in," he said, though he didn't look happy about it.

Inside it wasn't quite the same, less rubber and more silk, less leather and more designer chic. I still didn't fit in, but I didn't stand out quite as badly, either. "This is on your tab, right?" I quipped, spotting a lot of Rolexes, bottles of Dom Perignon, and other symbols of ostentatious wealth. Horace's contract was quite nice, but it wasn't going to get me a gold watch anytime soon.

I admit to being briefly baffled when a woman came toward us saying, "Darlings, so good to see you!"

Then she gave Percival and Tom both kisses on the cheek, planted herself firmly between them and said, "Is this your little accident?"

I snorted. "I'm not puppy piddle," I said, but I couldn't manage to be offended. "I'm Gabriel, you must be Isabeau?"

"Oh you've heard of me!" she said, and it seemed to please her so much I didn't bother to explain that it had been thirty seconds ago from her own bouncer. "Come, come, everything's on me tonight, so get something to celebrate the joyous occasion and meet me back in the lounge." Her face flickered for a moment and I saw a tiny glimpse of her age, and the predator beneath, before she smiled brightly and added, "I've got a tiny misunderstanding to attend to."

"Of course," said Percival, giving her a rather warmer kiss that also seemed to please her.

She grinned and nipped at him teasingly. "Tired of the company of men?"

Percival gave her a flirty look and said, "You eclipse them all."

"Flattery will get you everywhere," she said, and snagged a passing waiter. "Rafael, make sure these men get whatever they like, on the house."

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

And then she was gone, and it seemed suddenly quiet in our little space, despite the pounding music.

"She's quite an interesting person," I said, and all three of them laughed, even the waiter.

"You have no idea," said Rafael. "I've got to deliver these martinis, can I come back for you?"

"We'll be in the lounge," purred Tom in a way that made Rafael's ears perk up. "You can find us there."

"Sure thing," he said, and then he, too, was off, and we were a little island of vampires in a sea of humanity.

We dutifully made our way back to the lounge, and that bouncer, at least, had been paying attention. "The VIP lounge has its own waiters, but if you like I can reassign Rafael to you," she said, smiling her vampire smile.

I wondered how much that job must suck, and Tom said, "How would Rafael feel about that?"

"That depends on if you tip," she said with a little laugh that shivered along my nerves. I shot Percival a surprised look, and he shrugged in a way that said it was a vampire thing and he'd remember to explain if I remembered to ask when we weren't surrounded by people.

"Send him in and we'll see," said Percival, though he softened it with a smile.

"Will do," she said, waving us on in.

Inside, the atmosphere changed. It was all the same music, the same clothes, the same pretenses, but there was something in the air to let me know that this was where the vampires were. And this was also where they kept their nibbles, just in case they were feeling peckish.

"Wow," I whispered to Tom. A boy brushed past us and I could smell his life, sweet and thick like maple syrup, but overlaying that there was another smell, like incense or anointing oil.

"And now you know," said Percival, leading us to an unexpectedly free seating group. I had a feeling it had been recently vacated.

I had to ask. "Why are you two such big fish in this little pond?"

Tom laughed. "Told you," he said, smirking.

Percival rolled his eyes. "Ever curious, just like our little Tom Cat was when he first joined us," he said.

I have to admit I was dying to latch onto that subject change, but I knew better by now. Percival loved to drop hints, but he never elaborated unless he was already of a mind to, the smug bastard. "That's not much of an answer," I said instead.

"I'm old, I'm rich, and I've adapted well. I own my own club, which provides both jobs and," he cough-laughed, "uh, nibbles, to others of our kind."

"So if I keep up with the times, keep adapting and changing, I might be able to keep my spot on this side of the velvet rope?" I asked.

He gave me a sly look. "Marina tells me she gave you Mr. Jackson's card."

I nodded. "He's already contracted the first article, and we're discussing a book in two versions." My eyes flickered out to the sea of people, all of whom were oblivious to our conversation. "One for the older generation of people, and one for the truly ancient."

His eyebrows went up. "Was that your idea, or his?"

"The extra version was mine, but it seemed like something that could sell. Lots of grandparents out there want to be able to get little Timmy's pictures in their email, but they're too afraid of getting a virus or crashing the computer," I said, feeling annoyingly proud of myself for impressing Percival.

His smile was disgustingly self-satisfied. "I knew you were worth taking under our wing," he said.

I rolled my eyes. "Not like I gave you much of a choice," I said, just to be contrary.

I think he might have contradicted that and maybe explained a few of the finer points of the local hierarchy, but Rafael showed up and spoiled the moment.

"What can I get for you boys?" he said, and I couldn't resist leaning in close to get a whiff of him, though I tried to play it off as because of the noise.

"I'd like a White Russian," I said. His scent was dry and dusty, like old books, but it was all him with no trace of vampire that I could tell.

"I'll take a Tom Collins," said Tom. I chuckled and he protested, "What? I still like them."

"I'll have the Laphroaig 25 year," said Percival, looking smug. "If you think Isabeau's budget can handle it."

"Straight up?" said Rafael, clearly taking the challenge to heart.

"Yes, with ice water on the side, please."

I watched Rafael's retreating form with appreciation, then leaned in and asked, "No one's nibbled him?"

"Staff are usually off limits to the regulars, though she likely wouldn't object if we borrowed him for the night," said Percival with a grin.

I shrugged. "He's cute, but not, um, to my taste," I said.

"He smells great to me," said Percival, with just a note of challenge.

"Then I'm happy to bow to your preferences," I replied, remembering my earlier promise. I was easily consoled with the prospect of tomorrow, after all.

"He might not want a kinky foursome with us, you know," said Tom dryly.

"Who wouldn't want that?" said Percival dismissively.

Who, indeed?

---

Once we were settled in with our drinks, it was a little bit like being with visiting royalty. Everyone in the VIP lounge found a reason to come by and feel Percival out about something, and no few of them had questions for Tom, too. A lot of their shine rubbed off about me, especially when Percival let it drop that I was working with Mr. Jackson.

I was going to have to send Marina a bouquet or something, clearly.

"So," a particularly attractive young man -- well, vampire -- said, "I hear you're doing something for Horace Jackson."

"I'm Gabriel," I said. I'd grown tired already of the lack of anything resembling manners. "And you are?"

"Ethan, Ethan Coxton," he said with a chuckle and an adorable British accent. "I've a subscription to Modernize, I was hoping maybe it'd be for that?"

I relaxed and smiled, feeling more in my element. "Yeah, he's asked me to do some articles about computers and the internet. Er, if I may ask, what era are you from?"

He looked quite intrigued, and didn't hesitate to answer. "I'm from the Civil War. Erm, the one in Britain, not yours."

"Oh," I said, hoping my ignorance didn't show. Google would have my back, once I got home. "I take it you're interested in the topic?"

"Oh, yes, actually," and here he got a sly sort of look on his face, "I was wondering if perhaps you'd offer private lessons?"

"Three hundred an hour, and the client brings his own laptop," said Percival firmly.

I laughed. "What he said, I suppose."

"Oh, that's quite reasonable!" said Ethan unexpectedly. "Only... Perhaps the first lesson can be purchasing the item in question?"

Papa didn't raise no fool, as they say, and I knew an opportunity when I saw one. For one thing, it would make great research for the book. "Of course. Why don't I give you my card and you can call me later to schedule your first few lessons?"

I swear, it was like a kid with a present, he was so excited. "Oh, thank you! You have no idea how baffling it can be, all this technology. There wasn't that much of it in my day, and now it's everywhere."

"I'm sure in another few hundred years, I'll feel just the same as you," I said. And then I made a resolution to always keep on top of things, so that this budding business would always be viable, even if something happened to my new investments.

Ethan seemed to appreciate the comment, anyway, and he pocketed my card and moved on to Percival, and they began to talk quietly.

Tom turned to me with a grin and said, "And now you see why he really brought you here."

I shot Percival a grateful look. "It's a brilliant idea, actually, and it'd be great research. Especially if I can get a few different clients to see what works," I said. "Is that normal? I mean, the lessons thing."

"Oh, yeah, especially among the older ones. Ethan gives music lessons, I think, though most anyone over fifty lives off of interest from their investments." He paused, then admitted, "It's normal, too, for us to help you invest and get a foothold, financially. We just... I wasn't prepared for you."

"I know," I said, giving his hand a squeeze. He squeezed back, and I tried not to read too much into it.

But hey, a guy can hope, right?

Chapter 5

"So, I was thinking," I said to Tom, "about tonight." I'd managed to finally lure him into joining me at my place outside of lessons, and I wanted to make it good.

"What about tonight?" he asked, though there was some humor hiding in along with the doubt.

I grinned. "Well, Snowball's coming out. And I was thinking, maybe we could use your tub?" I could only imagine the hedonism of it, basking in all that hot water and feeding, and having sex, all at once. A vampire's wet dream.

He raised his eyebrow. "And how exactly would I explain the security to him?"

"Tell him you're a secret agent. Or a real vampire. It's Snowball, you know he won't care," I said, making my very best puppy eyes. "You know you want to try it, especially since we didn't feed last night."

He laughed. "You're probably right about Snowball, but eventually he'll get curious," he said.

I shrugged. "Maybe eventually I'll want to tell him the truth."

Tom's gaze softened. "It's easy to get attached, when you're young."

I gave him a wry look. "One swallow doesn't make a relationship?"

He laughed, but didn't contradict me.

---

"We've got a surprise for you," I said, grinning.

Snowball grinned right back. "I love surprises," he said excitedly. "Will there be blindfolding involved?"

Tom laughed and shot me a very amused look -- I nodded and pulled a sleep mask out of my pocket. "Just for a few minutes," I said, and then added, "This time."

Snowball chuckled and looked older than his years for a minute. "At least you're the type to ask first," he said.

It made me really sad for him, for a moment, and I wanted to bring him home like a lost puppy. I tried to keep Tom's warning in mind, but it was hard with Snowball being vulnerable like this. "Always," I promised, then slipped the mask over his eyes. "No peeking now."

"No peeking," he promised.

We led him upstairs -- he'd loved the antiques downstairs at Tom's house, but had clearly been afraid to touch anything -- and into the giant bathroom. In addition to the fancy shower that I coveted greatly, he had a whirlpool tub big enough for the three of us. He'd already drawn the water, though the jets were off, and we took a moment to strip before we took off Snowball's blindfold.

"Oh, wow, that's cool. So, bathtub sex?" he said cheerfully.

Tom and I both cracked up laughing. "Just what we had in mind," said Tom, and he got into the tub and started up the jets while I got Snowball out of his clothes.

"Good surprise?" I asked. I had finally learned not to lisp with my fangs out, hooray.

"Second best one tonight," he said, referring to Tom's decision to join us, or so I hoped. I grinned and kissed him, then helped him out of his pants and into the bath.

Ah, god, it was just bliss. I can't explain adequately the pleasure of submerging my cold vampire body into that huge tub of heat. It wasn't better than sex or feeding, but it was better than just about anything else, and since we were going to add both of the other two back into the mix in a moment, I had a feeling I'd remember this night for a long time to come.

"Ohhh, wow, this is nice," said Snowball, sinking in up to his chin. Tom was already limp as boiled spaghetti over by one of the jets, and Snowball and I ranged ourselves out next to him. "I'm so glad Gabe convinced you to share."

Tom chuckled. "What makes you think it was his idea?" he said.

I tried to look innocent. Yeah, right.

"You don't seem the type to have strange boys over on the second date," said Snowball reasonably. "Well, you and me, anyway, I mean, you know Gabe and I..."

"I know," said Tom, "Don't worry, he's been keeping me posted. Tempting me with tales of your deliciousness."

Snowball indulged us in one of his catlike stretches, and we both watched through slitted eyes, hungry and dangerous. "I am delicious," he said, a flash of the confidence that landed him in our bed in the first place.

"Yes," I said, sliding over to curl around him as he relaxed, "You are."

Tom joined me, both of us galvanized by Snowball's little show into cutting our basking short and getting on with the show. "I want to be inside you," I whispered, nipping at his ear.

"I want you inside me," said Tom into his other ear. I will admit, this part we'd discussed beforehand; I wanted Tom to want to make our threesome a regular part of his routine, which wouldn't happen if tonight didn't go smoothly. Even if I only got to see Tom when Snowball came around, it would be worlds better than not seeing him at all.

What can I say, the few times we'd shared nibbles with Percival weren't the same. Tom and I weren't equals, precisely, but there was always that sense that Percival was doing us a favor by joining us. Tom had never made me feel that way, in fact it was a little bit the opposite, like a part of him wondered if he deserved me at all.

If only he'd let me have a say.

Anyway, that line of thought got kicked to the curb, because Snowball deserved my full and avid attention.

"Yes, god yes," Snowball said, legs spreading in the water, inviting us to do whatever we liked with him.

There were a lot of things I really liked about Snowball, and his unabashed wantonness was right at the top of the list.

---

Strangely enough, it was Marina who finally opened up to me about vampire relationships.

"Our blood can be very strong, but vampire blood can't sustain us, not completely," she said one day. We were going over my portfolio -- the stock one, not the writing one -- and she was getting my signature on a few things.

I admit the change of subject caught me off guard, but I wasn't about to let the chance slip. "So even if two vampires wanted to be together, they'd still have to feed?"

She nodded. "Not as often, if they were also feeding on each other, but there's a vitality in humans that we no longer possess."

"Being undead, you mean," I said dryly.

She smiled that predatory smile and said, "Exactly."

I sighed. "Is it really all that rare, then? Vampires in any kind of relationship other than casual?" It was that taking it for granted thing, sneaking up on me. I'd been enjoying my lifestyle with the thought in the back of my head that someday, some guy would come along and be worth settling down with. That he'd find me worth settling down with.

The dreams you don't think about are the hardest to let go, I guess.

Marina surprised me by shaking her head. "No, no, I didn't mean to give you that impression. I've seen all kinds of permutations on the lifestyle, from vampires who don't have sex with their... What is it you've got Percival calling it, nibbles? Anyway, they often feed quite discreetly from the wrist, and stay faithful to their partners that way. And then it doesn't matter if their nibbles are a regular snack, because there's never any risk of fluid exchange."

I tried to imagine feeding separate from sex, and some of my discomfort with that idea must've shown on my face, because she chuckled. "Not for you? Well, there's open relationships, or closed ones with a specific grouping. Three is the minimum, two vampires and a human, and only if the vampires are feeding off of each other enough to cut down their human feedings. Four is preferable, in case the human gets sick and can't donate."

"But we can't get sick, right?" I asked, though of course I knew it wouldn't be a good idea for someone who was under the weather to make it worse by having a pair of vampires snacking on them.

"Vampires can't, no," she acknowledged.

I thought for a minute, then asked the question that had been skirting around the edges of my mind since we'd been to Isabeau's club. "So, what about those humans who smell claimed, who get into the VIP lounges and party with the vampires?"

She chuckled. "You won't like this, but you must realize that they're as much cattle as anything else. The scent of another vampire brands them as owned, at least until the moon washes it away."

"Is that the full moon, or just 28 days?"

"The full moon," she said. Then she pulled out another sheet from the endless folders she'd brought, and made me pay attention to my finances again.

By the time she was done, I'd almost lost the idea in the whirl of numbers, but then she left and it resurfaced in the emptiness of my apartment.

Vampires in relationships, what will they think of next?

---

"Tell me about vampire powers, Uncle Percival!" I said, setting down the tray of hot chocolate and trying not to roll my eyes. Despite being one of the undead, the idea of magic powers still seemed like story time to me.

"Your mouth is going to get you in trouble one of these days," said Percival, chuckling and shaking his head.

"You have no idea," said Tom, waggling his eyebrows.

Percival snorted. "He's barely learned not to lisp, and I'm supposed to trust him near my cock?"

"It's worth the risk," I teased, sitting between them and sipping my own drink. I love whipped cream, at least on my hot chocolate, and I got some on my nose only half by accident.

Tom surprised me by licking it off, then pressing a soft kiss to my mouth. When he sat back, he looked shy as hell, but I was grinning like a loon.

Percival rolled his eyes. "Do you want to learn or fuck?"

"Both, of course," I said, sitting back. "Go on, I'll be good."

"When you're young, you don't get a lot of powers right off the bat," he said, putting on his best schoolmaster tone.

I kept my mouth shut. Aren't you proud?

"You'll slowly grow in strength and speed until you can perform feats that seem amazing. You've already noticed it a little bit, I'm sure, and that will increase over the next few decades," he said, then gave me a pointed look.

"What?" I said, as innocently as possible.

He took a sip of his coffee and continued on. "There's a small amount of mind control over humans that develops first as the pleasure of your bite, and eventually grows to a very limited eye-contact-related mind control. You'll be able to convince someone to let you feed when you've been striking out, or make them forget you."

"Won't they wonder about the bite marks?" I asked.

"Not forget that they were with someone at all," clarified Tom, "just forget the details. Like being too drunk to really remember, they wouldn't be able to pick you out of a crowd later."

"Oh, well, that's gotta be useful," I said, then I laughed. "It's a good thing you never did that with me."

"A very good thing," said Percival dryly. "Once you get to be a century or two old, you may be able to train yourself to move unnoticed through crowds. This is a form of the same thing, telling them not to see you, not to notice you."

"So it doesn't work on security cameras," I said with a chuckle.

Percival sighed. "Security cameras are one of my least favorite inventions of the twentieth century," he said. "Especially since they're becoming ubiquitous in the twenty-first."

"Okay, so far that's all believable. What about stuff like turning into a bat, or flying?"

"No shape shifting, that's not our purview," he said, in a tone that suggested we'd be having a conversation later about just whose purview it was. "Some older vampires have a limited ability to defy gravity, not precisely flight, but enough to seem like it to a human."

"Wow, neat," I said, wondering if I'd grow up to be a gravity-defying vampire. Which sounded like a ridiculous comic book character, and made me hide my smile in my mug.

"The only real shape shifting we have is the fangs," he said, opening his mouth so I could watch his slide out, "and some of us get claws, too." He held up a hand and the fingertips lengthened and changed, the nails growing thick and strong and most of all sharp.

"Damn, now that is cool," I said, gently touching the curve of one. "Are they poison or anything?"

"They will infect a human just as biting will," he confirmed, switching back. "I only use them in dire emergencies, because they cause a lot of undue speculation when a body turns up dead of wounds caused by a human-shaped hand with animal-like claws."

"Oh, wow, yeah, that would suck," I said. "So, that's it?"

"That's it," he confirmed. "There's a few things that show up here and there rarely, but that's nothing you'll need to worry about unless you live to be over a hundred."

I got a suspicion. "Do either of you have one of those really cool rare powers?" Tom flushed, and Percival looked shifty. "Tom?" I asked pointedly.

"I have slightly more advanced telepathy with humans," he said with a sigh. "I can read surface thoughts and plant simple ideas."

"That's why you're really running with the top dogs, isn't it?" I asked, looking from one to the other.

Tom nodded. "It is, and why you'll be kept safe until you either do or don't develop the ability. It runs along 'family lines'."

That was good to know. "But not for a hundred years," I said.

"Tom started hearing thoughts when he was pretty young, actually," said Percival, clearly intent to get it all out on the table while Tom was willing to talk. "Less than fifty years as a vampire, wasn't it?"

"About that," said Tom. "Look, it's not like reading a book or anything, and it can be really annoying, but I promise that as long as I'm alive in fifty years, if you do start hearing people, I'll be there to teach you to keep them out."

"Huh, yeah, that would be annoying," I said. "Well, fifty years is still more than a lifetime to me right now, so don't worry, I'm not going to panic about my upcoming mind power explosion."

"Good," said Percival. "That really does cover it, however, so I'm going to cut tonight's lesson short." He paused for effect and said, "I have a date."

"A proper date?" I asked. "Not just nibbles?"

"A proper date. Teaching you got me thinking that modern life had led me away from seeing humans as anything more than talking food, and I decided it was time I remind myself what a real companion is worth," he said.

I felt weirdly proud, of myself and of him. "That's great for you. And her. Her?"

"Her. Donna Bell, an astronomer and day sleeper," said Percival. "She's also a big fan of English literature from the last few eras. All of the ones I was alive during, to be specific."

"You're sure about this?" said Tom, which surprised me a little.

"You don't think he should look for a mistress?" I asked. I didn't think Percival would appreciate 'girlfriend.'

Tom shook his head. "It's not that, it's just that it's a big deal to take someone into your life."

"It's a date, Tom, not a commitment," said Percival, waving his hand. "I'm not about to out our community or anything."

"So, what will you do?" I asked, curious. I'd had a lot of trouble thinking of things I could do with Neville that avoided the food issue, though he did sometimes eat the things I bought for him at a local bakery, describing the sweet flavors so vividly I could almost taste it. Food porn as foreplay.

"We're going to the theater, and then I have arranged for a certain manuscript of interest to both of us to be available for part of the evening," he said, looking smug. "Scheduling has prevented me from joining her for dinner, however."

"Smart," I said, wondering if Neville liked the theater. Or if anything was playing that I could sit through, for that matter. "But then, you have centuries of practice."

Percival smirked. "Exactly."

Smug bastard.

---

After he left, I brought out the Irish Cream to spike our hot chocolate, and Tom loosened up just a little.

"Will you tell me about when you were turned?" I asked.

All of his relaxation vanished, just like that. "Well, it wasn't an accident," he quipped, but his face didn't match the flippant tone.

"Did you have a couple of years to get used to the idea and everything?" I sat down close to him, but not quite touching, offering him space if he wanted it.

Much to my surprise, he curled close like a cat wanting comfort, and laid his head on my shoulder. "Not all vampires do things that way, though it's the approved manner," he said, melancholy leaking through in his tone.

I put my mug down and my arms around him, offering silent encouragement. This was one time I'd refrain from asking all the questions brimming in my head. I have been known to have tact sometimes, just not perhaps as often as others might like.

"The vampire that made me thought I was smart, adaptable, and innovative," he said, after a long, tense pause. "He was a regular at the bar, though of course you couldn't pick up men for sex in those days, or even women you didn't intend to marry or pay for."

"Must have made feeding harder," I said quietly.

He laughed wryly. "It was a whole different world, trust me." He shifted, getting closer and more comfortable, and something in my chest hurt just a little. "I suppose getting turned did save me from the tedium of a wife and children."

"Or being a confirmed bachelor," I said. "I always wondered what went on at those gentlemen's clubs."

He chuckled this time, and a hand snaked around my waist. "I was never gentleman enough to find out," he said. "My master was, but he didn't bother to give me entree. That wasn't what he'd turned me for."

There was a really long pause this time, during which I filed away for reference that at one point or another in history, a vampire who made another vampire was his master. And then I was glad that wasn't the case now, because I'd have made a bad servant, slave or serf. I shoved that thought aside, and pressed a kiss to Tom's curly hair, inhaling his familiar scent. "Why'd he do it?" I asked, gently rubbing his back.

"He hadn't inherited his own master's powers, and he wanted to see if it had skipped a generation or died out in his line altogether," said Tom bitterly. "I was just an experiment in vampire genetics to him."

"Well, you're more than that to me," I said, hoping it wasn't the wrong time and place.

Tom squeezed a proper hug and said, "I know."

There wasn't anything more I could say to that, so I just held him for a long while, until he moved away and picked up his now-cool chocolate. "So now you know," he said, trying to keep his tone light.

"Now I know," I replied, picking up my cup and taking his away. "Let me warm these for us."

He chuckled and let me go, giving us both the space to digest things.

I could tell there was a lot more to his story, but right now I felt I'd gotten a very important piece of the puzzle, and I wanted to make it fit before I went looking for the next.

---

Meeting with Horace the next evening was anticlimactic, to say the least. "I've got the first draft for you," I said by way of greeting, putting the envelope in Barnes' outstretched hand.

Horace looked surprised, the old bastard, but I'd read the contract carefully enough that I knew I had to stay on top of things, or forfeit a penalty. "Most excellent," he said, accepting it from Barnes. "Tea?"

"Please," I said, with unfeigned enthusiasm. "Am I allowed to ask how he makes it so good?"

Horace chuckled, and I thought I saw a tiny note of pride in Barnes' face. "Barnes keeps his own counsel on that matter, I am afraid, though you aren't the first to ask."

"It's the leaves, sir," said Barnes, all dignified and formal in a way I could never have pulled off.

"I'll keep that in mind," I said, accepting the cup he brought me with much more grace than last time. "Thank you."

"Of course, sir," he said, snagging Horace's cup for a refresher before fading back into the background.

"Now," said Horace, settling back into his chair with enviable poise, "What's this I hear about you selling off our hard-won knowledge?"

"It's my hard-won knowledge," I said, unable to resist the protest, "And it's research. Ethan is right in the middle of the ages of my vampire audience, and he'll be an excellent guinea pig for my methods. We can still put out the first article, but for the book we'll want to cover more ways of understanding, and that means finding out how, as a modern vampire, I can relate the workings of a computer to someone born before the printing press was invented."

I'd practiced the spiel after Percival warned me that word was already going around the vampire grapevine about my lessons with Ethan, with great interest in the results.

Horace looked suitably impressed, and I relaxed a tiny fraction. "Very well, then, I will allow it, but you should charge more. Five hundred an hour for anyone but Coxton, and if they complain, refer them to me as your manager."

I blinked at the figure, then shrugged. "Will you be expecting a cut, then?"

He waved the thought away dismissively. "The proceeds from your book will more than suit me," he said. "You are raising a great deal of interest, so you'd better come through. We've already had two new subscriptions."

He sounded smug enough about it that I had to ask, "I take it that's a lot?"

"We charge according to the value of our information," he said, "and so yes, two new clients is a very good month's work."

"Well," I said, saluting him with my teacup, "Here's to being valuable, then."

"Indeed," he replied dryly. But he did tip his cup to me, so that was something.

I didn't know what, but definitely something.

---

"Tooth still hurting?" asked Neville the next time I saw him. I'd brought over an assortment of macaroons, the traditional flavored French ones, not the coconut kind. Everything from chocolate to rose, and they were sitting on a plate between us as we sipped tea.

"I don't really like macaroons," I said sheepishly. This, at least, was true -- they were too sticky-sweet for me, even in the tiny bite size I'd bought.

He chuckled. "You spoil me," he said, "I guess I'm just not used to it."

I shrugged, nuzzling at his neck. "You spoil me, too, indulging in food porn and letting me leave marks on all your sensitive parts," I teased, feeling my own hunger start to rise. It wasn't as sharp lately, which Percival assured me was the result of settling into my new life as well as keeping up with regular feeding instead of letting it slide.

Neville blushed, and turned to claim a hot, sweet kiss. "You really don't mind that I'm, you know," he said, running a hand over his round belly.

"I like you just as you are," I said, glad that it had grown to be the truth. I hadn't been sure of him at first, but once I got to know him, the gentle chubbiness was just as much a part of him as his plants, his sun-worship, and his love of food. We were meeting in his house tonight, and I loved the way the moon shone down through the skylight while we sat.

I tried not to wish too hard that I could have seen the sun streaming in, instead.

He picked up one of the macaroons and we both leaned in and smelled the delicate rose scent rising up off of it. "You're sure you don't want any?" he asked. I was amused at the note in his voice that said that he didn't want me to want any.

"I'm sure," I said, kissing him. "Tell me how it is to you, though."

He took a bite, making an ecstatic face as his teeth sank through the soft treat. "Mmmm, oh, it's so good, it's just rich and sweet," he said, and for once I didn't mind him talking with his mouth full. He chewed, letting the treat dissolve, then swallowed. "The rose flavor is really nice, floral but still sweet, and the filling has a creaminess to it that helps take the edge off so it's not too perfumey."

I whimpered a little at the thought of it, and kissed him again, tasting just a hint of rose and sugar-sweetness. "You should write a food column," I said, nuzzling at his cheek. "I love the way you describe things."

He flushed and looked terribly pleased. "You think so? I mean, you're not just saying that?"

"I really think so," I said. I wondered if I could hook him up with my old restaurant review editor and get something started. "If you have the time."

He was busy eating the second half of his macaroon, so I gave myself a moment to watch and admire the pinkness of his cheeks, the smooth roundness that translated down to his whole body. He was lush and ripe, and I wondered again that no other vampire had claimed him before this, he had such life in him.

He swallowed. "You're staring again," he said, but it wasn't accusatory. "Should we save the rest for later?"

Despite the note of eagerness in his voice, I knew that if we skipped ahead to the main course I wouldn't get to enjoy him enjoying the rest of his treats. "One more?" I asked, hoping that was sufficient compromise.

He grinned. "Maybe two," he conceded, picking up a coffee macaroon.

I couldn't imagine cloistering Neville away from the world he loved so much, but I could imagine wanting to.

---

"I've got to go out of town on business," said Tom, the next time I saw him. He'd been spotty on the lessons since his confession, but I was trying not to push.

"Oh," I said, disappointed. "How does that work?"

"Client's paying for a private jet," he explained. "It'll be a night flight, but there's also a lightproof emergency compartment."

I nodded. "Are we going to put off lessons, or will I just be seeing Percival and Marina?" I asked.

"I hear you've got Ethan's computer lessons, too," he said with a grin. "How's that working out?"

I shrugged. "Neither good nor bad so far, though I think he was hoping he'd pick it all up faster." In truth, I really wasn't sure how it was going, but we'd only had one lesson so far.

At least Horace was pleased with me. He definitely wanted to give the book thing a try, so I needed to find some way to make point and click work for Ethan, so I could make it work for other people his age.

"I've heard good things about your article on the grapevine," said Tom, as if reading my line of thought.

I shrugged, but I was smiling. "When will I be a part of this grapevine, anyway?"

"You already are, you hear stuff from me and Percival," he said. "And Marina, I'm sure, she loves gossip."

I chuckled. "I suppose that's true. She was telling me Isabeau is thinking of passing off the club to run a specialty restaurant of some kind."

"She says that every year," said Tom, waving off the news. "Isabeau just likes to have people tell her that the club wouldn't be the same without her."

That sounded like the woman I'd met, for sure. "Well, so I'm at the gullible end of the grapevine," I said with a chuckle. "Perhaps I should go visit sometime and tell her how much I love the club, and how much her personality contributes to the atmosphere."

Tom snorted. "She'd love it, but I doubt you could keep a straight face."

"You've got me there." Now that I had to hit some sort of bar or club every few days, I was already growing weary of the ones where you had to keep up appearances or be relegated to the role of small, hungry fish. "I'd much rather go to Chelsea's."

"Heard from Snowball lately?" asked Tom, interest not at all feigned.

I grinned. "Yeah, he's eager for me to slot him in. If I thought I could manage to see him and not bite, I'd do it more often, but as it is we have a date for next week. Will you be back?"

Tom shrugged. "Probably not. But I did want to ask if you'd water my plants and make sure my bathtub doesn't get lonely," he said, dangling a spare key in front of me.

"Oooh, you said the magic words." I snagged it with a grin. "Maybe I can lure Neville over to see to the plants, he's got a green thumb like you wouldn't believe."

"Just don't kill them," said Tom wryly.

I laughed, but we still wrote down a watering schedule for me so I wouldn't forget. I'm the first to admit that I don't really have the magic touch when it comes to growing things.

Well, green, growing things, anyway.

---

Ethan Coxton's house was impressive much the same way as Tom's rather than Horace's more intimidating wealth. It was in a good neighborhood, the exterior kept pristine and yet with a feeling of original vintage, and filled with antiques from every era Ethan had been alive in. Well, or undead in, I guess.

"You've got a beautiful home," I said, wondering if I would soon start collecting things with an eye toward having them around in a hundred years, or five hundred. The leaps in technology made me wonder if vampires would be able to stay hidden that long.

Ethan smiled and inclined his head graciously. "Thank you, I've done what I can to remember all the times of my life," he said.

"It's remarkably uncluttered, for all that it has a feel of encompassing many years," I said. Despite the obvious old age of many of the items, his style lacked ostentation. It was a home, not a museum, and each object gave me a sense that it had once held a purpose for its owner.

I resisted the urge to touch things.

He looked pleased. "I try to keep only those things that I can use, or hold a lot of memories for me," he said, leading me back to his study. I could imagine the room would be full of light during the day, but at night there was an amazing view of the city. Instead of having the desk facing the door, he'd arranged it so he could see the windows as he worked. "I think I have everything set up correctly here?" he said, clearly anxious.

I checked that the laptop had power, and was pleased to see he'd acquired a stand to bring it up above the level of the desk for viewing, and a wireless keyboard and mouse. "I take it you haven't hooked these up yet?" I asked, touching the mouse gently.

He shook his head, boyishly flustered. "No, I couldn't quite figure it all out, I'm sorry."

"It's okay, I'm happy to walk you through it." After all, it's what he was paying me for, and we had all evening ahead of us.

---

In the end, it was the metaphor of a conductor and his baton that finally got Ethan to understand about the mouse, the idea that you could point to something, make a gesture -- clicking, right-clicking or double-clicking, in the case of the computer -- and expect it to respond from afar. Windows and pages seemed easy enough for him, the analogy to physical documents much more readily accessible for him now that he understood that he was manipulating the data from afar.

I took as many notes as he did, and at the end of the night he gave me a respectful handshake and a big fat check, and wouldn't let me leave until we'd scheduled another session.

"This will open up a whole world to me, Gabriel, you don't really understand how important this is," he said excitedly.

I grinned back at him, resisting the urge to flirt. He was really cute when he was excited, hazel eyes going all sharp and greenish, especially when he caught on to some point or another. His skin was the same pale white that all caucasian vampires developed sooner or later, and his hair was a dark, rich brown that I bet used to be much lighter, before he spent five hundred years out of the sun.

"I do understand, Ethan, I promise," I said, trying to imagine having the means and opportunity to be online, but not the basic understanding of technology. "My whole business, heck, half my life was online before I was turned."

"And now?" he asked, curious.

"Well, now you pay me more than I could ever make writing, to help you get the skills I used to take for granted," I said, teasing just a little.

His answering grin was brilliant. "Then we're doing each other a favor." He looked a little sly and then asked, "You'll stick to the same rate for me?"

I laughed. "You guys gossip more than high school girls, I swear," I said. "Yes, even after Horace makes me raise my rates, you'll get this same one for being my first client. After all, you're getting the unpolished trial-and-error lessons."

"Good," he said, looking terribly smug. "It's only fair, it was my idea."

"I suppose it was," I said. We'd meandered to the front door, so I took that as my cue to go. "I'll see you in a few days?"

"I'm already looking forward to it," he said, opening the door for me. "And Gabriel."

"Yeah?" I asked, turning back.

He had that same shy, boyish smile on his face he'd had earlier, and I wondered if I was being manipulated or flirted with. "It's not just the lessons I'm looking forward to."

I smiled back. "Me, too," I said, giving his hand a squeeze as I went down the steps to my car.

Whichever one it was, I was smart enough to play along.

---

Tom was gone long enough that I had a chance to take Neville to his place to help with the plants after all. Even though I'd followed the regimen he gave me, there was one scraggly little fern that seemed determined to die on me.

"He's not getting the right sun here, that's all," said Neville.

I bit my lip, then shrugged. "Let's find another spot for him, I guess," I said, though I worried that he wouldn't be too pleased that we'd rearranged.

Neville kissed me. "Don't worry, I saw another plant that'll do better here, so we'll just swap them," he said.

He did that, and then he got a wicked gleam in his eye and began swapping plants out here and there until everything was in a position that he felt would bring it optimal sun. He then rewrote my watering instructions in much more detail, and promised to argue his case with Tom.

Personally, I wasn't sure if Tom would even notice, as long as the plants continued to thrive.

"You could use a plant or two in your place," teased Neville as we walked back.

I shrugged. "I'm bad with them, but if you want to pick some out and give me directions, I'm willing to give it a go," I said.

We headed up the steps and inside, and his brow furrowed. "I'd have to see it in the daylight."

I sighed, but I figured this was the best chance I'd have to test out my in-closet hidey hole. "I have to leave really early for a meeting," I said, "but you're welcome to stay and let yourself out."

He looked surprised enough that I felt bad for how long it had taken me. "You're sure?" he asked.

I chuckled and kissed him, pushing the door shut and him up against it. "I'm sure," I said. "You don't need to steal my laptop, after all, you could buy it and this whole place twice over."

He blushed and laughed, but then I nibbled on his neck and it turned to sweet moans. "Mmm, all right, will do."

I grinned. "There's even pastry for breakfast, I'll be sure to leave you some." I'd originally bought them to feed to him tonight, but this was worth the sacrifice. As long as I could get him tired out enough to sleep before dawn, I could set up a believable hurried-breakfast mess in the kitchen and vanish into my cubby. I'd have to remember to take my phone, keys and wallet, but I could do it.

I hoped, anyway.

"You know just what to say to a guy," he said, kissing me soundly. "Show me how to arm the alarm when I leave?"

"Oh, sure, you just do this," I said, showing him the shortcut to arm it without the code. "Just don't forget anything important inside, you'll only have a few seconds to get out and shut the door."

"Is that all I need to know?" he asked.

"I'll set up everything else on the panel," I said, giving him a kiss. I'd need to make sure that only the bedroom was set to be lightproof, which I hoped could be explained by the blackout curtains. Just to be sure, I said, "No plants in the bedroom, though, it doesn't get any light at all."

"I'd noticed," he said wryly, pulling me down the hall one kiss at a time. "Living room, office, maybe some herbs in the kitchen."

"You could cook with them," I said, forgetting for a moment that I couldn't eat whatever he made.

He chuckled. "You only want to eat me anyway," he protested. I couldn't argue.

"I've got to do the security thing," I said, once we got to the bedroom door. "Wait for me?"

His laugh this time was positively wicked. "I'll try not to start without you," he teased.

I made it quick.

And then, I took a long time and got us both really, really tired out. He slipped into slumber with no problem, and I indulged myself by staying to hold him for a little while longer.

Eventually, though, it was time, and I slipped out of bed and into the kitchen. First, a rinsed-out coffee cup, some crumbs on a plate, and two pastries missing from the box. Then I set the coffee maker to make him some about 8 hours from when he fell asleep, and came back into the bedroom to gather my things.

Wallet, keys, phone -- put on silent -- and I made a show of using the bathroom to make some noise, just in case he was paying attention. Then the sunrise alarm beeped, I kissed his sleeping forehead, and into the compartment I went.

It only felt a little bit like a coffin lid closing to slide the panel shut after me, really.

Chapter 6

I'll say one thing for Tom, that little compartment was damned comfortable. A light came on as soon as the door sealed, and a little fan as well, the whisper of it blending smoothly into the background noises of my home. I wondered how they managed that, but I figured it was probably non-reflective something or other and lots of precautions. After all, it wasn't like I needed to breathe.

There was just enough room for me to stand uncomfortably next to the chair, and I found one of the wall pouches to slip my things into. Then I settled in, pulled the thankfully clean blanket over my lap, and stared at the ceiling, thinking about how much better it would be to have stayed there in Neville's arms.

At least, until he woke up and found me dead beside him.

Sunrise seemed to wait forever to come this time. I had no heartbeats to count, and my breathing rate grew unreliable as soon as I began to think about it. I considered grabbing my watch, or even opening the laptop, but I knew that as soon as I did that I'd go, and so I waited.

Sunset, on the other hand, came as fast as it always did, the life slipping back into me like feeling returning to a limb that's fallen asleep. I took a deep breath to yawn and appreciated the fresh, cool air from outside, then stretched leisurely, finding there was just enough room in the tiny space to do so.

I nearly opened it up and stepped out right then, but I remembered Tom's warnings and turned on the security monitor. I was lucky I did, too, because there was Neville, standing in my living room talking to someone I'd never seen before. I wondered idly if this thing had a recording function when I saw the stranger's mouth form a single word: vampire. It felt like an ice cube down my spine, but more than that, it hurt.

My sweet Neville that I'd trusted and cared for had brought this man into my home and put me in danger, and on the heels of the hurt came a cold, implacable anger.

It took some doing, but fortunately I'm not the sort of man who does things out of anger much, so I managed to shove down the feelings and think things through logically. Tom was still out of town, so I pulled out my phone and sent a silent text message to Percival. Then I began to look at the console for the video more carefully, watching as they looked through the house, flipping up the rug in the office and totally missing the hiding place there, checking in the kitchen and bathroom, then coming into the bedroom next.

I kept expecting my heart to race, but instead I stopped even breathing as I waited, still and silent. They poked around in the closet, but it was too well-concealed. They'd even put in a little custom-built shoe organizer along the wall and slotted my shoes into it, so that the wall didn't look like it could be moved without displacing all my shoes. The contractors were clever, and thorough, and I knew that it was all that was saving me.

For now.

Percival sent a message back warning me to stay where I was, silent and hidden.

He'd called the security company and used the voice code that Tom had given me, and apparently him, to get them to tap into the video feed. The man in my house was a dangerous man indeed, and no one known to associate with vampires could come to my rescue. It would only confirm to him that I was what he suspected me to be, and force me to abandon my old life completely.

A lot of this I learned, later, of course, but when someone like Percival tells you in no uncertain terms to hide or die, you listen. Or at least I listened, leaning back in my chair and letting myself slip into that place of perfect stillness. It was almost like meditating, except there were no breaths to count, no need to clear my thoughts, though I did achieve a certain clarity.

Whatever happened here tonight, I was going to find out why Neville had betrayed me.

What actually happened next was, I have to admit, a stroke of genius on Percival's part.

He had a pizza delivered.

Neville answered the door out of sheer confusion, despite the quiet protests of the vampire hunter. The kid cheerfully asked something, and a conversation ensued that sent them both into a tiny bit of a panic. Percival told me later that he'd instructed the pizza boy to be sure he relayed the message that I'd called for it on my way home, and he'd been offered an extra tip to wait if I got delayed in traffic and he beat me home.

Neville paid for and accepted the pizza so the kid would leave, then he forcibly kicked out the other guy, angry and guilty. The man left, though he didn't look convinced. I'd have to be very careful for a while if I was going to remain predator instead of prey.

Once he was gone, Percival texted me to stay hidden. They determined through mysterious vampire methods that the hunter had left the vicinity, and then Percival came knocking at the door. He bullied his way inside and distracted Neville long enough for me to slip out and then walk back in, acting properly surprised that Neville was still here.

"My m-meetings today got cancelled and I wanted to surprise you, maybe take you back to Incanto now that your tooth is better," he lied, and very badly.

"I'm afraid I already had plans," I said, opening up the box and serving pizza to all three of us. I'd puke my guts up if I had to, and I was sure Percival would manage something. "What do I owe you for the pizza?"

"Oh, n-nothing, I, I mean, you feed me all the time, it's no big d-deal," he stammered.

I glanced over, and saw Percival had thrown off his affable facade and become more like the man I'd seen that first night. I'd nearly forgotten that awful face, hungry and angry and cruel, and very, very old.

"Why did you let someone else into my house, Neville?" I asked, picking a pepperoni off the pizza and making it vanish up my sleeve with a magician's pass. I'd have to throw away this dress shirt, but it would be worth it.

Neville started, and nearly dropped his plate. Percival relieved him of it, and I set mine down as well.

"His security is monitored," said Percival. "When the alarm wasn't turned on, they checked to see if you'd left yet."

"Why would you do that to me, Neville?" I asked, letting the hurt and anger bleed into my voice.

Neville paled.

His voice came out a high, scared whisper. "I thought you were a vampire."

"I thought you liked it when I played the vampire to your tasty morsel," I replied, still angry, still hurt. Still betrayed.

Neville swallowed. "He, he s-spotted the marks, at my gym."

Percival snorted at that, but I shut him up with a glare. I knew that Neville went through periods where he tried to exercise and lose the warm roundness I'd grown to love so much.

I'd never get to enjoy it again, now, and I hated the hunter for that, just a little.

"You let a stranger into my house, the very first time I trusted you to stay over," I said, shaking my head. "I thought... Well, I suppose it's my own fault we weren't more than that to each other."

"I'm so sorry," said Neville, looking down at his hands. "He followed me here, you know. He swore you never left. He... he said a lot of things."

Percival and I exchanged glances; if our regular nibbles were being stalked by a hunter, that could be a very big problem. "So you let a stalker into Gabriel's house, let him case the place and examine everything?" said Percival, his voice filled with disgust.

I thought Neville might cry. I half felt like it myself, seeing something I'd dreamed of fall apart so easily. But in the end, I hadn't given him any real reason to trust me, and a dozen of them to believe the hunter's fantastical story. "I think you should go now, Neville. Don't call me again."

He blinked, and his eyes glittered. "I'm sorry," he whispered again, and then he went.

I turned away from Percival until I could wipe the hurt and loneliness off my face, school it into something like blankness. "We'll have to watch him, to make sure the hunter leaves him alone."

"You care if he gets hurt?" said Percival, surprised.

I hated that I did, but fortunately I had a better reason to offer. "We need to know if this was a coincidence, or if this guy is really stalking our prey. Your girlfriend could be in danger. Or Snowball."

Percival nodded. "John Wickham won't leave someone alive if he thinks they were consorting with vampires."

That was a name I wasn't going to soon forget.

I swore. "He -- Neville, I mean -- he was in Tom's house with me. Taking care of the plants."

I'd never get my plants now, and some part of me wanted to hunt down John Wickham and hurt him for taking that away from me. For taking my Neville away. Even though I knew it took two to build this betrayal, a part of me shied away from blaming Neville too much.

I'd have to delete Neville's number from my phone to keep from calling him, I thought.

Little did I know, right?

---

I want to say it was a tragedy that got splashed across the front page, but the truth is, Neville didn't even make the newspapers. One death in a city the size of San Francisco isn't much to write home about, after all. I wouldn't even have seen the obituary if Percival hadn't brought the paper with him, and even then it didn't seem real.

I was annoyed that whoever had written it didn't talk about his love of plants, as if they'd never seen his home. It said he was the victim of a mugging, shot point-blank in the heart and his wallet emptied. Reading about the parts of Neville's life I'd never shared hurt more than I expected it to.

It still hurts to wonder how long he'd have lived, if he'd never met me.

Percival swore to me that it wasn't the vampires' doing, but a part of me doubted him. I had no reason to believe he wouldn't lie to me if he thought it was for my own good, but at the same time, the sketchy details in the obit all pointed back to the hunter rather than his intended prey.

Percival moved me out of my apartment the very next day.

It was weird, how organized everything was. Percival came over and gave me the news, and while we stood in the kitchen and I wept like the besotted idiot I was, men came in and cleared out the place, leaving only an overnight bag, my laptop, and the amenities that were still hidden in the various lightproof compartments. Then, once I'd showered and collected myself, another group of men came in to dismantle the security system and erase every sign that a vampire used to live here.

"That closet will have to stay truncated, but we'll put some structural-looking supports in there to explain the foreshortening," said the foreman. I nodded, but he was talking to Marina, who had arrived with his crew.

"That's fine. The illusion needs to be as perfect as we can make it," she said.

My brows knit. "How will I explain moving like this to my neighbors? I've lived here a long time."

"Your father died suddenly, and your mother's health took a turn for the worse. You're moving back home to grant his dying wish and take care of her," said Percival. "You look like hell, they'll believe it."

I swallowed, then nodded. "How will I pay for all this?" I asked, gesturing at the men busily cleaning every trace of my second life out of my beloved apartment.

"We have an emergency fund," said Percival. "You'll pay into it once you're able, but it's on us now."

"Oh," I said. It still blindsided me sometimes, how tight-knit a community they were in some ways. We were. Vampires might posture and pose, but in the end they all knew that the safety of even the youngest of them meant the safety of all of them -- of us -- in the long run.

"What about Snowball?" I asked. None of my other nibbles had been more than one-nighters, but Snowball was in as much danger as Neville if Wickham found him.

"That's up to you," said Percival. He led me outside to his car, leaving Marina inside to deal with everything. According to her, by Tuesday there would be a little old lady living there with her long-time companion, grateful for the discount on the rent that enabled them to move into such a nice neighborhood.

If only they knew.

Once Percival had me settled in the car, we began to drive. "I won't make you leave the city, but you'll have to go underground. He found out too much. He's too ruthless."

"So if I want Snowball, he has to come with me," I said, throat still tight. I might not have to breathe, but hurting still closed everything off the same way it always did. And no, just for the record, my tears were not blood. Just tears.

Percival nodded. "Honestly, I think he's a good candidate, from what you and Tom have told me."

"Will Tom have to give up his place?" I asked, remembering how proud he'd been of it, how he'd loved the open downstairs with its public beauty. How he'd still hidden away upstairs in his fortress most of the time.

"We don't know yet," said Percival. "I've contacted him, and he wants to see how everything falls out."

"Will I still be able to work? I'll have to refuse the restaurant review I was offered after Neville..." I stopped, unable to think of it. It was to have been a trial run for the column I wanted him to have, and all of his love for eating was lost to the world now. All those words that I'd drank in like the sweetest wine, and now I was the only one who'd ever hear them.

"You can still work, as long as it doesn't involve too much going out. You'll be watched, monitored. It won't be the life we hoped for you."

I laughed harshly. "That makes however many of you, plus one."

His hand squeezed my leg, just a little too hard. "I'm sorry about Neville. I didn't realize how much you'd come to care for him."

"I told you," I said softly, feeling the loss inside me, empty and sad, "They're not just food to me."

---

In the end, I called Snowball and asked him to meet me. I crossed the Bay Bridge and slipped myself into his side of life for an evening, something I'd never done before, and he was so excited and sweet when I came to pick him up that it hurt, just a little.

"Show me your place?" I asked, when he came to the car.

He flushed. "You don't want to see it, it's a mess," he said.

I raised an eyebrow. "You don't like where you live?"

"Are you kidding me?" he laughed. "Have you seen my neighborhood?"

I looked around, and took in the disrepair of the buildings, the scraggly or more often nonexistent yards, the dilapidated cars. "I guess that's why you come to the city so much," I said, getting back in the driver's seat.

He climbed in and buckled his seatbelt. "I don't suppose you're about to offer me a spot as your kept boy?" he teased.

I actually blushed. "Maybe," I said, as lightly as I could manage. "Why, are you available?"

"I think Atari could live without me," he retorted. He was a game tester, I remembered, one of the temps that got shuffled from company to company as the release dates came around.

I got us onto the freeway and drove aimlessly, grateful that the traffic had emptied out this long past rush hour. "Have you ever seen this guy?" I asked, pulling up the best of the surveillance stills of Wickham on my brand spanking new iPhone. I was still me, but a lot of my details had changed, and my phone number -- and provider -- were only the smallest part.

He glanced at it, then looked again. "Yeah, actually, he came into work the other day. It was really weird, he pissed off my manager something fierce."

I nodded. "If I really was offering, but you'd have to give up everything you have now, your job and friends and life, would you take it?"

He leaned back and stared at me, then glanced down at the photo again. "That's security camera footage, isn't it? From your place?"

I nodded. "Did I ever tell you about Neville?" I asked.

Snowball grinned. "The food guy? Yeah, you did once. He sounded really sweet."

"We think this guy killed him," I said, soft and low and dangerous. I might have been angry with Neville, but that was nothing compared to what I felt for John Wickham.

Snowball blinked, the grin fading. "Neville's dead? As in, really dead?"

I nodded, taking the loops of the freeway that would eventually put me back into the city. "Really dead," I said. And then, because it was what came next, I said, "My fangs aren't fake, and neither are Tom's."

It was a calculated risk, but Tom was back in town, and Percival assured me that Snowball would be having his memories of us faded to blurry half-recollections if he refused my offer.

"You're telling me you're a vampire," he said flatly. "Now you're just making shit up."

"Google Neville Saunders, San Francisco. His obituary should be on the first page still," I said. I'd learned from the newspapers that he'd been an environmental lawyer, and good enough to make money doing it. We'd never talked much about his work, or mine.

Snowball pulled out his own phone and did as I asked, finding the obituary and at least one online article about Neville's death, trying to link it to other local deaths and make a serial killer.

If only they knew.

"Real vampires don't kill people," I said quietly, after he'd darkened his phone and sat in silence for a few minutes. "If I feed every three days, all I need are a few swallows. The time I got you all that food, it was because I needed more, maybe half a pint. I could only see you every two weeks because three times in a moon cycle makes you susceptible."

"Susceptible to what?" he asked.

"To becoming like me," I said.

"Oh," he replied, then sat in silence. "You know, I'd wondered. I mean, I've never actually seen you eat, and you always bite, and I've never been able to figure out where you keep the fangs."

"Tom turned me by accident," I said with a chuckle. "You remember that stereo equipment I fried?"

"Yeah, of course," he said. He'd helped me fix it last time he was out, finally.

"I electrocuted myself when I did it. I woke up like this."

"Wow," said Snowball, then he swallowed. "So all this time I've been into necrophilia?"

I laughed. I couldn't help it, it was just so absurd, and after a second he joined in. "Wickham, the guy in the photo, he found me through Neville, so they moved me, but I was worried about you, so, you can either be off limits to vampires from now on, or you can be mine."

"So there's no, like, third option?" he asked, clearly not pleased with such a narrow set of choices. Apparently he'd enjoyed his time in the arms of vampires enough to not want to let it go just yet. A point for us.

"You could let Wickham figure out you've been sleeping with me and kill you," I said flatly.

He paled.

"How long do I have to think about it?" he asked.

I sighed. "If Wickham's already started stalking you, we can't risk it. You've got until an hour before sunrise." Tom wouldn't need more than an hour to fix him, I hoped.

Snowball sat back. "If I'm your boy, could you..."

I waited, then finally prompted him. "Could I what?"

"Can you help out my sister? Just with some money, to get her out of that rat hole. So I'm not leaving her there alone." He looked down, clearly expecting to be refused.

"Ten grand," I said. Percival's emergency fund was wearing a little thin, but I hoped it would cover this.

If not, I'd make Marina un-invest some of my savings.

"Wow, uh, yeah. Wow, that'd be." Snowball looked a little stunned. "But I couldn't contact her after this?"

"Normally with this kind of thing you could," I said, "but because of Wickham, it's best if you disappear with me. Once he figures out she's never been with one of us, he'll leave her alone."

"Then yes," said Snowball, voice firm. "If it'll keep her safe, and keep me safe, and keep me with you," he said, giving my hand a squeeze, "then that's enough good reasons right there."

I squeezed back, then pulled his hand up to kiss. "You're sure?"

He smiled, watching the city go by around us for a moment. "Yeah," he said, "I'm sure."

I called Percival to arrange to move Snowball and his sister out. He even agreed to pony up the ten grand.

Now if only I could get him to help me eliminate Wickham, my life would be complete.

---

Snowball and I spent the rest of the night at a hotel -- I'd be spending the day in someone's secret hidey hole, and Percival assured me that the new place would be lightproof enough by tomorrow night to move in.

There's a kind of passion that I'd never really felt before, something that's half a desperation to reassure yourself of the good in life, and half the desire to appreciate it before it's gone. That's how we were that night together, both of us, using each other to help us let go of the lives we were losing. Reminding ourselves that we had a new life ahead of us, together.

I pressed him against the door as soon as it closed, flipping the security lock to assure us privacy. It wasn't a great hotel, but it was nice enough, anonymously businesslike without any pretense at luxury.

I had enough luxury in Snowball.

He melted for me in his usual way for just a moment, and then he kissed back, hungry and aggressive in a way I'd never seen him. He walked me backwards to the bed, shedding his clothing as we went, and I took a cue from him to strip off mine. It wasn't a long distance but we left a pretty good trail, and when we got there we tumbled into bed still wearing whatever we hadn't managed to lose on the way.

We didn't talk. There wasn't a need, and neither of us was in the mood for our usual banter.

Snowball had managed to shed everything but one sock, but I still had my pants on when I laid myself out over him. I needed them, the lube was in my pocket, and I got it out and slid two fingers into him without warning. He arched and gasped, but it wasn't a protest sound. Instead he kissed me again, just as hungry, tongue finding my fangs and pricking himself on them, adding a spice of blood to our kisses.

I slid down and nipped at his neck, collarbone, shoulder and chest, not wounds but just a tease of what I'd take when I was inside him.

He loved it, and soon enough his body was open and ready for me. I got my cock slick and slid it home, folding him nearly in half to steal a last kiss. I put his legs up over my shoulders and thrust into him, hard and fast, all passion and none of the sweetness that usually characterized our sex.

There would be time for sweet tomorrow, and a dozen dozen tomorrows.

I nipped down his calf and finally tongued my way to the tender spot at the back of his knee. He said something then, yes and please and all those wonderful words you want to hear when you're inside someone, and I curled my body in and bit as high up his thigh as I could manage.

The blood was spiced with adrenaline and need, and I understood why it drove some vampires crazy.

I'd like to say we did it just like that all night long, but once I got a good taste of him we shifted positions, again and again, drawing out our pleasure each time by thwarting ourselves before we could reach the peak. I bit him again and again, though I didn't drink much at any one time, wanting to keep my hunger going and his pleasure with it.

By the time we were done, we were both sweating and exhausted, panting as we curled together on the bed. I lapped at his kiss-bruised mouth and asked him to forgive me for stealing him away. He asked me if it was okay to like being stolen.

It wasn't perfect, but it was our first night together in a lot of ways, and I'll never forget it.

---

I wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that my new place was both nicer than my old, and somewhere Neville would have loved. They'd found me a house that was in foreclosure because the owner had died, tucked away in an old neighborhood that was resolutely resisting the encroachment of tall buildings and condos. There wasn't really a yard, but the owner had made up for it by constructing a beautiful conservatory up on the third level. Snowball promised he'd find a way to coax the plants back to life, if only so he'd get some sunshine.

We spent the first afternoon watching as large men put mysterious boxes and shrouded furniture in random rooms, too shellshocked still to direct much more than picking bedrooms, and an office for each of us. The furniture from my apartment and his together didn't fill up half of the rooms, so there were boxes scattered throughout the house like cardboard breadcrumbs, wherever someone felt like they might belong.

Once the movers left, it all seemed too overwhelming, so we fell into the one activity we were always good at together -- sex.

There was laughter while we hunted for the box with the sheets, finding books and dishes and shoes before we finally managed a set of sheets, and some towels as well. That whole box got dragged into the bedroom, and we barely made the bed before falling into it and messing it up, reminding ourselves why it was worth it. Reminding ourselves that there was life here, too, even if I wasn't technically alive anymore.

---

We did a little unpacking that night, but mostly we rattled around until the wee hours of the morning, when birds were starting to wake up and smell the sunrise. It wasn't until it was nearly too late to talk about it that it dawned on me -- we'd only set up one bed, and Snowball had never really seen what happened to me during the day.

"The sun's gonna be up soon," he said, breaking the awkward silence that had descended.

"Yeah, I... Usually I just sleep in bed, but if you don't want me there," I offered, even though it kind of hurt to say, "I'll find another room and curl up. It's not like I'll notice if I'm not comfortable," I added with a laugh that rang false. I was surprised to realize how much I wanted him to accept that part of my condition as well as he'd accepted the rest.

Snowball moved in and kissed me softly. "I want all of you, not just the fun bits," he said.

When I kissed back, it was half to keep me from saying something stupid. "Good," was all I let out into the space between our lips.

We went and got ready for bed like any couple, with teeth brushing and jostling for the bathroom and a lot of teasing, and then finally we were in bed and I could almost feel the minutes ticking away. "I don't know what it looks like from the outside," I said softly, "but from inside it's pretty awful, to feel everything drain away until I'm out. It's much faster, waking up, one second I'm gone and the next I'm awake and ready to go."

"But you won't breathe or anything, right?" he asked, then he laughed at himself. "You don't breathe now unless you need to talk."

"That's true," I said with a chuckle. "But my heart won't beat, my body won't be warm, and I won't move at all. It'll be like sleeping next to a corpse," I warned him.

"Naah," said Snowball, glancing at the shuttered windows as if wondering what was going on outside, "You smell too nice to be a corpse."

That was the first time I laughed my way to the sunrise, and it felt pretty good. It took the edge off the scariness of it, having Snowball's warm hand in mine, feeling the breath leave my body as everything went slack and unresponsive and then whatever it was that made me me winked out with the rest.

---

I don't know why, but I was surprised to see Snowball awake and watching me when I opened my eyes at sunset. He smiled down at me and leaned down for a kiss, and it warmed me more than one of Tom's baths, all the way down to my toes.

"It was weird," he said, stroking my hair while I gathered my wits, "but I liked being here, knowing you trusted me. Even though you couldn't move, couldn't even feel me," he blushed a little, and I wondered what he'd gotten up to with my body, "you still trusted me to see you like that."

"Thank you," I said, pulling him down for a kiss and whispering in his ear teasingly, "Even if you did feel me up in my sleep."

He laughed and smacked me. "How'd you know? You said you couldn't feel!" he protested.

"It was all over your face," I explained, tugging his hand down into my lap. "Why don't you feel me up now that I can do something about it, hm?"

"Mmmm, sounds like a great way to start the day. Night. Whatever," he said, and then we got the sheets a little dirtier before we got up and started in on cleaning the place up.

We threw ourselves into unpacking and rearranging with a vengeance, getting sweaty and dirty and then showering together and getting a totally different kind of sweaty and dirty. I swear we must have washed the sheets twice a day for the first few weeks, and it's a wonder Percival didn't get on us about the water bill.

Actually, we hardly saw him, or anyone else, and eventually everything was unpacked and we were just rattling around the big old house. Even the sex was starting to pall, not in a permanent way, but it was our only real entertainment, the one activity we could both get into.

After a month of nothing but sex and rearranging furniture, were both getting a serious case of cabin fever.

I did enjoy watching Snowball eat, once he decided he was going to learn to cook, but that also stirred up feelings of guilt and worry and grief that I wasn't really ready to face. We were sitting down to his dinner and my glass of wine one evening, looking at the endless stretch of time ahead of us, when Snowball finally spoke up.

"What we need," he said, "is a project."

"I have a project," I said, thinking guiltily of my book deal, "I'm just not very interested in it right now."

"Not a work project," he protested, nibbling on his garlic bread with relish. "Something around the house, something we can do to keep us occupied."

"I'm not Bob Vila." The house had been well-kept despite the foreclosure, but there were still repairs that I was avoiding.

Snowball snorted. "Well, we can't go out, and we're bored in here. What do you suggest?"

"We could cyber-stalk Wickham," I said. "Percival's got a watch on Tom's house, but so far there hasn't been much activity."

Snowball got a wicked gleam in his eye. "Now, that's a project I can get behind."

We headed to the office -- he'd set up a sweet desktop system that was tricked out for gaming, with dual monitors and a bunch of fancy extras. He'd given himself an extra piece of it every time he could save up enough money, because it gave him something to look forward to at home.

"I'm assuming you've already been stalking your sister?" I asked, amused. Percival had set her up in a nicer part of Hayward, sharing an apartment with a couple of college students to save on the rent.

Snowball flushed, but didn't deny it. "I stole her Facebook password," he said. "She's going to go to school part-time for a little while and see if she can find some direction. She misses me, but she's doing better now than she ever did with me around. Standing on her own."

I leaned down over him and stole a long, warm kiss. He was helping a lot in the strange grief over losing Neville, losing my whole life. I'd managed to get a little bit of freelance work done, but with my mind on the vampire thing I'd let my marketing efforts slip and my name was dying out. A month is a long time on the internet, and I wasn't hot anymore. It felt like it was one thing after another, but getting to keep Snowball in my life permanently, as my lover and friend, was a really good step back uphill.

"Are you happy?" I asked. I asked him that a lot, and he always answered the same.

"Yeah," he said, tugging me down for another kiss. "I'm happy."

"Good," I said, nipping at his lower lip. "Let's see what we can find out about Mr. John Wickham."

Snowball pulled up Google, and we were off.

---

I called Percival when we were done.

"Don't you think he's got web stats?" asked Percival, clearly annoyed. "He could trace back your IP address and find the new safe house, and I don't think the other vampires are really going to be up for funding yet another move for you and your..."

"Boyfriend." I rolled my eyes. "Snowball used an anonymizer. We're not idiots. Did you know there's a whole group? He's actually got a forum, but it's locked and we couldn't figure out a clean way in."

"Yet," said Snowball from behind me.

I stole a kiss while Percival ranted some more.

"Well, if you'd share your information with me, I wouldn't have had to go looking on my own," I said reasonably, at the next gap in his tirade.

"The only information you need right now is that we found some spying devices at Tom's house, and it's being cleared out. He wants to move in with you, since the house is already set up."

"Really?" I tried not to sound as excited as I felt at the prospect; I'd missed Tom a lot these past few weeks, and I had been starting to worry I wouldn't see anyone else I knew until after the threat had passed.

Percival chuckled dryly. "Really," he said. "And he's already agreed to pay for the bathroom remodeling you guys wanted."

My grin widened. "You say the sweetest things."

I hung up, figuring that was about as cleanly as I was going to get away. I'd learned a few more things in Percival's rant, though, facts he'd let slip that I passed on to Snowball, after I told him the good news.

We made dutiful notes, but after that we took the evening off to celebrate in bed.

Tom was coming home.

Chapter 7

This time the whirlwind of movers had Tom at the helm, directing things with a confidence I hadn't seen in him since I'd been turned. He bought a gigantic bed and set it up in the master bedroom, which had been made permanently lightproof already. Snowball had kept his own room, which had real windows that opened, but he didn't use it much. We put my old bed in there, and Snowball's bed went into one of the empty guest rooms.

In the first moment of calm I could catch with Tom, I had to ask. "What changed your mind?"

He looked down and away, then back up at me. "When Percival told me I'd have to move in with you, or lose you for years while we were both in protective exile, all of my fears seemed groundless compared to the idea of losing you completely."

I blushed, then pulled him close for a kiss. "I would've kept waiting," I confided. I think that's why I'd been so attached to Neville and Snowball, because they were like fireflies now, or maybe house pets -- they'd be long gone while Tom was still around. So instead of worrying about the next week or month or year without Tom, I'd latched onto the two steady lovers in my life, and kept them as close as I dared.

"I know," said Tom, after a few more kisses. "That's the other thing that changed my mind."

I chuckled and kissed him again, just for the luxury of being able to do so. "Snowball helped, didn't he?" I teased.

Speak of the nibbles and he shall appear, that was Snowball's cue to saunter in. "Of course I did," he said, cheerfully inserting himself into our embrace. "What vampire could resist tasty little me?"

Tom laughed. "Not me," he assured Snowball, claiming a kiss.

"Nor me," I said, taking one of my own. A thought came to me, and I asked, "Will we need another human, to keep Snowball from over-donating?"

I swear, Snowball looked sulky for a minute.

Fortunately, Tom shook his head. "If we alternate, each of us feeding every other day, we'll actually need even less than the three-day schedule. If he sticks to his vitamins and keeps his diet relatively healthy," he paused to give Snowball a stern look that was rather spoiled by the mischief in his eyes, "then Snowball will get his daily bites without any detriment to his health, at least in the short term."

"What about the long term?" asked Snowball, but I could tell he was all for it.

Tom shrugged. "Eventually you'll have problems, but we can give you breaks by feeding off each other, or bringing in someone. Over time, it's best if there's two of us and two or even three of you, but you've got a couple of years before we need to worry."

I grinned, and so did Snowball. "I think we can handle that." Snowball and I had already been experimenting with more frequent nibbling -- every day, and I began to lose my appetite, but with every other day I'd been taking a mere swallow and still giving him his bite fix. This would make everyone happy, I suspected.

"I know I can," said Snowball, sounding decidedly lewd. "Will you start today?" he asked, giving Tom his best puppy eyes.

I'm not sure what it says about me that my lover uses puppy eyes to get sex, but there you go.

---

We had to wait for the movers to leave, but Snowball cooked himself an extra-healthy meal to pass the time, using nearly every pot, pan and platter in the house. There was lasagna enough to feed an army, which ended up portioned off in a dozen Tupperware containers, half in the fridge and half in the freezer.

"Spinach," said Snowball, waving the fragrant-smelling bite around, "is full of iron."

Tom laughed. "And an excellent addition to your diet," he said, stealing a kiss. "However, you won't be able to keep feeding us both indefinitely."

Snowball looked appropriately sulky, though we could tell it was an act. "Well, I guess if there's more humans that's more playmates for me."

"You're not a kitten, despite the name," I chided.

Another adorable fake pout. "But what if I want a collar with a bell?"

"Well, that can always be arranged," I said, amused. I reached out and scratched behind his ear. "Would little Snowball like some catnip mice?"

Snowball butted my hand and purred, which is of course when the movers' foreman walked in to tell us they were done.

There was teasing and laughing, and Tom took care of inspecting and tipping while Snowball finished his food. Then our house was free of prying eyes, so we made up Tom's new bed and then dirtied his nice clean sheets.

I'd fed on Snowball yesterday, and Tom had that hungry look that meant it was definitely his turn. Snowball and I went out of our way to make it count.

We stripped ourselves by tacit accord, then fell into that nice big bed with its just-washed sheets, still warm from the dryer. It was luxury enough that Tom stretched out on them and basked in the heat for a moment, which gave Snowball and I time to pounce.

"I'm going to be inside you," I said, curling up behind Tom and taking advantage of the warmth of the bed a little myself.

Tom moaned, and then Snowball snuggled up to his front and murmured, "You'll be in me."

That definitely got his attention.

Snowball had had the presence of mind to bring the lube, and soon it was all fingers and tongues, teeth and slickness, and everyone was ready and beyond ready. We decided to spoon together on our sides, and the feeling of being in him and knowing he was inside Snowball was amazing. He warmed up as he drank, as the friction and heat between us built, and pretty soon it overwhelmed us all and we toppled over the edge one at a time.

It felt so good to hold him again, to know he wasn't going to disappear anytime soon, that I will admit I held out as long as possible. He and Snowball were patient with me, though, and then they stayed in bed afterward, sated and sweaty and so very happy.

I guess I wasn't the only one glad to have us all together again.

---

We settled into a different routine after that, sex and cooking alternating with writing and trying to figure out the extent of Wickham's influence.

At Horace's insistence, I forced myself to start marketing again, getting my name out there as a tech tips advisor instead of restaurant reviewer. Snowball constructed elaborate firewalls and other security precautions, diving into the online hacker community with a fierce glee and coming up with ideas to keep us safe, at least from the internet. Tom and Snowball worked in the conservatory to resuscitate the plants that had been left behind, both from the original owner and Tom's apartment.

Tom also spent a lot of time decorating, doing those Bob Vila jobs with Snowball's help or mine when needed, getting Percy to send in paint and wallpaper and tools, buying furniture to fill up the old house until the place felt like home to him.

Until it felt like home to all of us, really.

I make it sound like he just swept in and took over the place, but you have to remember I already loved his taste. He consulted us about everything, often having long rambling sessions browsing Apartment Therapy or furniture websites. In fact, once we got Percival's permission to have Ethan over for a lesson, we spent an entire day exploring the wonderful world of online shopping.

He gave Tom some great ideas for one of the empty rooms, and we gave him tips about internet safety, identity theft, and always checking the shipping charge if you're going to buy big.

"But the couch is a great deal," said Ethan, pointing to it on the screen again. Snowball had mostly hovered, but he had managed to cure Ethan of touching the screen when he pointed.

"Look at the shipping cost," I said patiently. It helped that he'd brought some really good coffee with which to soothe our stir-crazy souls. I took another sip to remind myself of that gratitude, and then pointed to the cost down below. "If you bought it locally and had it delivered, you'd come out the same or even ahead, once you added it all up."

That seemed to work -- after all, a house like his likely had involved a lot of delivery charges from antique dealers, some of whom would cheerfully gouge you if you weren't paying attention.

"Do you think they pad the price, or is it just that expensive?" asked Tom curiously.

"Hard to tell," I replied. "Shipping is very expensive these days, but some companies do sneak a little extra profit in and call it a handling charge."

"I'd bet this is one of the latter," said Snowball. "But the fastest way to find out is to find the item on another site, and then compare."

Ethan's eyes lit up; clearly, comparison shopping was familiar to him, even if he wasn't accustomed to reading the fine print on a website. "Can we do that?" he asked.

I grinned. "Of course," I said. I opened up another tab -- strangely, once he got the concept of windows, he had no problems with tabs -- and pulled up Google. Two seconds later we had a list of places that carried it, and we compared half a dozen of them.

Snowball had been right, the site we'd been looking at originally was padding their shipping. He's cynical, but only where it counts.

It was one of the things I liked about him.

"So, can we order it?" asked Ethan, reaching for his wallet.

Tom sighed. "I can surf, but I can't buy, we promised Percival."

"And me," said Snowball. "The less data we give them, the less crumbs we leave for them to follow back to us."

"Oh," said Ethan, sounding disappointed.

I chuckled. "I'll make it your homework," I said. I wrote down the main url for the site with the best overall price and gave it to him. "If you can go home and buy the couch from this site, then you'll get a passing grade."

Ethan laughed. "I'd rather have a kiss," he teased. Through the simple medium of Snowball asking, we'd learned that Ethan was much like Percival, no longer bound by the strictures of labels.

I'd already known he was a shameless flirt.

"Where?" asked Snowball.

"From who?" asked Tom.

"We'll see," I said, and that was that.

---

For all the time Snowball and I spent trying to convince Percy to let us join in the fight, we never expected the fight to come to us.

The doorbell rang, odd enough past midnight that I had Percival on speakerphone before Snowball had the security cameras up on his screen.

"What do you want now?" asked Percival, laughingly annoyed.

"Wickham's here," I said. "Is there a safe hiding place for Snowball?"

Percival's voice went deadly serious. "None of you are safe if he's sure. He's a big fan of fire."

"I don't think he's sure," said Tom, wandering into the room and nearly giving me a heart attack. Still, I was relieved he was here and not downstairs answering the door. "He wouldn't have rang the bell if he was sure."

"How much light is on in the house?" asked Percival.

"Not much," said Tom. "We have the ones on timers downstairs, and then the office that we never turn off, and that's about it."

"The porch light is motion-sensitive, that's on, too," said Snowball, pointing.

We watched Wickham pull out his cell phone and dial a number. I had a shiver of horror when an incoming call popped up on my phone. I hit ignore to send it straight to voicemail, which might give him my number but wouldn't confirm our presence in the house, since nothing rang.

"He's got my phone number," I said, feeling my fight or flight instincts starting to veer sharply towards flight.

Percival swore. "He must have something new, some technology that we're behind on, that let him find you."

"Did you use Gabe's real name on the phone?" asked Snowball.

There was a murmur of Percival talking to people in the background, and then he was back. "I suppose that's something they can hack? But it leads to the PO Box we set up."

"That leads to a dummy address?" asked Tom. Clearly he was familiar with their sneaky vampire ways.

"It does, but none of it really matters if he's there on your doorstep. He's got your scent now, and he'll be relentless."

"What's his problem, anyway?" I asked, annoyed.

Percival laughed. "Not enough hugs as a child? I don't honestly know, though I can tell you no one he knew and loved was killed by a vampire. We've checked."

"If he disappears mysteriously, that'll mobilize his whole organization," said Snowball. He'd pulled up the info we'd gathered on Wickham, not online but the stuff he'd copied and pasted into another document. "There's not a lot of them, but they're all kinds of crazy."

"Yes, we're aware," said Percival. "We may have no choice." He paused and had another conversation, then came back and said forcefully. "We won't sacrifice you to him."

"He's doing something," said Snowball, eyes back on the video feed. A few keystrokes and we had a split screen view of him from four angles, all well-lit thanks to the security lights and his own movement.

"He can't possibly be doing what I think he's doing," said Tom, staring in disbelief as Wickham fiddled with his clothing.

Snowball laughed, a comforting sound despite the note of hysteria. "Vampire hunter or vampire groupie?" he said.

Percival made an annoyed noise. "Don't let him come inside. Have you activated the secondary security yet?"

"I did as soon as Tom came into the office," said Snowball, which was news to me.

"Smart lad. Gabe has good taste," said Percival.

Snowball grinned. "Not that you get to know," he teased. "Two vampires are my donation limit."

"That's not what I heard," said a voice in the background, which sounded like Marina.

When Wickham straightened up, I had to laugh for reasons other than my original ones. He was holding up an antique cross and reading out of an old Bible, the words recorded though we had the sound turned down. "Doesn't he know anything about actual vampires?" I asked. "A cross and a Bible won't do much to us."

"Shit, he's giving Snowball last rites," said Percival. "He thinks he knows a way to kill you all."

Tom looked grim. "I'll get my weapons," he said, leaving the room with the stealth of a cat.

"I'm no help in a fight," said Snowball.

I went over and gave him a soft kiss. "Me neither," I said.

Percival contradicted us. "You've got control of all the front door security. If he lights up, set off the fire alarm as quick as possible, and then douse him with the fire extinguishers. Snowball can do all that manually and make it look automatic."

"I can!" said Snowball, clearly pleased with himself.

My phone beeped again, this time a strange 212 number. "Do you know anyone from New York?" I asked Percival.

"Yes, pick it up, they've had problems with Wickham, too," said Percival.

"Okay, hold on," I said. I swapped the calls and said nervously, "Hello?"

"Gabriel, this is Seth Thompson from New York. We've been working on a plan to eliminate Wickham's organization for a while now," he said, taking no time to get to the point.

"All right," I asked. I shushed Tom when he crept back in, slightly less quiet now with a sword and two guns strapped to his body, and that was just at first glance. "Do you have any recommendations for getting us out of this alive?"

"Kill him," said Seth. "If you're not too messy about it, we can have the body flown here, and our group will lure his into the trap. It's ready enough to mobilize for an emergency like this."

"Oh," I said, and then, "Wow. Has he..."

"Several of us, yes," said Seth, voice flat and angry. "I would have liked to have done him in personally, but you'll have to do the honors."

"I'll be doing them, actually," said Tom. "Tom Collins here. How are you, Seth?"

"Tom!" said Seth, sounding much more human now. Or, you know. Anyway. "How've you been?"

"Good and bad. It'll be nice to not have to move again so soon, if you really can eliminate Wickham's group." Tom slipped closer and put an arm around me. He whispered, "I won't leave you once the danger's past."

I missed whatever Seth said next, but I thought it was worth it.

Tom made an affirmative noise.

"It's a go, then. Don't mangle the body too much, and we'll lure them out to New York for revenge."

I chuckled evilly. "They'll think it's theirs, but it will really be yours," I said.

"Damn, I wish I could be there," said Seth. "Oh, don't drink from him. He's been working on a poison that's fatal to us but not to him, and he always takes his latest version before going on a hunt. We don't think he's gotten anywhere, but."

"Better safe than dead," I said grimly. There was a moment of bitter silence.

Tom spoke up. "I wish you could be here, too."

"Thanks," said Seth, and then he signed off.

"Percival, still there?" I asked, switching back over and wondering if I was going to need to plug the phone into the charger before we were done. It was something to think about that wasn't killing someone on my front stoop, okay?

"I'm here, what's the deal?" asked Percival, voice distant enough to make me think he'd gone to speaker, too.

"Seth says they've got a trap ready to spring if we can kill Wickham quietly and send the body to New York for staging."

"And can you?" asked Percival.

"Whatever you're going to do, you need to do it now," said Snowball. "He's messing with the lock."

"I'm on it," said Tom, already on his way out and downstairs.

I swallowed and moved closer to Snowball. "Tom says he can do it," I said, for Percival's benefit.

Snowball was using the cameras to follow Tom down, out the side door and around behind Wickham. He was so fast, and I wondered if I'd ever have that deadly grace. If it was innate to vampires, learned over the years, or just innate to Tom.

Apparently Wickham was more observant than I was, because some movement or sound alerted him just before Tom got within reach. I wished we could have heard what they were saying, Tom defiant and Wickham with his grand motions, but the shadows made it impossible even to lip read.

There was a blur of motion that my eyes could just barely follow and Tom had his sword out, while Wickham had a very modern gun with a very modern silencer. I spared a thought to hope that no one was watching our very well-lit drama, because the last thing we needed was for someone to call the cops. I'd be willing to bet Wickham's gun was illegal, but then, I was pretty sure Tom's big sword was, too.

I couldn't figure out why Tom had drawn that instead of one of the guns at first, but Wickham's silencer spoke volumes -- a gunshot in this neighborhood would bring all kinds of unwanted attention.

It was hard to watch, to sit there while the silent action played across the screens like a movie, and I came up behind Snowball and laid my hands on his shoulders. "Go, Tom," I whispered, watching the two of them stand in a stalemate.

"Kick his ass," whispered Snowball, one hand coming up to cover mine while the other kept the cameras on track.

Tom slid back out of the pool of light from the porch, daring Wickham to follow or just shoot. I wondered if Tom was old enough, fast enough, to dodge a bullet.

Apparently, Wickham was sure of himself and his bullets; he stepped into the shadows after Tom. Snowball shifted from camera to camera until he had the infrared up, though that only showed Wickham brightly. Tom was a fainter shape, the warmth from our earlier lovemaking already faded since it had been my night to feed. Wickham's eyes glowed as he swept the area with his gaze, eerily attuned to Tom's movements.

Wickham said something then, and Tom shifted subtly so that we could tell the gun wasn't quite pointed at him anymore. A bright flash from the screen was the only indication that Wickham had tried to shoot him, followed up by a flurry of motion that my nearly-human eyes couldn't make out.

And then Wickham collapsed, and a pool of light started to form around him as the heat of his life bled away into the cold ground.

Tom looked right up at the camera, then hefted John's body over one shoulder like he was drunk and walked him out to the garage instead of bringing him inside. It would save on the cleaning bills, anyway. Snowball followed them with his cameras and we watched while Tom did something mysterious with the body in the dark, muffling it from the cameras and finally putting it in the trunk of one of the cars.

When that was done, Tom went back to the front door to peer at the lock, shook his head, and disappeared again. From what I could tell, he was doing something about the bloody patch on the lawn.

"I wonder if maybe he wasn't picking the lock after all," said Snowball worriedly.

Apparently, I still had a little fear in me. "They'll fix it, whatever he did," I said, moving to kiss him.

"Do I get to know what happened?" asked Percival testily.

I snorted. "Tom killed him, and took him to the car. We think Wickham tampered with the front door, so if you've got some sort of expert with you, have him take a look before you try to come inside," I said.

Percival snorted. "I'll try to pull one out of my ass for you on the way," he said.

My phone beeped again. It was Tom. "Tom's calling, and I need to plug in my phone, so I'm hanging up now," I said.

"I'm almost there anyway," said Percival, disconnecting before I had the chance. Bastard.

"What's up?" I asked Tom, when the call switched over.

"He's tucked into the trunk in plenty of plastic to contain the leaks," said Tom. "I think he was in the middle of rigging the door to blow somehow. I'm going to go check."

"Don't get hurt," I said, chest tightening again. "I need you."

"And not just to help pay the rent, huh," he teased. He came back on screen, produced a little pen light from somewhere, and started looking over Wickham's handiwork.

"Someone's got to take out the trash," I said dryly.

He laughed. "Looks like he just got started," said Tom, examining the stuff that Wickham had spread out on the doormat. "I think I can clear this out safely, but we might wait and see if Percival can call someone."

Percival appeared behind Tom, just a little too fast to be human, startling and strange on the screen. "Explosives, you think?" he asked, taking out his phone. We could just barely hear him in the background of the call, making out the rest by reading his lips onscreen.

"I do, yeah, something high tech," said Tom, sounding frustrated. "Can you call your guy?"

"Already on it," he said.

Tom brought the phone back up to his ear, and we missed whatever phone conversation Percival was having. "It'll get taken care of," said Tom. "This benefits all of us, taking out Wickham and his band of merry murderers."

"I know," I said. I paused, then pressed on. "It's more important to me to have you alive and safe."

"Me, too," Tom said with a wry chuckle. "I'll probably have to fly with the body. Can you live without me for a few days?"

I heard that note and swallowed. "I can," I said, "but you come back safe now."

I watched him nod. "I've got something worth coming back to."

He shut the phone, and the rest was a silent movie of him and Percival. Eventually, Tom came back around the side and up to claim kisses from us both.

It helped.

"I've got to pack, and then get Wickham out of my car before he can leak anything incriminating," he said.

"Ew," said Snowball, stealing another kiss. "Is it really over?"

"Yeah," said Tom. "It's really over."

He was right, but he was also wrong.

---

The last bit of excitement for the evening came after Tom was long gone. Percival had come in the side door, at the advice of his fully human explosives consultant. We made coffee and sat around the kitchen, talking about the future.

"Will I need to get a job again?" asked Snowball, nibbling on the last of the macaroons Marina had brought by as a boy-warming present. Her words, I swear.

Percival shook his head. "It's traditional for the vampire to take care of his human lover's needs, much like a mistress in the old days."

"Neat," said Snowball.

I chuckled. "Always wanted to be a kept boy?" I asked.

I never got to hear his answer, because there was a commotion at the front door. A loud noise was followed by a lot of swearing, and the lot of us rushing out into the foyer.

There was a blackened hole and some slagged metal where our doorknob had been.

"Sorry about that," called the guy. "He'd shoved a little bit of his explosive material way back in the lock, and we just weren't able to get it out without setting it off."

"Like putting gum in a lock," said Snowball, annoyingly cheerful for someone whose front door had a hole in it.

The tech laughed, anyway. "Yeah, something like that."

Percival looked less amused. "I take it there won't be any charge for the house call?"

A guilty voice came through the hole. "Oh, uh, yeah. As long as you don't try to bill us for the door."

"Nah," I said, getting an annoyed look from Percival. "It's not your fault. Are you sure you've cleared everything away?"

The tech rattled the door, but something was fused between lock and doorframe. "Yeah, I'm sure, we'll dispose of the rest of it and send you a full report. Sorry again about the door."

Percival chuckled. "At least it's not stuck open," he said, shaking his head. "Thanks for coming out on such short notice."

"My job, it's always an emergency," he said. "At least all we lost was a door."

I swallowed, and found myself suddenly very thankful for that. If Tom had tried to come in the front door instead of the side, he might have lost a hand, or more.

At least this way he had a chance of coming back to us whole.

---

"Did it work?" I asked Tom, the next night. He called just after sunset here, and I wondered how that had felt, waking up 3 hours ahead of the people you most wanted to talk to. I tried not to wonder if we were really the people he most wanted to talk to.

"Yeah, we think so. They really have been planning this for a while. Apparently Wickham was a bit of a loner, and he had these mood swings, especially when he was on a hunt. So they recorded his voice, and used it to make the kind of terse, arrogant phone calls he usually makes." Tom sounded tired, and I wondered what else had gone on out there with his old friends.

"Huh. I guess it pays to be friendly and verbose," I said.

Tom laughed. "They used his phone to report that it was done, and he was going to New York after the neighbor. Me. Then they arranged for his body to be found, apparently only dead a few hours."

"Freaky," I said, trying not to wonder how they'd fool the cops. I'd been trying to wean myself off of cop shows, after all. "And the cultists or hunters or whatever took the bait?"

"They've already captured one who came into town a few hours ago." He paused, and I knew it was bad news. "They asked me to stay, to help."

"I was afraid of that," I said with a sigh. "You'll be careful?"

"Promise."

---

Snowball and I rattled around the house while we waited, making sure the plants got watered and the door got replaced with an even better model. Snowball had almost entirely moved himself to our schedule, though he made sure to get a little sunlight every day working in the garden. Once the sun went down, he spent a lot of time online, learning everything he could about the ways in which Wickham might have found us.

Ironically, it was at the intersection of both his hobbies that we found the answer. Neville had bugged the plants.

All that rearranging to get better sunlight, and he'd really been putting tiny tracking devices in the soil, which had been moved right on in along with the rest of Tom's things. From what the tech guy said when he came out to dispose of them, they used the moisture in the soil for power, and the plants had all been dry as a bone when they were brought in. No water, no signal.

If only someone had taken better care of his plants.

In the long run, though, I couldn't really complain. Wickham had been scary, but from what I could tell the outcome for the vampire community would be overall positive. But I still missed Neville sometimes.

"When did you buy night-blooming jasmine?" I asked, wandering into the conservatory still in my pajamas.

Snowball smiled. "Do you like it? It was already here, but the planters were choked with weeds. It's only just started blooming."

I came up and wrapped myself around him, stealing a kiss. "It's beautiful. You've done a wonderful job bringing everything back to life."

He turned and kissed me back, his body wonderfully warm. "I had good motivation," he said, and when I gave him a confused look, he added, "I get kisses like this."

I chuckled and kept kissing, walking him toward a wrought-iron bench. "Let me see if I can't give you some extra motivation."

He sat willingly, letting me kneel between his legs and taste him in a purely human manner, for once. His skin was so alive I wanted to rub myself all over him, but I tried to concentrate on his pleasure. I even warmed my fingers on his leg before slipping them under his balls, a gesture he appreciated with a sweet moan and his fingers in my hair. I could feel my own heat rising as I sucked, though my fangs stayed obediently hidden away.

Snowball's breathing grew erratic while I made good use of my own lack thereof, taking him into my throat again and again without having to pause for anything so mundane as a breath. It didn't take much longer for him to spill into my mouth, the flavor bitter and salty and alive, not quite so nutritious as blood but a lovely morning snack.

"Delicious," I said, pulling off and licking my lips. He was wonderfully debauched, cock toppling slowly and a grin on his lips, everything about his posture speaking of satiation.

"I'd say it was cheating that you don't have to breathe," said Snowball between panted breaths, "but I love the result."

I knelt up and shared a tasty kiss with him, then said, "So do I."

We stayed like that for a while, but just as we were getting warmed up again, the doorbell rang.

I could feel myself tense up, remembering our last unexpected visitor. "Shall we see who it is?"

Snowball nodded reluctantly. It seemed I wasn't the only one who was worried about another nasty surprise.

We descended the stairs in silence, finding the security monitor already lit up with the view from the front porch -- he'd had it set to do so automatically when the security firm came to replace the door and fix the melted wiring on the alarm.

We both breathed easier to see Percival and Marina, along with someone I only vaguely recognized. "It's all right, they're safe," I said, stealing another kiss. "Can you let them in while I change?"

He chuckled, running his hand over the tented fabric of my pajamas. "Are you sure you don't want to ignore them for another round?"

I laughed and kissed him again. "I'm sure," I said. "Gratitude goes a long way."

Snowball sighed. "True, true. Down I go, then. Er, to the door. Not on anyone there. You know what I mean."

I laughed and allowed that I did, and we parted ways. By the time I'd made myself presentable, Snowball had settled everyone in the downstairs parlor and even had the big French press out to serve coffee.

"Thanks, Snowball," I said, stealing a kiss and not missing the slight look of distaste on the stranger's face. "Who's the new face?" I asked of no one in particular.

"Gabriel, this is Benedict Medina," said Percival. "Benedict, this is Gabriel. He's the one who's been giving Ethan lessons."

"Tom's... get," said Benedict.

I didn't offer him my hand, because he looked as though he might refuse it. At least I'd brushed my teeth. "Yes, I'm Tom's embarrassing accident," I said instead, nodding when Snowball offered me coffee.

Benedict snorted. "As you say," he allowed with a nod, but that seemed to have won him over a little. He accepted the tea that Snowball poured him with grace, at least, and no sign that he thought he might get gay cooties from us. "I am very old," he said.

I sat down, seeing that this was going to be a long story. "How old, if that isn't a rude question?" I asked.

Marina hid a smile behind her cup.

"It normally is, but as I brought up the subject... I was born sometime in the Dark Ages, at a time when many things were unthinkable."

Wow. That was very old, indeed. "All right," I said, sipping my coffee. "Are you looking for lessons?"

He shook his head slowly. "Not at this time, though the idea does tempt me more than it used to. No, I am an artist, and I have been asked to scan some of my pieces for inclusion in a show, but I..." He spread his hands and shrugged, making the gesture seem timeless and old world, somehow, though I couldn't have described how it was different from the way I would have done it.

"You don't have the skills," I said. "Do we have a high-end scanner?" I asked Snowball. I had one, but it was a crappy little thing that mostly got used as extra desk space.

"I can provide whatever equipment you need," said Benedict. "If the original handling of the documents works out, I would be sending you further work. I have an entire body of work going back centuries."

Snowball and I exchanged a wordless glance. "What sort of fee are you offering?" I asked.

He chuckled. "Horace has you trained already, I see," he said. "The scanner you may keep, whether or not we work together in the future. For this first round I will pay one hundred dollars per piece, and the older works that require more careful handling will of course have a higher value attached."

I nodded. "It's a project we could probably take on," I said, glancing over at Snowball. "You won't object if S- Clarence assists me?" It might keep him out of trouble during the summer especially, when he had a lot of daylight and little to fill his time.

Snowball perked right up at the idea of it.

Benedict looked dubious, but clearly the idea of taking whatever these works were to someone outside the vampire community was worse than the idea of a human fondling them. "However you choose to conduct the work is your business, as long as the work is done properly and the art remains intact at the end of it."

I could tell that was about the best we were going to get. "We'll do it, then. We'll make arrangements for the proper scanner and bill you," I said. "Do you have a budget?"

Benedict gave that shrug again.

"Five thousand," said Percival. "You should be able to get something good for that price. Try to find eleven by seventeen, and if you can't within the budget, call me."

That seemed to please everyone, and we let the conversation move on to other things, mostly Marina and Benedict chattering about vampire politics that didn't mean much to me. I tried to absorb what I could, though, because they wouldn't hand-feed me clients forever.

Of course, their idea of a newbie vampire was one under fifty years of undeath, so it might be a while before they tried to force me out on my own.

---

"I'm going to fight," said Tom, when I called him a few hours later. Percival had taken Benedict away once the polite conversation wound down, and then Marina grilled us about the incident, as she liked to call it, wanting every detail of Wickham's actions and our defenses. He wasn't the only hunter in America, just the most organized, and she was convinced that someone else would fill the void soon enough.

One good thing about the evening was the she and Percival agreed that Snowball could contact his sister in a few weeks. He took this news with about the same level of excitement as you'd expect of a kid given a puppy after he's been told no because of Mom's allergies. Benedict had looked politely away, but I could tell he wasn't impressed.

Eventually I got bored with the conversation, so I left Marina with Snowball and the computers, and took my phone up to the conservatory and called Tom.

"Are you sure?" I asked, though I'd halfway known all along that there was a reason why he went with the body, and why he stayed there after its delivery.

"I'm sure," said Tom quietly. "I'll explain when I get home, all right?"

"I assumed it was your own personal revenge," I said, giving him the out.

Tom made a sound that was mostly like laughter. "It figures you'd already have it worked out."

"Just don't throw this life away on someone who's already gone," I said, quiet and just a little sad. I'd lost my whole life, and he was the one thing I didn't want to have to learn to live without.

Well, not any more than I already had, anyway.

---

Snowball and I spent the rest of the night worrying and window shopping for scanners online. Percival had pointed out that it still wasn't really safe to order in things from companies we didn't know much about. So we read reviews and product specs, making sure it was all compatible with Snowball's machine. My little laptop would be hopelessly outclassed, so I felt lucky to have Snowball around.

For more than one reason.

My phone rang when we were once again ramping up to a more naked pastime, but this time it was a welcome interruption.

"How'd it go?" I asked Tom, snuggling up to Snowball's naked body and putting the call on speaker.

Tom chuckled. "I'm a little worse for wear, but everything important is intact. I should be coming home within a day or two."

"Yay!" said Snowball.

I chuckled. "You've been missed," I said teasingly.

Tom chuckled, too, warm and sexy. "So I hear. I've got to go, it's nearly sunrise, but I wanted to let you two know I was coming home in one piece."

"Thank you!" we chorused, and he hung up to laughter.

We got back to what we were doing with a great deal more enthusiasm, now that we knew we'd get our Tom back safely.

---

I don't know why the second reunion was so much more important than the first. Or, well, I do know, but I can't put it into words. Seeing Tom walk through that door, watching Snowball catapult himself into Tom's arms, it was just. Yeah, okay, it was kind of a chick flick moment. But it was still a moment I'll never forget.

I walked up and got my welcome home kiss in, shutting our new, sturdier door behind him. "Some workmen came while you were gone," I said, teasing him a little.

"For the door, I presume?" he said, looking mischievous.

I snickered. "No, these guys had been scheduled for a while now, actually. Percival vetted them as legit so Snowball let them in."

"It's brilliant," said Snowball with a grin. "But Gabe made me wait."

Tom grinned right back. "Let's go break it in," he suggested.

We were all over that idea, trust me.

We raced up the stairs and into the master bathroom, shedding clothes as we went. Our new Greek-style sunken tub awaited us, already filled and heated to a decadent temperature. It's a good thing he wasn't delayed, or we might've given in to temptation to start without him.

As it is, we all slipped into the water with noises worthy of a sexual act. Even Snowball looked pre-orgasmic, ducking under the water to get his hair wet and then lolling invitingly on one of the carved stone benches, head barely above water.

Tom and I both gave in to the urge to duck completely under and stay there, our whole bodies surrounded by heat. I have to say, it was the second best use I'd found yet for not needing to breathe. I can't adequately explain how good it feels to be a vampire, one of the cold undead, and then be able to immerse yourself in water that's not only warm but hot. It's like every moment you ever came into a warm house on a cold day, or snuggled back into a warm bed after getting up to use the bathroom, all rolled into one. Only better.

So much better.

Eventually I was warmed nearly to my core, and I felt like I could uncurl myself from the loose fetal position I'd taken and do something to further Tom's feeling of welcome. I slithered through the water to Tom and nuzzled at his face, sharing a strange underwater kiss. Then I flipped myself around and kissed something else.

Tom showed his appreciation by returning the favor.

I wondered how we looked to Snowball, taking up most of the space in the big tub for a swirling underwater sexual ballet. Tom's familiar taste was muted by the water, but the feel of him was there, the shape that slipped so easily back into my throat.

I don't know what or who he'd been doing while he was gone, but it didn't take him long to show how much he missed me.

I swallowed the warm seed and probably some bath water along with it, then finally came up for air. Snowball was still lounging, but his attention was quite firmly fixed on the show in front of him. "My turn soon?" he asked hopefully.

Tom came up, too, abandoning his task for now. I was feeling good but not so close I couldn't wait to be inside one or the other of them.

"Your turn now," said Tom, shaking the water out of his ears.

I grinned and half-swam over to the niches along the wall, where we'd stashed things like body wash and waterproof lube. All the necessities of life, as it were.

"Will you have me?" Snowball was asking Tom. "Like last time, maybe?"

"Maybe you should have me," I suggested, returning with the appropriate bottle. "Would you like that, Tom, you in him and him in me?"

Snowball whimpered -- he didn't get to top a lot, but when he did he gave it his all.

"That sounds like an excellent plan," said Tom, and we got to work with fingers and lube making it so.

Snowball was the perfect middle man in this equation, his body just a little hotter, still, than the water could make us. His cock felt so good inside me that I moaned and rode back against him shamelessly, and Tom's answering moan told me that Snowball's body was just as hot inside as out.

Snowball's pants and cries joined ours, and soon enough he figured out a rhythm, in me and then onto Tom. The two of us braced ourselves so that all Snowball had to do was move from one pleasure to the other, over and over until it was all over, for all of us.

We floated like that, joined still, for a long time afterward, until Snowball had to get out and lay himself on the cool tile to recover a bit. "You two are going to be the death of me," he gasped, flopped out like a beached dolphin.

"You'll love every minute of it," teased Tom, moving close to me. He claimed a kiss and I gave him a few extra for good measure.

"It's good to have you home. To have you at all," I said, hands roaming over that was still new to me in many ways. For all that we'd chosen to give eternity a chance, we'd only made love a few dozen times, most of those with other people in the bed.

Not that I minded the other people, but still.

Tom grinned and kissed me again. "It's good to have you, too," he said. "To have a chance."

"It's a really good chance," said Snowball, crawling over close enough to claim kisses.

"Yeah," I said, sharing a wet, messy three-way kiss with them, "It really is."