“There isn’t one,” she insisted. “What can I do to make this more comfortable for you?”

“Get a tourniquet and a glass, and take your neck out of the equation?”

She laughed and led me to the porch swing, where I sat as she tipped her head back. I opened my mouth, extended my fangs, and leaned toward her. I saw her pulse beating beneath her skin, her living, human skin. Every nerve ending was an opportunity for me to cause her pain. She took a steadying breath when she felt my nose awkwardly brush her ear. It reminded me of how I used to exhale sharply when I was stuck at the annual library blood drive.

“I can’t,” I said, giving her a helpless, apologetic look. “I’m sorry, I’m just afraid I’m going to hurt you.”

“Don’t worry about being nervous. A lot of vampires have trouble with this from time to time. It happens to everyone.”

“If I was a forty-year-old man suffering from erectile dysfunction, that would be a great comfort to me, thanks,” I said, even as the thirst sent my stomach rumbling.

“Think of me as a free-range animal,” she offered.

“That’s…a brilliant idea,” I started, until I pictured her being led into a slaughterhouse by vampires wearing black cowboy hats and Dracula capes. “But not helping.”

Seeing a chink in my argument, Andrea smiled and crooked her head back, offering her delicately veined throat. “Don’t think of me as male or female. Or even human. Think of me as a cheeseburger on legs. That seems to help the newbies with pacifist tendencies.”

I waited for icky visuals involving an undead Ronald McDonald, but none came. “Oddly enough, I think that might work.”

I leaned toward Andrea, who happily settled into her “feeding position,” head tilted back, arms relaxed. She moaned as my lips skimmed her throat.

“Um, if I’m going to do this, you can’t do that,” I told her. “Vampires do not suddenly become sexually ambiguous the moment they’re turned…unless, you’re Angelina Jolie, and then we can talk.”

Andrea silently leaned back and offered her jugular. I found a place on her skin that hadn ’t been marked and sank in my teeth. Her blood was warm, alive, and electric, flowing freely into me and flooding my senses. True to her word, Andrea was delicious, with a delicate, floral flavor under the hemoglobin. Absently, I wondered if blood types were like wines. Maybe type O

negative was full-bodied with undertones of oak. Or if you want something light with hints of tropical fruit, type B positive.

Andrea let loose a comfortable yawn and companionably wrapped her arms around my waist as I swallowed mouthfuls of her blood. It was surprising how quickly my thirst was slaked. Then again, there wasn’t much in the way of excitement to stretch the procedure out. It was cordial, efficient—like an ATM transaction.

I pulled back, watching a drop of scarlet run from tiny twin punctures I ’d left on her throat. Andrea whimpered and collapsed back on the swing, rolling around like a puppy in high grass.

I lay back, too unsteady to stand. The comfy emotional distance I was enjoying evaporated as Andrea writhed and wriggled.

Obviously, she had enjoyed the experience far more than I had. I felt dirty, like some married father of five walking away from an encounter at the Lucky Clover Motel. But at least I knew I hadn’t hurt her. At this point, I just hoped I hadn’t cultivated myself a dandy new stalker.

Andrea’s wounds began to close but didn’t heal completely. Just after the Great Coming Out, I’d read something about the proteins in vampire saliva speeding up the healing process in humans. It seemed only right that we helped them heal after drinking from them.

Andrea’s breathing had returned to normal. She sat up, stretching in a long, lean line. She pulled a prepacked alcohol wipe out of her purse and wiped at what looked like the mother of all hickeys. She tied the scarf in a jaunty knot at her throat and smiled.

She looked like a woman who’d just spent an afternoon with a masseuse or possibly on a masseuse.

“Why would you do this?” I asked, wiping at my mouth.

“It’s nice to be needed.” She rose on wobbly legs. “And if you understood what it feels like to be on the giving end, you wouldn’t ask.”

She stood and fished a card out of her purse.

“I’m going to leave my number,” she offered, smiling. “If you’d like to see me again, just give me a call.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I mean, you seem nice, but I don’t know if you’re…”

“Someone you would spend time with in real life?”

Open fanged mouth, insert foot. “No, I didn’t mean…This is so strange. I’m sorry.”

She smiled, her lips thin. “It’s going to be a little strange for a while. I’ll leave it here for you.”

She laid the card on the porch railing and walked away without as much as a look back. Humiliated, I flipped Andrea’s card between my fingers. She seemed so nice. And I hurt her feelings. I made her feel cheap. This was the sort of thing that was going to keep me cringing for days and then strike me at odd intervals over the next year.

Yep, I’m that kind of social neurotic.

If Gabriel would just leave me alone instead of treating me like some undead child, I could find my footing. I would stop making these weird vampire social gaffes. Who asked him to send take-out on legs to my house? Why couldn’t he just let me take care of myself? Smothering, overinvolved, toxically incapable of butting out. He was like Mama with fangs.

Please, Lord, let that be the only time I compare Gabriel to my mother.

I was running before the idea of confronting Gabriel was even fully formed. Still enjoying my newfound inner track star, I sprinted over to Silver Ridge Road at full speed. It was so much better with shoes. I passed a couple of cars, but if they noticed a woman running at sixty-five miles per hour in the dark, they didn’t make a fuss.

I reached Gabriel’s driveway just as I was hitting my stride. Even in my foul temper, I could appreciate the sight of Gabriel’s house. It was about as stately as houses get in the Hollow. Immaculately whitewashed clapboard, big wraparound porch complete with Corinthian columns, and a front door that covered more square feet than my first apartment. It still amazed me that Gabriel had been able to direct public attention away from this place. My mother and her historical society cronies would probably sacrifice their firstborn just to snoop through the root cellar.

And yes, I do realize that would be me. (Jenny had produced grandchildren, after all.) I slapped the hood of my old station wagon in a sort of greeting, wondering idly if Big Bertha had behaved herself for Gabriel. It didn’t really prick my conscience either way.

Lifting the brass knocker, I was struck by a horrible thought. What if Gabriel wasn’t home? Or worse, what if he was home and had someone with him? Some vampire groupie/snack or another vampire? What if he was feeding? Ick. Or having weird vampire sex? Ickier.

I had turned on my heel and started to run back to my house when I heard Gabriel ask, “Where are you going?”

7

The bond between sires and the young vampires they create is sacred and should be respected.

—From The Guide for the Newly Undead

“Gah! How do you do that?” I yelped, turning to find Gabriel standing in all his noir glory just behind me. “Why didn’t I sense you or smell you or whatever?”

“I move faster than your young senses can detect,” he said, opening the door and welcoming me with a wave of his arm.

“You will become more attuned to me in time.”

I chose not to respond to that, striding into the slate -blue foyer with my shoulders squared. He followed, hovering on the edge of touching me. His fingers glided millimeters from my arms, leading me through to the den.

“I fixed your car,” he said, tossing the keys from a jade dish on the little maple end table.

I palmed them and eyed him speculatively. “You fixed my car?”

“I have walked the earth for more than a century. I managed to pick up some skills along the way, ” he said, before reluctantly adding, “and one of them is finding skilled mechanics.”

I smirked, leaning against the wall. “You almost had me there.”

“I supervised,” he insisted. He was adorable when he was all flustered and indignant. “That car was a death trap—”

“It’s a classic.”

“A classic with shot brakes, a fuel line that had been gnawed by rodents, and a carburetor that had been rebuilt using duct tape,” he said. “I don’t know what any of that means, but my mechanic said he couldn ’t determine what made your car break down because it would have been much easier to look for what didn’t.”

“OK, so I’ve been a little lax in the automotive -repair department,” I said defensively. “And I shouldn’t have let a high-school student rebuild my carburetor. But that doesn’t mean you need to do things like this for me. It makes me feel obligated.”

“That wasn’t my intention. I liked feeling that I was doing something kind for you, Jane. I haven ’t felt the urge to do something like that for a woman in a long time. And I thought you would appreciate the restoration of your vehicular independence far more than posies and poetry.”

I smiled, and, encouraged, Gabriel took a step toward me.

“Thanks. I mean, it’s not exactly a sonnet, but that’s really—wait. No,” I said, warding him off. “I’m still pissed at you, seriously pissed. That girl at my house, Andrea. You had no right to do that. Did it even occur to you that you had no right to do that?”

Unimpressed with my outburst, he replied, “You needed someone experienced to help you through your first live feeding.”

I jabbed a finger into his chest, backing him into his living room. “So why didn’t you just send over a hooker? Hell, why didn’t you videotape it? You could have sold it to Vampire Girls Gone Wild.”