filtered in through the living room window and touched the carpet. Two policemen and a tall, blond guy in faded Levi’s were walking up Edward’s front lawn. The whole world shifted into slow motion as he kissed my forehead and started running toward the door.

Nothing could have stopped him. As his half-naked form burst out onto the front porch, screaming like an animal in pain, one of the cops pulled a gun. I just stood there.

He loved imported tobacco and Savile Row suits. He loved sitting by the hearth and playing chess. He loved dancing at midnight and watching Monty Python films. He loved Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novels. He looked hot in a black tux. The sanest vampire I’d ever known.

He was on fire before his feet hit the grass. Both uniformed cops jumped back, and the guy in Levi’s just stood his ground, staring—like me. I had to go, to run before somebody spotted me, but I stayed frozen by the window watching as Edward sank down in a burning heap on the lawn. He had once told me what happens when we die. At the time I hadn’t believed him.

It hit me like a wall falling down, almost visible. The psychic energy of a thousand lives burst from Edward’s mind like prisoners fleeing their cage. I saw a thousand deaths, a thousand lives lost. The terror and anger and pain cut through me in an unstoppable flow. The carpet rushed up, and I lay there writhing until the pain faded. Edward had told me that only others of our kind would feel this agony . . . this release, and would know that one of us had passed over.

Poor Edward.

Fear and instinct pushed me up onto all fours.

The police would be calling for backup or entering the house on their own any second. But while crawling toward the cellar, I heard someone else screaming, and I forced myself to look back outside. The light hurt my eyes. The guy in jeans was rolling on the ground, holding his head.

Something touched my mind, something alien—not Edward. It was the blond man on the ground, frightened and suffering. I could feel him, see the scattered, disoriented terror running through him. But he was mortal. He shouldn’t have felt anything.

The house. What would they learn when they searched the house? I looked about wildly for anything to take with me. I’d never been awake this late. My eyes burned, and my legs were weak. Edward’s personal address book lay under the phone. I grabbed it and stumbled for the cellar door, looking back only once at the large, framed photograph of myself hanging over his fireplace.

chapter 2

My eyes opened to darkness. Like an infallible clock, my internal second hand woke me precisely at twelve minutes past sundown. In our inverted world, this almost physical connection to time was a blessing and a curse—or that’s what Edward once told me. He never liked his world to be too regulated.

Edward.

I lay on his mattress.

He had divided his cellar into four dingy storage rooms, with no soft carpets or velvet furniture, not even linoleum—just aging floorboards. Most of us keep mementos of past time periods, reminding us to flow and change and evolve with each new generation. Edward had never purchased a bed, though, and he had been sleeping on a sheet-less Posturepedic mattress for years. That old folktale about coffins is a lie. I’d get claustrophobic.

Like projections against a blank wall, images from that morning flashed before me: his face, hair, and fingers bursting into flames. Had it hurt? Did death hurt us? I couldn’t mourn him yet, or I’d get lost inside myself, and survival always outranks emotion.

What had happened while I slept?

The police had probably searched the house from floor to ceiling. The tiny space I now occupied was hidden behind an invisible door in the west wall. At least they hadn’t found me.

Listening for a full minute, I heard nothing. I pushed on the sliding panel once to release it.

Empty room.

Odd smell, sweet and musty.

Was it floating down from the mess in his kitchen? God, what had the cops thought of that? Slipping Edward’s address book inside my jacket, I stepped out to find the stench growing stronger, and to see a pile of torn-up floorboards. They’d torn the floor up? Why? Rotting shards of wood and fresh, uneven piles of dirt lay all around me.

Then I noticed a small, gray-white spot in the dirt and leaned down to