in the hall he seemed to be a little more aware of the need to get out of there, and we hurried from Fangtasia and got into Bill’s car.

I looked down at myself. I was bloodstained and wrinkled, and I smelled funny. Yuck. I looked over at Bill to share my disgust with him, but he was looking at me in an unmistakable way.

“No,” I said forcefully. “You start this car and get out of here before anything else happens, Bill Compton. I tell you flat, I’m not in the mood.”

He scooted across the seat toward me, his arms scooping me up before I could say anything else. Then his mouth was on mine, and after a second his tongue began licking the blood from my face.

I was really scared. I was also really angry. I grabbed his ears and pulled his head away from mine using every ounce of strength I possessed, which happened to be more than I thought I had.

His eyes were still like caves with ghosts dwelling in their depths.

“Bill!” I shrieked. I shook him. “Snap out of it!”

Slowly, his personality seeped back into his eyes. He drew a shuddering sigh. He kissed me lightly on the lips.

“Okay, can we go home now?” I asked, ashamed that my voice was so quavery.

“Sure,” he said, sounding none too steady himself.

“Was that like sharks scenting blood?” I asked, after a fifteen-minute silent drive that almost had us out of Shreveport.

“Good analogy.”

He didn’t need to apologize. He’d been doing what nature dictated, as least as natural as vampires got. He didn’t bother to. I would kind of liked to have heard an apology.

“So, am I in trouble?” I asked finally. It was two in the morning, and I found the question didn’t bother me as much as it should have.

“Eric will hold you to your word,” Bill said. “As to whether he will leave you alone personally, I don’t know. I wish . . .” but his voice trailed off. It was the first time I’d heard Bill wish for anything.

“Sixty thousand dollars isn’t a lot of money to a vampire, surely,” I observed. “You all seem to have plenty of money.”

“Vampires rob their victims, of course,” Bill said matter-of-factly. “Early on, we take the money from the corpse. Later, when we’re more experienced, we can exert enough control to persuade a human to give us money willingly, then forget it’s been done. Some of us hire money managers, some of us go into real estate, some of us live on the interest from our investments. Eric and Pam went in together on the bar. Eric put up most of the money, Pam the rest. They had known Long Shadow for a hundred years, and they hired him to be bartender. He betrayed them.”

“Why would he steal from them?”

“He must have had some venture he needed the capital for,” Bill said absently. “And he was in a mainstreaming position. He couldn’t just go out and kill a bank manager after hypnotizing him and persuading the man to give him the money. So he took it from Eric.”

“Wouldn’t Eric have loaned it to him?”

“If Long Shadow hadn’t been too proud to ask, yes,” Bill said.

We had another long silence. Finally I said, “I always think of vampires as smarter than humans, but they’re not, huh?”

“Not always,” he agreed.

When we reached the outskirts of Bon Temps, I asked Bill to drop me off at home. He looked sideways at me, but didn’t say anything. Maybe vampires were smarter than humans, after all.

Chapter 10

THE NEXT DAY, when I was getting ready for work, I realized I was definitely off vampires for a while. Even Bill.

I was ready to remind myself I was a human.

The trouble was, I had to notice that I was a changed human.

It wasn’t anything major. After the first infusion of Bill’s blood on the night the Rats had beaten me, I’d felt healed, healthy, stronger. But not markedly different. Maybe more—well, sexier.

After my second draft of Bill’s blood, I’d felt really strong, and I’d been braver because I’d had more confidence. I felt more secure in my sexuality and its power. It seemed apparent I was handling my disability with more aplomb and capability.

I’d had Long Shadow’s blood by accident. The next morning, looking in the mirror, my teeth were whiter and sharper. My hair looked lighter and livelier, and my eyes were brighter. I looked like a poster girl for good hygiene, or some healthy cause like