voice the editor was affecting, Bastien would guess he was supposed to be a woman. For some reason.
"How my heart beats for y--achoo!--you, Dracula. You stir my fire, my desire." Chris let the page he was reading drop to his side with disgust. "Who wrote this drivel?" he asked.
"A playwright," Vincent sniffed. "A professional playwright."
"Well, I'm a pro--achoo!--professional editor. And I--achoo I--wouldn't publish this poppycock."
"You just don't understand camp," Vincent snapped. "Haven't you ever heard of a little play-- later made into a major motion picture--called the Rocky Horror Picture Show?"
"That was good camp," Chris informed him, then rubbed his nose. "This--achoo!--is drivel. God, I wish the drugstore guy would get here with those-- achoo!--allergy pills."
"Believe me, so do I," Vincent said. He spotted Bastien in the entry and smiled. "Cousin! So you fi¬nally decided to join the living, did you?"
"Yes." His gaze shifted back to Terri, who blinked her eyes open, sat up to glance over at him, then scrambled to her feet.
"Good morning," she said brightly. "Did you sleep well?"
Nodding, Bastien moved purposely forward. His curiosity was killing him. Terri's eyes widened in sur¬prise when he paused in front of her, wiped one of the red spots off her neck, and pressed it to his tongue.
"Sauce?" he asked with disbelief. A couple of drops of sauce were what had nearly caused him the vampire equivalent of a heart attack? He'd thought--
"Ketchup, actually." Terri gave a laugh as she wiped off the rest. "We were helping Vincent with his lines. I was Lucy, and Chris is Mina." She glanced toward the editor, who sneezed violently three times in a row. She then leaned forward to tell Bastien in hushed tones, "He's allergic to the flowers. I sug¬gested he go to his room until we can get the pictures done and the flowers out, but he says it won't help."
"I did when they first arrived," the editor com¬plained. "But there are so many--achoo!--that the pollen is all through the apartment. Achoo! It wasn't much better than being out here." He removed the sheet from around his head and shoulders, and sank onto the couch with a groan.
Bastien slowly turned, only now noticing the flow¬ers that filled the living room and made it look like a bloody flower shop... or a mortuary. He didn't know how he had missed them on first glance, except that the sight of Terri lying prone on the floor had so overset him, he hadn't noticed anything else.
"I made breakfast," Terri announced, drawing Bastien's attention. "Omelets. I left some of the mix in the fridge for when you got up. Would you like some?"
Bastien took in her bright eyes and hopeful smile, and found a smile of his own claiming his lips. "Lovely."
"Good. It'll just be a minute," she assured him cheerfully, then turned on her heel and left.
Bastien hesitated, then followed. He had meant she was lovely, not that an omelet for breakfast would be lovely. But that was okay. He'd eat the omelet if she'd gone to the trouble of making enough for him. It ac¬tually sounded good anyway. An omelet. Made with Terri's own two hands.
You got it bad. Those words drifted into his mind with a chuckle. Vincent!
Bastien ignored him.
"Would you like a cup of coffee?" Terri asked as he entered the kitchen. She took out of the fridge a bowl filled with a mixture of eggs and various other ingredients.
"I'll get it," Bastien said and moved to the coffee pot. He usually tried to avoid the stuff; caffeine tended to have an exaggerated effect on his kind, but it was morning now, long before he would go back to sleep. There had been a time when he would have just been lying down to sleep after having been up through the night. Some members of his family, and he supposed others of his kind, still kept their night hours, but that wasn't possible for Bastien to do and run Argeneau Enterprises efficiently. Most business was conducted during the day, and Bastien found it easier to simply consume more blood than he other¬wise would need and deal with matters during the day.
"How about toast with your omelet?" Terri asked.
"No. Thank you." Moving to lean against the counter, he watched her set a frying pan on the stove and turn on the burner underneath while she whisked the contents of the bowl. "How long have you been up?"
"About an hour." She dropped a dollop of oil in the frying pan, nodding in satisfaction