I sat at my desk for several minutes after Katz Meow left. An anxious spasm tore through me. My fingers clutched at the desk blotter.

I forced my hands flat on the desktop and stared at the wall to settle my nerves. A forgotten woman returned from my past and the memory of her tapped a well of shame from my childhood. Shame so toxic that even as a vampire I wanted to pull away from myself. The woman had remained unknown except for the bit of kindness she had shown me. Now I knew who she was, and I had to find her killer.

And the murder involved vampires colluding with humans.

Impossible.

Crazy.

Even if true, why would vampires risk catastrophe?

I tried to imagine every scenario where vampires and humans could mutually benefit from such collusion. How? We were enemies. Predator and prey.

Did the Araneum know about this collaboration? The Araneum-which is Latin for spiderweb-is the secret global network of vampires and should be made aware of this alleged vampire-human collusion. To protect the community of vampires, the Araneum had its feelers everywhere. And like the web tended by a spider, one suspicious tug on a strand would summon the Araneum to investigate, and if need be, strike.

But what if they didn't know? To quiet my fears, I had to ask. My previous contact with the Araneum had been through my vampire mentor, who was now dead, having been killed by vampire hunters shortly after I arrived in Denver. I called Carmen, the head of the local nidus-vampire nest. I could trust her. Her voice mail picked up and said she was in Florida, "working on her tan."

Very funny, Carmen.

I couldn't share this suspicion of collaboration between the undead and living with any other vampire until I knew what was at risk. So I had to contact the Araneum on my own. I logged on to an antiquarian booksellers Web site, The Sagging Bookshelf, and requested a first-edition copy of the 1940s classic Dental Care and Sexual Hygiene for Post-Adolescent Women. I added that a buyer from Los Angeles had inquired about the book.

Ordering this title from this bookstore was a coded signal to the Araneum alerting them of compromising contact with humans by the Los Angeles nidus. Centuries ago, vampires had ruled with impunity over their terror-stricken fiefdoms. Now humans with their technology had the means to hunt, capture, and exterminate the undead. Our best defense was to remain hidden within the skepticism that flowered over myth and fantasy. Humans wouldn't fight what they didn't believe existed.

After I had sent the message my nerves should've calmed, but they didn't. Instead my thoughts invented gruesome plots where even the inner cells of the Araneum had been compromised. For an instant, in my mind's eye, the sky was crowded with helicopters catching vampires in the daggers of spotlights and tearing their bodies apart with rockets and cannon. The survivors were doused with gasoline and set afire. Bulldozers plowed the burning and squirming survivors into pits. I had seen the barbarity of war, in the time before I was made a vampire. Humans had committed these atrocities against one another; why would I think the undead could fare better?

My kundalini noir slithered within my belly like a snake trying to escape a trap.

I brewed herb tea mixed with Saint-John's-wort and goat's blood. To work off my nervousness, I paced my office, walking across the floor, up the eastern wall, across the ceiling, and down the other wall, pausing at my desk to sip tea. I walked this circuit until the teapot was empty.

I went downstairs to see what was in the mailbox. Checks had arrived from recent clients, assignments involving philandering spouses and an insurance chiseler. In one case I had given a client and her lawyer a digital video of her husband churning the water in a hot tub with his blond personal trainer. Of course, the husband in the other case got a similar video of his wife giving her boss highway head.

The man accused of insurance fraud told me under hypnosis where he had cached the "property stolen from him" and in what other states he committed identical scams.

After returning to my desk, I endorsed the checks and went through my files. I took a coffee break to enjoy shade-grown Mexican Java mixed with type B-negative. I watched the blood drip from a Tupperware cup into the coffee. This was blood I had saved from a victim.

When I first became a vampire, human blood reminded me of my contribution to the misery and tragedy in this world. As a human I had murdered innocent people; blame it on the fog of war, but that was no excuse. I had taken aim and fired. And for a long time, I refused to drink human blood until I nearly died from weakness-and nearly let others be killed because of it.

Since then I've accepted my place in the cosmic game. I didn't invent the rules. God made me need the blood of my human prey. Like any predator I have to hunt and sometimes kill, and if I'm to survive I'd better be good at it.

Something rapped on my window. Since I was on the second floor, the noise startled me and I spilled coffee on my desk blotter.

A crow peeked in from the outside windowsill. The bird was a sleek inky shape in the glare of the bright sunlight. Its eyes, twin onyx beads, beckoned impatiently. The crow rapped its beak on the wooden frame of the screen.

I looked at the bird and pulled open the sash. The sunbeam warmed my hands and face, my skin protected by Dermablend and high SPF sunscreen.

The bird rapped the window again. Did it want to come inside?

This was an old building, and layers of paint kept the window screen firmly in place. I dug at the edge with a letter opener. I pried loose one corner of the frame and pushed it open, trying not to crack the wood.

The crow squeezed into the gap and twisted its glossy black body until it emerged onto the inside sill.

The crow flew into the shaded coolness of my office and landed on my desk. An ornate metal capsule the size of my little finger was fastened to its right leg.

Was this my contact from the Araneum? A crow? Of course-what should I expect? An ostrich? Or a penguin on roller skates?

I read my watch. I had sent the email three hours ago. The Araneum responded already?

I had imagined the Araneum as somewhere in Europe, a sheltered enclave as secretive and forbidding as the Vatican. Had the crow flown all that way in three hours? Or, more plausibly, the Araneum had agents here in Denver.

I expected the crow to talk. Instead it kept mute and preened its wing feathers.

I cupped the silky, warm body. Its heart thrummed against my palm. The crow weighed less than a small chicken. It held still while I undid the metal clasp holding the capsule in place.

Its leg free, the crow squirmed from my grasp and hopped back to the desk. It strutted back and forth, claws scratching the paper of my blotter. The crow stopped beside my coffee cup and dunked its beak inside. It tilted its head back and suddenly hacked.

"Thanks a lot." Crow spit now flavored my coffee. "You can finish the rest."

The crow resumed walking across my desk.

"Behave yourself," I said. "Crap on my desk and I'll bake you in a pie."

The crow swiveled its head to fix one glassy eye upon me and snorted.

The capsule was filigreed with delicate loops of gold and platinum. Tiny rubies lined what appeared to be a cap. I twisted the cap, and it unscrewed. The funky odor of stale meat leaked out. A slip of paper was curled inside, which I dug out with my fingertip.

The paper was a rolled sheet of speckled parchment that looked like onionskin and unfolded to the size of a postcard. Someone with exquisite calligraphy had written: