“I need to give it to you now,” I said.

“But what—”

“Mozzy…” I put my hand over his mouth. “Here’s the thing: if we stand here talking, I think I’ll eat you.”

His eyes wide, he nodded.

Pulling away my hand, I leaned forward, my mouth covering his, and the beast exploded. It struggled to filter through my skin, trying to wring itself out every pore, squeezing itself into my sweat and spit and blood, saturating every drop of me.

Infecting Moz, injecting him.

The kiss took long seconds, and when it was over I was dripping.

I pushed myself back from Moz and stared into his glittering eyes. He was panting, beautiful, infected. Relief swept through me, and I kissed him softer this time, finally certain that he was safe. Just this once, sane had beaten crazy.

After that first kiss, the hungry beast inside me didn’t want to consume this new warrior in the struggle. It was satisfied.

But me… I was only getting started.

I’d bought a new dress just for this, and nine kinds of makeup. My hair had been redone that afternoon, cut and blown and sculpted with goo. I was dripping borrowed bling and staring at my bathroom mirror, a contact lens balanced on the tip of my finger.

Color my mother ecstatic.

“You can do it, Pearl.” She was hovering behind me, similarly glammed.

“That’s not the question.” I stared at the contact lens, which shimmered like a tiny bowl of light. A dreadful, painful glow. “The question is whether I want to.”

“Don’t be silly, darling. You said you wanted to look your best tonight.”

“Mmm.” Foolish words that had sent Mom into a spending rampage.

Back a million years ago when she was seventeen, she’d actually had a coming-out party, like a real old-fashioned debutante. She still had the pictures. And we’d stayed in New York City no matter how high the garbage got, no matter how dangerous the streets—because this was where the parties were. So she probably hoped this was the beginning of a new era of Pretty Pearl, no more blue jeans or glasses or bands.

“I could just go there blind.”

“Nonsense. To be truly lovely, one must make eye contact. And I don’t want you stumbling all over the art.”

“She’s a photographer, Mom. Photos are traditionally hung on the wall; you can’t stumble on them.” Typical. It was my mother who always got invited to these things, but she never bothered to Google the artist. Which was lucky, I guess. A glance would have revealed who else was on the guest list tonight, giving away the real reason I wanted to go.

“Quit stalling, Pearl. I know you can do this.”

“And how do you know that, Mom?”

“Because I wear contact lenses and so did your father. You’ve got the genes for it!”

“Great,” I said. “Thanks for passing on those sticking-a-finger-in-your-eye genes to me. Not to mention the crappy-eyesight genes.” I stared at the little lens gradually drying to razor-sharpness on my fingertip, imagining all my totally lateral caveman ancestors jamming rocks and sticks into their eyeballs, none of them realizing the whole thing would pay off a thousand generations later when I had to look good at an art gallery opening.

“Okay, guys, this is for you,” I said, taking a breath and prying my left eye open wide. As my finger approached, the little transparent disk grew until it blotted out everything, dissolving into a fit of blinking.

“Is it in?” my mother asked.

“How the hell should I know?” I opened one eye, then the other, squinting at myself in the mirror.

Blurry Pearl, clear Pearl, blurry Pearl, clear Pearl…

“Hey, I think it’s in.”

“See?” my mother said. “That was easy as pie.”

“Pi squared, maybe. Let’s get going.” I scooped new makeup into my brand-new handbag, its silver chain glittering softly in my blurry eye.

My mother frowned. “What about the other one?”

I alternated eyes again—blurry mother, clear mother—and shrugged. “Sorry, Mom. I don’t think I’ve got the genes for it.”

As long as I could recognize faces, the demimonde was good enough for me.

Out on the street, Elvis made a big deal about my new look, acting like he didn’t recognize me, trying to get me to blush. The older I got, the more he thought his job was to make me feel ten years old. Lately, he was tragically good at it.

The weird thing was, though, by the time we arrived at the gallery, I felt twenty-five. There weren’t any cameras popping as Elvis swung the limousine door open for me, but there was a guy with a clipboard and headset, other blinged-up art lovers sweeping into the entrance, their bodyguards piling up out in the street, the clink and chatter coming from the crowd inside… It was almost like going onstage.

Even with everything going on, New York still had gallery openings. Civilization was still kicking ass, and here I was, in costume and in character. Ready to charm.

Once inside the gallery, the first trick was extricating myself from Mom. She kept showing me off to friends, all of them dutifully not recognizing me and dropping their jaws, reading from the same script as Elvis. Soon Mom was striking up conversations with strangers, dropping “my daughter” comments and clearly craving “Not your sister?” in response.

And she wonders why I don’t dress up more.

Finally, though, I weaseled out of her orbit with the lame excuse of wanting to look at, you know, the art. Her fingers trailed on my shoulder as I slipped away, reminding everyone one more time that I was her daughter.

I made my way straight to a table full of champagne, rows and columns of it bubbling furiously, and smiled. The open bar: where else would a record company rep hang out at an art opening?

I snagged a glass and hovered near the table, keeping an eagle eye (just one) out for the face I’d downloaded that morning. My trap was finally set—I was ready. All my lines were memorized; I was dressed ravishingly and standing in the perfect spot. There was nothing more I could do but wait.

So I waited…

Twenty minutes later, my enthusiasm had faded.

No record company talent scout had materialized, the glass was empty, and my feet were unhappy in their new shoes. The party buzzed around me, ignoring my little black dress and borrowed bling, like I was some kind of nonentity. Bubbles rattled unpleasantly in my head.

All my life I’d wondered how my mother’s sole life purpose could be going to parties, even while the world was crumbling around her. Finally Google had shown me the answer: her reason for existence was to get me into this party. Astor Michaels, Red Rat Records’ most fawesome talent scout, was also the biggest collector of this photographer’s work. He’d discovered the New Sound, signing both Zombie Phoenix and Morgan’s Army—not huge, commercial bands, but gutsy bands like us.

It was a perfect match, like when Moz and I had been brought together. Surely this was fate playing with my mother’s social calendar.

But as I picked up my second glass and wandered through the crowd, squinting at two hundred half-blurry faces and recognizing none of them, I started to consider an awful possibility: could fate be messing with me?

What if Astor Michaels was out of town? Or busy scouting bands at some undiscovered club instead of here? What if Google had lied to me? All my efforts tonight would be wasted—in fact, my mother’s whole life would be wasted…

I stood there, dizzy on my feet, staring at a half-empty glass and realizing something equally dismaying: the champagne gene was another one my mom hadn’t passed on. Maybe it was my half-blurry vision or the buzz of the uncaring crowd around me, but I felt like reality was in a blender.