When the feeling gets bad, no amount of canned blood helps. I’ll be walking along and I’ll smell something unbelievably good. I’ll start salivating, stomach growling, and I’ll turn to see, not a plate of freshly baked cookies but a person, maybe even a friend. I can’t describe how that feels. It’s bad. Just bad.

I finished my drink and went inside. Marguerite was in the bathroom putting on makeup. I perched on the counter, watching her as she applied pale lipstick to a mouth that was already a perfect pink bow.

“So who’s the hot vampire in New York?” I said. “A tall, dark Napoleonic soldier you met during the Civil War? Sheltered him from the witch hunts? Got separated on the Titanic, each floating off on your own icebergs?”

“History is not your strongest subject, is it, mon chaton?”

“I’m improvising. So who is he?”

“There is no he. I want to look nice for people I have not seen in a while.”

“Uh-huh.”

I looked in the mirror—yes, unlike Hollywood vampires, I can see my reflection. Beside Marguerite’s fragile porcelain perfection, I always feel big and clumsy. Seeing us together, though, the difference isn’t that obvious. I’m only a few inches taller, and skinny enough that I can snag her designer shirts and leather jackets. No one ever mistakes us for sisters, though. My golden brown hair, green eyes, and lightly bronzed skin guarantee that.

I reached for her makeup bag. She snatched it away and handed me lip gloss.

“When you are seventeen,” she said.

“I may never be seventeen.”

“Then you will have no need for makeup, will you?”

I sighed. Marguerite can be unbelievably old-fashioned sometimes. The perils of having a guardian who grew up in the nineteenth century. On this point, though, I don’t really care. I’m a jock, not a cheerleader. Makeup is a pain in the ass. Well, most times. I make an exception for dates. Not that there’d been any of those since I turned. Let a guy nuzzle my neck and he might realize I don’t have a pulse. Marguerite says guys won’t notice, but I’m not ready to take that chance.

I wandered into the bedroom, picked up the keys and jangled them. “Don’t forget I have my license now. Better hurry or I’ll go to New York without you.”

She didn’t peek out of the bathroom. Didn’t call after me as I walked out the door. Didn’t even ring my cell as I drove our little rental car from the motel lot. She knew I wasn’t going far. There are days when I like that, knowing she trusts me. Then there are others when I really wish I was a little more rebellious. A little less predictable.

She probably even knew where I was heading. We’d passed a coffee shop and bakery a few minutes before we stopped for the night, and she’d promised to let me head back in the morning, grab my morning coffee. Vampires don’t need food. We can still eat and drink, though, which helps us fit in. For most, like Marguerite, food doesn’t sit well in their stomachs. Not so with me. That’s one of the modifications that did work, apparently.

I grabbed an extra-large hazelnut vanilla coffee and a cinnamon bun. Then I headed back, music blasting, pedal to the floor, zooming along the empty Vermont road. Well, close. I had the music moderately loud and I was going about ten kilometers over the speed limit. Five miles over the speed limit, I should say. I’m American, but Marguerite is French Canadian, and we’ve spent most of the past decade in Montreal, so I’m used to the metric system.

Miles or kilometers, the point was that I wasn’t speeding very much, and I left my coffee and bun untouched beside me until Marguerite was driving. Yes, I can act like a smart-aleck teen, but I rarely break the rules. It’s my upbringing, Marguerite says. The only time my “parents” ever praised me was when I was a model child, tediously well behaved. Being a vampire doesn’t make me a badass. Sadly.

I’m not a complete wimp, though. So when a pickup came roaring up behind me, I didn’t follow my driving instructor’s teachings and pull over to let him pass. I sped up. He stayed on my bumper, coming so close I could only see his truck’s grille.

That made me realize just how empty the road was, winding through the foothills, dense trees on either side, a steep embankment down to my right. I hadn’t seen another car since leaving town. Not the place to play road warrior. So I slowed to the speed limit and eased over, giving him plenty of room for passing.

When he made no move to go by, I slid my cell phone from my pocket. Then the grille disappeared from my rearview mirror as the truck swung into the other lane to pass.

I glanced in my side mirror. It was only a glance. I had both hands on the wheel. I didn’t drift into his lane. I was sure of it. But the next thing I knew, there was a crunch, metal on metal, and my car shot toward the embankment.

My throat seized up, brain screeching, brakes screaming along with it as I slammed on the brakes. The car kept going, sailing over the edge.

It rolled and it kept rolling and all I could do was duck, hands over my head, until there was a bone-jarring crash. And everything went dark.

I blacked out for only a second. When I came to, the car was still groaning from the impact. I opened my eyes to see a tree in the passenger seat. The car was wrapped around it.

I reached to undo my seat belt, but I couldn’t twist. A branch had gone through my shoulder and pinned me to the seat. I stared at it. There was a branch through my shoulder. And I couldn’t feel a thing.

I took a deep breath, reached up, and pulled it out. Took some effort. Vampires don’t get superhuman strength—another myth debunked—and the branch was all the way through the seat, so it required work, but finally I got it free. It left a hole in my shirt, but no blood, obviously. There was a hole in my shoulder, too, but it would seal up.

I tried to check out the damage in the mirror. Seeing myself, I let out a yelp and closed my eyes fast. Another deep breath. Then I pulled down the visor and opened the mirror.

My nose was broken. Smashed nearly flat from an impact I couldn’t remember. My lip was split. And one of my eyes was…not quite in place.

Oh God. My stomach heaved. I closed my eyes and pressed my palm to the injured eye. It…went back in. I shuddered, stomach spinning.

I reached up and straightened my nose. As I moved it, I could feel it reforming under my fingers.

There. All fixed. Now—

“Hello!” a man’s voice shouted.

I lowered my head to look out the smashed window. A vehicle was parked at the top of the embankment. The guy who’d run me off the road?

No. It was a car, not a truck. Two sets of legs stood beside it. They must have seen my car fly off the road.

That really wasn’t any better. I couldn’t let rescuers find me, not while I still had a hole through my shoulder and God knows what other injuries, all of which would miraculously heal during the ambulance ride to the hospital. This was exactly the sort of scenario I’d feared.

I stuffed my cell phone into my pocket and grabbed the door handle. My fingers slipped on the wet surface. Coffee, I realized. The whole interior of the car dripped with it.

Hey, at least it’s not blood.

I wrenched the handle. Not surprisingly, the door didn’t open. I twisted to get up, so I could kneel on the seat and go out the window.

My legs wouldn’t move.

I stared down. They were crushed. Oh God. My legs were crushed.

“Is someone down there?” the man yelled.

“I think I see a car,” a woman answered. “Have you called the…?” Her voice drifted off.

Okay, they weren’t coming down here. Not yet, at least. I had time. I tugged at the broken steering wheel. It snapped off in my hands. I set it aside, then ran my hand down my legs, trying to wriggle them free. The muscles weren’t responding, but my legs seemed to be loose.