Most black vampires looked anemic. Not Antoine. His complexion was as dark and shiny as waxed ebony. Evidently, he shared Carmen’s skin treatment.

Antoine let go and we continued up the beach. Jolie jumped onto Antoine’s back and sat on his shoulders like she was riding in a rodeo.

Carmen strode alongside Antoine. “Any word on the missing chalice?”

Antoine sighed. “Nothing new on Key West. Any word from Miami?”

“No.” Tendrils of anxiety snaked along the periphery of Carmen’s aura. She closed her eyes and brushed a hand through her hair.

Jolie reached from her perch on Antoine’s shoulders and tapped her foot against Carmen’s back. “Chill. You’ve done all you can for now.” Jolie unsnapped her bikini top and twirled it like a pennant. “Time to party.”

Her pointy breasts dared me to leap up and nuzzle them. But from what I’d seen of Jolie, she was as apt to kick my balls as to fondle them. So I stayed on the ground and kept my mouth shut.

The four of us passed through the village. None of the lightbulbs matched. The cords had lumps of electrical tape where frays had been mended. The cabins were simple huts with painted shutters and doors. Colorful streamers-actually cut up sections of awning-dangled from the eaves. Everything looked cobbled together from a salvage yard. I had expected a luxurious Florida resort and it was instead a Third World shantytown fixed up for a party.

“Who built this place?” I asked.

“I did,” answered Antoine. “You won’t believe I got most of this picking through debris from the last hurricane. Saved a ton of money.”

“No kidding?” I asked. “The guests ever complain?”

“I give them a retro experience. The Keys as they were back in the day of rum runners and nickel sandwiches.”

A helicopter rested on a concrete pad between the cabins and the wood line. A threadbare tarp covered the bubble canopy and another tarp (in a different color, of course) covered the engine beneath the rotor mast. Black stains darkened the concrete under the engine. The copter was a vintage Bell 47 Whirlybird. Ropes secured the tips of the drooping rotor blades to eyebolts in the pad.

“You have a helicopter? Why didn’t you fly instead of taking a boat?” I asked.

Carmen cocked her thumb at Antoine. “Ask him.”

“The copter’s mine.” Antoine’s voice sagged with remorse. “Won the damn thing in a poker game and it’s been nothing but trouble.”

“You fly?”

“I gave Howard Hughes his first lesson,” Antoine replied. “I haven’t renewed my license since but I still get around.”

The Bell’s right skid was missing and a stack of cinder blocks and a car jack kept the fuselage propped upright. Beach and kitchen towels hung from the lattice structure of the tail boom. “This thing’s an antique,” I said. “It’d be worth fixing up.”

Antoine shrugged. The gesture said, Mañana.

Two snowmobiles sat on a rusted trailer behind the helicopter. Weeds grew through the trailer and around the flat tires.

“What are you doing with those?”

“Different poker game,” answered Antoine.

We passed through a plume of charcoal smoke carrying the aroma of grilling fish. The smoke rolled out the chimney and the windows of a wooden shack.

“That’s my gourmet kitchen,” Antoine said.

“Looks like it’s on fire,” Jolie noted.

Antoine paused. His aura flared with concern. He yelled to the shack: “Hey, you guys burning my kitchen?”

From inside the kitchen, there came a clanging of metal and an “Oh shit.”

A flame shot out the kitchen chimney. Antoine pulled Jolie off his shoulders. Together they sprinted for the shack.

Carmen shook her head in dismay. She grasped my hand, we turned our backs to the shack, and continued for the pavilion.

A combo band of undead and living played guitars, a baritone saxophone, a marimba, and a variety of drums at the south end of the pavilion. No one wore anything more than a brief swimsuit and dreadlocks. Some wore less.

Groups of chalices stood on the wooden floor of the pavilion, arms waving to the music. I counted seven orange auras besides us. I didn’t recognize any of these vampires. Counting Antoine, Carmen, Jolie, and myself, that made about three chalices per set of fangs.

Along the floor’s edge, vampires sat on the benches of picnic tables, chalices on their laps, the couples necking like teenagers. A wall of palm fronds decorated with flowers, ribbons, and bunches of rooster tail feathers stood on the far end of the pavilion.

Carmen took me to the center table. A female chalice, topless and fit as a Pilates instructor, removed the lid from a metal stockpot on the table. The smell of a rich bouillabaisse wafted out. Bread rolls filled a basket next to a stack of bowls and utensils.

Carmen patted my shoulder, indicating that I sit. “Antoine’s lack of aesthetic style doesn’t extend to his cooking. Enjoy.” She rubbed my scalp and tousled my hair. “Chow down, Felix, you’re going to need it. Meanwhile I have resort business to take care of.”

I grabbed Carmen’s wrist. “What do you mean, ‘You’re going to need it’? For what?”

She grinned and shook loose. “Every evening we have a party and tonight you’re the guest of honor.” She turned to leave.

The chalice ladled the fish stew into a bowl. The aroma of the bouillabaisse was a teaser compared to the wonderful scent of a thick blood stock, type O-positive, that she added from an insulated metal carafe. Another chalice-a bustier version of the previous one-poured mojitos from an enameled pitcher into short glass tumblers. This was the first decent meal I’d had all day, and after a second helping, I sopped at the last of the gelatinous redness with hunks of bread and washed it down with sips of the sweetened rum drink.

Two chalices cleared the table. Thorne, Carmen’s male chalice, went around with a big pitcher and refilled glasses. This batch of mojitos had a better kick. Maybe it was the blending of different spices, a more potent rum, or something from the botánica.

The sax, marimba, and guitar players paused and let the bongos and conga drums carry the rhythm.

Antoine reappeared from the left side of the pavilion. Vertical red, black, and white stripes covered his torso. A wreath of leaves crowned his balding noggin. His broad lips gripped an unlit cigar. Glitter sparkled in his hair, mustache, and goatee. A necklace of cowrie shells glistened against the dark skin of his neck. He strutted in a cadence that matched the drumbeat, his thick legs parting his only attire, a blue sarong.

The drumming softened to a rumble.

A female chalice followed Antoine. Stripes of paint also covered her body.

They stopped before the wall of palm fronds. She stepped around Antoine to place votive candles along the floor.

Antoine pulled a butane barbecue lighter from his waistband and crouched to light the candles. After he lit the last one, he stood, put the lighter to the end of the cigar, sucked hard, and exhaled a dense puff of smoke. The smoke rolled through the air and spread a pungent tobacco smell.

The drummers slapped their congas and started a loud Afro-Caribbean beat. The guitars, marimba, and saxophone joined in with a fast merengue.

Antoine’s aura crackled around him. He no longer looked doughy and friendly but demanding and stern. “It’s time to make music,” he boomed louder than the conga drums, “and dance to beckon the goddess of beauty and sensuality, our exalted Oshún.”

The beat reverberated inside me. I swirled my mojito and wondered about the dark sediment circling the bottom of the tumbler. Maybe what Carmen had bought in the botánica was in the drink. Something psychoactive. I hoped so.

Jolie made her entrance from the left. She wore an iridescent loincloth the size of a napkin. Her red hair was fashioned into an octopus of braids. Jolie led six painted chalices, alternating male and female, who entered in a swaying gait. The rattles on their ankles and wrists shook with the rhythm. They carried censers that trailed plumes of smoldering tobacco, sage, marijuana, and sandalwood.