“That’s okay with me, babe. Just as long as I got somewhere to sleep.”

“Itbetter be okay. Because that’s the way it is.” She gathered her things and opened the door, which scraped loudly on the sidewalk. And then she surprised him by leaning over and awkwardly pecking him on the cheek.

Jules waved out his window as he drove off in the direction of her Bienville Street home. But instead of putting his car in the garage, he turned onto Canal Street and headed west. Maureen was right about a lot of things. He would need to be at the top of his game to make it through even a week back in New Orleans. That meant getting as healthy as he could. No more aching knees. No more shortness of breath or incipient diabetes (or whatever the hell he was beginning to suffer from).

There was only one man who could possibly help him. Only one man who both understood Jules and maybe had the medical smarts to figure out a cure for what ailed him. The man who’d signed his paychecks and fed him the blood of the recently deceased for nearly thirty years. Jules wasn’t sure that Dr. Amos Landrieu, onetime city coroner, was still among the living; after all, he’d been near retirement age when he’d been voted out of office twenty-three years ago.

But so long as the Lincoln didn’t throw a piston on the way, Jules was determined to make this a night of reunions.

The name on the mailbox in front of the big old Greek Revival-style house on Cleveland Avenue, near the Jewish cemetery, still readAMOS LANDRIEU, M.D. The doctor’s car, an aged but well-maintained Mercedes sedan, was parked in the driveway. Jules saw a light on in an upstairs bedroom.

He hadn’t spoken with his old boss in more than fifteen years. After Dr. Landrieu’s comeback election campaign sputtered before it could even get off the ground, there hadn’t seemed much point to staying in touch. Jules regretted this now. The events of the past few weeks had taught him that you couldn’t have too many friends.

The emaciated branches of the spindly trees in the nearby Jewish cemetery rustled with a sudden gust of wind as Jules gathered his courage to ring the doctor’s doorbell. Even after nearly three decades of working side by side, Jules had never been totally sure what his boss had really thought of him. Their interactions had always been short, direct, and work-related; clinical, in both senses of the word. Dr. Landrieu was the only human being in New Orleans who knew what Jules was. He knew about the victims whose blood Jules had drained. In fact, suppressing Jules’s appetite with the blood of the dead had been the main reason the doctor had kept him on as his assistant for so many years. How would the doctor react now, seeing Jules again after so long? Would he call the police? Or toss a basin of holy water in Jules’s face?

Jules rang the doorbell. Half a minute later he heard footsteps descend the stairs inside the house. A light illuminated the foyer, and a second light flickered into dusty brilliance above Jules’s head. He sensed himself being observed through the peephole set in the middle of the oaken door.

A moment later the door slowly opened. Dr. Landrieu was in a robe, standing a little more stooped than Jules remembered, the lines and folds shadowing his eyes a bit deeper, his hair whiter and more scarce.

“Hiya, Doc,” Jules said. “Remember me?”

“Jules Duchon. How could I forget you?” The doctor’s voice was tired and weak and resigned, the sound of gravel bouncing down a rusted old tin roof. His eyes were very round and very small, like a startled sparrow’s, and a large blue vein that crossed his left eyebrow pulsed strongly. His thin fingers traced the sign of a cross on his chest.

Jules flinched, but he quickly recovered his composure. “Uh, Doc, can I come in?”

“Then the game would be all over, wouldn’t it?” Dr. Landrieu said, smiling faintly. “According to the old legends, you can’t enter my home until I invite you in. Isn’t that so? But if I remember correctly, you didn’t play by a lot of those old rules. No, a lack of invitation on my part will not suffice to save me. I always expected, Jules, that when my time on this earth was done, the Angel of Death would wear your face when he came for me. Very well. You may come in. But do we have time for a final cup of coffee before you, eh, do your business?”

Jules nervously rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Gee, Doc, you’ve got me all wrong. I’m not here to, y’know, fang you or anything. I mean, you’ve never done anything but good by me, so you’re probably the last person on earth I’d ever slake my thirst on. Well, one of the last, anyway.”

The old physician’s breathing became more regular. “Then what brings you to my door, Jules? It’s not as though you’ve been in the habit of paying me impromptu social calls over the last two decades.”

“I’ll cut to the chase, Doc. I need your help. All these years of livin‘ the New Orleans lifestyle”-he patted his bulbous stomach for emphasis-“they’ve caught up with me. My knees, my hips-practically every joint in my damn body feels like an exploding firecracker when I put any weight on it. Just crossing a street can make me winded. And to top it off, I think maybe I’m comin’ down with diabetes.”

Dr. Landrieu’s eyes brightened with sudden interest. “Diabetes? What makes you think that? What sort of symptoms have you been experiencing?”

“Well, I’m thirsty a lot more often then I used to be. Some nights, I’m thirsty all the time. And sometimes right after I, uh, feed, my heart goes all nutzo and my vision gets blurry. I been readin‘ articles about diabetes inModern Maturity, so I figure I sorta know what I’m talkin’ about.”

“I see. This is very interesting. Most interesting, indeed.” Dr. Landrieu opened his door wider and gestured for Jules to enter. “Please come in. I’d like to perform some tests. Perhaps I can help you.”

Jules’s face lit up like a sunrise. “Really? That’s great, Doc! That’s just great! Thanks!” He stepped into the foyer, then followed Dr. Landrieu into the living room, tastefully furnished with Victorian and Edwardian antiques. “Say, is that offer of a pot of coffee still good?”

“Of course. It’ll just take a moment to prepare. But why don’t you hold off on drinking any until after I’ve extracted some samples from you? We wouldn’t want any caffeine or sugar to skew the results.”

“Sounds right to me. What do we do first?”

“Come downstairs with me. I’ve maintained a modest private practice since my,ahem, retirement from public service, and my instruments are down there in my office.”

Jules clung tightly to the banister as he descended the steep stairs to the doctor’s office, wincing as each of his knees bore his full weight in turn. “Uh, Doc, not that I doubt you or anything, but will instruments that work on, y’know,normal people also work on me?”

“That’s actually quite a good question, Jules,” Dr. Landrieu replied as he reset the weights on his clinical scale to zero. “But rest assured, the entire time you were working for me, you were somewhat of a hobby of mine. I was probably the only physician in the country with an on-staff vampire available to study. Do you recall the blood samples I took from you over the years?”

“Sure. Every six months or so, you were stickin‘ me.”

“And do you remember the reason I gave you for taking all those samples?”

“Uh, yeah… it was somethin‘ about wanting to see if drinkin’ all that blood from dead people was havin‘ any effect on me over the long haul.”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I told you.” He gestured for Jules to step onto the scale. “Come. Let’s get a weight on you. I’ll want to compare your present weight with the old charts I kept from thirty years ago.”

Jules didn’t move. “Uh, Doc, I don’t wanna be a party pooper or nuthin‘, but that’s a real nice scale you’ve got there, and I’ll bet it cost you a bundle-”