Jules slapped the mattress, making himself bob atop a stormy sea. “Oh, you know damn well why! I’m ashamed to think I’m the one who made him a vampire! I mean, the only person I ever picked to do the change on, and look how he ended up!”

Maureen grabbed his shoulders. “Just getover it, Jules! He could’ve turned out way worse, and you know it! You never hearme complaining about howyou turned out, do you?”

Quickly deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, Jules bit his tongue.

“Well,” she continued, “he’ll be here two nights from now, and it’s out of your hands. So just get used to the idea. You’ll thank me when this is all over. Believe me, you’ll thank me.” She clapped her hands twice to turn out the light, then settled into her side of the bed, leaving a foot and a half between herself and Jules. “All right, enough yacking already. I’m pooped. Good morning, Jules.”

Jules clung tightly to the bed frame until the waves subsided. “ ‘Morning, Mo,” he said. He knew it would take him a long time to fall asleep. There was too much to think about. He lay on his back and listened to the sounds of Maureen’s breathing. It had been so long since they had been this quiet together. This close.

Just before she started snoring, he felt her shift onto her side. In the undulating darkness her arm fell across his shoulder and chest like a scented pillow.

Jules was awakened the next evening by the deep tones of the front doorbell. He hurriedly rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Maureen’s side of the bed was empty. While he was recovering from his disappointment and trying to decide whether the doorbell had maybe been a dream, it rang again. His sack lay crumpled at the foot of the bed. Rather than squeeze into the makeshift garment again, he went into the adjoining room and pulled one of Maureen’s terry-cloth bathrobes out of her walk-in closet.

Downstairs, he went to the front door and peered through the peephole. A white man stood on the front stoop, an impatient look on his face. Jules recognized him as a bouncer from Jezebel’s Joy Room. He was holding a large paper bag.

Jules opened the door a hand’s width, so that a bare minimum of his robed body could be seen from the street.

“You Jules?” the man on the stoop asked.

“Yeah,” Jules said cautiously.

The visitor handed over the bag. “Here you go, buddy. Maureen asked me to come over. She found these on the street. Had to pull the coat away from a bum who was using it as a blanket. Two words of advice for you-dry clean.”

He turned, loped down the steps in a vaguely simian fashion, and walked up Bienville Street in the direction of the club. Jules closed and bolted the door. He set the bag down in the hallway without opening it, not especially eager to see what was inside. But then he remembered that Doc Landrien’s antidiabetes pills were in the trench coat’s pocket. Relieved, he removed the pill bottles, telling himself to leave it somewhere more secure this time.

He walked into the kitchen, his empty stomach emitting watery, squishy noises, much like those made by the water bed mattress. He tried to remember how Maureen had fixed her blood-tomato-juice-vegetable concoction the night before.

A happy surprise awaited him. On the counter, a tall glass sat next to the blender, which was full of Maureen’s patented mixture. He poured himself a glassful, then put the remainder in the refrigerator for later. He sat at the kitchen table, where Maureen had left a handwritten note. The note was short and to the point:

Jules,

There’s coffee grounds and water in the coffeemaker; all you have to do is pressON. I left your dinner on the counter to warm up for you, but don’t leave it out of the fridge too long. I’ll be back around 4:30A.M. Don’t do anything stupid.

M.

Jules downed his initial glassful of Mo-8, then turned on the coffeemaker. As the blissful burbling and heavenly aroma delighted his senses, he mulled over his plan to recruit Nathan Knight’s followers into a white vampire army. Wednesday night, when the rally would be held, was two nights from now. The night after Doodlebug was scheduled to fly in.Hell. Thanks to busybody Maureen, he was stuck with the little deviant for a while. At least pulling off a masterstroke like creating an army would demonstrate conclusively that Jules was still boss.

He couldn’t afford to screw this one up. Too much was at stake. He’d have to plan very carefully. He poured himself a cup of coffee and paced the kitchen. The central question, the one he couldn’t quite get his head around, was this: How could he turn dozens of people into vampires all at the same time?

Gas.

Of course! He could use laughing gas to knock the whole room unconscious at once. Then he could pick the best ones, the biggest, strongest, and meanest, and transform them into vampires at his leisure while they snoozed helplessly away. Oh, he knew the pitfalls, after his last experience with gas, but they’d be easy to avoid. Terrific!

Let’s see… he’d need canisters of gas, of course. And a timer of some kind; that way he could set the canisters to release during the middle of the rally, when attendance would be the highest, and he wouldn’t have to be in the room himself. If he was going to use a timer, then he’d have to set up the whole knockout apparatus ahead of time. A timer meant complications-batteries, wiring, and some sort of electricON switch for the gas nozzles. But luckily, he could get free construction advice from the same man who’d happily sell him the parts.

That man was Tiny Idaho. Anarchist. Tree hugger. Bearded ex-hippie radical. The best gadget man Jules had ever run across. Tiny did most of his business over the Web nowadays, but he still maintained an inconspicuous, disguised storefront operation in a broken-down strip mall buried on a side street in suburban Kenner. Jules had used his services for years.

He checked the contents of his wallet. Thirty-two dollars and a dollop of change. Not a heck of a lot to offer Tiny Idaho for what Jules wanted rigged up. Maybe Tiny would consider it a down payment? Jules hated the idea of going into hock yet again, but he couldn’t think of any alternative. Maybe he could cut a few corners. If the gas canisters in his old garage had survived the fire, then he wouldn’t have to buy new ones.

There was just one more hurdle he had to jump before he could begin his night’s work. What to do about Malice X’s toughs, who might still be scouting the neighborhood for him? Once he was in his car, he could be out of the Quarter in hardly more than ninety seconds; but the short walk from Maureen’s door to the garage was too risky. Even his wolf-form was too conspicuous.

Tooconspicuous-maybe that was the answer. If he couldn’t make himself small or stealthy, then hiding in plain sight was his best option. The Quarter wasfull of weird characters… mimes, human statues, and tuba players, to list only the most common. Dressed as a costumed street performer (the more outlandish, the better), he could fit right in.

He climbed the stairs and returned to Maureen’s walk-in closet. Surely she’d have some old thing lying around that would fit the bill… a stage outfit she used in her stripper’s act, or maybe even a Carnival costume. After digging through a tangle of outsized dresses and gowns, Jules found what he was looking for: a harlequin’s outfit. The black-and-white checkered jumpsuit, with its garish frills on the collar, sleeves, and cuffs, certainly looked big enough for him. There was an easy enough way for him to find out.

The jumpsuit was a considerably tighter squeeze than Maureen’s bathrobe had been. The fully elasticized waist was stretched to its limit. So long as he didn’t inhale too deeply or try any fancy gymnastics, he’d be all right. He couldn’t find the bell-trimmed cap that went with the outfit, so he went searching for something else to cover his head and face with. A broken pink lamp shade from the attic, with two eyeholes cut out, fit the bill nicely.