“They can all kill each other off for all I care!”

“Damn rich white folks over theredeserve it for lettin‘ those niggers breed out of control!”

“FuckNew Orleans!”

Jules waved his arms wildly. “Wait! Just wait a minute! Look over there!” He pointed dramatically at the window on the eastern side of the building. “In just four or five hours from now, thesun’s gonna rise over the horizon and come through that window, andnone of you know what to do about it! You know what that sun’ll do to you? It ain’t nice!I’m the only one here with the know-how to teach you how to escape the sun-how to live asvampires! And if y’all don’t do exactly as I say-I ain’t teachin‘ none of you doodly-squat!”

The new vampires stared at each other, their pale faces twitching with uncertainty. But then the ex-moderator stood and strode to the podium. “Listen, folks! We don’t need this man! I’ve read every book Agatha Longrain has ever written, cover to cover, three times! I know everything there is to know about vampires!”

The man in the Buchanan shirt shot to his feet. “More good, Christian white folks are moving to St. Tammany every day! Who’s to say we can’t form our own colony of white vampires overhere, where there’s an endless and ever-growing supply of pure, unpolluted white blood?”

A man in a black suit, who hadn’t said a word previously, was the next to rise. “I own a funeral home in Mandeville, folks! I have, in stock, a full line of magnificent coffins that I will be happy to sell for one penny over invoice to every person in this room!”

It was all slipping away. Jules looked beseechingly at Doodlebug, still sitting in the back of the hall with hisNew Yorker on his lap. Doodlebug slowly shook his head and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Then he put his magazine aside and stood on his chair.

“Whatgreat ideas everyone has! I can justfeel all the positive energy flowing in this room. But I’m sure you’re all terribly,terribly thirsty. I remember how it was whenI first became a vampire. Well, I know just the thing! Nothing, butnothing, beats the zing of drinking yourown blood. It’s incredibly reviving and refreshing! Everybody, check the floor next to your chairs. There’s a baking pan there that’s filled with your own blood. Trust me, it’s a treat like no other!”

Like a pack of ravenous hyenas, the newborn vampires grabbed the pans of blood off the floor and lifted them to their thirsting lips. The red gore ran freely down their faces and necks, staining blouses and T-shirts and polyester neckties alike. The room was filled with the sounds of slurping, gulping, and sweetly satisfied sighs.

Those satisfied sighs didn’t last long, however. They were quickly displaced by surprised yelps of pain, then agonized screams, then the wails of dissolving banshees. Before Jules’s horrified eyes, twenty-three newborn vampires were reduced to twenty-three puddles of smoking, bubbling goo.

“So the conquering heroes have returned.”

Maureen didn’t even bother looking up from her copy ofLadies’ Home Journal as Jules and Doodlebug stepped into her dressing room. “Where’s your glorious army, Jules? Out in the club watching the floor show? Or did you recruit so many soldiers that you had to leave them outside?”

“Don’t ask,” Jules said, staring sourly at his companion.

Maureen swiveled around on her stool. “Oh, but Iwant to ask! I want to heareverything! Jules, how did your brilliant plan work out? I assume from your happy expression that it was asmashing success. And, Doodlebug dear, I justknow you’re feeling a warm glow of satisfaction from backing your friend to the hilt.”

“Maybe if hehad backed me to the hilt,” Jules said, “we woulda accomplished somethin‘ tonight. But thanks to Penelope Pukehead here, all I got to show fer the evening is eight gallons of wasted gas and a sick feelin’ in the pit of my stomach.”

“Jules is a little peeved at me.” Doodlebug reached into his purse and applied a fresh coat of imported French lipstick. “I’m afraid I had to pull the plug on him before things got out of hand.”

“Pull theplug? Isthat what you call what you did? That was the mostdisgustin‘ horror show I ever saw! Those werevampires you killed! Prejudiced idiot vampires, sure, but stillvampires!”

Doodlebug gave Jules an honestly sympathetic look. “It was very unfortunate, yes. But I’m sure once you’ve had a chance to cool off and think the whole thing through, you’ll agree with me that itwas necessary. The only one I feel sorry about, really, is that rabbi’s wife.”

“You didn’t give me achance! I coulda turned ‘em around! Sure, maybe they weren’t as gung-ho as I expected. But if I just coulda talked to them some more, I’mpositive I coulda got maybe half of them to sign on-two-thirds, even! Butnoooooo — you hadda go jump the gun and turn ’em all into piles of goo!”

“My, my! The Grand Alliance is fraying already, is it?” Maureen got off her stool and sashayed toward Jules, aggressively thrusting her stomach before her. “Jules, as uncharacteristically dumb as Doodle has been so far on this visit, you can’t blame him for this latest fiasco. If anything, I’m sure it would’ve turned outworse if he hadn’t have been there with you. You know who you need to be shoveling the blame onto? I’d saylook in the mirror, but unfortunately, that isn’t possible, is it?”

Something in Maureen’s tone of voice got under Jules’s skin. “Yeah? It’s all my fault, huh? I justasked for Malice X and his goons to trash me, that’s what you’re sayin‘?”

Maureen leaned across their twin stomachs, putting her nose an inch from his. “Damn you, Jules Duchon!” Her eyes were afire with anguish and self-loathing, and her voice dripped with bitter resentment. “Itis all your fault! Every second of misery you’ve endured these past three weeks you’ve brought on yourself! Yourself! And you’ve forced me to suffer every miserable second right along with you!”

Jules frowned with befuddlement, not anger. “What’re you talkin‘ about, Mo?”

“Youmade me make him, damn you! You left me alone! I hadno one! Do you have anyidea what that’s like for a woman like me? Do you?Do you? ”

She collapsed onto the couch and buried her face in her hands. As the room filled with the sound of her ragged sobbing, Jules stood still as a gray, weather-beaten statue. Only a twitching in the corner of his mouth betrayed that he still possessed the power of movement.

Doodlebug knelt by Maureen’s side. He gently stroked her hair. “It’s all right, dear. It’s all right… try to get hold of yourself. I suspected it might be something like this. You have to tell us the rest. We need to know everything.”

“Oh God… oh God, please forgive me.” She choked back her sobs and raised her head from her hands. Tears and fingers had smeared her mascara into a mask of spiderwebs. Only her stained forehead and her eyes, turned toward the heavens, showed above the arm of the couch. “Lord, I know I haven’t any right to call on Your name. No right. But if You have any shred of pity for a damned creature like me, please send Your forgiveness.”

“Start at the beginning, Maureen.”

“Ten years ago, we… I just couldn’t live with Jules anymore. He was driving me out of my mind. He wouldn’t listen to anything I’d tell him. He’dsay he was going on a diet, that he’d watch what he was eating. But every month I watched him pile on the pounds, get grosser and grosser. He was destroying himself, destroying the beautiful man I’d wanted to preserve forever… Finally, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I told him to get out. If he refused to take care of himself, he had to get out. I never meant for him to leave, notreally — but he took me at my word. He was too bullheaded, too goddamndense to realize that, yes, I’d reached the end of my rope, but actually I was onlywarning him… I wanted him to shape up, toreform, notleave…”