Too many questions-his rodent brain ached from them all. Right now, he had other irons in the fire. Like pulling a wolf out of his trick bag. He shut down his echolocation, clenched his weak eyes shut, and thought the most cogent wolf-thoughts he could manage. Something started to happen “No, Jules! Notthat way!”

What was the matter? He was doing it, wasn’t he?

He could sense the long wolf snout emerging, complete with its wet nose and fearsome incisors. Unfortunately, he also sensed something else going on-his left wing was disintegrating even as his wolf snout took shape!

“Use the mass in your coffin, Jules! Theextra mass! Don’t reshape what you’ve already got with you! Pullmore in-”

But it was too late. Jules’s grotesque little homunculus was missing its left wing and much of its ears, but a wolf’s levitating jaws were attached to its chest by tenuous floating strands of protoplasm; he splattered into a grayish puddle with a sickeningshhglorp!

Jules needed nearly forty minutes of recuperation before he had the strength, not to mention the intestinal fortitude, to try again. This time he managed to hold his bat-form steady while pulling about a quarter of a wolf from the proto-matter stored in his distant coffin. However, he would’ve done better to build the canine’s hindquarters first. Starting with the head meant that the wolf’s potent senses shattered his concentration before he even reached the neck. Both his bodies imploded, ending up as sluglike puddles on the floor, then a very disoriented and disgruntled Jules.

Threeshhglorps! later, the door at the top of the basement steps opened. Maureen, dressed in one of her Velcro-laden dancing costumes, inserted herself through the doorway.

“How’s the training coming? I’m on my one o’clock break at the club, so I thought I’d walk over and see how you guys were making out.”

Jules said nothing as Maureen descended the steps. Whether this was because of exhaustion or a reluctance to have anything to do with her, he wasn’t quite sure. Doodlebug rushed to fill the dead silence. “Jules has made some pretty impressive progress. The last couple of hours, though, he’s hit a wall. Not unexpected, really. We all do. So we’ll be taking a break.”

“You have him punching sides of beef yet?” She hummed a few bars from theRocky theme and performed some girlish shadowboxing. She stopped when she saw she wasn’t getting even the faintest shadow of a smile from Jules, who was still lying on the floor. “Jeezus… helooks like a side of beef.” She walked over to where he lay flat on his back, breathing in labored, phlegmy gasps. “Hey, you been rummaging through my costume jewelry lately?”

This out-of-left-field question yanked a response from him. “What the… hell… kinda reason… would I have… to dig through yourjewelry?”

“I have no idea. But tonight I was looking for some pieces I haven’t worn in a while, and I noticed that your vampire baby teeth were missing.”

Jules dragged himself to a sitting position and set his shirt over his lap. “My baby teeth? What’re you talkin‘ about?”

“Yourvampire baby teeth. Don’t you remember? I saved them and kept them in a pill bottle. They were soadorable. I still remember the night you lost them. Twelve months to the day after you first became a vampire. Remember? You were soscared. I meanterrified. You thought you’d never have fangs again. You were running around this house hollering like your pecker had just fallen off. It was funnier than the Keystone Kops and Fatty Arbuckle put together.”

“Yeah, I remember. You were a regular Saint Theresa that night. Real supportive. So what’s all this about my vampire baby teeth?”

“They’regone. Like I said, I kept them in this pill bottle, and I kept the pill bottle at the bottom of this box of old costume jewelry. Nobody ever dug through that box except me.”

“Well,I didn’t take them.”

“But you were the only one who would’ve known they were there.”

“What do I need my fuckin‘baby teeth for? I need another pair of fangs like I need a pack ofHispanic vampires on my case. You lost ’em, that’s all.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right. What does it matter, anyway?” She picked up a folding chair that was leaning against the wall, opened it, and sat down. It groaned like a packhorse on its last legs. “So let’s see your stuff, hotshot. Let’s see what Doodlebug’s taught you so far. Put on a show for ol‘ Mo.”

Jules mopped his forehead with his shirt. “Forget it. I’m whipped.”

“Oh, come on, Jules. I walked all the way back here from Jezebel’s-”

Jules’s voice had more steel in it this time. “I said forget it. I been beatin‘ my head against the concrete floor all night. The only thing I’m good for right now is watchin’ an old John Carradine flick on video.”

Maureen crossed her arms stiffly. “Well, that’s afine attitude to have. I suppose John Carradine will show you in ten easy steps how to get out of the mess you’re in?”

Doodlebug, sensing trouble brewing, stepped between the two of them. “Uh, Maureen, Jules reallyhas been working awfully hard tonight. This isn’t the best time-”

Jules lit into Maureen as if Doodlebug weren’t even there. “Y’know, you got ahelluva lotta nerve, waltzing in here now and givin‘ me shit when you ain’t even been here to see how I’ve been knockin’ myself out. You got noidea what you’re talkin‘ about.”

Maureen didn’t back down a millimeter. “Oh, don’t I? I think I know enough to recognize aquitter when I hear one. Winners don’t crawl away to lie on a couch and watch old horror movies when they’re beat. Winners keep plugging away until they’ve got thegame beat.”

“Well,thank you, Knute Rockne. I’m all inspired now. ‘Scuse me-I gotta go jam a stake up your old boyfriend’s ass for the Gipper, okay?”

Maureen flinched, but her voice remained steady. “I see you’ve gotplenty of vim and vigor left when it comes to blaming me. How about applying some of that energy where it’ll make a difference, like learning how to be a better andsmarter vampire?”

“Aww, hell, why don’tyou try it, Maureen? You think it’s so goddamn easy? Go ahead. Change to a bat and a wolf at the same time. Or change into three ballerinas. No-fourballerinas! I ain’t the only one around here ‘blessed’ with excess mass.”

“That’s right. You just happen to be the one with a bright red bull’s-eye painted on your mass.”

“Painted there courtesy ofyour out-of-control sex drive-!”

The upstairs phone rang, the bell that ended this round of the superheavyweight championship bout.

Maureen rose from her seat, her cheeks flushed. “Excuse me, Jules. Maybe we’ll continue this-discussion-once you’re decent.” She tossed his trousers at him before heading back up the stairs. Two minutes later she stuck her head through the door again. “It’s foryou, buster,” she said. Her voice was a barely contained froth of scorn, anger, and hurt. Jules, flabbergasted, stared at Doodlebug. “But-but nobody knows I’m here. Right?” Doodlebug shrugged his shoulders. Jules turned back to Maureen. “Who is it?”

“I didn’t care to ask.” Her nose twitched, as if she’d just caught the scent of something unmentionably vile. “It’s somewoman.”

Jules finished wiggling into his trousers. Then he hurriedly climbed the steps, wincing as his bare foot snagged a splinter, his mind seething with equal parts curiosity and trepidation. Maureen had left the receiver lying on her kitchen table. Jules picked it up, his heart beating both with excitement and the exertion of hustling up the stairs.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Jules?” He recognized the voice before she said another word. “It’s Veronika.”

Her husky, Memphis-tinged but New York-inflected voice set off a grenade in his brain. A hundred questions whizzed past each other like shrapnel. Unfortunately, his mouth could process only one question at a time, and the resulting traffic pileup resembled the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway during a hurricane evacuation.