"Into a wolf?"

"Clothes, cadaver breath."

"I didn't know. I thought maybe you'd learned."

Tommy thought Alaska was a great idea. Just because she was a few years older, she always acted like his ideas were stupid. "The thing with William worked," he said defensively as he put away the supplies they'd bought at the drugstore.

"That was a good idea," Jody said from inside the closet.

Now what? "Well, Alaska isn't a bad idea."

"Tommy, there's like nine people in all of Alaska. We'll stand out, don't you think?"

"No, everyone is pale there. They don't have sun for most of the year."

She came out of the closet wearing her little black cocktail dress and her strappy come-fuck-me pumps. "I'm ready," she said.

"Wow," Tommy said. He'd forgotten what they were talking about.

"You think the Ferrari-red lipstick would be too much?"

"No, I love the Ferrari-red lipstick on you." Hot, sweet monkey love, he thought. This was exactly why he loved her. In the midst of all of the pressure, the danger, really—she still took time to think of his feelings.

She lifted her breasts until they threatened to spill out of the plunging neckline of the dress. "Too much?"

"Perfect," Tommy said, walking toward her with his hands out. "Gimme."

She breezed past him into the bathroom. "Not for you. I need to get going."

"No, no, no," Tommy said. "Hot monkey love."

While Tommy watched from the doorway, Jody applied the Ferrari-red lipstick, checked it, then frowned and wiped it off, then grabbed a different tube off the vanity. "When I get back."

"Where?" Tommy said. Sexual frustration had reduced him to single syllables.

She turned to him with the new coat of maroon lipstick. "To get your minion."

"Not like that, you're not," Tommy said.

"This is how it works, Tommy. This is how I got you."

"Nuh-uh, you weren't wearing that when I met you."

"No, but the reason you pursued me is because you were interested in me sexually, wasn't it?"

"Well, that's how it started, but it's more than that now." And it was more, but that was no reason to leave him here all aroused and stuff.

She walked over to him and put her arms around him. He let his hands slip inside the low back of her dress. His pants were getting tight and he could feel the pressure of his fangs coming out.

"When I get back," she said. "I promise. You're my guy, Tommy. I picked you as my guy, forever. I'm going to find someone to help us move and do things for us in the daytime."

"They're just going to want to bone you, and when you don't do them, they'll turn on you."

"Not necessarily."

"Of course they will. Look at you."

"I'll figure it out, okay. I don't know how else to go about it."

"We could put an ad on Craig's List." (Craig's List was a classified Web site that had started in the Bay Area and was now the first place people checked for jobs, apartments, or nearly everything.)

"We're not putting an ad on Craig's List. Look, Tommy, we have more things to do than we have time. You can clean the loft and go get the laundry done and I'll get us an onion."

"Minion," he corrected.

"Whatever. I love you," she said.

Bitch! He was vanquished. Unfair. "I love you, too."

"I'll take one of the disposable cell phones you bought. You can call me anytime."

"They're not even activated yet."

"Well, get on that, buddy. The sooner I get out there and find someone, the sooner I can get back here for some hot monkey love."

She has absolutely no sense of ethics, he thought. She's a monster. And yet, there she is, only a few dress straps from being naked.

"Okay," he said. "Don't step on the huge cat on the way out."

Jody had only been gone twenty minutes before Tommy decided that cleaning and laundry sucked and that he could find a minion as well as she could, even if he didn't look as hot in a little black dress. He was careful not to wake Chet and William on his way out.

Jody moved down Columbus Avenue with long, runway-model strides, feeling the windblown fog brush by her like the chill ghosts of rejected suitors. What she could never teach Tommy, what she could never really share with him, was what it felt like to move from being a victim—afraid of attack, the shadow around the corner, the footsteps behind—to being the hunter. It wasn't the stalking or the rush of taking down prey—Tommy would understand that. It was walking down a dark street, late at night, knowing that you were the most powerful creature there, that there was absolutely nothing, no one, that could fuck with you. Until she had been changed and had stalked the city as a vampire, she never realized that virtually every moment she had been there as a woman, she had been a little bit afraid. A man would never understand. That was the reason for the dress and the shoes—not to attract a minion, but to throw her sexuality out there on display, dare some underevolved male to make the mistake of seeing her as a victim. Truth be told, although it had come down to confrontation only once, and then she'd been wearing a baggy sweatshirt and jeans, Jody enjoyed kicking ass. She also enjoyed—every bit as much—just knowing that she could. It was her secret.

Without fear, the City was a great sensual carnival. There was no danger in anything she experienced, no anxiety. Red was red, yellow didn't mean caution, smoke didn't mean fire, and the mumbling of the four Chinese guys standing by their car just around the corner was just the click and twang of empty swinging dick talk. She could hear their hearts speed up when they saw her, could smell sweat and garlic and gun oil coming off them. She'd learned the smell of fear and imminent violence, too, of sexual arousal and surrender, although she'd have been hard-pressed to describe any of that. It was just there. Like color.

You know…

Try to describe blue.

Without mentioning blue.

See?

There weren't a lot of people out on the street at this time of night, but there were a few, spread up the length of Columbus: barhoppers, late diners just wrapping it up, college boys heading down to the strip clubs on Broadway, the exodus from Cobb's Comedy Club up the street, people giddy and so into the rhythm of laughing that they found one another and everything they saw hilarious—all of them vibrant, wearing auras of healthy pink life, trailing heat and perfume and cigarette smoke and gas held through long dinners. Witnesses.

The Chinese guys weren't harmless, by any means, but she didn't think they'd attack her, and she felt a twinge of regret. One of them, the one with the gun, yelled something at her in Cantonese—something sleazy and insulting, she could tell by the tone. She spun as she walked, smiled her biggest red carpet smile, and without breaking stride, said, "Hey, nano-dick, go fuck yourself!"

There was a lot of bluster and shuffle, the smart one, the one with fear coming off him, held his friend Nano-dick back, thus saving his life. She must be a cop, or just crazy. Something's wrong. They clustered around their tricked-out Honda and huffed out great breaths of testosterone and frustration. Jody grinned, and detoured up a side street, away from traffic.

"My night," she said to herself. "Mine."

Now off the main drag, she saw only a single old man shuffling ahead of her. His life aura looked like a burned-out bulb, a spot of dark gray around him. He walked stooped over, with a dogged determination, as if he knew that if he stopped, he would never start again. From what she could tell, he never would. He wore baggy, wide-wale corduroys that made the sound of rodents nesting when he walked. A wisp of breeze off the Bay brought Jody the acrid smell of failing organs, of stale tobacco, of despair, of a deep, rotting sickness, and she felt the elation leave her.