"You look amazing from this angle," Tommy said.

"You look like a man-shaped fluorescent lightbulb," Jody said, grinning at him, then noticing a change. "Do not get wood, Thomas Flood. You will not get wood, do you hear me?"

"You sound like my mom," Tommy said.

"Ewwwww," Jody said, shuddering and covering her eyes.

"Ewwwww," Tommy said, realizing what he had just said and about what and whom.

He dropped to the bed and bounced. "Sorry. Quick, put the self-tanning lotion on me, we only have a few minutes before sunup."

"Okay, but just the lotion."

"Right, go."

Jody took the lotion and squirted some on her hands. "Turn around, I'll get your back."

"But—"

"Just point that thing the other way, writer boy, you have had all the monkey love you're going to get tonight." She said it, but she didn't mean it—she'd go another round if he wanted, if they had time before sunrise. Then she remembered.

"Did you say you found us a minion?"

"Yeah, I did. She's going to start tomorrow—er, today. I gave her money to get us an apartment. Told her what we needed."

"Her?"

"Yeah, you remember that girl we saw in the drugstore?"

Jody stopped rubbing, grabbed his shoulders, and spun him around. "You gave our deposit money to a nine-year-old?"

"She's not nine. She's sixteen."

"Still, Tommy. You trusted our secret to a sixteen-year-old girl?"

"She already knew."

"Yes, because you let your fangs show like some doofus of the night. You could have explained that somehow, or better yet, never seen her again."

"Look, she's smart, and she'll be loyal. I promise."

"You could have just gotten us killed."

"What would you have done? Huh? You have to trust someone."

"But a sixteen-year-old kid?"

"I'm only nineteen, and I was a great minion. Besides, she thinks I'm her dark lord."

"Did you even tell her about me?"

"Of course, she knows all about you. Knows that you're my sire—that's what they call the vampire who made you. I even told her that you were older, that you had vast experience."

"Vast? Vast experience sounds like I'm a slutty old divorcee. How old does she think I am?"

"Five hundred."

"What?"

"But you look great for five hundred. I mean, look, you got my attention. Do my front."

"Do your own front." She threw the lotion bottle at him and he snatched it out of the air.

"Love you," Tommy said, slathering self-tanning goo all over his face and chest.

"I'm going to lock the bedroom door," Jody said as the alarm on their watches started beeping, signaling ten minutes before sunrise. She'd gotten the alarm watches for both of them, just in case. "You didn't give her keys, did you?"

"Not to the bedroom."

"Great. What if she finds William in the stairwell and stakes him out? You could have given our key to a Buffy wannabe—"

"This stuff is supposed to take like eight hours to work, so by sundown I'll be sexy bronze."

"There's a bronze vampire in the living room. Why don't you go ask him how that's working out for him?"

"He's impersonal bronze, not sexy bronze like I'll be."

"Come to bed. And put on a T-shirt. I don't want a sexy bronze stain on the sheets, even if they are torn up."

Tommy sniff-tested a half-dozen shirts, finally decided on one, climbed into bed, and was kissing Jody good morning when the sunrise put them out.

"Oh my God, that stuff turned me completely orange."

"Not completely."

"I look like the Great Pumpkin."

"Good grief, Tommy, you do not."

Just after sundown.

They watched the coffee dripping out of the filter like they were distilling nitroglycerine and the slightest bit of inattention might cause an explosion. "It smells really good," Jody said.

"It's like I never noticed it before," Tommy said.

"You'd think it would smell sickening, since it's indigestible," Jody said. The last time she'd taken a sip of coffee, her vampire system had rejected it so violently that she ended up convulsively dry-heaving on the floor, feeling like forks were twisting inside of her.

"This might work," Tommy said. "You ready?"

"Ready."

He poured a tablespoonful or so of coffee into a glass cup. Then he uncapped one of the syringes that held William's blood and squirted a few drops into the coffee.

"You first," he said, swishing the cup around in front of her.

"No, you," Jody said. As good as the coffee smelled, the memory of her nausea held her back.

Tommy shrugged and threw the coffee back like a tequila shooter, then set the cup down on the counter.

Jody stepped back and snatched a tea towel off the fridge handle in preparation for the coffee's return trip. Tommy rolled his eyes, shuddered, then grabbed his throat and fell to the floor, twitching and choking. "Dying," he croaked. "Suffering and dying."

Jody was barefoot and didn't want to stub her toe, so she pulled the kick to his ribs. "You suck, you know that."

Tommy rolled on the floor giggling, curling himself around her foot. "It works! It works! It works!" He sort of dog-humped her leg in rhythm and tugged at the hem of her robe. "You never have to be grumpy again!"

Jody grinned. "Pour cups, grommet! Full cups."

Tommy climbed to his feet. "We don't even know the blood-to-coffee ratio yet."

"Pour!" Jody was in the fridge in an instant, grabbing another syringe. "We'll wing it."

The she heard the downstairs door open and spun on her heel. "William?"

Tommy listened to the footfalls coming up the steps and shook his head. "Nope, too light."

They could hear the key fitting into the lock. "You said you didn't give her a key," Jody said.

"I said I didn't give her a key to the bedroom," Tommy said.

"Lord Flood, there's a stinky dead guy with a huge cat on your landing," said Abby Normal as she came through the door.

I have been to the lair of the vampyre Flood. I am part of the coven! Kinda. Okay, back up. So I like slept till eleven, because we're on Christmas break, only it's called winter break now because Jesus is AN OPPRESSIVE ZOMBIE BASTARD AND WE DO NOT BOW DOWN TO HIS BIRTHDAY! At least not at Allen Ginsberg High School, we don't. (Go, Fighting Beatniks!) But it's all good, 'cause I'm going to have to get used to getting up later if I'm going to be a creature of the night.

So, like first thing, I made some toast, and it burned, as black as my soul, and I was so bummed that my tears of despair fell like cold bits of crystal, to be destroyed on the unforgiving rocks of this miserable life. But then I saw that Mom had left a twenty out on the counter with a note:

Allison (Allison is my day-slave name—my mom named me after some song by some Elvis guy, so I totally refuse to accept it), here's your lunch money, and please stop at Walgreens and pick up some RID shampoo for Ronnie's head lice. (Veronica is my sister, who is twelve and a total tumor on the ass of my existence.)

So, I was like, Sweet! Starbucks!

It took forever to pick what I was going to wear, and not just because I'd never rented an apartment before. The lightbulb burned out in my closet and we didn't have any extras, so I had to take everything out in the living room to look at it in the light. Like the song says, I wear black on the outside to reflect the black I feel on the inside, but OMG, it's impossible to tell one thing from another in a dark closet. Since it was going to be a business thing, I decided on my striped tights with my red PVC mini, my skull-and-crossbones hoodie, and my lime Converse All Stars. I went with just a plain stud in my nose, a barbell in my eyebrow, and a simple silver ring in my lip—understated and elegant. I carried my hot-pink biohazard messenger bag.