"You know," Abby said, "the man and the turtle are cool, but that woman statue, you should get rid of that. She looks kind of skanky."

"You think?"

Abby nodded. "Yeah. Maybe there's some church or something that you could donate it to. Like, to show how you don't want your daughter to grow up. Oh, sorry, Lord Flood, I didn't mean to say church."

"No, I'm okay," Tommy said. "I'll walk you out."

"Thanks," Abby said.

He followed her downstairs and held the door to the street, then at the last minute, as she was walking away, she turned and kissed him quickly on the cheek. "I love you, Lord Flood," she whispered in his ear. Then she turned and ran up the sidewalk.

Tommy felt himself blush. Dead as he was, he felt heat rise in his cheeks. He turned and trudged back up the steps, feeling the full weight of his four, maybe five hundred years of life. He needed to talk to Jody. How long could it take to find one drunk guy with a giant cat?

He dug his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed the number of the phone he'd given Jody. He could hear it ringing on the kitchen counter where she had left it.

The Emperor was sitting on a black marble bench just around the corner from the great opera house, feeling small and ashamed, when he saw the striking redhead in jeans coming toward him. Bummer lapsed into a barking fit and the Emperor snatched the Boston terrier up by the scruff of the neck and stuffed him into the oversized pocket of his coat to quiet him.

"Brave Bummer," said the old man. "Would that I could still hold that kind of passion, even if it were fear. But my fear is weak and damp, I've barely the spine for a dignified surrender."

He'd felt like this since he'd seen Jody outside the secondhand store, where she'd warned him away from the owner. Yes, now he knew her to be one of the undead, a bloodsucking fiend—but then, not so much a fiend. She had been a friend, a good one, even after he had betrayed Tommy Iff to the Animals. He could feel the City's eye on him, could feel her disappointment in him. What does a man have, if not character? What is character, if not a man's measure of himself against his friends and enemies? The great city of San Francisco shook her head at him, ashamed. Her bridges slumped in the fog with disappointment.

He remembered a house somewhere and that same look on the face of a dark-haired woman, but mercifully, in an instant that memory was a ghost, and Jody was bending to scratch behind the ears of the steadfast Lazarus, who had never been agitated by her like his bug-eyed brother, who even now squirmed furiously in the woolen pocket.

"Your Majesty," Jody said. "How are you?"

"Worthless and weak," said the Emperor. She really was a lovely girl. He'd never known her to hurt a soul. What a cad he was.

"I'm sorry to hear that. You have plenty to eat? Staying warm?"

"The men and I have this very hour vanquished a corned beef on a sourdough roll the size of a healthy infant, thank you."

"Tommy's Joynt?" Jody said with a smile.

"Indeed. We are not worthy, yet my people provide."

"Don't be silly, you're worthy. Look, Emperor, have you seen William?"

"William of the huge and recently shaven cat?"

"That's the one."

"Why yes, we crossed his path not long ago. He was at the liquor store at Geary and Taylor. He seemed very enthusiastic about purchasing some scotch. More energetic than I've seen him in many years."

"That was how long ago?" She stopped petting Lazarus and stood.

"Little more than an hour ago."

"Thank you, Your Majesty. You don't know where he was going?"

"I should think to find a safe place to drink his dinner. Although I can't claim to know him well, I don't think William passes the evening in the Tenderloin often."

Jody patted the Emperor's shoulder, and he took her hand.

"I'm so sorry, dear."

"Sorry? About what?"

"When I saw you and Thomas the other night, I noticed. It's true, isn't it? Thomas has changed."

"No, he's still a doofus."

"I mean he is one of your kind now?"

"Yes." She looked up the street. "I was alone," she said.

The Emperor knew exactly how she felt. "I told one of his crew from the Safeway, Jody. I'm sorry, I was frightened."

"You told the Animals?"

"The born-again one, yes."

"And how did he react?"

"He was worried for Thomas's soul."

"Yeah, that would be Clint's reaction. You don't know if he told the other Animals?"

"I would guess yes, by now."

"Okay, don't worry, then, Your Highness. It's okay. Just don't tell anyone else. Tommy and I are leaving the City just like we promised those police detectives. We just have to get things in order."

"And the other—the old vampire?"

"Yes. Him, too."

She turned and strode away, heading into the Tenderloin, her boot heels clacking on the sidewalk as she kept her pace just below a run.

The Emperor shook his head and rubbed Lazarus behind the ears. "I should have told her about the detectives. I know that, old friend." There was only so much weakness he could confess to at one time—that, too, a fault. The Emperor resolved to sleep somewhere cold and damp tonight, perhaps in the park by the Maritime Museum, as penance for his weakness.

There was no way she was going to remember his new mobile number. It was five in the morning before Tommy had finished moving all of the furniture, books, and clothes. Now the new loft looked almost exactly like the old loft had looked, except that it didn't have a working phone line. So Tommy sat on the counter of the old loft, looking at the three bronze statues and waiting for Jody to call.

Just the three statues left to move: Jody, the old vampire, and the turtle. The old vampire looked fairly natural.

He'd been unconscious when he'd been bronzed, but Tommy had the biker sculptors downstairs pose him as if he was in midstep, out for a stroll. Jody was posed with her hand on her hip, her head thrown back as if she'd just tossed her long hair over her shoulder, smiling.

Tommy turned his head to the side, getting perspective. She didn't look skanky. What made Abby say the statue was skanky? Sexy, well yes. Jody had been wearing some very low-cut jeans and a crop top when he'd posed her for the electroplating, and the bikers had insisted upon exposing more of her cleavage than was probably decorous, but what could you expect from a couple of guys who specialized in making high-end garden gnomes acting out the Kama Sutra?

Okay, she looked a little skanky, but he didn't see how that was a bad thing. He had actually been delighted when she came streaming out of the ear holes to materialize, stark naked, in front of him. If she hadn't killed him, it would have been the fulfillment of a sexual fantasy he'd nurtured for a long time. (There had been this old TV show he'd watched as a kid, about a beautiful genie who lived in a bottle—well, Tommy had done some serious bottle polishing over that one.)

So the Jody statue stayed. But the old vampire, Elijah, that was a different story. There was a real creature in there. A real scary creature. Whatever bizarre events had brought them to this spot had been set off by Elijah Ben Sapir. He was a reminder that neither he—Tommy—nor Jody had chosen to be vampires. Neither had chosen to live out the rest of their days in the night. Elijah had taken their choices away from them, and replaced them with a whole new set of scarier, bigger choices. The first of which was how the hell do you deal with the fact that you have imprisoned a sentient, feeling being in a shell of bronze, even if he is an evil dick-weed from the Dark Ages? But they couldn't let him out. He'd kill them for sure if they did. Really kill them, too, a complete death, the kind with no nooky.