 
Overture

by Zaide Williams
Text Copyright © 2016 Zaide Williams

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design image by Pakmor, via Shutterstock

"Ulysses and the Siren" by Samuel Daniel, 1605.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

1. Elma

2. The Sister-Friend

3. Fur

4. Mike

5. Doctor's Care

6. Creatures of the Wood

7. The Tenuous Voyeur

8. Calves and Croatian

9. Recitative à Deux

10. Break and Enter

11. Found in Translation

12. Intermezzo

13. Rainfall

14. Cricket Confessional

15. Exciting and New

16. The Courtier

17. Interception

18. Tip of the Tongue

19. Sense Memory

20. Snake Charmer

21. Contact

22. Best Laid Plans

23. After Sunset

24. Crashing Together

25. Everest

26. The Friendly Skies

27. Letting Down One's Guard

28. Cold

29. Two Rooms

30. No

31. The Other Shore

32. The Freeze

33. Black and Green

34. Recovery

35. Black on Olive on Rose

36. Breakthrough

37. The Finish

38. The Rescuer

39. When the Dust Settles

40. The Arrangement

About the Author
For my guys, and with thanks  
to Bean the budding literary critic

#  Prologue

London, 1861

The vampire tapped his foot against the wooden base of the chair and absent-mindedly slid the corner of an index card between his left incisor and canine teeth, as if picking out a bit of food. The firm closing of the door behind him caught his attention, snapping him back to the here and now.

"My apologies. Spicy soup for lunch. Didn't quite agree with me, I must say." The doctor, still a bit red-faced and breathless, bustled with a hint of in a embarrassment across the small room and resumed his seat opposite his patient. "We'll tack on another few moments to the end of our consultation, of course, if you have time," he offered with an apologetic smile.

A smirk sneaked across one side of the vampire's full lips, drawing his mouth into an uneven bow. "Time?" he repeated, immensely entertained by the comment. "Time, I think, I can spare."

"So, getting back to the anxiousness, is it constant or do you notice that it comes and goes? Sorry, does something strike you as humorous?"

"Yes," replied the undead man to the living one. "Yes indeed. Though each of these conversations is a favor to you, a contribution to your research, every occasion seems to develop into a discussion of my emotional and psychological status. Tell me, why might that be?" He regarded his companion with eyes full of merriment.

The young doctor grinned back good-naturedly. "Simple indeed, my friend. The psyche of a vampire is a critical piece in the understanding of the drives, the urges—the hungers—that propel you and in many ways define your existence. If I am to fully appreciate your order as a whole, I must understand the workings of your mind as well as your body. In truth, even more so." He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat to mark a change in the topic at hand. "Now then, this anxiousness, is it precipitated by a particular situation, place, thought, et cetera?"

"Like a catalyst, you mean?"

"Yes, quite. Is there a particular worry you have, perhaps a new activity in your life—an employment, a relationship—that's been revolving in your mind a great deal? I realize health concerns are irrelevant in this case, but perhaps work?"

The patient uncrossed his legs slowly, and crossed them again in the opposite fashion, his grin unfurling Cheshire cat-style as he relaxed. "I am a professor of European history at Kings College, where I have been for thirteen years. I am a recognized expert in my field, widely published, and have been teaching the subject since the French owned Canada. So no, I do not believe I am experiencing 'work-related stressors.'"

The doctor leaned back in his chair, rubbed his abdomen and looked with empathy at the centuries-old vampire and thirty-year-old man sitting downcast before him. "You know what it is already."

The statement, for it wasn't a question, caught the vampire off-guard, requiring him to clear his throat and take a slow breath before responding. He looked down for a long moment, and in that time the sound of the air changed, as when the sun goes down in the late afternoon. His next words came in a low, more measured tone.

"She smells of spring water and sun. She is intoxicating. I cannot go near her because I want her. Not only to drink from her, but to have her. I cannot remember this feeling . . . I have no recollection of ever being disturbed in this way by any woman, human or otherwise."

"Curious that you mention such bloodlust only in the context of this woman. Are you feeding regularly? Because there might be—"

Irate eyes snapped to the doctor's face. "Yes of course I feed! Were I not, I would likely be slicing apart your carotid right now. Please do not patronize me, Doctor."

"Mr. Randall—"

"Roan, please, as I've said repeatedly."

"Sorry—Roan—I assure you, in no way do I intend to be disrespectful. We're trying to find a trigger for what you're feeling. So, let's get back to this line of thought, shall we? Your desire for her is both sanguinal and sexual, then? And this is an emotion you've not encountered before?"

Roan sat fully forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced, lavender eyes locked on his companion's face. A full five seconds passed before he spoke, in a round, deep, and deadly direct tone.

"Doctor, shall I presume that you have never sucked the warm marrow out of a woman's body as she screamed with pleasure? I have done so, many times over many centuries. It is an exquisite sensual experience unlike any physical gratification I could ever have imagined as a human, but it pales in comparison to the mere scent of her."

He traced his finger slowly along the small scissor-like slit he'd created at the corner of the index card, watching as the doctor attempted to hide his discomfiture and restore control of his breathing. "She is undoing me, and . . . I am . . . frightened."

# 1. Elma

Today

Whack.

The maestro always stares at me. There are thirty people in the room right now, but I'm the only one he's looking at. And his eyes just bore in, like he's trying to see the color my soul. He notices every movement, focuses on every note. He stalks me with his gaze measure after miserable measure, because I'm the pianist.

I've played with the Straythern University Orchestra for six years now, and for each one of those years Dr. Maldonado has had exactly the same look on his face, disturbingly similar to the gape of a lecherous, drunken seventy-year-old waiting for the chick across the bar to bend forward and expose an inch of her bra. The difference here, however, is that Maestro doesn't see me as sexual, or even female, for that matter. All I am to him is a channel for sound.

Whack. His baton hits the lectern in front of him a second time, and his angry, almost artificially tenor voice rolls in a shrill ring across the room.

"Dead! Again!"

The flautists fear him. The first chair violin cannot even look at him. Maldonado's unpredictable temper is legendary within the walls of Straythern, and is the sole reason we lose more musicians than we should to other universities. He is kind to no one .... except me.

Whack. "Esteban, you're timing is abysmal!" This particular diatribe is directed at the tympanist, who merely tightens his long, dark pony tail, sighs, and nods in resignation. Then to me in a softer voice, he whispers, "Once again for the percussion section, please, Elma." Baton up.

Fifty minutes later, the day's battle has ended, and my fellow musicians begin to file out of the rehearsal hall with heavy eyes and slumped backs. On my way to the door, I meet Esteban, who seems unfazed by the maestro's pounding focus on his shortcomings.

"Hanging in there?" I ask with a smile as he packs away sheet music into his rucksack. Turning to me, he offers a happy smile that dents his high cheekbones and exposes pearls of perfect white teeth.

"Hell, at least I'm not first oboe." With that, he grabs my waist, pulls me to him, and kisses me long and full on the mouth.

* * *

I'll miss that kiss. Esteban and I have been perfecting it for just over two years, having first met in this very same rehearsal hall. He came to the university three years ago on a post-graduate fellowship in percussion, a well-regarded musician across both the classical and contemporary lanes. He was unlike anything I'd ever seen before; lean and slight and quiet, but very present all the same. Especially for a sleepy little town like Winter Rain, New Hampshire, Esteban was exotic; tattoos in all the right places, cool, with a sexy Aztec look about him. His musical timing was enviably perfect to boot. I could feel him in the orchestra in just the same way I felt him in my body--steady, dependable beats delivered at just the right pace to take you up and away.

But now, after three years of pounding out beautiful rhythms together, Esteban was moving on, musically speaking at least. A good friend of his from LA had started a band, and had been surprisingly successful right off the bat. Now they were planning to open for a fairly well-known act in a tour across Asia, and since their current drummer had a newborn son and wanted to stay local, they needed a top-shelf replacement. I imagine three years of maestro whacking on his lectern was just about all that a free-spirit like Esteban could take. Classic-- I look at our harmonious relationship and start imagining how the name Elma Montes-Plumosa would look on the top of my personal checks, he gets an offer that comes once in a millennium and that he'd be crazy to refuse, and here we are. Or at least, here I am.

Tomorrow, my world changes a little. For the moment, though, Esteban and I can still walk hand in hand across the quadrangle and toward his little apartment on the south side of town, where we'll pack up the few remaining bits of his Straythern life, eat Chinese food while perched on a couple of packing crates, and make love in the twin bed I've come to snuggle into so comfortably. Tomorrow, he'll be a world away, but today I can still touch him, see his dazzling white smile, and watch his inky black mane blow behind him in the late summer evening, alive in the wind.

# 2. The Sister-Friend

Only I could break my ankle playing the piano. It's a gift. A gift I say! A level of clumsiness previously undiscovered in this corner of the cosmos. And as if the sexy ankle boot and crutches weren't enough, now I get to not work—and not get paid—for six weeks thanks to being less than delicate on the Steinway's pedals in my orthopedic Lady Gaga shoe.

In all honesty, it was a hairline fracture that the doc said had probably been there for a good while, and the aerobic pedal action during last week's Mussorgsky at rehearsal was just the wrong motion at the wrong angle at the wrong time. Double sheep shit. As an irksome sidebar to this whole situation, I now have scads of time to sit around my apartment in physical misery and ruminate on the fact that I'm now quasi-unattached. Well, maybe not even "quasi."

I look beyond my elevated right foot over to the bookshelf where a quaint collection of monthly good-boyfriend gifts stare back at me. There are three of them, one for each month we've been apart. The first is my name in Korean, elegantly hand painted and beautifully framed. Next is a Japanese fan with a picture of little geishas adorning the accordioned surface. The third is this month's offering, a boxed set of Thai herbal balls. I think they're for massage, but I can't be sure—there was no note. They're all mocking me. They know Esteban is happier in Nepal or Taiwan or wherever he is today, and probably also realize, as, somewhere, do I, that there is someone else right now offering him the warm coat of herself against the chill of solitude.

I got myself into this situation, so I can't really blame him. We had a long conversation about "us" over several rum and Cokes the week before he left. He said he wanted to stay with it and give a long-distance relationship a try, but didn't want to be unfair to me, since we were looking at a long period apart and it wasn't likely I'd be hopping on a plane to Bangkok to pay him a visit. He said he'd understand if I wasn't up for it, if I wanted to break things off. I said no, no, we could do it, we could handle it.

In the end we decided we'd stay together, but being the highly evolved twenty-first-century couple we were, said we'd loosen the ties of the relationship a little, though we never really defined what that meant. We were both just too busy being impressed with how complex and emotionally advanced we were. So, technically Esteban and I are still an item. But the truth is right in front of me, in calligraphy ink and lemongrass, and I can read the writing on the wall.

Mills says I should cut him free. That's been her repeated proclamation over the last few months, as she's brought me wine, made me sit through stupid movies, and done all those other things that best friends do to help one another through boyfriend drama. Like now, for example. She's just tuned Spotify to _Gett Off Radio_ and is dancing like a complete wingnut across the room, trying to make me laugh. It's working.

Mills is the best version of a best friend ever imaginable. She and I have been a matched set since junior high school, when she came loping into my school district, homeroom and life with a package of Nature Valley bars, very odd shoes, and a wicked sense of humor. Back then she wanted to be an actress, and that completely fits, what with her utterly extroverted personality. She was the one to dance on the desk in study hall when someone brought in a radio, she's the one to narrate her day because she just needs to bounce it off another human being, and she's the one to love you just because you are. And for that, I love her uproariously. She's my Laverne and I'm her Shirley, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

We live together now not only because it's fabulous, but because Mills is doing her residency at the Children's Well-Being Center, a few blocks from Straythern. She works with kids trapped in the microcosm of autism, using those amazing communications skills to coax them into walking longer distances in the larger world. But at the moment, she's shaking her butt like that's her one and only job.

"Mills... stoooppp."

"But Ells, 'twenty three positions in a one-night stand!'"

"Seriously, you're gonna trip over my foot."

'"I'll only call you later if you say I can!"'

"Miiiiiiills! I'm straight—this isn't doing much for me!"

She stopped in mid-twerk to laugh at me. "It better not, Elma, or else we've got a whole other conversation to have! But I better damn well do something to lighten the atmosphere around here! So 'let a woman be a woman and a man be a man!'

She continued dancing around the room for a good two minutes more, shakin' what her mama gave her as well as a white girl from Toledo could, and then, with one more elaborate spin, planted herself squarely on my lap with her legs stretched in front of her on the armrest.

"Ells—you need to go outside now. I love you, but you look miserable. Not in an 'I really need a bath' kind of way, but in an 'I haven't seen a tree in two weeks' kind of way. And you're lonely—don't fib and say you're not. As fabulous as I clearly am, there are certain things I am unequipped to provide in this scenario. So, I have two options for you. One, you can come with me to the Farmer's Market this morning, and then come back here and pupate while I'm at work, or two, I shall force you to go get a full body wax."

"What! How the heck did you put those two together?"

"Well," she started as she (finally!) eased her tuckus off my thighs, "it's really two means to the same end. If on one hand you go get some fresh air and blow the blahs away, you'll look and feel better, you'll meet a man and hopefully get laid. If, on the other hand, you get a full body wax, you'll still be depressed but you'll feel sexier, will go out with me somewhere where the spicy beasts congregate in large, pulsating throngs, and hopefully get laid. Either way, you're getting some tribal chi and moving beyond Sheila E. all at the same time."

Easy for her to say. Mills was the textbook version of a hottie. Back in the eighth grade, she was the textbook version of scrawny, with toothpick legs, a giant mouth, and kneecaps that you could use for a bongos solo. But rather than making her self-conscious or shy, all that her gawkiness did was cause her to give not half a rat's ass about what anyone thought—she focused on her brainpower and her personality. While she was engaged in that exercise, all her angles gained some pillow, she grew herself a butt, and turned into the woman you don't want to stand next to in photos because she makes you look like a construction worker by comparison. Now, I was attractive, I could truthfully say that without being full of myself. But where I had a feature or a slope that was pretty, her version of the same had a quality that threw it right over the line into complex and stunning. And the best part was that she still didn't give a damn.

And men came and went as she required, plain and simple. Mills was a confirmed bachelorette. She'd put her entire heart and guts into her work, and didn't really have much left for a relationship. And she'd chosen that route consciously. Be that as it may, she was a beautiful, young, hormonally vibrant woman who had no problem getting what she wanted, and so she always managed to keep herself sated where men were concerned.

I, on the other hand, had always been shy when it came to sex. Other than Esteban, my only lover had been my college boyfriend, and though we had worked through the full primer of "normal sex stuff" and had even moved into some sincerely adventurous and fun experiments like outdoors lovemaking and quickies in a dark room, I was never the type to take the initiative just for the sake of sex. And since Esteban had left three months ago, there'd been nothing and no one. I was happy to concentrate on work, fueling my energy into those smooth black and white keys, and hadn't given much thought to my libido. Plus, I was kind of an "old soul," content to wait for the pomp, circumstance and the whole enchilada of love, even if that equated to innumerable nights in front of the TV with a bowl of corn chips as I awaited the arrival of my dashing matador of romance.

Mills' cell phone interrupted my train of thought. After a few "uh-huhs" and a "certainly" or three, I knew from her tone that I had been sprung.

"I'm meeting Dr. Davids for coffee, but that does not—and I do say does not—remove you from your requirement to shop or wax with me. Bye."

With that pronouncement successfully communicated, she grabbed her tote and swept out the door, leaving me to return my gaze to my Korean name. Ah so.

# 3. Fur

Left alone again to contemplate my navel, I thought about whether or not I was actually depressed. That would be helpful, and open the door to a means of getting rid of the negative emotions in question. However, after further internal inspection, I decided I wasn't—it was more like I was . . . unfinished. I had the ensemble, I had Mills, and I sort of had Esteban, but was there something else I was missing? I felt a little bit like there was another dimension that I didn't know was there, so didn't really feel the lack of, but was vaguely aware of all the same. Moving forward, then, to ask the question "What is it?" really would open a Pandora's box of questions I not only didn't have answers to, but didn't even know how to approach. I mean, who the hell knows? Broadcasting? Archaeology? Zumba?

So, let's narrow it down. I was a cerebral person for sure. I'd rather curl up with a good book than go wall climbing or play volleyball. In fact, in high school gym class I used to get positively nerve-addled at the prospect of playing any of the team sports they decided to torment us with on a weekly basis. I can run, and I can stretch, so that's what I do. And, not unimportantly, neither of those activities has any real chance of causing me to break a finger.

I started playing piano when I was three, at my grandmother's house. She had an old upright number with a pull-out cover, and I spent hours teaching myself songs while the grown-ups made dinner, chatted over dessert, and had their secret dish-washing-and-coffee-drinking conversations that the younger folks found so profoundly dull. I have perfect pitch and can play by ear, so learning was the easy part. My mother, to her credit, saw that there was promise there that needed challenge and molding, and so I began formal lessons at the age of five.

Over the years I've learned to play other instruments as well as develop my singing voice, which is not half-bad, but piano has always remained my home, my haven, my place apart. I don't understand it, but for some reason, I don't question it. As elemental as a child's love for its parent, it's that way because somewhere deep inside, deep below the level of reason, I know it needs to be. When I play, I dissolve until there is just the music, floating across the air to its intended. And the knowledge that people like my playing, that they are even effusive about it, satisfies me enough to call this my chosen profession. I consider myself very lucky indeed.

I was in the middle of playing when Mills burst back through the door with a maniacal grin on her face. Not unusual. Just as I raised my fingers from the keys, she slammed the door so hard that a huge flock of starlings—which had apparently been having a bird conference on the lawn in front of my window—suddenly took wing as a unit, one gorgeous shadow of movement across the sky. I'd seen them do this before, but the beauty of their silent but complete harmony always left me a little breathless.

"Ells, how much do you love me?"

"I love you a ton, Mills, but right now you're freaking me out a little, I've gotta be honest. You look like Jack Nicholson in _The Shining_."

She wouldn't move away from the door, and had this bizarre stance going on. I was clueless what she was up to, but she was definitely up to something. She giggled, bounced up and down a couple of times like she had to pee, and started raving again.

"What do you need right now more than anything?"

"A tranquilizer for you."

"Besides that."

"A side job, so I can afford to buy said tranquilizers for you until I can go back to work."

"Very cute—you kill me, really. No Elma, what you need, and I say this in all honesty from a professional perspective, is a change. You need something new, a challenge, a hobby. And, other than me, you need . . . a companion."

With that last word, she opened the door and shifted her position. In her hand, which she'd been hiding behind her back, she held a leash. On that leash on the other side of the door, and now barreling toward me with joyful abandon, was a Labrador Retriever puppy.

He was completely black, with big paws and a fabulous, wet nose, and he greeted me like we'd known each other for a decade. Who doesn't love a puppy, but the glee and the relief that coursed through me at that moment were real, palpable, and undeniable.

Mills was as excited as I was, and together I think we petted that poor dog within an inch of his life.

"But where—?"

"Therapy dog in training. Cataract in one eye, just removed, but he was released from the program due to the regulations. Just happened yesterday. Dr. Davids called, hooked me up with the training team, and here we are!"

"But Mills--"

"I know," she interjected, hands in front of her in a peacemaking posture. "Unilaterally saddling you with a responsibility like this would be lame and unreasonable. So, he'll be mine, technically speaking."

"But Mills," I repeated in my 'let's-be-grownups-about-this' voice, "your schedule is ten times worse than--"

"I know." Again with the hands. "I'm going to find us a dog-walker. I'll tell my mom I need a therapy dog to cope with the mountains of stress at work, yada, yada, and she'll shell out, no problem."

"But--"

"No."

"But Mills--"

"Shhh. Look at him, Ells. Just look at him. We could both use this, you know? Isn't he just fabulous?"

He was fabulous, there was no way around it. He sat right in front of me on the carpet, staring and wagging and just full of absolute glee, and damnit, I felt myself being sucked directly into the chasm, with no way out. I was in love.

"What's his name?" I cooed while caressing his impossibly soft ears.

"Willie. It's a little "To All the Girls I've Loved Before," but it fits, I think. What's your vote?"

"Willie—it's perfect." It honestly was perfect, I marveled to myself as Willie nipped joyfully at my toes. We had a dog. Mills had figured out how to disengage me from my romance-related doldrums, require me to get off my butt and take my booted ankle outside a few times every day, and give me a rewarding new purpose as well as a daily partner in crime. She was brilliant, and I loved her.

"I love you too, Ells," she replied, even though I hadn't uttered a word out loud.

# 4. Mike

Willie needed one more round of puppy shots, and since Mills was in the middle of a double shift at the Center, I was "it." Darn her if she wasn't getting me out of the house the very day after pulling her little stunt.

This was my first visit to a veterinarian's office since I'd had a cat in high school. The experience of taking in the cat for check-ups had been an exercise in misery, complete with growling and scratching and something called a "burrito roll" which involved wrapping my poor pet in a towel, rendering her unarmed and pissed off while white-coated humans came at her with needles. On each occasion she was mad at us for a week or so afterward.

The memory struck me as hilarious in that specific instant, and I found myself giggling audibly until the knock on the door snapped me back to my senses. But really, was there a need to knock? I mean, unless I'm pulling at a wedgie, are we concerned the dog might be naked?

"Um . . . Willie?" called a voice. The door opened just as I lurched to catch my canine pal in midair in his foiled attempt to leap off the table. Excellent, I've embarrassed the adorable blue-eyed man in doctor glasses.

"That's us." And cue my smile—I can be cute on the outside, even if I'm a fuzzy-brained nut job on the inside.

Smile received and shot back over to me. And what a dazzler he was armed with.

"I had a Willie too."

"Excuse me?"

Another dazzler, this time an embarrassed one, and even more adorable.

"Sorry," (pronounced 'soa-ry'—he's Canadian, I deduced), I mean, what I mean is . . . ah . . . I had a gerbil named Willie in college."

I must have looked absolutely stupidized, because he amped it up and started talking faster. "In college, I was a biology major and we had to work with rats. My roommates and I wanted a rodent we could hang out with and kind of, well... treat like a pet, you know? So we snuck in a gerbil. Willie."

Not only did I not have the first clue what to say to that, but I also was girlishly melting at the sweetness of his little monologue and the fact that his face was so genuinely, guy-on-the-farm handsome, with soft skin and a warm smile—your quintessentially natural good looks.

"Soa-ry," he grinned again, extending his hand. "I'm Dr. Mike." Warm, smooth hands and a strong grip to boot. Crap.

"Elma. And Willie."

"Hey Willie! What's goin' on, boy?" As Dr. Mike gave Willie's head a good rub and scratched him behind the ears, I could almost see both of their tails wagging. It was probably several minutes before either of them remembered I was in the room, they were having such a blast together.

"So, he looks really good. Labs sometimes have hip dysplasia, that's a commonality in the breed, but right now I don't see any real issues structurally to be concerned about other than a little bit of a lower stance on the left, which we'll just have to watch. Doesn't feel like he's got worms, which doesn't surprise me given he's almost four months old and probably has been de-wormed by now, but we'll test anyway, just to confirm. And good, bright eyes, good energy—looks like a healthy guy. Isn't that right, Willie? Yes, buddy!"

Another round of mutual admiration. And now he'd earned some from me, too.

"That's—wow. I didn't even see the exam coming. Looks like you have fun with your job."

"Love it," he smiled, jotting down a few notes while Willie stared at his hand in hopes of another chin scratch. "Not a single day at the office."

"How great it—"

"—So he'll need one more distemper to close him out. The nurse will come in and take him to another room for that in a few minutes." Willie looked up at the good doctor adoringly once again, as if his suggestion of a shot was just too awesome to be believed.

"OK sounds good," I cut in. So—"

"—Then we'll send you home with a stool test container, and if you could bring in a sample—a fresh one, soa-ry—when you can, we'll make sure he's worm-free."

"Got it. I understand. You know, we just got him—"

"—Do you want to have dinner with me?" He looked up from his chart with a frank, guileless gaze, as if he were asking what kind of kibble Willie preferred.

"Huh?"

Dr. Mike took off his glasses and blew me away.

"I mean, would you like to go out to dinner with me? On a date?" He started walking toward me with easy purpose, smiling and glinting his ridiculously gorgeous eyes all the while. My fierce protector was apparently on break, lying on the exam table and happily noshing away at his "good dog" treat from his new pal.

"We just met, I know, but I really like you. If you're not attached, I'd like to see you again."

Who is this direct? Really! But, as Mills would concur, what the heck did I have to lose? And he was now right next to me—I could smell a little hint of sweet, masculine cologne and see how supple his lips were. His skin wasn't overly tight—young, but the kind you could move and feel the softness of between your fingers.

Another smile, knee-melting and directed right at me. I was losing myself in his eyes, which were happily and expectantly trained on mine.

"So? Would you like to go out?" he repeated, more quietly this time. I wanted to kiss him—badly.

"I . . . um . . . "

"Yes, Elma?"

Inside my brain, there was a screaming match going on. I was on my little soapbox, reminding everyone that Esteban was still very much my boyfriend. My alter-ego was jumping onto the soapbox beside me to convince me that, at least according to Esteban, we were a bit open in our relationship, so dating shouldn't be an issue. Mills was attempting to kick down the soapbox, screaming that I needed a man, Esteban had chosen to hit the road, and a dream guy who was nice and perhaps also good in bed was right there for the seducing. Mills won out, as usual.

"I'd like that. Yes," I smiled back.

I'm screwed.

# 5. Doctor's Care

I couldn't believe I was doing it. Even as I arranged my makeup thirty minutes before leaving the house, I was reprimanding myself in the mirror.

On one hand, yes, it was true that Esteban and I had a tacit agreement that we'd become more . . . liberal . . . in defining our relationship while he was gone. Our e-mails over the last month or so had reinforced that fact, becoming more chummy than romantic. Long-distance relationships are tough, and I don't think either of us was really bent on stirring the embers of whatever this was when we were apart for the better part of a year.

However, even given that meaningful and satisfactory context, the rule-following Good Girl in me had a fundamental angst around this whole thing. If I have a boyfriend, I shouldn't be going on a date. Period. It's as simple as that.

But, I countered to myself, do I need to be lonely? I mean, really. And what century is it, anyway? Simply put, going out with a guy for dinner does not mean I'm going to sleep with him or marry him and go on family vacations in a minivan, does it? Can I not have dinner with a friend who happens to have a penis?

Nice try, was the answer that came back from my snarky subconscious, but this is not that, and you know it. It's a good, old-fashioned, makeup and mouthwash date.

Is that necessarily the case, though, I reasoned, even as I donned my fake little "putting on blusher" smile for my reflection. Can't I have a good meal with a nice (if adorable) guy without it automatically becoming a relationship? I do have control over my own actions. If I don't feel right about getting romantic with Esteban in the picture, I'll stop myself before we get into that neighborhood. I'm at the helm of this ship, I reaffirmed to myself. The end. Satisfied and comfortable with my executive decision, I checked my wardrobe in the mirror—red cashmere turtleneck, black skirt, leather boots—gave myself a nod of approval, and headed out the door.

* * *

One thing I love about living in a little college town like this is the prevalence of good BYOB restaurants. Those little places that really don't look like much from the outside—the brick building next to the cleaner's with the ripped awning—are boho, quiet, unique, and simply delicious. I clip-clopped up to one such place, Vitio, for my first date with the doc.

Date? Really? OK, yes, it actually was a date, and a date about which I was already required to divulge every detail to Mills when I got home. It was a date because the man who greeted me inside the door of the restaurant looked handsome and shiny, smelled gently of cologne, and brought me a flower. It was a date because he had a bottle of wine and I had butterflies in my stomach.

"Hey Elma! You look great." And flower delivered.

"Thanks. Thanks again." Pregnant pause. "And you too."

"Hungry?" he grinned. Why did he have to be so damned pretty?

"I am." Another pregnant pause. "Smells great in here." Was this going to be small talk hell? Everyone probably has at least one memory of a horrendous evening spent staring at a half-eaten plate of chicken-something-or-other while trying desperately to think of anything to say to fill the plodding moments until it's politely reasonable to end the date. Egad, I so hoped this wouldn't turn into one of those nights.

Just then the maitr'd, doubtless recognizing the all-too familiar twang of the belabored first date conversation, swooped in like Spider-Man, simultaneously intercepting the vino, shuttling us to the "cute table in the corner by the window" and cutting us off just before someone uttered that dreaded comment about the current climate. Left once again on our own, and with a swallow of liquid reinforcement each, it was time to get to know each other. OK, where do we go with this now . . .

"I helped birth a calf today."

Stunning show of deft on my part that I didn't spray my large mouthful of wine onto his Jerry Garcia tie. The fact that he was actually wearing a tie was adorable. Was it required here? Not at all. Did he know that? Probably not.

"Sometimes they need a little help coming out. And, I figured it would be a great thing to be able to use as an ice-breaker tonight." He flashed a giant grin that was boyish, sexy, and impossible not to reciprocate.

"What do you do before a second date?" I queried with what I hoped was a slightly flirty little smile of my own.

He laughed out loud, one of those high-pitched laughs that, when he really got going, could have everyone in the room in stitches. "Most of the options aren't really great for me to mention as we're looking at our menus, but . . . " and he aimed his deep blue eyes directly at me, " . . . I don't think we'll need any help making conversation next time."

Yep. Definitely a date.

An hour and most of the bottle of wine later, we had covered all the basics— his childhood on a dairy farm in Virginia (which clearly is not in Canada), my background in music, and our joint affinity for jazz and dark chocolate. He was one of those people who was wide open, would honestly answer any question you could ask him without guile, and just didn't seem to be built with a lens for manipulation or subtext. Totally without hidden agenda. It was so refreshing. And even with that almost simplistic style, every so often he'd fold in a comment or idea to the conversation that reminded me that, apart from being a nice guy, he was also a very intelligent one with a lot to bring to the table, no pun intended. Now was one of those moments.

"I was almost a medical researcher. I have that background. But I think our path chooses us. And part of that process, that choice, is what you feel in your soul is the work you want most to do. You're as happy as the choices you make."

"And this is what you were meant to do?"

He absently fiddled with his espresso cup, eyes fixed on the table. "I can't explain it well," he began, "but there's this—charge—in me that comes through when I work. Only then. It's like it reproduces, like I'm sharing it with the animals." He stopped and looked up at me sheepishly, blushing crimson. "Sounds like I just smoked a large joint on my VW bus on a road trip to Joshua Tree, doesn't it?"

I smiled in response, but inside I was marveling that his words rang just as true for me. What was in the air when I sat at my piano was just that way—a charge, energy. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him so, but (why I don't know) I said nothing about it, just looked back at him with a reassuring smile. "Heavy," I grinned.

* * *

The town was quiet, the evening cold as we strolled down the sidewalk after dinner in the light of the street lamps. We fell into a comfortable silence for a few moments, enjoying the fresh air after all the food and wine.

Mike walked with his hands in his jacket pockets, wavy dark blonde hair tousled by the wind. The cold made his lips and nose redder. He had such a classic face, I marveled, that face you would see on a J. Crew poster, with a little stubble added in to express a touch of a rugged streak.

He stopped and turned, and suddenly that face was inches away from mine.

"Your trusty steed, madam?"

"What?" I squeaked, wondering how much of my inner monologue he might be onto, but then, looking around, I realized we were now on the part of the street where I had left my car. "Oh! That was fast. I . . . um . . . forgot I had told you where I was parked. It's that green one, parallel parked next to the tree."

I pointed to my Beetle, which was waiting just a few feet away and across the street, but Mike didn't move except to take another step toward me, our bodies now touching.

"Can I see you again?" His voice was quiet, almost a whisper, and his eyes were trained on mine. Up close, and even in the low light, their color seemed to expand, to deepen. They were so, so blue. The smallest whiff of his cologne mingled with the clean, almost green grass scent of his skin, and again I wanted him to kiss me.

He touched my cheek, and my heart quickened. He whetted his lips ever so delicately with his tongue, and my lips began to tingle. He leaned in, opened his mouth just perceptibly . . . he smelled marvelous...

"I have a boyfriend." Our mouths were so close that I could imagine the words leaving mine and floating into his. He stopped where he was, likely stunned, but a moment later withdrew his hand gently, and moved away with a downcast expression.

"What I mean is . . . ," I stammered, " . . . is that I had a boyfriend who is now just kind of a boyfriend. We're taking a pause, I mean, not actively . . . I mean, he's in Asia, and we aren't really together, but still not . . . and I just can't . . . "

"It's OK." Unbelievably, he was smiling. "I shouldn't have done that. I just . . . I'm sorry. I really like you, Elma."

"I like you too, Mike. And I just want to do this right. The sad thing is, 'right' for right now, means I can't get into anything more than friendship. I'm sorry." My alter-ego proceeded to bang her head against the nearest table repeatedly, then pulled out her smartphone to text Mills.

"I'm not." He was resolute as he continued to look at me. "Then we'll be friends. I just want to be able to keep spending time with you." He paused, looked away, then focused back on me. "If you would want to, that is."

I was relieved, elated (and alternately pissed off with myself), and felt warmth emanating from inside me as I smiled in response. "I'd like that very much, Mike. And maybe someday ..."

" . . . will come and we'll talk about it when it does. And if it does . . . " Mike stopped, placed his hand on my left cheek again, moved in and placed his lips against my right cheek. It was a slow, soft, sensual kiss, and it made me warm and gave me chills all at once. When his lips drew away, he held his face next to the spot for another few seconds, letting his warm breath caress my skin. " . . . If it does, I'll be ready."

Out in the distance, I heard a hawk scream.

# 6. Creatures of the Wood

Given that I was temporarily unemployed, for the next few weeks I assumed the role of 1. returner of Mills' innumerable boxes of mail order crap; and 2. daily walker of Willie. Fortunately, I could tackle both tasks at once on days like today, when my return pile consisted of two blouses and a pair of TOMS flats. Full-on Zappos days were a little bit tougher, but those were rare, since Mills was in blue Crocs roughly 97% of the time anyway.

The straightest walking path to the UPS Store was through campus, which on a late weekday morning like this made me feel like Justin Bieber at the mall, since every female student along the way stopped to pet, gush and croon over Willie. Even though it was cold, blustery, and there was even a little sprinkling of chilly rain coming down from time to time, everyone had a few seconds to get some puppy love. And Willie, for his part, was eating it up like kibble.

If all that adoration weren't enough, the west side of campus, where we were heading, was a woodland reserve, and though no puppy-petters were to be found there, the area was chock-full of trees and squirrels and oh so many exciting things to smell! I could only laugh, standing there with a plastic bag over my ankle boot as a high-tech protector from the moist ground, watching my new friend's unabashed display of glee. Willie was beside himself completely, having what almost looked to be an out-of-body experience digging into a gopher hole. If only it were that simple for us all.

But suddenly his paws stopped in mid-dig. His tail went completely rigid, his head shot up, and the hair on my arms stood on end to see the way his hackles shot out to attention instantaneously. A low, threatening growl rose up from his chest as he lowered his head in warning, a complete 180 from the playful pup he'd been just a second ago. Then he was motionless; the sound he made came out of an unmoving place, which frightened me in its oddness, as though some unseen force was keeping him from following his natural instinct to lurch out and protect me.

It was cold, and standing still as I was, I felt my fingers and nose begin to grow numb. We were alone in this dense patch of woods; there were no crunching footsteps or voices or any signs of life around us. The only sounds were Willie's growl and the wind blowing a few remaining late fall leaves across the November ground. It all felt still, dead.

The wind whipped suddenly, a blustery blow that set my hair and coat flying behind me. Then suddenly the feeling was there—cold and moisture fused in a perfect O on the side of my neck. My body froze in place of its own volition; I wanted to move, scream—anything—but I was mired to the spot in which I stood, with flesh . . . yes, it was flesh . . . pressed against me. I could only hear my breath now, and the beating of my heart. The flesh . . . no, the lips . . . began to move, expanding, then shrinking, then expanding again. I felt a tongue follow those lips as they drew back around my skin . . . as the lips kissed me . . . growing warmer as they lapped with controlled abandon. For a brief second the feel of them was gone, and I felt the wind set a chill over the wet skin they left behind. Then they were back, warming me, landing differently this time, and as they once again began their sensual dance, a hardness was there as well. In the wake of soft and warm there was now hard and sharp, shocking my skin as it scraped along. Then there was more hardness, then lips and tongue and sharpness together, all bearing down harder and harder...

* * *

"Miss, it's your turn."

"Huh?"

I must have looked like a total fool to the other people in line at UPS, what with the completely dumbfounded gape on my face. The redhead standing directly across from me surely thought so. One of those stylish types with the brick house bod, the perfect hair and the Lancôme face, she and her two little almost-bald, bug-eyed little Chihuahuas were all staring at me with thinly veiled loathing.

The woman behind the desk called to me again. Had I walked here? I had absolutely no memory of it. I advanced my befuddled behind to the counter, trying with all of my might to gather together any threads of the past hour I could muster, but all to no avail. What the hell had happened to me?

"Ma'am?"

"Oh sorry, yes, I have three items to return, please." I had left the apartment, I had tripped over one of the stairs, but caught myself on the railing. A young woman in a Duke sweatshirt asked if she could babysit my dog. Willie barked at a squirrel and the sound echoed across the woods. And then... I was here. What?

"Do you have the return receipts?"

Come on, Elma, come on back to Earth. "Sure--here." The printouts shook in my hands as I handed them over. My neck was burning in one small place, near where they always feel for a pulse in those TV medical dramas. I felt around with my shaking fingers, but there was nothing--no rash, no bumps, no scratches. Just smooth, clammy skin above a racing pulse that even I could find. I was starting to feel faint. Breathe, Elma. Focus.

"No charge for ground, then, ma'am. Have you seen the Master?"

"Excuse me?"

"Ground OK, or do you want to send it faster?"

"Um...ground. Ground is fine." My head was beginning to thump painfully in time with my heartbeat.

"Cool. They'll be watching you."

"What?" I was sweating, and couldn't catch my breath.

"Ma'am, you dropped your shoe. Are you OK?"

Looking down, I saw that one of Mills' red canvas flats had fallen out of the box and onto the floor. I picked it up, shaking even more as I did so, stuffed it indelicately back into the box, dumped everything onto the counter, grabbed the leash, and rushed out of the store.

# 7. The Tenuous Voyeur

"Tell me about her."

"Why?"

"Many times it's possible to demystify a situation by discussing it. It puts the subject in a more realistic light."

"You do realize you're not to share your methods with your patient, don't you?"

Roan was now pacing back and forth across the room in obvious discomfort at the topic under analysis. "And now that you've told me your strategy, I'm less than inclined to humor you." He stood for a long moment in front of a still life on the wall, a bowl of apricots on a wooden table in the sun. Finally, he turned around, pinched at the fold of skin above the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and sighed long. "But very well, let's do carry on."

"We'll start simply, then. Tell me about her physical characteristics."

Roan resumed his seat opposite the doctor, elbows on knees, perfectly manicured fingers templed at his mouth. "Her feet are small, dainty. She wears heeled shoes quite often, and they create a beautiful swell of muscle at her calf. Her legs are lovely and well-toned. I think she would be a strong runner. I've not seen her bottom, but I believe it to be exquisite. She's 'petite', as I think is the word du jour, and her bones are quite small. But again, very strong, I think."

He rubbed his chin, his gaze wandering off into the distance.

"Carry on."

"Her waist is small. Her breasts are roughly the size of my palm, and I imagine they are delicious." As he spoke, the vampire's fangs began to descend, coloring his speech as he continued his description. "Her neck is the color of white silk, and in it I can see every pulse of her heart from across a room. The flow of her blood through the vessels there is a rose against her flesh—a thin, delicate rose petal."

"And you desire to taste her blood?"

Roan glanced up at the doctor with narrowed eyes that told of how unnecessary that question was to even utter, then returned his focus to the floor and continued.

"Her hair is of three colors—red, gold and brown. She does not iron it or use chemicals, and so it smells sweet . . . of apple, strangely. When she is working, she wears it tied together in a chignon at the nape of her neck. When she is not working, she wears it in a—oh what is that ludicrous new term—horse tail?"

"—Pony. Ponytail."

"Yes, yes—pony tail. She wears it free and flowing around her only once in a great while. Her skin is healthy if a bit dry—perhaps from a lack of water. And her mouth . . . " the vampire paused, moistened his own lips, and swallowed, " . . . is round, her lips supple, curved and with a lovely small swell. I can imagine her genitals are the same—smooth, cushioned, as soft as one could possibly imagine."

The doctor cleared his throat and shifted his weight in his chair. The vampire looked at him and smiled broadly, an amused grin showing his long, sharp, fully descended fangs.

"Does my description embarrass you, Doctor Upping? Or are you aroused?"

"Neither, I assure you. Please continue."

"Do not lie to me. I can hear the blood rushing to your prick."

"It's a natural physiological response, Roan. I won't be embarrassed by it, but are you? How does a man's arousal make you feel?"

"Meaning?"

"Just that. Are you embarrassed by a man's physical excitement, or does male sexuality intrigue you?"

Roan merely shook his head, completely unfazed by the intimate line of questioning. "In the years since I began walking in the moonlight I have fed on many men, by necessity. Although that is a more intimate experience than sex in many ways, I still have never had intercourse with a man. Women are my craving. Many vampires desire both sexes. I happen to prefer women," he replied, and, drawing his unwavering lavender gaze from the doctor's lap to his eyes, he added, "both to feed from and to fuck."

"Roan, enough." Dr. Upping was now calm and unflustered, but also clearly through with his patient's attempts at sidestepping the core topic of conversation. "Let's go back to her. What else? Tell me everything that enters your mind."

Roan sighed again, letting the calm wave of oxygen wisp through his body, and looked down at the index card in his hand, though his focus was far away from the words printed there.

"Her eyes are most confounding—they are green, then brown, then hazel. Almost as if they are reflecting the changes in the sky above them. I cannot take my own eyes from them, whether or not she is focused on me. Her emotions float across them as on a movie screen, and it is almost as though I can read her inner thoughts, feel her feelings. This haunts me most of all."

Both men were quiet for a moment, in tacit appreciation of the emotion now coloring the atmosphere around them.

After a long pause, the doctor broke the silence, speaking in a comforting, almost deferential tone. "When she is focused on you, when you speak with her, how do you think she regards you?"

"I have not spoken with her."

"Pardon me?"

"I have not spoken with her. We have never met."

# 8. Calves and Croatian

Mills had of course taken me right to the doctor's office after I told her what had happened, and, in the space of about five minutes and a whirl of candy-colored smoke, had me perched on an exam table in front of some of the best physicians in Winter Rain. They had all concluded that there was nothing to it, that I had fallen victim to an anxiety attack, most likely. They were certain that all the sensations I had experienced were related, somehow connected to sources of mental or emotional strain. Mills chalked it up to the combination of Esteban issues, the ankle injury and the new puppy—new life element overload. I wasn't so sure. Though I wanted to believe her, somewhere within me I just knew there was something else. Beyond that, I was mystified, and that just added more fuel to the fire.

The piano was the only thing that helped. I continued to practice as well as I could with the damned boot on--I was able to work the keys but not the pedals, which for a pianist is kind of like making a gourmet dinner with a stove but not an oven. The cherry on top of this frustrating situation was the fact that I was rehearsing for a concert to be held in two weeks' time. I'd be free of my ambulatory albatross a week before the show, which though helpful, didn't do much for the lead-up. So, not only did I have to learn some new and very out of the ordinary pieces, but I had to do it with one hand tied behind my back, musically speaking, and with my brain off in who-the-hell-knows-where. But still, I could play. I could play.

This upcoming performance was a unique retrospective concert based on new arrangements of Eastern European music from the 15th-18th centuries. It was slightly odd stuff to learn, and I was all over it. Straythern was a gem in that regard. Although small, with limited financial means, and housed in a decidedly little town, the university found ways to keep itself hard-wired into the high art community for regular infusions of truly unique subject matter. It's why I'd chosen to stay here after graduation versus taking a job in New York or Chicago, cities in which I'd been offered similar positions at higher salaries. I can't say it was a difficult decision, though—something within me just clicked right away when I considered Straythern. And I've always felt good about my decision.

And so here I was, learning 300-year-old Croatian folk songs, complete with full choir and historical readings. The latter was the coup of the evening—spoken word accounts of the composers' lives and environments in their own languages, delivered by the very lofty and enigmatic Dr. Everest Hendry, renowned linguist, former Washington diplomatic muckity muck, and current visiting professor in the Straythern linguistics department.

I'd never personally met Hendry, and couldn't fathom why the poor man's mother would name him after a mountain. But be that as it may, the person, his perpetually pissy disposition, and his legendary dalliances with the female student and faculty bodies were storied elements in Straythern social circles. As the tales were spun, he apparently possessed a type of seductive magic that rendered anyone in his path weak and noodle-like in his presence, propelling them to prostrate themselves in a puddly pile before him, served up for his brazen sexual slurping.

The Casanova impression notwithstanding, he was also a smart son of a bitch with a wallful of Oxford-league diplomas, who could easily handle recitations in half a dozen obscure Cyrillic dialects. And he was gorgeous to boot, or so I'd heard. But, he was still a dick, so I'd also heard. All well and good—I'd see for myself in a few days what all the fuss was about, since he'd be participating in the full program run-through the day after my ankle was to be liberated.

Shorter-term, I mused as I stroked the keys in front of me, there were two interesting dates coming up. First, a farm trip with Mike, to watch him do his thing with horses, cows, pigs and perhaps the odd sheep. The following evening, a phone date with Esteban—the first in three weeks. I was looking forward to Farm Day not because I necessarily dug mucking around in animal stalls or observing equine insemination or whatever wacky veterinary requirements this kind of thing entailed, but because I simply liked to spend time with Mike. He made me feel good, he was fun, he was funny, and he was kind to me.

One of the most charming things about him, I mused to myself, was the fact that, as stunning as he was to look at, he was equally oblivious to it. He was the hot guy who has no idea he's hot. And the lack of that self-awareness made him infinitely hotter. When he worked, he was full of . . . well . . . glee. He was the quintessential sweet country doctor, only his clients had fur. And to see the look on his face when he was working—that smile was worth the trip in and of itself. He was so thrilled to be doing what he did, and joyful about the good things he helped to make happen. It was just adorable to see. This upcoming event was good. This event was not likely to induce undue levels of cortisol and cause me to short-circuit again.

The call with Esteban was another story. Not only was I totally clueless about how I was going to broach the subject of Dr. Mike, but I also hadn't the merest idea what to talk to him about. "So, Esteban, have any interesting bras thrown at you lately?" Or perhaps, "Hey, how are the groupies doing?" Then there was always, "So, me? Well, just hanging out here watching my toenails grow and not having sex, nope, not having any sex at all. How's the tour?"

Any way you cut it, it was going to be an awkward conversation at best, both of us dancing around the elephant in the room who wanted to raise her trunk and bellow that we had zero to talk to each other about anymore. When we were together it worked, but now it was just . . . dysfunctional. But who was going to bring that up? He'd feel terrible breaking up with me over the phone while I was here all alone, and I'd feel crummy ending it when he was across the world in an unfamiliar place, working so hard to get some level of professional success.

And what if we did end it? What then? Did I want to follow through with Mike? It did sound like an appealing idea. I'd already determined that he was a good guy. He was hardworking and had a solid career that he loved, and he was easy on the eyes to boot. I was attracted to him, yes, so a plus there—not in the "I want to rip your pants to ribbons and cuff you to the bed" kind of way, but more in an "it would please me if you nibbled my ear" kind of way. And that was a relief. The last thing I wanted was to be so dizzy in lust that it kept me from thinking straight or acting rationally. Such was not the case with Dr. Mike, so a plus there.

On the other hand, we had a fabulous relationship going, so why mess with success? I had a great guy friend, which is almost as awesome as a great gay guy friend, and I didn't want to risk mucking that up. I knew Mike was game to move things forward—he'd told me as much on that adorable first date, and had hinted at it multiple times since. So it was all up to me.

However, I could feel the anxiety rising like a sour current in my belly, and beginning to stretch out unwelcome into my back and arms, so it was time to stop thinking. Besides, e-flat major was not the best key in which to decide on the best path to take in a relationship. Perhaps I simply thought too much, plain and simple. You can't analyze every detail of your world, can you? And besides, where would the adventure be in that? No, I'd rather close my eyes and leap from time to time.

# 9. Recitative à Deux

STAGEHAND: "Tell me what happened."

MILLS: "OK, let's have it—the whole corn dog, top to bottom. Start at the beginning."

HENDRY: "I was due to deliver my first reading at twenty minutes or so into the program—"

STAGEHAND: "—We're you feeling nervous?"

HENDRY: "Don't be stupid. The music was playing—adagio, strings and piano. Quite soothing."

ELMA: "So I'm playing, everything's great, no problem."

MILLS: "Were you nervous?"

ELMA: "It was just dress rehearsal! Besides, I'm way more jittery getting my driver's license renewed."

MILLS: "Weirdo."

ELMA: "Anyway, it's a slow piece, and the first reading is to be right after that, in this same kind of subdued, sort of sentimental tone. I play the last few notes ..."

HENDRY: "You pulled aside the curtain and I began walking toward my mark on the stage. And suddenly, I was . . . not well."

ELMA: "Then my hands go numb."

MILLS: "What??"

ELMA: "I mean totally numb! Another panic attack, I guess. I hit the last notes, then all of a sudden the room is freezing, my heart is beating a thousand miles a minute, I can't catch my breath, and I cannot feel my hands."

HENDRY: "I forced myself to walk, with difficulty, toward the microphone. Once there, I found I was unable to continue."

STAGEHAND: "Were you dizzy, or nauseous? Are you feeling better now?"

HENDRY: "I wasn't well! That is sufficient!"

ELMA: "The professor doing the reading walks out to the microphone, looks at his papers, clears his throat, then apologizes and turns around and walks right back off the stage. No idea—totally random."

MILLS: "Did he look sick?"

ELMA: "No . . . well, I mean I don't really know. I was too busy trying to breathe and not pass out to pay much attention to his skin tone!"

HENDRY: "I was unable to perform my piece, and so I removed myself."

ELMA: "He just walked away."

# 10. Break and Enter

I studied the curve of my upper lip in the mirror, careful to trace a clean line with my lip pencil across its bow. It wasn't something I did often, and so I couldn't, like some other women, apply makeup almost automatically, lightning fast and never missing a stroke. So, slow and steady it went, up over the two generous curves under my nose. I liked my lips very much—they were one of my favorite features. The lower one pouted out gently toward my chin, so they were supple but not overly plump or collagen-like. And they were a little bit puffier than usual today.

Blusher was next. The makeup smile I made into the mirror to pop out the apples of my cheeks didn't reach my eyes at all. Not even a dirty joke from Mills could make them look bright today. But I headed there anyway with my products to see what I could do. A dot of concealer rubbed under each eye to reduce the puffiness there. Eyeliner carefully applied so as not to exacerbate the redness of my eyes from my tears. Eye shadow to mask my sadness.

Two waves of the mascara wand on each side—one for each of the reasons Esteban and I had agreed it was best for us to break things off. The first was geography, the second was situation. We said long-distance relationships were difficult. We agreed we had done a great job, but neither of us was enjoying it or getting much from it anymore. It was lonely and hard to manage.

We also didn't know where we wanted the relationship to go, and whether or not we were even moving in the same direction. And if we didn't know if we'd be together for the long haul, why were we working so hard to keep it going from different ends of the world? We had both been thinking the same thoughts, having the same doubts, and it had felt good to say it out loud to each other as friends. But it also felt miserable.

A new bubble of water welled in my eye, and I carefully siphoned it away with the corner of my Kleenex. It would be one of those nights when my sadness was right there under the surface, ready to overflow at any time, and it would be difficult to keep from showing it. I would at least have the diversion of the concert to occupy my mind, but rather than soothing me as the thought of playing usually did, the idea just added a shiver of nervousness to my already strained emotions.

However, there was still work to do, and so I put down my makeup brush and assessed my reflection. I still looked sad, but otherwise the crying had mostly served to accentuate the good features of my face. Fuller and redder lips, heavier lids, ruddier cheeks. It was a sensual look, to be perfectly frank, the irony of which made me chuckle ruefully. White peasant blouse cut to reveal my collarbones, black silk skirt, and hair gathered in a loose bun—I looked like the heroine on the cover of a period romance novel. Hilarious.

* * *

It was snowing again, big, moist flakes gliding down quietly in the moonlight. The flakes had been smaller yesterday, when Mike and I had made our trip to the farm in the next town to check on the animals. He'd almost stripped the clutch of the veterinary practice's house call van on the way in; I was about a minute away from asking him if he'd like me to drive, but didn't want to humiliate the poor guy, smiling and laughing self-deprecatingly as he did every time the clutch made that awful metal on metal sound.

What struck me as interesting was the fact that he looked more comfortable on a horse than he did in a car. One of his patients was a quarter horse with a resolving GI issue; the farmer let him take her for a spin before we left. The way he nimbly hefted up over her bare back with the snow falling all around him, the way he cooed lovingly to her as he edged her forward . . . it looked like he belonged exactly right there.

Mike was in the audience tonight, the dear, even though it was clear with one glance that be belonged exactly not right here. As I walked into the auditorium I could see him talking with Mills, who, because she loved me, had changed her schedule to make sure she could be in the audience to support me too. As I headed toward them, I couldn't deny I was relieved to see them both in the big room.

"Hey gorgeous!" Mills always had to make a remark when I put on makeup, which basically only happened once a month or so. "All good?"

She wasn't about to mention the whole Esteban situation in front of Mike. Given that he'd already voiced that he had feelings for me, it would be just too weird for him (and me) for him to know that I was single, just until I had my emotions under better control. I couldn't add guilt to the list of sentiments roaring through my gut right now.

"Yep. Just want to get this over with and have a large glass of wine."

Mike put an encouraging arm around my shoulder. He smelled like soap and . . . Old Spice? He smiled down at me with a reassuring twinkle. "You'll be fabulous, kiddo. And Millie and I were just figuring out the whole wine plan, as a matter of fact."

"Mills. No Millie," she grunted through gritted teeth. Her face and tone of voice were pancake flat. She loathed the name Millie.

"Oh, soa-ry—Mills. Anyway, Brewster's after the show?"

"Deal," I piped up. "That sounds fabulous, actually."

"It'll be a celebration for me, too," he said with an excited jingle in his voice. "My first live classical music show!" And he grinned all the way to his ears.

Mills, on the other hand, looked like she'd just swallowed a filling. "Dude—you have GOT to be kidding me! What are you, like thirty five? How is that even possible? Were you raised in the woods in Nebraska or something?"

"There are no woods in Nebraska, Mills," I offered.

"But still!"

I giggled and gave Mike and Mills each a quick kiss on the cheek. "Fight nice, kids. Gotta get backstage."

"I'll text you if anything, Ells," Mills called, waving her phone in the air as I walked away. I signaled that I got it, trying to avoid the growing pit in my stomach, gnawing louder with each step I took toward the stage.

# 11. Found in Translation

Full house. Not a huge venue, but still a sea of faces in the shadows, in front of whom I was not eager to lose my cool. Places taken, instruments ready, all eyes on Dr. Maldonado at the dais, and an anticipatory quiet filling the air. Baton up.

My fingers went to the keys, my foot to the pedals, and the right sounds began to emerge. After the first dozen or so measures, I felt my shoulders relax. Ten minutes into the piece, my heart was no longer thumping like a tympani and I could again breathe in time with the music.

Things continued to progress beautifully through the first half of the performance. Whatever had hit me in rehearsal was nowhere to be felt, and I was the same musician in concert I had always been. The orchestra sounded marvelous, the maestro was pleased, and the audience was appreciative and anticipating the headlining piece in the second half of the evening. Good all around.

I had a spring in my step as I walked toward the ladies room at intermission, checking my phone for messages. There was indeed one from Mills.

"Got called in. Walked here, so asked Ludwig von Doolittle to drop me at the hospital. Poor guy was falling asleep. You're rocking it. Feel OK? XOXO."

Mills. I smiled and quickly dashed a note back to her. "Feel great! Thanks for getting me here. For EVERYTHING. XOXO."

I hit Send, and started to type a quick thank you to Mike when someone slammed directly into me. I was standing in the middle of the crowded hallway between the main auditorium and the restrooms, right in the flow of foot traffic, and so I deserved to be tossed around a bit, but this was more than a bump. The impact almost sent my phone flying and the force really hurt my arm. I looked up with a pissed off expression to find myself staring right into Dr. Everest Hendry's pinched and severe face.

His stare bore down on me so that I felt the almost unavoidable need to look away, but I didn't. For a breathless, eternal five seconds he continued to hold me stock still where I stood without touching me. I couldn't move . . . I could barely breathe. Everything behind, around and in front of me ceased to be. My heart was thumping precariously and every nerve in my body was on full alert.

"You . . . watch . . . your . . . back." Nose to nose, all but touching, he said it in an accented whisper so intimidating that I felt my knees shake, but I continued to look at him. I willed myself to return his stare, boring directly into his eyes, and saw that they were alive, wide, and burning with anger.

For an instant he made me see nothing but the hues and urgency of him, but in the next second he was gone, disappearing into the crowd and leaving me once again breathless and shaky—this time from shock.

* * *

While waiting in line in front of the ladies room, I felt rattled and slightly dizzy from the bizarre altercation, if you could call it that. While sitting in the stall in the ladies room with my head in my hands, I seriously wondered whether I might be having some kind of psychological breakdown. While washing my hands before emerging from the ladies room, I got mad at Hendry for accosting me, threatening me, and most of all, for affecting me this much. He'd slammed into me so hard I'd even nicked my wrist with my fingernail, which added injury to insult. And, while hurrying back to my piano stool and shaking out my now-sanitized hands, I determined that Everest-fucking-Hendry was a dick, and was undoubtedly the one with the screw loose. He could suck it, the Napoleonic hotshot, as far as I was concerned.

Baton up.

Being pissed off didn't hamper my playing, but I was glad the next piece on the program was a forceful one that let me hammer the living shit out of the keys. I was sweating by the time it was over, but feeling a little bit better, well enough not to be tempted to throw something at Hendry when he came onstage later. If he even came onstage, that is. The conductor had planned for every potentiality tonight, and there was a PhD student in Eastern European linguistics in the audience just in case the professor flaked out. I sort of hoped he would.

The music turned soft, to the tender strains that just preceded the first reading. Piano and strings graduated into solo violin, the mood grew calm, and I folded my hands in my lap and turned my head to the stage to watch the games begin. If only there were popcorn.

The spotlight was soft against the dark theater, and the light it cast across the small stage was almost cream-colored. The solo violinist stood center stage, next to a microphone and music stand hitched higher than normal. The next things I caught sight of on the stage were Hendry's black patent leather dress shoes, because the shaft of light bounced off their highly polished face and made them gleam as he walked out onto the stage. Hendry was tall—over six feet—and had a long, deliberate stride, walking casually but with gravitas toward his mark. He was dressed in black and white, like all of us in the orchestra, in his case smooth black dress pants, an equally fine white tailored shirt that was open at the collar, and a black dress jacket. I couldn't deny that he was handsome—gratingly so. And it seemed he knew it, even down to having the balls to get onstage at this kind of tight-ass formal event with stubble. Two or three-day, dark, rugged and sexy-as-hell stubble.

Asshole.

He nodded to the violinist, cleared his throat, arranged the papers on the music stand in front of him, and awaited his cue. Whether stage fright or a frightful case of the vapors, whatever had been his issue during rehearsal clearly had been resolved, because he was nothing but calm, fully composed and refined as he stood on the stage waiting for his turn to perform.

The violin sang out a final, yearning note, stilled, and then Hendry opened his mouth. The sound coming from him wasn't harsh or rough or intimidating, as I had expected it to be and as it had been in the corridor in front of the ladies room thirty minutes before. No. His voice was a round, full, rich, and musky combination of whiskey and cigars, and it hit my ears like thick velvet earmuffs. I swooned in my seat—I couldn't help it. I literally couldn't handle the sound of his voice; it was too much sensory input to manage, and I'm a musician. My body rocked with every vibration of his throat as he gradually read through his material, caressing the old Croatian text, taking hold of the clipped, staccato modern Russian poem, kissing the slow and sultry Hungarian love song. I wasn't cold or numb as I had been the last time we were in similar positions, but the breathless emotion was still infuriatingly, achingly there.

The pattern of my breathing sped to match his, fast to fit the pace of the rally poem he was now performing. His words came in bold, exotic bursts of sound, passionate and evocative, every shout sending a fireball of wonderful pain through me like a searing ember. I was very glad I wasn't supposed to be playing; at the moment, I couldn't.

Hendry himself looked cool as a cucumber, completely unaware of what his words were doing to the audience. He stood with one hand in his pants pocket, the other alternately turning the pages of his material and waving in the air to express himself. As very few of the audience members could even understand the languages he was speaking, he seemed unconcerned about fully engaging in the drama or in every layer of meaning required by the words in front of him.

Suddenly, though, Hendry looked up from his papers, removed his reading glasses, and—I can't lie and say I didn't think he did it—looked directly at me. With centuries-old poetry flowing in a haunting wave from his lips, he stared once again into my eyes, his own deepening until they were dark crimson, and so bright it was as if they were on fire from within. I couldn't look away. Sure, OK, perhaps I was hallucinating the whole thing, but even so I COULD NOT rip my focus from his. He had me.

And as he spoke, as we breathed together, and as his eyes burned the color of flame, the phrases he was speaking began to change. First a word, then a few, then a whole sentence. Pieces of imagery began to drift into my befuddled mind, floating bits of land in a bizarre sea. It slowly began to dawn on me that I understood what he was saying! At that very same moment, I also realized that he hadn't started speaking English. Impossible as it was to conceive of let alone admit to myself, I was capturing and comprehending the 17th century Croatian song he was reciting. It was a story of lost love, triumph over death, a lovers' bond across the ages, longing, need, eternal commitment and unending devotion. It was beautiful. I felt a flutter at my eyelid and realized I was crying.

# 12. Intermezzo

"Are you a jealous man, Roan?"

"No."

"Do you feel a sense of unfairness due to your condition? Have you found yourself wondering why you've been dealt this difficult set of cards?"

"No."

"Then tell me, how it does make you feel?"

The rain had given way to a strong wind, audible through walls of the old building. In the silence, Roan scratched at his smooth chin while considering the doctor's question with a rueful smile.

"Immortal. Powerful. Above the stupidity and baseness of most human thought processes. You waste. You fill your minds with utterly ludicrous concerns—bills, reputations, flouncing about in an attempt to convince someone to touch you. Preposterous things. And you spend the entirety of your short life spans spinning and spinning over them. I do not miss being human."

"Vampirism provides clarity, then? Evolution?"

"Yes."

"And, I daresay, a breaking of those emotional restraints?"

"Precisely."

Now Upping smiled. "Yet you're here, in front of me."

The vampire did not bristle, but merely nodded in acquiescence, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin again. "Precisely."

# 13. Rainfall

Driving home from campus in the cold rain, my fingers were gripping the steering wheel so hard that I thought I might break it in two. I could not stop crying; setting aside all the other bizarre events of the evening, what I had heard in Hendry's monologue made me realize what a void there was in my heart. Where was my addictive love, where was my soul-clenching passion that made me float a few inches above the ground? Would I ever have that feeling, would I ever find someone to be truly, honestly in love with?

It's not like I hadn't tried. I'd been out there, I'd dived into relationships and put my heart into vulnerable display for the taking. It's just that no one had ever really taken it. Crushes, yes. Puppy love, yes. But where was that enduring, can't-eat-or-sleep-without-you pair bond? The scary thing was, it wasn't something I could control; I couldn't decide one day that I was going to find my true love, identify him and tag him like a shelter dog with a microchip. The whole thing was as complicated as the tides and their gravitational pull—chemical, natural, divine—and completely out of my hands.

Given this whole emotional meltdown, the out-of-body experience of Hendry's recitation, my run-in with him earlier, and breaking up with Esteban as an appetizer to the whole chef's menu of torment, I was a total basket case, my nerves at the point of being split ends. I truly needed my friends tonight. So, I willed myself to snap out of it and concentrate on making the correct turns to get to Mike's place, where Mills and he would be waiting to flit me away to Brewster's for some laughing and a glass of wine or six.

I pulled into the parking lot of Mike's complex and took a deep breath of relief. I hated driving at night, especially in the rain, even when I was in a jolly mood. So I was very glad to be safely parked with the motor off. Mike had picked up Mills, since he'd dropped her off, and it would be easy to convince her to drive us home later. She never liked to drink, even a little bit, when she was on call.

The other thing I silently lauded myself for was the fact that I carried wet wipes in my purse at all times. While I couldn't do a heck of a lot to mask the fact that I'd been crying, I could remove the raccoon makeup that had migrated down below my eyes. And though I was not comfortable talking about my experience during the concert for several reasons, I did just have a breakup after all, so at least Mills would be unsurprised to see me a little bleary-eyed right now, if for that reason alone. Rationale firmly in place, I wiped the night away, and though the finished product was not a work of art, I was cleaned up and actually kind of pretty in a "flushed because I'm weepy and miserable" kind of way.

As I walked up onto Mike's front porch, I stepped sideways on a small rock or something, and felt the heel of my boot crunch ominously beneath me. Crap, a great end to a stellar night. I rang the bell and bent down to assess the damage while I waited for Mike to answer. At the sound of the door opening, I jerked back upright, and immediately grabbed onto the railing for support.

Mike stood in front of me wearing a grin . . . and a towel wrapped around his waist. He held open the door with one hand, and with the other, rubbed at the back of his wet head with a hand towel. Three things caught my eye in in the same nanosecond—the small shock of hair under his exposed armpit, the ripple of muscle in his forearms and abdomen, and the southward slouch of the towel caused by his raised arms, exposing chiseled tucks at his waist that marked the North Pole in a trail to . . .

"Hey Elma! What a nice surprise!"

It took me a good month and a half to be able to form actual words. "A nice surprise? Um . . . I thought we were meeting here for Brewster's? Is Mills . . . ?" I peered over his David-esque delts into the living room as I tried to forcibly yank a coherent sentence from my throat.

"Still at the hospital. She'll be there for a while—she texted us about 45 minutes ago. But come in, it's cold. I'm freezing my nips off!" And cue the loping, happy guy smile.

I walked under Mike's macho-scented underarm through the door into the warm living room, which was decidedly male in decor; no wall hangings, just a sort of worn out couch, chair, and coffee table, a few mismatched throw rugs on the wood floors, and random items hanging from doorknobs and such. Not messy, just . . . relaxed. It was definitely clean and mostly orderly.

"I'll take your coat."

"You know, I still can't believe YOU don't have a dog. Of all people."

The walking work of art sauntered through the living room with my coat draped over his arm, blissfully unconcerned that he was mostly nude or that the barely tucked towel might slip at any point and render him completely nude. "Nah, I work too much. Don't get me wrong, it would be awesome, but not fair to a dog right now." To that, he added with a lopsided grin as he closed the closet door, "Besides, I can just borrow yours." He stopped in mid-chuckle and came back to where I stood, his forehead creasing into a line of concern as he peered down at me. "Hey, you OK?"

He continued to gaze down with a heart-achingly earnest expression at my tear-worn face, but I briskly swept the topic away. "I'm good. Really. Just the music—it got me a little. So pretty."

"Hey." Mike walked up to me, close, and lifted my face to his with his finger and thumb. I could smell the soap still hanging on his skin, and the completely, unmistakably masculine scent of him underneath. "Hey, don't ever hide away like that. I'm your friend, and you need to be able to count on me to be there, just like Mills." His voice was so soft and soothing. "Though I'm not as scary." Another big, lopsided grin.

I wanted to kiss him. Right then, looking into his kind, genuine face, hearing him be so good, so caring as he spoke to me, I wanted to kiss him. And I also wanted to KISS him. That soft skin covered the body of Adonis, smooth and hard and utterly male. I was aroused again, a new wave of that same relatively rare feeling that had popped up for notice weeks ago, now fully awakened and wanting. The look of him, perfect and chiseled, the smell of him, and the feel of his touch on my face were driving me crazy.

Without a word, I moved my hand to his cheek and drew him closer. The first was a sweet kiss, soft and warm and innocent, as I reinforced that this was what I wanted to do and as he learned my intentions. When our lips came apart, we stared at each other in a silent conversation—him asking if this was really what I meant, what I was ready for, and me assuring him that I was indeed of sound mind and that the time had come.

Once he understood my assent, the small smile that had been lingering on his lips fell away. The super-swell, sort of goofy guy disappeared in a blink, and a man, a sexual, virile and unafraid man appeared in his place. He placed both of his hands at the back of my head, pulling me toward him, not forcefully, but definitely with purpose, and covered me with his mouth.

Warm, wet lips coaxed open my own and his tongue tasted me without shyness, twisting together with mine and exploring with unabashed urgency. At the same time his hand worked its way down to my blouse, pulling at the threads tied together at my collarbone. His mouth followed his hands, planting hungry kisses along my neck and chest, licking and sucking their way along. I was in a frenzy as I explored his chest and torso; every line was finer, firmer and more perfect than the last. I buried my face in the concave smoothness of his sternum, kissing him hungrily, and I could feel his breathing quicken.

Arms entwined with mine, he walked me backward until my back was against the wall, and pressed his body into me, kissing me deeply and erotically, every once in a while nipping my lower lip with his teeth. I could feel him hard against my thigh, the towel a poor shield for his obvious arousal. He stopped, and looked into my eyes, and I could see his want there, kindness and raw passion all rolled together. With one deft move he untucked the towel and pulled it from himself, tossing it into a corner without taking his eyes off me. He was unapologetic about his nudity as well as his very present erection, grabbing me again and pressing himself firmly against me.

I was overcome by this incredibly virile, sexual version of my guy friend. Even as his fingers traveled down my chest, grasping and massaging my left breast hungrily, I couldn't believe I was actually here, doing this thing with this person . . . and liking it. Viscerally, carnally liking it. What the hell?

Mike's mouth was on my right breast now, sucking and rolling his tongue over my nipple as he continued to explore my left breast with his hand. We were going to have sex, that much was clear. Neither of us showed any sign of stopping, and why would we? We were single, close friends, and in need of this physical connection for whatever reasons we each had. And it was a good thing that was mutually understood, I thought to myself as he ran his hand up the inside of my thigh and grazed my sex with the tip of his finger. The surprise and the pleasure made me groan out loud, and in response Mike stopped kissing me and looked at me with that same roguish smile.

The next part was slow . . . so torturously slow. He continued to smile at me as he inched his fingers inside my panties, caressing and retreating, making me arch my back in ecstasy only to instantly take that warm smoothness away again. Around, over, away, below, around, over . . . I couldn't breathe. Suddenly, his smile vanished again, and in the next instant two of his fingers shot inside me, the feeling of my wetness making him scrunch his eyes closed in passion even as I cried out loudly. Now he was fast, sucking hard at my nipples while he darted his hand in and out powerfully, with no hesitation, sending me higher into the stratosphere with each thrust. I came powerfully, bearing down against his hand and bracing myself against his body.

When I began to come around, I noticed Mike slowly and gently sliding my panties down my legs and off, delicately navigating the broken and intact heels of my boots. He left me for a second, leaving my naked torso cold in his absence, but almost immediately was back, tearing open the condom wrapper with his teeth. Then he was enveloping me again, kissing me and placing my legs on either side of his waist. With one gorgeous, slowly flowing movement he buried himself in me, making the sexiest guttural sound when he pushed into the wet softness there to welcome him. He was slow again, savoring each sensation as he eased in and out several times in an unhurried dance. My thumb was in his mouth, my tongue lapping at his ear, and he stopped, smiled again, and lifted me up without breaking our connection, to carry me to his bedroom.

# 14. Cricket Confessional

I woke up lazy, still lost in the sensory feast of the night before. I didn't want to open my eyes or let reality seep back in. It was just too damned cozy lying here tangled in his covers, head tucked into his pillow, with the last little tingles of his touch so fresh that I thought I could still feel him. That was fuuuuun. He had woken me two hours before to say that he had to leave for work, but offered that I should stay in bed as long as I wanted, which I did. Opening my eyes again now, I found a thermos of coffee, a mug, a banana, and a little dog-shaped piece of chocolate. I smiled to myself and let out a giggle. Dr. Mike was a conundrum. I mean, who would ever have thought that our mild-mannered veterinarian would have the libido of a mountain lion . . . if, in fact, mountain lions are sexual dynamos with amazing stamina and good hands. Those hands had gone everywhere . . . more than once . . .

OK, this train of thought was not getting my ass out of bed. I hefted myself into a standing position, realizing that I was sore in my interior intimates, a thought that made me giggle as I remembered the five reasons why. And back to la la land we go . . .

All righty, then—shower. Normal person activity. The water was hot and welcoming, and cleared my silly schoolgirl swooning a little. On the way out, though, I still couldn't resist draping myself in Mike's towel—THE towel. It had covered such lovely things, after all. There was not a bone in Mike's body that was not hot, and how I had never figured this out previously was completely beyond me. Still, I wasn't sure if this little turn of events necessarily meant we were officially a thing. Yes, I liked him a lot, and yes, he was good and kind and funny, and yes, I was obviously attracted to him in a cat in heat sort of way, but were there relationship feelings there?

Come to think of it, the kind of affection I had for Mike was the same sort as there had been with Esteban. Amistad, companionship, physical desire... but not really romantic love. I never got that weak in the knees feeling with either of them. I never lost my appetite, or was what they call "lovesick." And I never felt like I was missing a piece of me without either of them there, although even with them, I still felt a . . . gap . . .

Crickets. Diving under the bed, I found the iPhone perched face-up on my bra. Classic. And with one look at the screen, I sat back down on the bed and quickly prepared for roughly a 45-60 minute overview, deep dive and Q&A.

"Hi."

"Fuck! I'm glad you're alive, so that I can kill you myself. Seriously?"

"I'm so sorry, Mills, really, really I am. I'm OK—great, actually—everything's fine, but I should have texted."

"Ya think?"

"I'm sorry."

"OK, me too. Enough. So where the hell are you, anyway?"

"In Mike's bed."

There was a moment's pause; I think she was literally doing a victory dance on the other end of the phone. "Nooooo waaaaay! Yes! Excellent! Well done, you sex goddess. So, how was Dr. Doolittle? Did he display all the thrusting prowess of a cheetah in the wild?? The man is built like a brick house, after all . . . that ass is tight as a snare drum . . . "

"Mills!"

"Well come on . . . don't tell me you never appreciated all those muscly curves under his shirt. He's a hardbody, Ells, yeesh! I'll bet you he's got some mad stamina. Am I right?"

I could hear her grinning. She was clearly not going to let me off the hook without at least a few sordid details to sate her thirst for info. "So, Ells . . . how many at bats did you get, hmmmmm? Three. I'll bet it's three. Poor guy's probably had all that sexual energy pent up for weeks. Maybe even longer. Maybe—"

"—Five."

"What."

"Five." I cleared my throat loudly and hoped she couldn't see the shine of my deep blush from across town.

"Five."

"Yep."

"I hate you."

"See you tonight, Mills."

* * *

The recital hall at Straythern has perfect acoustics, and rehearsing there is a dream. So, even though there are normally tons of empty, soundproofed rehearsal rooms in the music building, I invariably find myself at the back of the stage in the main auditorium, next to the ropes, cables and curtains that are the stagehand's tools. It's my own wonderland. Even in jeans and a tee shirt and with my hair hastily clipped in a loose, messy knot at the top of my neck, I always feel like a princess back here, like the most elegant and refined of ladies. It was silent in the hall today as well, so I had the freedom to play, and think, and think, and play . . .

Mike was the thought du jour, of course. I walked through the lustrous events of the previous night, as well as all of the other time we'd spent together, essentially willing myself to want a relationship with him. Why couldn't I just fall in love with him already? He would be so great for me—giving and good and kind. He was exactly the right kind of guy to be with. It was almost like I was my own worst enemy in a way, not able to get my heart in gear with something that just made sense. I could be a veterinarian's wife, stick to my career, have balance and peace and normalcy—and apparently, multiple orgasms—with a solid, fabulous partner. You know what? Maybe I just had to dive in. It could be that my naysaying half needed to see what this would really be like. It just needed a taste of the good life, that's all. My crazy imagination was keeping me from seeing the value of what was in the real world right in front of me.

And that was that—decided. I was going to give Mike the Boyfriend the old college try. Inner monologue complete, I moved my focus singularly to my practice, pouring my concentration into the keys. Eyes closed, I let my body sway to the flow of the music, a giant metronome checking time with my fingers. One could just float away like this . . .

And then a hand was on my head, and the moist warmth of a mouth on the skin under my ear, kissing softy, audibly. It was bizarre and shocking, but familiar, and I didn't know why. I couldn't move . . . or I wouldn't move . . . which was it? Am I scared, I asked myself, or am I—

"You taste so good." Mike's unmistakable bedroom voice almost made me cry with . . . relief. "Sorry to freak you out, but I just couldn't help myself. You were driving me crazy, and that neck! Damn, woman, you are delicious." He punctuated his statement with a new series of soft, sexy-sounding nips.

"Mike, you just scared the hell out of me, you know that?" I had my hand on my heart, willing it to slow to a merely ridiculous pace. "You could have been some psycho axe murderer for all I know. That really got me . . . wow."

"Sorry, Ells. I'll make it up to you." He looked sincere as he said it, picking up my hand and putting it on his own heart, which was also beating surprisingly fast. After a few seconds, without taking his eyes away from mine, he lifted that same hand and planted a slow, soft kiss on the inside of my palm, making flutters stir deep inside me. "You have me in your spell. I'm nuts over you, Elma."

How could things change so much after one night of applause-worthy sex? How could a guy who knew so little about me profess to essentially be falling in love with me? How could I even consider diving into a new relationship approximately 42 seconds after ending my last one? What kind of masochistic schmuck was I, anyway? Mike gazed into my face as he stroked my cheek with a giant tenderness, and I had the answer.

"A happy one," I said aloud to his puzzled face as I leaned in and blanketed his beautiful, warm lips with my own.

# 15. Exciting and New

I loathe _The Love Boat_.

Unfortunately, it's Mills' go-to Hulu staple when she wants to decompress from work. Isaac, Gopher and the merry crew of the Pacific Princess can somehow wash away all her worry over a tough case, or the nagging guilt she often feels from frustrated parents. Given the kind of job she has, I will gladly suffer through as many episodes of 37th-minute reconciliations and kisses on the lido deck as her heart could ever desire.

Only we're watching it on cable today (way to change it up, Mills), and apparently the Exciting and New marathon has just come to its close. She hasn't noticed yet. She's vegging out, yes, but doing it with her nose shoved in a book about the cerebral cortex. I myself am painting my toenails, because I am so deep and complex—and because now that my boot is off, I can do these little things again without running the risk of taking out a large piece of furniture.

"Duck piss." This from Mills, who has just surfaced from the cortex and apparently realized that Captain Stubing has left the building to leave us with a documentary on maritime art.

"Giant waves and swarthy sailors . . . not so much?" I queried.

"Efffff," she groaned. "Just when I was getting into it!" I was laughing at her—obviously so, not trying to hide a thing. I think Willie was even laughing at her inwardly. Outwardly, he was fast asleep between us on the couch, making the outside of my left thigh several degrees warmer than the rest of my body. Mills' next move would be to head to the kitchen for an assuaging handful of Trader Joe's peanut butter cups, then go for a run. And five, four, three, two...

One gazelle-like leap off the couch and over the dog and she was halfway there. I heard the plastic container pop open but had my eyes on the screen. Image after image sifted by of green-blue pools of water, boats and sailors, sea nymphs and whales. Who was that soothing voice narrating? Gabriel Byrne? No—Liam Neeson? Somebody smooth and Irish . . .

The image onscreen morphed to that of a mermaid on a rock, twisting her long hair in her hand as she glanced out to sea. What was she thinking about, I wondered? Was her true love somewhere across the water, waiting? Was he pining for her too? Maybe she couldn't be with him, in her eyes perhaps one could see something holding her back. Did she know where her lover was? Did she know who he was?

He appeared on the shore; she couldn't see him. He saw her, but he didn't come to her. Even as he kept his distance, she began to remember him. Yes, they had been lovers, more than lovers, yes, much more than that. But why did he not come to her? He stared at her as the skies rolled past above him, knowing what she now knew, that they were meant to be, yet he still would not go to her. She could have compelled him once upon a time, but not now. In fact, yes, she had compelled him, she had once commanded his actions . . . one unforgettable, tragic but absolutely necessary time. Had she the same influence over him now, she could compel him again without trying, so strong was her recollection becoming. She would bring him to her on the power of her memories, without intention, so clearly did she see in her mind's eye what it was to be loved by him . . . how he had held her and caressed her skin and fixed her in his bright, hot gaze. How it had felt when he kissed her so softly . . .

I turned my head to see Mike planting little kisses on the inside of my elbow. He was in Mills' place next to me on the couch, and Willie was no longer asleep, but off in the kitchen resting on the cool tile.

"Good morning," he said without looking up.

"Good afternoon," I countered, marveling that I could fall asleep so quickly without a pillow, a blanket or a shot of scotch. I closed my eyes again, and felt like I was on a raft, with wide brush strokes of blue sea dancing in front of my eyes and soft lips cresting onto my skin like water trickling onto the beach.

"Babe," I said sleepily, "Mills is right . . . she's right over . . . "

"She's running."

"Oh." My limbs were deliciously heavy, and I just let him manipulate me like I was a marionette under his command. With his body, he could direct me while I stayed halfway tuned to my dream world and its rolling skies.

I'll be your puppet, I thought as I felt my pants roll down my legs, the air cooling the place between them where his tongue had just flicked once, quickly. Show me what to feel, I said silently as I felt him climb atop me and heard the zipper of his jeans slide and the condom package crinkle. "Move me," I said out loud as the sweet sear of his thrust came and he began to make me dance at his will from inside.

# 16. The Courtier

This was not going to be a fun week. Not too long after we had officially decided to break things off, Esteban had made the decision to sublet his apartment and move his things to storage, since he would be on the road for the foreseeable future and now had no real ties left in Winter Rain. He'd always been a bit nomadic in that way—no close family around, no allegiance to any one particular place—and that sort of lifestyle fit him like a glove. And as I now realized, it really did make him happiest. Now he was in town one more time to meet up with his tenant and move out his things, and we decided to meet and have lunch. It was going to be at this juncture that I mentioned my new boyfriend. The two words to best describe this impending reunion? Awk-ward.

Nevertheless, I was a gutsy broad, and therefore was going to manage to have a delightful chat with my ex while simultaneously making him feel truly happy that I had moved on. Yep, that was it. Precisely. I was still rehearsing my inner monologue when my iPhone buzzed that Latin ringtone. Stereotypical, I know.

"Esteban?"

"Hey, Elma. I'm running a few minutes late. I forgot how crammed the center of town gets on Thanksgiving weekend. Driving me nuts. And now it looks like it's gonna snow again too."

I knew exactly where he was, almost down to the traffic light. He'd be a good fifteen minutes getting here from there, providing he wasn't mown down by a four-foot, blue-haired maniac hell-bent on getting to the Black Friday sale at Morgen's. "Just be safe, okay? Take your time. Those drivers are wild."

"Will do," he said. See you in a few."

"See ya then," I replied. And he hung up with a click.

I was glad to have the opportunity to see Esteban again. It was a good way to get closure, to sit together as friends and end this experience in the same amiable way we had begun it. Even if for that reason alone, it was actually good that I was in town this weekend. Typically I'd be in Illinois spending Thanksgiving with my mom, but she was on vacation in Barbados at the moment with her new boyfriend, Ben. Just as well—I had no interest in Caribbean get-to-know-you family dynamics right now.

The delicate ping of my text message notification interrupted my little internal wandering. Mills bitching about her alcoholic and annoying brother-in-law? Esteban informing me that he'll be even later due to an unfortunate encounter with two 85-year-olds in a Cadillac? I ventured a glance at the screen. And the winner is—Door Number One.

"Does Willie know the 'kill' command yet? Please say yes."

"Sorry, Mills. Haven't gotten past 'don't eat my shoes.' Louis driving you ape shit?"

"They all are, Ells. It's a Mexican soap opera on acid. But I love my therapy dog."

"Just bring him back soon--I could use him today. Anything new with the Covington-Goldstein clan?"

Mills had a somewhat bizarre family—high-society, highbrow, and WASPy Covingtons on her Mom's side, and Jewish immigrants on her dad's side. Her dad's family ran a small, modest but charming chocolate shop in Toledo, and her mom's family wrote a check for her entire med school tuition without blinking a fake eyelash. It was an interesting combo when everyone got together, annoying brother-in-law aside.

"Mom got permanent makeup and my Aunt Gert is a lesbian."

"Excellent!" I couldn't help laughing.

"Oops—time for round three of 'My Penis is Bigger Than Yours.' Later. GOOD LUCK WITH E.! XOXO."

No sooner had I hit some XO's back to Mills than my text message icon lit up again. Yummily, it was a note from Mike.

"What color is your bra?" Grinning lasciviously, I dashed back: "Same one you took off me last night. Where R U?"

"Work. Coffee break. U with Esteban?"

"Not yet. Traffic at Morgen's. Come visit for a few? At the diner."

"On the way. Will test bra. ;)"

Hormonal. Totally hormonal—not that I minded. Within two minutes, Captain Hormone was right in front of me, having jogged the three blocks from the veterinary clinic, and was grasping both of my coat lapels, the better to hold me to him for a firm, not-graphic-but-definitely-not-chaste kiss . . . which was followed by the promised and surreptitious boob grab.

"I like this one."

"Easy!" I half-scolded. "Esteban is coming any minute. Seeing you grope me in public wouldn't exactly equate to breaking it to him gently."

"Valid point," Mike countered wryly, "but that's two gropes later," and with a wide, naughty grin, he added, "and maybe a lick or two."

"Mike!" He really was incorrigible, especially given the fact that the street was jam-packed and we were in the middle of a very crowded sidewalk. I really didn't feel like getting the kind of disapproving glances like the one coming from the tall brunette standing a few feet away from us smoking a cigarette. She even looked familiar, which made it worse—maybe I could expect additional judgy looks on an elevator or at the cleaner's later in the week. Goody.

"OK, soa-ry, after you," he said impishly as he kissed me again, then held the door for me to pass under his arm and into the restaurant. "One for you?" he asked, nodding toward the coffee machine.

"Sure. Thanks."

He leaned across the counter to make his request to the blushing, giggly young waitress holding the coffee pot. "Two to go, please—one black, one with cream and a sugar."

He kept smiling at me, just looking all happy and bashful and sweet leaning against the diner counter. As he passed me my take-away cup, he stole a kiss on my cheek. It was so tender a gesture that it made my heart skip a beat.

He took a sip and smiled again. "Ells, can I ask you a question? Just promise you won't laugh too loud."

I did laugh out loud at that. "Quite a setup there, Mike. Very compelling. But sure, what's up?"

He scratched at his scalp for a full ten seconds before responding. If I didn't know better, I'd almost be convinced he was about to propose. "Um . . . "

"Yeesh, where should we have the rehearsal dinner?"

He threw back his head and laughed that high-pitched yowlp, red in the face, and looked back at me, now a little more relaxed and grin appropriately askew once again. "OK. So the other doctor in my practice is a friend of mine. Good guy, funny, kind of goofy. For the last couple of years I've been invited to these parties right after Christmas at his family's ski cabin in Killington. His mom owns a country or something—huge money—and the place is enormous. His college friends come, and some family friends, it's a good time. There's a little drinking, but nobody gets gross, and they just really—"

"—Babe? I've got, like, one minute, and you're rambling a little," I said with an apologetic smile.

"Oh, right—soa-ry. Anyway—shit, what's my issue here? Anyway, Ells, will you . . . come with me?"

As I looked up at him, taking in the slight blush on his cheeks, the way he kept looking down at his shoes and trying not to smile in embarrassment, it hit me that this wasn't just him asking me to join him on a weekend getaway. Between the lines, this was his way to express that he wanted me to be his girlfriend, that he wanted this—us—to be official and he wanted to tell that to the world. It touched me.

"I'd love to, Mike," I said with a clarity and depth that communicated to him that I understood. In response, he brought his hand to my cheek and cupped it gently. "Ells, I feel a lot for you. It hasn't been long, but I want to keep learning all of you. I'm nuts about you, Ells."

I couldn't talk—there was a frog the size of this ski house in my throat. No matter, though, I didn't have time to respond since Mike's face was lowering toward mine and then our lips were dancing again.

I was suddenly a little flushed, and so I walked outside with him into the cold, refreshing air. "See you tonight," he whispered, and, bussing me on the mouth once again, turned and walked away from the diner.

# 17. Interception

As Mike retreated, I thought I saw Esteban advancing in my direction from a few blocks down the same street, big snowflakes falling around him like a figure in a just-shaken snow globe. Perfect timing, I lauded myself. But five seconds later, all best-laid plans were out the window when the biggest bolt of lightning I'd ever seen exploded across the sky. It was still snowing in fast, fat flakes, but the sight was unmistakable, even from my vantage point at the diner door—brilliant flashes bouncing off every surface, like a strobe light in a darkened dance club. It was absolutely terrifying. Like a period at the end of a bellowed sentence, next came a crack of thunder that shook the buildings and everything else around me, including the people, followed just a few seconds later by a second and bigger flash of white light.

As I continued watching, dumbfounded, an angry mass of blue-black clouds galloped across the horizon and darkened the day, making noon look like midnight. They broke open immediately, pouring a cold, almost solid sheet of rain down on the unbelieving town. It was 25 degrees, and the snow still fell, but along with it came the water, a contrast of slow and fast, hard and soft, peaceful and brutal, dancing together to the rhythm of the thunder and backlit with bolts of torrid energy.

Within two minutes it had all passed—the snow, the rain, the black clouds, all of it—leaving everyone sopping and stunned in its wake. Just like every other patron in the diner, I was wiped out and a little scared by the spectacle, and Esteban or no Esteban, I just wanted to go home. But I couldn't –he was a block away, after all. And so I waited.

I had retreated indoors when rain started, and so, again alone at the counter, I sipped hot coffee and, after a few comforting swallows, started to calm down a little. And part of my methodology for achieving said relaxation was to think about Mike. With a grin, I marveled that I very officially had a boyfriend. No getting around it now. And funnily enough, the butterflies in my stomach were actually real. Mike gave me butterflies, those first vestiges of romantic, falling-for-the-guy sentimentality. Yes! I had a boyfriend, and he made me feel squishy! In all seriousness, I thought, I might actually be falling for him. Wow. Notable development of the day.

Fifteen minutes later, and no Esteban. I shouldn't worry, right? Surely he didn't get hit in the head by a giant chunk of hail or struck by one of those bizarre lightning bolts. I texted him—no response. Twenty-five minutes later, and I got a little worried, so I put on my coat and went back outside to look around for him. No sign of him anywhere. Really strange. Thirty minutes later and I still had no text from him, and no call, but a fresh cup of coffee to keep me company—it was cold out, after all.

Thirty-five minutes later, I determined that I had been stood up for whatever reason. Then it hit me. Esteban had been walking toward us right as Mike was walking away, which meant that he had also been walking toward us thirty seconds before that, when Mike and I were standing in front of the diner together... kissing. Sheep shit. Perfect timing, indeed. I'm a moron.

I was dejectedly winding my scarf around my neck to prepare for the walk back when I saw someone moving toward me quickly . . . almost too quickly, but perhaps that was just a trick of my viewing angle. The figure disappeared then reappeared three more times before finally staying reliably within my view, pacing down the street directly toward me. It was indeed Esteban, and he was progressing with a focused, serious stare, the wind blowing his long, black hair all around him.

Everything about him was different than I remembered it—all just a bit more . . . pronounced . . . than it had been before. His ruddy olive skin was a few shades deeper than I recalled, his previously shoulder-length, glossy and gorgeous hair now reached the middle of his back, and the approaching features of his face were all harder and more chiseled than they had seemed only months ago. He had a lovely, long Peruvian native nose that now stood out in an even more pronounced way from the rest of his face, giving him the appearance of a large, exquisite bird—wait . . . make that an exquisite and angry bird.

As he sped toward me, I felt something flutter up from the depths of my body. As he came closer, I began to recognize the sensation. Fear. I knew Esteban, knew him to be a gentle, sweet if slightly stoner-ish guy without an aggressive bone in his body. He wouldn't step on a bug on the sidewalk, yet I was growing afraid of this man in my sights, his hair billowing around him like a black sail as he moved. It wasn't just the speed, or his heightened appearance. More than anything it was the look in his eyes. They were so intent and focused that they almost seemed to be glowing. But it was still Esteban. I reached out my hand as he came within arm's length, and he reached for me . . .

Something hard hit me in the side at just that second, knocking into my head and making me see stars. It had me in a vise grip, bear hugging me into the alley behind the diner. It wasn't Esteban; as we retreated, I could see his unfathomable expression as he sat on the sidewalk, holding his head in pain as he watched the bizarre display. In a moment I was scooped up over the man's shoulder and he was running—he had to be running—through the alley. There was a Zip Car parked at the end of the block, and we were headed straight for it. I looked at the glossy back of his head and had no recognition of my attacker. He was obviously strong, though he grunted with the effort of running while carrying me. I strained, kicked, bashed at him with my fists like a mad woman, but his only response was the same guttural moan as he continued to move forward.

We were almost to the car. I screamed limply, but there was no one else in the frozen, sodden alleyway to hear me. I continued to beat at his legs and torso, to no avail. Whoever this man-beast was, he was not only strong, but also polished. His long winter coat was fine under my hands, his shoes shone, and he smelled discreetly of cologne. This was not a drug-addled lunatic, but perhaps even more dangerous, a deliberate man making a sober, deliberate choice.

As we approached the car, I gave one last explosion of resistance, sending every scrap of energy I had left into my limbs as a weapon against my attacker. He groaned again several times, and may have slowed down barely perceptibly, but not enough to stop him from opening the car door and throwing me roughly into the passenger's seat. I hit the back of my head on the console, hard. I looked up with a haze in my field of vision, and chanced a glance at him. He was looking to the side, from where we had come. The profile was unmistakable—Everest Hendry was casting a look back in the direction of Esteban so murderous that it made me feel faint. In slow motion, as I looked in absolute disbelief at him, Hendry turned his head, and I found myself looking directly into his angry blue eyes. My head throbbed more acutely where I had hit it. His hand was behind my neck in the next second, right before everything went blank.

# 18. Tip of the Tongue

"Has there been any improvement from an . . . em . . . internal perspective?"

"Would I be bringing up the topic again if there had been?"

"I should hope so. Progress is not a simple case of on or off, after all. Have you experienced any new difficulties?"

"My dreams disturb me."

"Vampires dream? I suppose I always believed you didn't sleep, keep aside dreaming."

"We sleep. We dream. We have nightmares. I have nightmares . . . about her."

"Please tell me."

Roan's fingers formed a triangle at his lips, in his normal pose, but his eyes were far away, clearly worn by stress and discomfort. "She comes to me, we embrace, we kiss, and as I kiss her, I grow more energetic. I have suddenly drawn blood, and I am sucking it from her mouth. I can't stop, and I take too much from her. I overwhelm her, and she . . . dies. She dies there in my grasp, with her lips still touching mine."

"What do you think it represents? Perhaps fear of your ability to interact with her on a human level? Doubt of your humanity?"

"Doctor, my humanity left me centuries ago."

"I disagree. I believe you hook your self-loathing on the mere fact of your vampire status, Roan, and you are utilizing that same fact quite literally as a crutch on which to lean your inability to relate to other people. It's a sociological issue, full stop. Nothing more."

Roan's eyes blazed with ire. "It is not possible that after so many years of living, I lack the capability to effectively interact with humans or other beings. Completely irrational and utterly laughable."

"If so, then why have you never even talked with her? Do you fear her, Roan?"

"Hardly."

"I think you're lying." Upping was resolute, finger in the air and spectacles askew. "I challenge you to approach her, then. Prove me wrong. Prove your humanity."

"It is not that fucking simple!"

"Then what is it? What in the bloody hell is the problem, man?"

# 19. Sense Memory

The first task of waking up out of unconsciousness is the setting of the stage, the orientation of the brain back into its environment. It begins to turn again, you can perceive it, and reaches out into the atmosphere to understand what is happening around it.

Sensory input follows. Smell: vanilla. Feel: wave movement. Sound: wind. Still in a light sleep state, my brain attempted to pull together these inputs into a logical whole, to prepare me for what I would open my eyes to find surrounding me.

Accordingly, I should have expected to be on a yacht, rocking on a swaying sea and eating a slice of freshly-baked cake. Only I couldn't access my fork, because my hands were tied. Sometimes, the brain encounters something in its reconnaissance that signals it to rush past the reorientation step and bring the conscious body to attention. This was one such time, and so, my eyes shot open.

The air freshener was dancing on its string as it dangled from the rear-view mirror, recording every bump in the road at the same time as my body felt it. I couldn't breathe, or speak, or comprehend what was happening. There was a tiny bit of blood in my mouth; I felt a ridge on the inside of my lower lip where I had bitten it. I dared not move my head, so fearful I was of giving out the secret of my wakefulness. It was not difficult to stay stationary; the combined forces of tied hands and a firmly cinched seat belt held me well in place. Even so, I needed to see him. Slowly, so painfully slowly, I inched my head around just until I found him in the corner of my eye.

His expression was absolutely stoic. He held the steering wheel with both hands, like a driving instructor, eyes fixed in front of him on the snow-covered street. He was calm, intent. His face gave away nothing—it was like looking at a painting of a rock. But then the rock moved. Like it was detached from the rest of his body, his head slowly swiveled to the right, and his stare fell directly on me. From my limited side view I could see a fifty-fifty mix of perfect calmness and sizzling rage. He was going to kill me. He looked as though he could easily do so at that very moment. Without a word or any change of expression, he turned his head just as slowly back to the front and resumed monitoring the road before us.

I was scared. Where was he taking me? I had no recourse. Screaming was useless, fighting back wasn't an option, and there was no way to get word to anyone. As far as other motorists could tell, I was sitting back and enjoying a nice afternoon drive. Panic gripped me. I was alone and in grave danger.

But Esteban . . . he had to have seen everything, right? Hendry had scooped me up directly in front of him. He would call the police, get them after us and hopefully put an end to this bizarre experience soon. He probably ran after me, so he knows we got in a car, and therefore has the description, and maybe even the plate number. Now it was just a matter of time. But just as I was getting eager and anticipatory, my realistic side piped up uninvited. Esteban didn't see much other than me getting ushered away; from his angle, Hendry could have been absolutely anyone at all. Plus, he was obviously injured, so how quickly could he really have gotten back up and run after us? Furthermore, even if he had gotten a clear view of Hendry, he had no idea who he was, so couldn't get the police looking for him specifically. And finally, there was the snow to contend with.

I turned my head to the window. Trees sped past, the few remaining fragments of reason catching on them as they zoomed by. Hendry would be hanging on the proverbial Wanted posters in precincts and post offices all across the state, with an artist's rendering just about good enough to make him look like roughly 10% of the population of the United States. No one would miss me until I was far, far away from safety, deep in this madman's clutches. I was as good as gone. I felt like I was about to either throw up or faint, staring out the window and trying to devise a way to get out of Hendry's grasp as we placed mile after mile between us and my life.

"Where are you taking me?" I managed at length, numb with fear at what his response would be.

He continued to look straight ahead, not deigning to answer me, speeding dangerously around corners and on and off side roads. I repeated my question—still no response. It was as if he'd just completely tuned me out, a cold, calculating beast whose only motivation was carrying out whatever sick fantasy he had thought up. Finally, a stricken sob rose up from my throat, the only thing I had left in my arsenal, a pained choke of supplication. "Please!"

Hendry still didn't acknowledge me for a moment. Then, stealing a glimpse at my face from the corner of his eye, he sighed heavily and slouched his shoulders. Without comment or explanation, he veered to a snow-free spot on the shoulder of the road and stopped the car suddenly, slamming me into the door. When he turned to me, his expression was no longer angry, but calm and slightly remorseful, and his voice velvet soothing.

"You needn't be afraid, Elma. I won't hurt you in any way. On the contrary, this is all done to protect you. You must trust me." He looked at me quietly, those jeweled eyes linked directly onto mine for emphasis. The air in the car evaporated. I couldn't look away. He was my attacker, but my entire consciousness was riveted to him. But . . . he was my attacker . . . and so, I surfaced.

"Are you insane? You're kidnapping me, Professor Hendry! You grabbed me and you're holding me hostage in this car! Let me the hell out!"

I grabbed for the door awkwardly with my tied hands, and was met with Hendry's restraining arm, so I lunged forward and planted my head into his nose, just like they'd taught me in self-defense class. In a heartbeat, he grabbed both of my hands in a vise grip in one of his and used them as a lever to push me backward into the seat, rendering me defenseless. He was so much stronger than he looked. When he touched me, a current soared up my arm and shot all the way through my body, in both directions. Memories of him grabbing me in the corridor at the concert came back to mind, and I was ashamed to be feeling anything in addition to revulsion. I struggled against his grip, but it was no use. I looked back up at him helplessly, to gauge his ire. But even still he wasn't angry, and simply looked back at me with those same genuine, sober eyes, speaking in a tone that sought to hypnotize me.

"You will not run away. If you continue to try, I will restrain you more extensively, so I advise that you attempt to calm yourself. We shall be traveling for quite some time."

I started to cry; my fear, combined with the detached betrayal of Hendry's silky baritone, were too much for me to bear. Continuing to hold both of my hands in his right one, he fished in his pocket for a tissue with his left. Still holding me motionless, he reached out slowly and caught each tear that careened down my face, dabbing at my eyes and nose with a disarming tenderness. It was silent, the only sound the infrequent passing of nearby traffic. Hendry's face was a perfect mask of concentration as he focused on his work. His hand stopped, still positioned on my cheek, and the world stopped for a second as well.

He was whispering. "Don't worry—I will explain everything to you once we are in a safe place. But for now, I ask you to understand that you are in danger, and I am attempting to protect you. Now, will you be calm and allow me to untie you, or shall you continue to travel with your hands bound?"

As much as I was crying inside to fight back, he was strong, and in the final analysis, being physically restrained would put me at more of a disadvantage if and when an opportunity to escape presented itself. So, I merely nodded, and, watching me closely, Hendry freed my wrists and faced forward once again to put the car back into gear. I lowered my hands to my lap, trembling as they were, and looked forward at the road, stifling a sob.

The foot-high cover of snow was a seamless white sheet as it sped past along the shoulder of the road. The highway itself was unreadable; both the white and yellow lines were hidden beneath a thick covering of gray slush. It was snowing yet again, now the giant, wet flakes that sometimes indicate the impending end of the storm. Even in this wintry nastiness, there were still a few other vehicles in sight; most of these adventurous ones were giant semis, salt trucks or plows. Hendry was driving exclusively in the passing lane, and the seat shook whenever one of these behemoth trucks passed by, often accompanying their move with the blow of a horn or a dirty look in our direction at the effrontery of not staying on the right.

I knew Hendry was doing this in order to thwart any thoughts I might have of jumping out of the car. And he was a smart son of a bitch, I'd grant him that—the thought of tumbling out of a vehicle moving at fifty miles per hour into a foot of thirty two-degree sludge in the path of an enormous eight-wheel vehicle driving in icy conditions did not appeal to my sense of reason. No, as much as it physically hurt me to admit it, I couldn't try to escape right now. And attacking him just wasn't a logical thing to do—there was much too great a possibility that I could cause us to spin out or wreck rather than take over control of the car. I would just have to be patient. Eventually, he would run out of gas, need food or have to go to the bathroom. He was human, after all. I would just need to wait for my opportunity. The time would come.

# 20. Snake Charmer

We continued on for another fifteen miles or so in silence, having passed into Vermont and now heading north on interstate 89 to I-knew-the-hell-not-where. All the while, Hendry was perfectly calm, like he was commuting to work. He was dressed like he was indeed at the office—black pants, an expensive-looking long-sleeved cashmere sweater and the coat that he'd taken off and laid across the back seat. The stubble was still there, and up close I could see that it was all black, not like the dark hair on his head, which was sprinkled through with a little white. If I didn't know he was a crazy man I'd have undoubtedly said he was attractive. His facial features in profile were classic—a long, straight nose, rather high cheekbones, and a true, firm chin. He had Roman beauty, I suppose you could say.

The maddening thing was that in moments like now, from the side and in such a quiet state, he exuded serenity. But when he turned his head, those eyes took over the entire frame. The long lashes encasing them did nothing but magnify their drama, a megaphone to every emotion glinting from them. And they changed, from the lightest sky blue to a deep, furious sapphire. I felt like they could—did—pierce my skin and see through to my naked soul, so intense was their stare. Just thinking of them brought back those unwanted rumbles deep within my gut, which made me angry.

Also, those two coffees from the hour before we're beginning to make their presence distinctly known in my bladder, a situation that would have to be dealt with eventually. That might be just the opening I needed. If he got off the highway and slowed down at the exit, I could feasibly make a jump for it. Or, even better, if I could make it to a ladies room I could at the very least call Mike or Esteban, let them know what was happening, and give them the license plate of this Zip Car. OK, there was a plan. I cleared my throat to announce my bio break requirement, but before I could get a word out, Hendry piped up.

"Have you ever had a pet, Elma?" The question was so bizarre that it left me in a "Huh?" facial pose for a second.

"What?"

"A pet. Growing up, did your family own dogs or cats, et cetera?"

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?" Just as that question launched out of my mouth, another one materialized in its place on the tip of my tongue. "And how do you know my name?"

"From the concert program," he replied nonchalantly. "Now just humor me, please."

Who ever reads those things? Great, we've now expanded the personality description to _nerdy_ , creepy, homicidal, deranged kidnapper. Fabulous.

"My question, please, Elma." The way he said my name really pissed me off. But OK, back to probing my childhood. I could not imagine how this information could possibly be used against me, so I bit.

"Dogs and cats. Why?"

"Did you ever notice that they were more obedient to you than they were to the rest of your family? That they understood what you wanted of them almost without your expressing it?"

Oh my gosh, how completely inane. "You're being ridiculous," I bitched.

"Just answer the bloody question!" The firmness of his tone echoed off the windshield, and I remembered that I was not dealing with a rational individual here. It was safest to play along.

I gulped, and answered honestly and demurely. "They liked me best. I must have spent more time with them or fed them a lot, I don't know."

He sighed. "That's exactly my point. Elma, if we are to make any progress here, and if you are to remain safe and unharmed, you need to know the facts. And the most salient of these at the moment is related to this example."

"I don't understand." Play along, Elma, just play along.

"You have an ability, Elma, a rare ability to affect the behavior of animals, and also of other creatures, through your voice and your manipulation of sound."

Whoa. He really was living in his dream world, wasn't he? "Like a snake charmer?" I asked with undeniable incredulity in my voice. Visions of me cross-legged in a turban playing a recorder concerto for a basket of swaying pythons sprang to mind, and I smirked in spite of myself. When something's ridiculous, it's ridiculous.

"Stop it. You are mocking me and I will not tolerate it."

"I'm sorry." I sat back and checked myself. The forcefulness in his response reminded me that I had to tread very, very carefully.

"But yes, not unlike a 'snake charmer,' as you say. It's a very powerful ability, Elma."

"So you're saying that I could make anyone do whatever I want them to?"

Hendry sighed as he looked over his right shoulder and changed lanes momentarily, only to pass the car in front of him. "Not exactly. Your ability is not effective with humans—only animals and other supernatural creatures."

"Other sup—Dr. Hendry . . . " I was getting scared now. This dude was off the rails.

"You are supernatural, Elma. You are one of a line of creatures with this same capability, carried through centuries and well-storied in verbal histories and literature the world over. You may be familiar with the most common name for creatures like you—the siren. Have you heard the term?"

A siren? Two references immediately came to mind. First, the ugly toad-like character in that Ice Age movie, who lures in the bad guy creature by pretending she's a sexy she-creature, then eats him. Is that what he was referring to? No way. Second, mermaids. Given that I couldn't swim, that concept was ludicrous right out of the gate. I had once read that sailors originally thought manatees to be mermaids; conceptualizing myself as the equivalent of sea cow was much less of a stretch than to believe that I was half human, half fish.

Then I remembered the dream—that odd dream of a week ago about the woman on the shore. It had been so vivid, so detailed. At the same moment that a tiny fragment of my imagination began to rise in curiosity, however, reality and reason swooped down to bring me back to where I was, trapped next to a madman in a fast-moving vehicle on treacherous roads. The dream was a dream. I was here—in danger and vulnerable. I had to keep Hendry talking, I decided. The more I knew about what he was thinking, the better a handle I would have on how to get away. Let's see what else his cerebellum had up its sleeve. "So, if I'm a siren," I offered, "what does that have to do with my safety?"

"Affected entities not only do your bidding, but they also develop an overwhelming attachment to you. In the case of supernaturals, this attachment may take the form of deep affection."

"So . . . "

"So, manifest in the wrong supernatural being, this phenomenon could create jealousy, violent rage . . . madness. Esteban is one such being."

"Esteban is supernatural too?" I was getting ready for some popcorn here.

"Indeed. He is a raiment—a descendant of the ancient Mayans. Raiment possess extreme strength and speed, all fed directly from the energy of the sun."

"And?" Keep him going, Ells. Eventually he'd lower his guard a little, and I could present the bathroom break request in a way that wouldn't make him think anything was up.

"And, raiment are historically volatile creatures, given to sudden and violent rages. He was after you."

"That's impossible—he's only ever been kind and sweet to me."

"I understand. But Elma," and here he turned his head completely to look into my eyes, averting his attention from the road in front of us, which scared the crap out of me, "did you see the storm? The thunderstorm atop the snow?"

"Yes," I said meekly.

"It was unnatural . . . unbelievable, yes?"

"Yes." I couldn't lie and say it wasn't. It was the most bizarre trick of nature I had ever seen.

"This was a marker. The end of a curse . . . or, better said, the beginning of one, as it awakened Esteban to his identity as a raiment. Who he was before and who he is now are unfortunately two entirely and importantly different entities. I cannot explain the context to you at present, but I do promise that I will, in the fullness of time and with complete candor, share all the information that I have." His gaze was soft, almost apologetic as he finished speaking. "But I am sorry to say that your . . . boyfriend . . . is no longer the man you once knew."

Suddenly, it occurred to me that in no universe should Everest Hendry even know who my friends—or boyfriends—were. I shifted my body to face him fully, the angry steam now percolating anew. "How on earth do you even know that I know Esteban? And how could you know that he was my boyfriend?"

"I've been watching you, Elma. I must . . . you are special, and you must be protected."

So Hendry had been stalking me. My heart sped up, my face flushed, and a cold thrill of fear lashed through me. His weird behavior at the concert rehearsal, his bizarre admonition to me on the night of the concert itself, it all made sense. He was unhinged, predatory, and dangerous. And he had me. Still, I couldn't let on that I was scared. I had to see this through in order to escape. So, I decided to play along, even if I was almost too frightened to speak.

"What does he want with me?"

"To claim you. If he has access to you again he will indeed kidnap you, and won't be so genteel about it as I. You will be his prize, his possession, his captive."

"So what happens now? We just run? If he's so supernatural, how do we stop him?"

"We first get you out of his reach, and then I will dispose of him."

"How? He's powerful, remember?"

"As am I."

"What—you're a raiment too?"

Everest Hendry turned to me again with that same calm, unbothered look, and made his reply in a matter of fact tone, with a smile on his face, no less. "No—I am a vampire."

# 21. Contact

Something about the way he had conducted this entire conversation made me cold with not only fear at being held against my will by a psychopath, but a new, numbing terror that this unstable man was talking so matter-of-factly about the depths of the occult. He didn't just talk about these things, though; he had concocted a fully fleshed-out and detailed alternate reality that revolved in part around keeping constant watch over me, and he had included himself as a central figure in his fantasy realm. There was no part of this situation that was safe or sane in the least, and I had to find a way out.

As I reconfirmed my desperation for escape, from the corner of my mind came the unaskable question: What if Hendry was a vampire? Could it be possible, in any conceptualization? I could just imagine having this conversation out loud, say, with Mills. The second I brought up the concept she would be face-down on the couch, laughing hysterically. Why on Earth was I even considering it? But, I thought to myself as I watched Vermont continue to speed by, while I'm entertaining the ridiculous, let's do it up right!

Now then, what did I know about vampire lore? First, vampires were supposed to drink blood. No indication of that with Hendry, but he also hadn't eaten anything in terms of regular food, at least as far as I'd seen. Second, they couldn't walk around in the daylight without getting french-fried . . . or sparkling like diamonds like the characters in _Twilight_. Clearly not an issue for my uncorked friend here—he was driving around in the middle of the afternoon with me as a hostage instead of hunkering down underground or sleeping it off in a coffin. Third, fangs. So far, none that I had noticed. Fourth, strength and speed. He was a strong dude, and had carried me to the car with no problem, but I hadn't perceived anything of X-Men caliber at all. And fifth, from what I'd seen in the movies and read in books, vampires looked dead, felt dead and were cold and clammy. Not this guy—his eyes alone were on fire, and the rest of him wasn't far behind.

But speaking of fire, I challenged myself, let's talk about those eyes, and what they had done during the concert. That was not normal. They had been red—hot, penetrating red—and aimed at me like a weapon. With them, he had made me hear his language somehow. Was he hypnotizing me, "glamouring" me, as the lore goes? That was something a vampire could do . . .

My alter ego notched a "#1" on the imaginary blackboard she now had in front of her, and then proceeded to ask me a little bit more about the language in question on that very bizarre night. Hungarian. And what else did he speak? Russian? Croatian? Perhaps there could be some Romanian in there too? Hmmm, she intimated with a smirk, how coincidental that vampires are supposed to come from that general part of the world? And with that, she proceeded to notch a "#2" onto the board. Presumptuous little twerp.

I looked over again at my captor. He had just told me that he was a vampire, that Esteban and I were supernatural creatures, and that there was black magic working against me. Even in my wildest imaginings, how could I possibly bring myself to believe that such fantastical claims could in any way be true? It was just impossible. The storm was a storm, Esteban was Esteban, I was no more and no less than I had always been, and Hendry was just a man—a sick, deranged and possibly violent man who had created this world for himself to live in. How many weeks, months, years had he spent researching and developing this imaginary truth? It was the stuff of serial killers.

Still, there was a disturbing tug at my mind as I settled into my decision. The storm wasn't just a storm. It was as surreal and unnatural as the color of Hendry's eyes when he had looked at me from the stage that night, when I had heard and understood his words. It was as unfathomable as the look on Esteban's face today as he had come toward me. Was it just a coincidence that all of these incredible things were happening at once? And did I really believe that I had been hallucinating or imagining any of it, or that what I saw and felt so profoundly could be explained away as something so simple as an anxiety attack? Not ever had I mistrusted my senses, never in my life—why would I begin to do so now? Something had happened. What was it?

And so, the implausible question resurfaced: what if Hendry were a vampire? In the final analysis, whether vampire or serial killer, he had me and could hurt me. I needed to get out of this situation, and I had to do it now.

I cleared my throat (which was probably a "tell"—shit), and went for it. "Professor Hend—"

"—Everest. Please, Elma."

"Um, Ev-Everest, I need to find a ladies room. Please."

"Ahhh," he sighed, "yes, right—of course. I'll look for a suitable place."

"Thank you."

A mere two minutes later, we were pulling into a mom-and-pop type gas station with chipping paint and old fashioned pumps. It was one of those places that had restrooms in the back for which you needed to get the key at the counter. Hendry shut off the motor, pulled the key out of the ignition, and put his hand on the door to open it before doling out his warning.

"Do not leave. If you attempt to run, I shall find you, and you will be tied to the seat. And informing the staff here will be of no use to you, I assure you. Do you understand, Elma?" As he said my name, he turned his head and looked into my eyes, and I lost my breath in spite of myself.

"I understand," I whispered, not able to tear my gaze away, and we remained that way for several seconds, each attempting to read, understand, and anticipate the other.

Everest made a move first, hopping nimbly out of the low Zip Car and sauntering into the office. For a moment I did consider making a break for it. But then I looked around me. Everything was barren; no buildings, no other people, and Hendry had the staff here in his pocket, apparently. Either that or he was going to glamour them. Plus, it was cold and still snowing, and I was wearing high-heeled boots and a tailored dress coat. I would make it thirty feet before he found me, and then I'd be sorry one way or another. No, I was going to stick to my original plan.

A short moment later Hendry reappeared, a long wooden paddle in his hand with a skeleton key dangling oddly from one end.

"Thank you," I mumbled, taking the key and attempting to climb out of the car without letting him see the cell phone I had hidden in the waistband of my jeans. I had thought he'd ask to keep my purse, hence the stowing away of the iPhone in my pants, but he'd surprised me with his willingness to take me at my word and trust me. Were I not aware that he was certifiable, I may have felt guilty. But the circumstances were what they were, and my plan was working.

I closed the door to the ladies room (if you could call it that) and immediately pulled out the phone to dial. Six percent battery left—of course. I had already determined that I wouldn't involve Mills. She would come after me immediately and alone, and I didn't want her in danger. So, it was Mike or Esteban. I dialed Mike first, my heart beating like a gong against my ribcage.

One ring—I was nervous. Two rings—I was scared. Three rings—I was panicking. After the fourth ring, Mike's voicemail picked up. Do I leave a message, and tell him where I am? Will he get it in time? Split second decision—no message. I hung up before the beep and dialed Esteban. He picked up on the first ring.

"Elma?"

"Oh, Esteban, thank you for answering! Listen, I—"

"—Oh Elma, what a relief! What happened? Are you OK?"

"No, I'm being kidnapped. Listen, I know where I am right now, but I won't be here long. He has me in a car."

I proceeded to give him the address of the gas station and the license plate number of the car, all the while weak in the knees with an almost overpowering relief that I got through to someone who could help me.

"Elma—stay calm and don't do anything. I'm coming for you."

"Thank you!" It came out in a sob, but I didn't care. I hung up, made use of the disgusting facilities to empty my bladder, which would help if I needed to run, collected my emotions and headed back out to my kidnapper, now feeling like there was some hope after all.

# 22. Best Laid Plans

"What is that in your hand?" Dr. Upping indicated with a nod of his head the index card his patient had been holding throughout the session. The vampire made no reply.

"Roan?"

After a lengthy pause, Roan cleared his throat, a bittersweet countenance moving across his face.

"This," he said, raising the card into the air, "is the quintessence of my temptation. This," he repeated, indicating with a long, manicured finger the delicate blue script facing the doctor, "is the location of the flat in which she lives."

"You plan to go there, then?" More silence, the clock ticking expectantly in the background.

"Yes."

"And what will you do there?"

"I do not know."

"What does your mind tell you will do?"

Roan stood and began to pace the room, anxiously running a hand through his thick hair.

"Someone will open the door. I will see her in the foyer, I will tell her my name and ask if I may speak with her. She will invite me into her drawing room. I will follow her through the hallway, and she will ask for tea to be served. She will sit opposite me in an abominably uncomfortable chair and listen to me discuss the weather, all the while wondering for what reason on Earth I have come to call."

"Is that all?" Upping queried, rising from his chair.

The vampire turned to face him. "Should it not be?"

"Perhaps. But what do you think will happen next?"

"How should I know that?"

"What do you think happens next, Roan?" It was no longer a question, but a command, iron served on linen.

Silence filled the room.

"What's next, Roan?!" Upping's bellow shook the walls.

"I do not bloody well know!" Roan smashed his fist into the side table, sending wood splinters flying to all four corners of the room. Both men stood mutely, the doctor breathless and his patient maddened, staring into each other's eyes.

The doctor took two steps forward, aiming his whisper directly into the vampire's reddened face, not backing down an inch. His words came out heated, fast and unyielding.

"What do you fear you will do?"

The vampire did not hold back, but moved closer until the cool breath from his speech touched the other man's face. He spoke quietly, in a tone that sent an icy chill down his companion's spine. "I will glamour her, throw her to the floor, lift her dress, lick her, bite her, and then fill her and empty her at once."

# 23. After Sunset

It was almost sunset. So far, there had been no flashing lights of police cars behind us, no road blocks or random searches, not even a familiar car speeding down a parallel lane in an effort to find out where I was. Nada.

How the hell many Zip Cars were there, anyway? They're not your typical family sedan in an average, muted earth tone. They kind of stand out. Hendry was taking side roads, avoiding toll booths and other scannable areas, but still. Stiiiiiiill. As we skied along country lanes in the middle of nowhere, with snow-stacked trees and other Rockwell-esque scenery stretching before us, I had zero idea where we were or where we were going. I wasn't even sure what state we were in at the moment. The madman next to me, however, seemed to have some kind of internal homing device going, because he was twisting and turning like this was his hometown.

Speaking of Hendry, he hadn't said five words in the last hour. I almost thought he knew. He was honestly too calm, I mused to myself, like he was revving up for an episode of murderous horribility. Maybe he knew what I'd done and was deciding how best to punish me? He could be planning out some elaborate scheme in his head, and I shuddered to think what that might entail. I needed to know where his emotional barometer was hovering at the moment, so I decided to spur some discussion on his favorite topic.

"Dr. Hendry?"

"Call me Everest." OK good—he didn't sound particularly homicidal at the moment.

"Do you drink blood?" It's _Interview with the Vampire_ , redux! I felt like an absolute moron just uttering that sentence.

Hendry grinned what looked like one of those GQ manly man side smiles and turned his eyes toward me while keeping his face forward. How lovely that I was so amusing to him, the prick.

"Is that what the books tell you?"

"It's not true, then?"

He nodded and grinned again. "Yes, yes, you're correct, we do as a species consume human and other mammalian blood, but it is purely by choice. I myself have not drunk human blood in weeks . . . and even then merely a taste." The word "taste" came out in a whisper, and sounded way too erotic for my liking, so I opted to move to the next question.

"Why don't you burn in the daylight?"

He actually laughed at that, out loud. He had a deep, full chuckle, like some sadistic version of Santa Claus. "And do you also believe that we turn into bats at will and fly around in the night in search of prey?"

I was seething at his pomposity, but also remembering how he had blown up the last time I bit back at him, so I held my tongue, although I was simply boiling over with the desire to slug him. "Then what is the truth?" I managed sweetly through tightly gritted teeth.

He turned his head to look at me and spoke, the words falling over his lips with quick force. "We are immeasurably strong, and extremely quick. We do crave blood; it is difficult for us to function normally when we are near to even so much as a paper cut. We heal immediately, and can heal others with but a drop of our own blood. We are fast and hard and deliberate. In life, in sex, in feeding, we take what we like and do not engage in the exercise of guilt. Is that what you wanted to know, Elma?"

I realized then that I hadn't been breathing throughout his monologue; now I took a deep, ragged inhale and tried to steady the thumping of my heart, which was pounding in my ears like a bass drum. But I couldn't let him know what kind of effect he had on me, so I continued in my line of inquiry as rationally as I could. This was the moment, the perfect opportunity to ask the one question that was so important in both my reality and his.

"Do you kill?"

I almost didn't want him to answer; part of me was curious, sure, but part of me was afraid that he would say that yes, he did kill on occasion, that it was part and parcel of a vampire's life. And I was afraid that what he told me would make sense and corroborate his story. What if he were able to rationalize the concept of him being a vampire, of me being a siren, of this whole bizarre concept he had conjured up ...

Fortunately, I didn't have time to continue along that disturbing mental tangent or hear his response, because just then Hendry turned off the road onto a highway, and, two minutes later, into a parking lot. Unfortunately, the act opened up a whole new Pandora's box of anxiety, because he was turning into an underground hotel parking garage.

He shut down the motor and turned to me matter-of-factly. "In the night we can relax. Raiment feed off the energy of the sun, so after nightfall there is less he is able to do . . . and do to you." He handed me my coat. "We will sleep until sunrise, and then be on our way."

"Where?"

Hendry reached into the back seat for his coat as he added conversationally, "Somewhere to which he is unable to travel when you deliver your coordinates covertly in the ladies room."

There is a motorway between scared and angry, and at that moment I took the overpass above that motorway and sped right on over to rosily pissed off. After his little pronouncement, Hendry wore this supremely self-satisfied smirk that said two things at once, very clearly: 1. you will never outsmart me; and 2. if you try, I will demonstrate that not only am I thinking faster than you are, but I am also witty and clever as shit.

I wanted so badly to deck him right then, and I probably would have if he hadn't done what he did next. Everest Hendry put his hands on my neck and looked into my eyes with those stupidly hot lamps of his. He didn't leave a mark or cause pain, but simply placed the tiniest pressure of his fingertip against a soft valley of musculature right at the base of my skull, making the skin beneath it vibrate, and I closed my eyes in response to the sensation. Whatever Vulcan neck grasp he employed was highly successful, because the next thing I knew, I was lying in a double bed at the Hyatt Regency Seneca Falls, fully clothed and covered up with a comforter.

I opened my eyes to find Hendry at the little desk opposite the bed, working on an iPad with his back to me. He had shed his sweater, and was clad in his dress pants and a white tee. He didn't know I was awake. It was an advantage; I could take a few moments to study the room, appreciate the situation and devise my next move.

From what I could tell, the room was fairly standard as far as nice hotel rooms go: two double beds shared most of the space, and a flat-screen TV on a low, chic dresser covered the opposite wall. The work desk at which Hendry was seated took up the corner opposite the vacant bed and next to the only window in the room; I had no inkling how high up we were in the building. I was lying on the other bed, near the doors to both the hallway and the bathroom. Finally, I spotted two phones, one next to me on the table between the beds, and another on the desk next to my kidnapper.

Then my eyes moved to Hendry himself. He was hunched over just a little in order to type, and I watched as his muscles shifted ever so subtly under his shirt while he clicked at the virtual keys. His back was really quite muscular overall, I had to admit, and the visual kept going from there, moving into arms that were surprisingly ripped for a middle-aged guy. He was lean, but strong, and up close didn't have anywhere visible that forty-plus doughiness you sometimes find on men, those first signs that the steel wall of youth is beginning to give way to the pliability of age. The only places that divulged his true years were his eyes, which I'd already noticed bore the shallowest of crow's feet at the corners when he squinted, and his hair, which clearly displayed a hefty dash of salt along with the original pepper. I guess being a deluded psychopath made you go grey.

How old was Hendry? I thought to myself idly. I could do the math; his background was no secret—in fact, his bio had been written on the concert advertisements around campus. He'd been at Straythern for two years of a four-year visiting scholar residency. Before that had been on the faculty at the American University in DC for fifteen years, I thought I remembered reading, to lead some variety of Eastern European cultural and linguistic research program. That meant he'd had his Ph.D. for roughly seventeen years. If he was really as smart as he acted, let's say he'd had that doctorate by the time he was thirty. So, that would put him in his late forties. Seemed right.

I couldn't help marveling to myself, though, as I lay motionless on the bed opposite him, watching him move, that he was extremely well put-together for a man of his age. His sinew, the simple way he held his body, everything about him was athletic and lithe. The skin of his arms that was visible was smooth and free of even the tiniest mole or age spot, the flesh taut and supple. The muscles beneath shaped the armholes of his tee shirt, and the curve they created was just so sexy . . .

Enough. Well-manicured or not, we're dealing with a madman here. Back to escape planning. I was in the process of re-scanning the room for strategic options when I felt the tickle, that very particular creep in the back of the throat, off to the side, that lets you know you're about to cough. You can swallow all you want and wish it away, but it's gonna happen. When I couldn't stifle it any longer, the sound caught Hendry's attention, and he turned to me.

"Welcome back." He was relaxed, smiling, and tousled, and it pissed me off.

"Did you . . . drug me?" Because I was still groggy, the question didn't exactly have the emotion behind it that I'd otherwise expect to hear along with those particular words.

"Not exactly. I simply altered your consciousness so that I might peacefully walk through the lobby with you."

Right. He'd drugged me. Maybe.

"Are you hungry, Elma? You've not eaten a single morsel since morning." It was unbelievable that he was asking after me so earnestly, even with a polite little smile tugging at his mouth. The bastard. I didn't answer, but merely turned my body away from him in the bed and closed my eyes.

What happened then unraveled me. I heard him rise from his chair in the next moment, his footfall coming toward me. He approached the side of the bed to face me, then climbed in beside me, lying on his side, parallel to my body, head resting on his hand. He looked at me and smiled.

His eyes scanned my body from head to toe. I watched his hand come toward me, then pass by my face to my shirt, to smooth a fold in my collar. He sighed, still smiling, with a long, lazy gaze at my face, hair, shoulders—everything in his field of vision.

"And we revisit youth."

My mouth was dry. His shoulders were broad. His hand was gently rubbing the fabric of my shirt. I could smell his skin and I couldn't breathe. At all.

His next words came out not in English—Russian, Croatian, who knew, but the phrases rhymed and he spoke them softly and slowly, almost whispering. The metered speech ended after another thirty seconds or so, and then he was just talking. Quietly and very conversationally, he was effectively chit-chatting to me in that same language, which now sounded like it might even be Hungarian. Just gabbing away, still rubbing the crap out of that one spot on my shirt, still happy and smiling, still looking like a delicious entree of lust.

I must have been too caught up in my internal you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me-fest that I hadn't even noticed he'd moved his hand and now had his very well-groomed fingers tangled in a small tendril of my hair.

"Elma, you've not had much to drink today, either. Do you have thirst?" The absolute discontinuity of the mundane words in those sentences and the positively seductive way he said them made me marvel and pissed me off in equal measure. But again, I found I couldn't move. I had no idea what chemical ridiculousness was taking me over, but I could no more raise my hand and smack him than I could turn backflips across the room.

"No." A brilliant response from me, delivered with all the forcefulness of a fifteen-year-old girl at a Barry Manilow concert.

"Very well." With one more caress, Hendry released the curl of my hair from his fingertips and glided them back toward my collar. The length of his body was touching me, toes to chest, creating a gentle hum everywhere we connected. It was horrifying but undeniable. With his left hand still supporting his head, with the fingers of his right he fiddled with the top button of my shirt, undoing it in one smooth, fluid motion before I knew what was happening. He repeated with the button below it, and with one finger opened my shirt collar wide, exposing my throat and chest up to the rim of my bra.

I was panting, the quick breaths clearly visible on this exposed palate. With the same finger, Hendry traced a painfully slow line from the base of my throat down to the bare strip of skin between my breasts that remained uncovered by the fabric.

Never taking his gaze from my flesh, he lowered his head and placed a soft, slightly audible kiss on the middle of my sternum. Mike. I should be thinking about Mike. Why wasn't I thinking about Mike? Hendry moved upward, nibbling at my chest and neck with kiss after warm, slow kiss, the softness of his beard brushing against every inch of my skin in the wake of his lips. Every so often a small moan would escape him, a higher-pitched sound telling me he was vulnerable and losing himself to me. It was erotic.

Even as I watched myself in my mind's eye, astounded and infuriated with my actions, my hand came up to grasp the thick, smooth hair at the back of his head. I pushed his face further into my neck, and in response his kissing became more intense and frenzied, his groans now a yearning as he coaxed me to lay flat. His hand came to my breast at the same time as the tip of his tongue cascaded down the middle of my chest, where his finger had begun this whole event, and my hips rose off the bed under their own power. One hand still in his hair, the other found his bicep, hot iron under silk. How sexy to feel those muscles dancing when I knew they moved to support his hand as it slipped inside the cup of my bra, how they tensed as he took my nipple between his finger and thumb and squeezed.

# 24. Crashing Together

I gasped aloud, and everything stopped. Everest was at his desk, his back to me, writing, and I lay on the bed as before, but now breathless and saturated with want. He hadn't heard me, or so it seemed, because he remained lost in whatever work he was doing, motionless but for his typing and the rapid rise and fall of his back as he breathed. He turned his head to the side, toward the door. I could see the corner of his eye illuminated by the lamplight. Was he watching me? When had I fallen asleep?

"Elma?" There was something odd in his voice, as if he had to clear his throat.

"What?"

"We'll leave here in an hour's time. It will be dawn soon, and we'll need to be back on the road." He stood then, stretching through his full height with a deep breath, straining everywhere.

"You may have the first shower, if you wish." Yeah right, the concept of stripping naked and jumping into a tub in the next room was ever so appealing from a personal safety perspective. Because I am a total fool.

"No thank you."

"Very well," retorted Hendry, passing beside me on his way to the bathroom with a waft of wonderful man-scent in his wake. At the sound of the door closing and, a minute later, the shower running, I dashed off the bed. Egad, did I have to pee. Never mind, more pressing things were at hand. The main door to the hallway was rigged to not turn. How he'd done it, I had no idea, but it wouldn't budge. Sheep shit.

Knowing that a guy's shower lasts approximately twelve seconds, I knew I had to figure this out fast. Scanning the room, I saw that the only other connection to the world outside was through the window, but it was sealed shut, as many hotel windows are. Double sheep shit. Just to be sure I'd checked out all the options, I picked up the hotel phone. Dead. And no cable anywhere in sight. I wasn't that surprised.

I ran back over to the window, and threw open the curtains. We faced the concrete exterior of the building next to us, and it had no windows within view, so no people who would possibly see me. We weren't on the ground floor, but we looked to be only about three stories up, which was good news. The ground was way down there, but there was an awning in view below me, and that was enough to keep me scrapping.

Exploring the edges of the window pane against its housing, I could tell it was sealed tight. I pushed my whole weight against it, willing it to give way, break, whatever, but nothing. Above, same story—the window continued upward, almost to the ceiling, butting against . . . a transom.

A transom—an old-fashioned piece of work that must have belonged to the original building and been kept after it became a new-fashioned hotel. With no time to waste, I grabbed onto the desk, pushed it with all my might to the window, and climbed up. I could just get my fingers near the very bottom of the transom pane. I needed more height. So, I grabbed the desk chair, stacked it on top of the desk, and stacked myself on top of it. I was wearing jeans that were a little too long for me, especially in my bare feet, and the material at the bottom of one leg caught on the lever under the seat of the chair as I climbed up. Not wanting to wipe out on the way to freedom, I hopped down, shinnied out of my jeans, and climbed back up in my underwear.

Shower still running. Luckily, Hendry may be higher-maintenance than some other men. I could now reach the top of the transom, which was where the handle was. And I was gleeful to feel that it gave a little when I pulled. The problem was, it probably had not been opened in decades, and had been painted shut, swelled shut, and become just plain stuck shut over all that time, and so was tough to make budge at all.

But freedom was on the other side of that window, and so I gathered up all my strength, took a deep breath, and heaved with all my might. And it gave. It gave! The pane moved about four inches toward me with a terrific groan. The shower was off. Now or never. One more heave . . .

Several things happened at once. The bathroom door opened and I tilted my head to see Hendry emerge in his boxers and tee shirt; the window gave way another few inches; the change in my angle as my head turned and the window moved with me caused my precariously balanced chair to tip back. I fell in slow motion, watching the transom handle fall away from my grasp, hearing the chair clang against the desk, and waiting for the dark to descend as the back of my head hit white sharpness and then the dullness of the floor. And descend it did, oozing across my consciousness and making everything fall away.

It retreated just as gradually, leaving both my vision and my brain fuzzy in its wake. I was bathed in warmth, my head, neck and shoulders buzzing with prickly heat. I lay in a prone but supported position on the floor, and after a few moments understood that I was in Hendry's arms. Against my left cheek was his smooth skin; he held me tight against him. He was whispering to me to wake up, to please open my eyes. He told me everything would be well . . . please, Žena, let everything be well.

The plea in his voice, his supplication to the saints, roused me more than anything to open my eyes. First I saw my feet, then my legs. Thankfully, they moved when I willed them to wiggle. Then, on the floor next to me, Hendry's tee shirt, covered in red . . . my blood. It was blood that warmed my head and neck, I then realized, still wet from a wound somewhere. On my head? So much blood. I tasted the metallic tang in my mouth, and felt with my tongue a gash on the inside of my lower lip. No pain though, and as I ran my tongue over my teeth, I confirmed that there were none missing, fortunately.

He had seen or felt my movement, for I heard a choke escape him. He was covered in my blood, but he seemed not even to notice let alone be tempted by it. As my eyes rose slowly from the floor to his face, I saw that he was white as a ghost. Even so, a smile of relief transformed it into a map of happiness, with tears glistening in both of his eyes as he realized I was not seriously injured. They were of a color I'd never seen, but even as I watched, they seemed to fade in my weakened sight back to the searing blue I knew so well. Still smiling, he continued to speak to me, but now in his own language, his eyes creased with happiness at the corners. Two things became crystal clear to me in that moment, as he cradled me in his arms. First, Everest Hendry was no vampire. Second, and I knew this as certainly as I knew my own name, Everest Hendry would never, ever hurt me.

# 25. Everest

"I loathe New Jersey."

It was late morning. We had just crossed over the state line from New York, and Everest was visibly turning up his nose against the crowded, slightly toxic sludge of a cold day in Newark. "The stench is almost unbearable. How can you stand it?"

I looked over at him with slowly bubbling annoyance. Not only was I trapped in a car with a maniac, but he was acting like a cranky prima donna. To be fair, he hadn't slept, I was sure of it, and there was weariness making its debut in the lines around his eyes and mouth. But still he carried on, carrying me to who knew where as part of his solemn self-assigned mission.

As for me, I had now graduated from frightened to pissed off, less afraid to let the fur fly, possibly because I knew that Everest cared for me, and so I was, therefore, safe from harm, even if I was still being kidnapped. Regardless, I didn't give my captor the satisfaction of a pithy reply to his diatribe regarding "Bon Jersey," but simply turned my head again to stare out the passenger side window, sullenly watching the factories and high-rise projects drift past.

After my near-death experience of a few hours before, I felt remarkably OK, other than a thudding at the back of my neck where I'd cut it open on the jagged edge of the broken lamp, and a residual humming sensation there and throughout my body, really. With all the blood everywhere, I was astounded that I had not needed stitches, but it was true, reconfirmed by the gentle rise of the developing scab under my hair as I traced it with my fingers.

It really was a crazy fall. I shuddered when I thought of how much work the hotel would need to do to clean the blood and shattered glass from that room. Everest must have paid a large sum of money for the damages, but it had all been done in quiet negotiation between him and the hotel manager with no muss or fuss. He was smooth, I'd grant him that. But he was still holding me against my will, so he was still a douchebag.

Mentally I was on a much less linear path than I was physically. If it were possible, I was more confused now than I had been yesterday, when the portrait of Everest Hendry had been drawn with much more sinister colors. I now saw humanity in him, and that quality, combined with his deliberate ways and rational approach to doing most things, diverged dramatically from the absurdities he was describing to me and professing were true. It was the biggest disconnect in the universe—he talked about all this bizarre crap like it was tea conversation, but everything about the way he looked, spoke, and carried himself was completely sane. Refined, even. He was a living oxymoron in other ways too. He was a cool cucumber, but he was unstable. He was aloof, yet he cried when I was hurt. I could not for the life of me figure him out.

Additionally, I still had rationality questions to consider related to my own discombobulated self, and not a single damned one of them had a logical answer. The first and most obvious question was, why was I still in a car with this maniac to begin with? And what the hell was convincing me to even be passive and peaceful at this particular moment? Furthermore, why on earth would Everest claim to be a vampire, when that was obviously not the case? How could he possibly claim that Esteban was some kind of monster, when he clearly was nothing of the sort, reconfirmed by the very non-monstrous conversation I'd had with him from the gas station ladies room? And finally, what the hell was that neck thing he did?

"Where are we going now?" I demanded. It came out as more of a bitch than a question, and that was completely intended.

Everest was unaffected by my ire. "The airport. We need to stay anywhere out of direct sunlight, and a crowded airport will do quite nicely. Provided we can make it from the car into the terminal, he'll have no claim to you then."

"And what have you deduced as the next part of this clever scheme?" I launched. "We'll hop around from Cinnabon to Starbucks until Esteban the horrible axe murderer gets tired of chasing me? Brilliant, Dr. Watson. Just brilliant. Maybe you're actually trying to kill me through high cholesterol—much less messy than a gun or a knife." And then, in a moment of recklessness, I blurted out the cherry on top of my cake of pissiness. "But it'll be kind of tough for us to stay out of sight much longer, since I've already delivered your license plate number to Esteban covertly in the ladies room."

At that moment, Everest swerved the car off the road and onto the long-term parking exit ramp. Pealing around the corners at thirty mph, he pseudo-stopped just for a millisecond to grab a ticket, then raced forward into the covered lot, just barely missing several parked cars in his path. He plunged forward, then suddenly reversed into a corner spot with one loud, brake-squealing motion. In other circumstances, I'd have been impressed with the stunt driver-quality stuff, but I was too busy being scared to death. I'd really done it now. Shit.

Throwing the car into park, he turned and grabbed my face with one hand, hard, and pulled so that I was staring directly into his eyes. But he wasn't angry. Instead, he gestured to the elevator banks a few feet away, then floated his beautiful orbs back to focus on me. "Will you run?" he whispered, more intimately than he should. When he moved his hand to my neck, at the place where he'd applied the Vulcan neck grip the day before, I caught his meaning.

"No," I responded to his eyes.

We both exited the car at once, and Hendry grabbed my hand and led me through the garage and toward the terminal. We reached the elevator, and he pressed the button with the little airplane on it. As we waited, I grew more and more confused. He wouldn't harm me, but what would he do with me? Where did he intend to take me? Would I ever see my home, Mills, my old life again? And why the hell was I NOT running? Again a light the size of a candle flame illuminated the corner of my mind in response.

The elevator doors opened, and we stepped in. Before they had closed behind us, my request had been blurted out. I used every morsel of goodwill I had, along with my new-found confidence in his feelings for me, to my advantage.

"Let me go. I'm scared. I promise I won't tell a soul, but please release me and let me go back to my life. If you care about me, please let me go . . . Everest."

Everest made no reply, but I saw in the clench of his jaw that I had gone too far. He reached behind me to hit the Stop button for the elevator, then stood right in front of me against the wall, almost against me.

His words came out not in a scream, for which I was braced, but in a passionate, rapid whisper. He was close enough that I could feel the heat from his body.

"Elma, there are evils in this world that you know yet nothing about . . . there are so many who will want to stop you, harm you. Even if you do not understand, even if you battle against me, I will, always and in every way, protect you. I shall keep you safe with all that I am and can offer, you must believe that. And if that protection must occur against your will, my dear woman, then so be it." I was about to respond when the door opened.

# 26. The Friendly Skies

Everest grabbed my hand and we pushed forward into the departures area of Newark International Airport. Why I didn't bolt immediately, scream, or grab onto the nearest patrolling security guard I have no idea, but some voice inside me advised me that I shouldn't. Instead, I race-walked to try and keep up with Everest, who was booking it through Terminal B like those mall-walkers in the Midwest who fly around the storefronts on a daily basis to keep in shape.

Down the mini-escalator we went to the Air China ticket counter. We glided right past the snaking queue of economy passengers, bags, and angst to turn into the first-class line. It was actually not a line, really, since we proceeded directly to the counter. A perfectly lovely associate smiled at Everest like he was absolutely the most fabulous customer ever in the universe. And the letch just ate it up, fixing her with his superhero bedroom eyes laser beam, and I'm sure—totally sure—I saw him look at her boobs. More than once.

With a smile that would shame sugarcane, she handed over two tickets to him. Time to check in with myself, clearly. Why, in the depths of all hell and Hades, was I not totally railing against the concept of getting on a plane to China with a maniac? Furthermore, why in the depths of fuck am I looking forward to this? My alter ego screamed at me to get the hell away, right now, as far as I could go, while I could. But the light shone more brightly in reply, and it was all I could focus on. Somewhere inside me, I had to know what was next. Perhaps I was the unstable one, but for whatever the reason, I could not—no, would not—go.

I had to pee. Now, I have a bladder of truly admirable proportion, but I'd had to pee for roughly six hours now, and It. Was. Time. As we headed into the security line, I asked my captor's permission to use the facilities. Perhaps this involves a hall pass, I snerfled to myself light-heartedly. My captivity was not a topic to be playful about, but in the final analysis, life is harsh, and hard, and if you can't approach it with a sense of humor then you're basically screwed.

So, I turned to Daddy to ask if I could use the potty.

The next thing I knew I was in seat 2F with a glass of champagne on the console beside me and an empty bladder.

"Did I order this?" I asked of Everest, indicating the bubbling booze in front of me.

"It's a complimentary pre-flight drink." Everest was reading China Today, in Chinese. Asshole.

"Why don't you have one?" I countered. The liquid in his glass was brown—maybe whiskey.

"I don't favor sparkling wine. Scotch is more to my liking."

"Did you drug me?"

"No," he responded matter-of-factly while turning the page of his newspaper. "You went to the ladies room, and boarded the plane. You must be weary, as you don't remember."

I knew he was doling out rations of bullshit again, but I merely sighed in resignation and took a sip from my fluted crystal. The bubbles bubbled north, and the smooth liquid sailed south, soothing many parts of me at once with that first swallow. I knew I was gonna ask, and was sure he was waiting for me to ask, so why didn't I just do it already?

"Why are you taking me to China, Dr. Hendry?"

He put his hand over mine, leaned in right to my lips, and whispered coarsely into my mouth, "Everest."

I was hot, and had to turn away. Mint and whiskey lingered in my nose.

I took another drink and let the bubbles diffuse me. I was going to China with a man who was holding me against my will. A man who had bought me a first-class flight, arranged all the details. Heck, I didn't even have to apply for a . . .

"I don't have my passport," I blurted, nervous energy starting to pulse down my arms. "How did I even get on the plane without my passport!?"

He took another sip of his scotch and relaxed into the seat. "We're not going to China, we're going to Alaska. You presented your driver's license to the check-in attendant, if you recall. The temperature in North Pole is twelve degrees Fahrenheit, with overcast skies and a forecasted snowstorm. It will be the perfect place to regroup and plan our next step."

"Sounds fabulous." I rolled my eyes so hard I thought they might get stuck that way. "Why couldn't we just go to Boston?"

"Don't be impossible, Elma. I am trying to save your life. We may find information in Alaska that will help us to that end."

I heaved a sigh, reclined back in my high-society armchair, and followed the cargo loaders outside with my eyes as they hauled luggage back and forth from a trolley into the belly of the plane. Routine action, predictable, normal. The dependability of such a day-after-day pattern sounded so appealing at that particular moment. No unstable linguists with a threadbare grasp on reality, no disillusioning game of "find the mate," and no wondering how to uncover that thing that is right in front of you, coloring your actions, but that you just cannot see, no matter how hard you try.

Maybe I needed a new line of work, I giggled, resting my head back against the seat. I can't draw, don't like math, and goodness knows I don't have the divine patience to be a teacher. I could be a cop . . . now that's a rich one. Gun on my hip, chasing down the streets of town with my trusted partner. Perhaps a biologist? Life in a lab can have its advantages. Out of the weather, comfy clothes under the lab coat, etc. Or better yet, a marine biologist. I could wear a bathing suit to work every day . . . or at least most days . . . have water cooler talk with dolphins, hang out on the sea floor . . .

As I drifted off to sleep on a bed nicely made up for me by the champagne bubbles, rocked by the hefting of the plane as it taxied to the runway, the images that danced in front of my closed eyes were those of the blue sea, and painted boats, and sailors, and mermaids on rocks.

# 27. Letting Down One's Guard

Upping was quiet. Roan stared again at his own hands, examining the tiny swatches of cuticle that so perfectly shaped to their beds. Some chose to have these bits of skin trimmed down every so often. He, of course, could not, for they would grow back in a matter of days. Years ago, he could have watched the skin take shape before his eyes, the body's incredible work witnessed. But not now. And that was just as well, he thought, for why take them away in the first place? His hands as they were stood closer to their natural state.

The doctor poured out more tea, and handed a cup to his patient. His next question was ready in his mind, but there was no rush. Even vampires could become emotionally weary, and there was time. There was always time. Time was science.

Roan sipped his tea slowly and closed his eyes, enjoying the hot pool of flavor on his tongue. On the other side of the window, the night stretched out along the street, unfolding its layers of dusk. The vampire raised his arms above his head and stretched as well, reviving himself. Then, with a moan of comfort, he opened his mouth and slowly extended his fangs until they were released to their full, brazen length.

The session had gone for forty minutes. Outside this room both men's days would continue, full of talking, eating, sleeping and evading. But not here. Within these walls was where truth lived.

The doctor looked to Roan, who sat, as usual, with his elbows on his knees, pushing his weight into the floor. His mouth was just slightly open to allow room for his descended canines, lips slack with relaxation. Upping gazed at one of these weapons from where he sat. It was pearl white, like the rest of Roan's teeth, like the teeth of every vampire he'd ever seen. That could be a marker of vampirism on its own, he chuckled to himself.

The fang began at the same width as the teeth around it, but tapered quickly down to the gauge of an ice pick at the very bottom. A very sharp ice pick. Each side was finely angled at the tip, an amazing wizardry of its own that Upping had studied years ago with a detached fang obtained at great cost. He did not fully understand the physics, but the truth was that each fang was sharp enough to pierce flesh and muscle like silk, with minimal sensation, yet constructed in such a way that it would never injure the wearer. A vampire's only discomfort related to these fascinating weapons was the tightness of having them receded into the skull. This was why Roan Randall now looked so comfortable sitting opposite him in an embroidered chair, with six-inch razor sharp fangs resting below his lower lip.

Upping sat upright, cleared his throat, and, assessing that this was the correct moment, posited his question.

"Will she let you in?"

# 28. Cold

I think I read somewhere that Eskimos have hundreds of words to describe snow. However, ten bucks says that they all have something to do with cold.

My ass was cold. My hands were numb, my feet were wet and numb, which is even more enjoyable, and there was an area on the outside of my thighs that was so numb it hurt. That makes no sense whatsoever, but neither did the fact that I was in the tenth circle of frozen-over Hell with an hallucinating kidnapper whose bones I wanted to jump. Take that, Jerry Springer.

After landing in Fairbanks, we had hopped a mini-plane and flown an additional hour north to a little town called Coldfoot (right on). From there, Everest had hired a car to take us even further north, to a resort-type log cabin retreat out in the middle of absolutely woodsy nowhere, but complete with all the posh trimmings a girl could hope for, including a spa offering a hot cocoa body scrub. Because that's the kind of treatment I usually get on a Saturday. On Thursdays I rather enjoy a nice whale blubber facial—I wouldn't be surprised if they had that too.

I can't euphemize—this was a majestic place. A triple-wide, wood-burning fireplace consumed the heart of the room, surrounded by gorgeous tapestries dripping down all four walls. The sofa and two easy chairs across from it were all made of top-quality distressed leather, and they all convened around a huge, roughly-hewn oak coffee table that was so authentic that it still bore some raised knots. If academics had coin, Everest certainly knew how to use his.

How long we would be here was unknown to me—it was all part of the grand scheme of the caring criminal in the doorway who was handing over a stack of bills to the driver, a total ace who had expertly navigated every weather-related hazard in the known universe to get us here in one piece. It was all part of the grand scheme of the deluded professor who was now closing the door to the outside world and leaving me vulnerable, the one who was turning to me with an annoying little smile stamped on his face.

"Thank you for the boots and gloves. And the coat," I said, shrugging out of my thick, shin-length wool and something-hide cover.

Everest came behind me and held the coat as I wriggled my arms out, his knuckles brushing my back in the process, and as he left to open the closet door I marveled at the residual buzz on my skin.

"Andrew will be back to collect us tomorrow night. We have an eight PM flight back to Fairbanks."

The buzzing stopped abruptly, ire the size of the snowbanks Andre had circumvented building in my belly. "Wait a second," I launched at him, you flew me to the North fucking Pole for twenty-eight hours? Even for a lunatic, you're crazy! What the hell, Everest?"

"We need a place and a bit of time to think, and this is a location in which we can do so securely. Esteban will not come to us here." He had all the animation in his tone of Ferris Bueller's teacher reading a cookbook.

"Ya think?" Brilliant comeback from me, but I was too sore, tired and spent for wittier verbal ping pong at that particular moment. I exhaled a long, cleansing breath, stretched, and sent my hand behind my head to massage my neck. After being met with layers of rough, caked-on dried blood, my next activity sprang clearly to mind. Everest saw my thought process, and just smiled faintly and nodded.

There was a giant hotel-style bathrobe hanging in the bathroom closet (yes, closet), so after a luxurious, hot shower and thorough brushing with the hotel-provided travel dental kit, I emerged clad in white terry from head to toe to find Everest in the kitchen . . . cooking. Really COOKING. Where he had scored the food I had no idea, but there was a pot of pasta bubbling next to a sauté pan simmering with wilted greens, another small pan filled with a bubbling, whitish sauce, and the distinct smell of salmon coming from the oven. Heavenly.

"You look well," he remarked, coming toward me with a glass of red wine in each hand. "A toast, then—to a safe journey _._ Uzdravlje. _"_

"Cheers," I offered. Sweet, warming tannins bursting with cherries coated my palate, and, even mixed with the flavor of Crest, tasted intensely good to me. I needed this badly. But of course, my inner discussion partner had to choose this exact moment to remind me that I was, although clean, toasty and about to eat a gourmet meal, still in the clutches of a sanity-challenged criminal, and therefore should not be dulling my senses with highly delicious alcohol.

I placed my glass on the counter and watched as Everest loaded our plates with food and carried them over to the dining table, which was oak, thick to match the coffee table, and just gorgeous. White linen napkins and good quality silverware had already been placed, along with a vase of white daisies. Either this theme of white indicated a pleasant, blemish free evening, or, my inner voice countered, since white is the color of death in Japan, perhaps we shouldn't be thinking everything looks so quaint. And I'm right in the middle of this theme, in my white getup . . .

"I should change first," I piped up then, remembering that I was wearing only a bathrobe and a towel wrapped around my head. That and I was clad in the color of death.

Everest sat down in his seat and chuckled. "Change into what, Elma?" Your shirt is covered in blood. You are just fine as you are—there are laundry facilities here, so you may have your things cleaned before we leave. I shall as well," he gestured, indicating his sweater, which now had no tee shirt underneath it, since it was also covered in my blood somewhere in his bag. There had been blood on his boxers too, I mused. Damn smartass caught the thought in my eyes, and grinned. "Indeed," was all he said.

The color of my face against my white bath turban and robe must have been a sight to behold, so the least I could do was pick up my wine glass again, which he had kindly carried over to the table with my dinner plate, and get that sucker right up next to my face as I sat down.

He cleared his throat, and threw me a bone. "I wasn't certain of your tastes, so we've got a bit of a mix here . . . pasta, fish, vegetables . . . please, begin." He wasted no time and went to work on the salmon in that white sauce, which I soon discovered was beurre blanc and phenomenal.

"It's delicious," I garbled honestly and semi-unintelligibly with a mouthful of sautéed kale. "Where did you learn to cook so well?"

"My father was a chef, actually. At quite a high level. I learned to cook as a child. I don't have the opportunity to do so very often, but it is something that I enjoy very much. I'm glad you enjoy it as well."

He had made a fire, and in the silent moment after he finished talking, as he looked over at me with a half-smile, the firelight flickered in his eyes and in the glass he held, making both look simply irresistible. I grabbed at my own goblet without looking and took a giant slug of wine, filling every corner of my mouth with its rich flavors.

"Do you?" he asked.

"What?"

He smiled again. "Do you cook?"

For a good ten milliseconds my internal pal flogged me about the head and neck with her imaginary wiffle ball bat, which helped get me back onto planet Earth from wherever the hell I was.

"Oh! Not really. I can make a few things, but—it's a little silly—I never got deep into cooking as an art because I had this irrational fear of cutting a finger or burning a hand . . . "

Everest looked at me quizzically until I made a little piano playing gesture, and then he nodded as he understood my meaning.

"Yes, yes, of course. I don't find that irrational at all, Elma. With your skill I would protect my instrument as well. You are very gifted, you know. You play beautifully."

I was going to reply, but he looked like he was about to say more. He didn't, though, but simply took the bottle and poured us each more wine. Then, with another sip, he looked back at me.

"I explained things incredibly poorly yesterday, I realize. That idiotic monologue about pets—it's no wonder you think me mad. Allow me to try again. It's very important. Please."

I nodded slowly in reply, took another drink, and leaned back into my seat.

# 29. Two Rooms

"It sounds ridiculous, I grant you that, but the world contains werewolves, vampires, witches and other preternatural beings."

Everest sat across the table, his hands flat on the rough wood, his gaze fixed on me, checking my expression for any sign of incredulity. "There are three categories of being, and though I do not fully understand the history myself, I can explain the differences among them. They are humans, the animal world, and the preternatural world. What I do understand very fully is the distinction among the preter-set, as they are called scientifically. And that I can share with you."

Just like before, Elma's along for the ride. Let's see the pretty scenery, even if we know we ain't moving in. "Are you a . . . preter . . . preter—"

"Preternatural."

"Thank you."

"Yes. As said, I am a vampire. But that was quite a pithy response earlier—let me amend it now. I have also studied the wider group of preternatural beings for a number of years, and have come to understand a great deal about them. Are you through?" He indicated my empty dinner plate, and I nodded. With what really looked like a flourish, he whisked away both of our plates and brought back two chilled ones from the fridge, on each of which was stacked a piece of sweet potato pie and a dollop of vanilla ice cream.

"Wow."

"Enjoy. Here's a favorite combination of mine as well," he added, and plopped down two short glasses containing a finger each of what looked like whiskey. "Macallan 18-year—very pleased the hotel had it on hand. To preternatural beings." With a grin that he obviously hoped would spread across the table to my face, he raised his booze in the air. I managed a half-smile, I think.

"Uzdravlje," I offered, trying to match his accent. My alter ego just rolled her eyes.

Everest didn't speak for a moment. He almost looked like he forgot what he was about to say. His eyes went vague for a second, like he had left the room or Alaska as a whole, but a second later he was back, and smiled again.

"Very good," he offered quietly. "You're a fast learner."

"I aced my foreign language courses in college. Call it a knack." I was done being polite for a little while.

"Very well, so . . . where were we? Let's move to the types of preternaturals, then." And why not?

"There are several types of supernatural being, and please, try and maintain an open mind. This will all seem very unreal, but I ask for your willingness to consider. Is that fair, Elma?"

I swallowed hard. I was nervous about this conversation, but wasn't about to admit it, to myself or to Everest.

"Yes," I breathed.

"We'll start with the most famous—the vampires. No capes, no garlic, but yes, fangs, and yes, blood, as said. And yes, very dangerous. There are not many of us, and we are widely dispersed. We are solitary beings, by and large, and most of us choose to live in shadow. Obviously, however," he added, gesturing to himself, "a few of us have learned to live very successfully in the mainstream." Oh brother.

"Next," he continued on, "are the magicks. This is a group made up of witches, warlocks, and the fae."

"Fae?" I interjected.

"Fairies." He used little air parentheses when he said it, and actually rolled his eyes. "This is the largest of the 'orders,' as we say, well-assimilated into human society and impossible for humans to distinguish. Their power ranges very broadly from the slightest tinge of magical capability to incredible depths of force. The orientation of that power simply depends upon a magick's personality, assigning a tendency to what you might refer to as 'good' or 'evil,' though these are horribly simplistic definitions. They are people, with people's benefits and flaws. Are you with me thus far, Elma?"

I wished he would stop saying my name like that. I nodded silently.

"Excellent. Next we have the weres—werewolves, to be clear. Completely assimilated with humans and completely deadly. After that, there are the morphants—raiments like Esteban and a rare but broad array of creatures that appear one way to the human eye and quite another to a supernatural. And finally," he said as he reached out and grasped my hand across the table, "we have the muses."

Heat shot straight up my arm. I pulled away but he wouldn't let go. His grasp was gentle but firm, and his response to my mild wriggling was simply to put his other hand on top of mine, reinforcing the lightning bolt that was soaring through me. He stared at me, leaned in, and spoke softly, soothingly, still holding my hand in both of his own.

"There is one family of muses. Since their presence was first recorded, there has been one sole clan of beings that composes this entire order. One small cluster of individuals that single-handedly is responsible for the lore of the siren, the nymph, the mermaid . . . the siren. This is your lineage, Elma."

I suddenly felt incredibly uncomfortable. Something rose up in me that I did not want to see, feel, or analyze more closely in any way. I pulled my hand free and laughed caustically. "Mom and Dad didn't include that in the birds and the bees conversation. This is just bullshit—I'm done entertaining you."

I had to get away. I bolted up out of my chair and made for the bathroom. Everest was right behind me in the hallway, grabbing my arm to swivel me back to face him. His other hand darted behind me to the door, holding it closed and me captive against him. But still, he was gentle.

"I ask you again to remain open-minded until I have finished. I have not yet finished."

His blue eyes bore into me, and I saw two compartments in my mind. The first was the world as I knew it, in which I was a person like any other person, where what I knew to be true was true. The second compartment, the one I wanted to avoid looking into at all costs, but the one lit from within, was unfathomable, unbelievable, and, for some reason unknowable to me, pulsing with something I needed to know more about. I looked into Everest's eyes, felt his breath, and suddenly saw the blue of the ocean rippling in the wind of an artist's paintbrush, the color and strokes becoming clearer and clearer each second.

"All right." Like in Alice in Wonderland, one room grew smaller while the other swelled.

# 30. No

"Literature has painted you as evil, ugly, a sexual predator . . . ," waxed Professor Everest Hendry as he sat with one leg crossed over the other on the leather sofa, absently swirling the wine in his glass to watch its color spread across the crystal, " . . . but that is far from the case. Be that as it may, I cannot say that your order has never led anyone astray thanks to seductive prowess."

I was better, calmer, and whether due to the wine or some other effect, was curious to listen now with both ears and engage with my whole brain. That said, I was still residually pissy, under the effect of alcohol, and infuriatingly attracted to the maniac sitting opposite me. And he was talking smack about what was supposed to be my order.

"Well, you can't say that about your order either, now can you?" I looked him square in the eye, and he knew that I knew that he was a dog. A womanizing, women-using hormonal male dog. And a well-documented one at that.

He sipped serenely. "However, in your case it is not your cock that leads a lover to do your bidding."

If there had been more than a quarter inch of wine in my glass, it would have been all over my robe. He merely sipped again and continued pontificating, the pompous douchebag.

"As said, I know very little of the origin of any of the orders, but there is one very important historical fact that I must impart to you. That is the fact of singularity. Also as said, there is, and as I understand has ever been, only one family of muses. Throughout time, there has been but one small handful of men and women with your rare ability."

"What makes them . . . us . . . so special?"

He raised three fingers in the air. "Communication, persuasion, and attachment. The three powers of the muse." He brought the wine glass to his lips expectantly, anticipating my reaction.

"Like mind control."

"No, not at all, really. In order to hold sway over another being, that being needs to actively engage." He stared at the crackling fire for a moment, thinking. "I'd say the effect is more similar to hypnosis, actually. A subject under hypnotic suggestion willingly submits to the effects of the hypnotist. The same is true of the power of the muse."

"Therefore, I could, hypothetically, make a guy rob a bank for me."

Everest rubbed his chin and smiled. "A were or a witch, perhaps, yes. But as I also mentioned earlier, the powers of the muse only have an effect on animals and most supernatural creatures—humans are unfazed. I do not know why."

"So then, if you say Esteban is a supernatural, why couldn't I just persuade him not to stalk me? Wouldn't that have been slightly easier than this?" I gestured to the overall remoteness of our current surroundings. "And furthermore," I added with a sudden flash of psychological curiosity, "if you're a supernatural creature too, why wouldn't you have been compelled to let me go when I asked you to in the elevator at the airport?"

Instead of getting defensive, Everest just grinned again. "Excellent," he cooed, "I see you're capturing and fully comprehending all I've said. Well done indeed, Elma. And you are correct—per my description, I as a member of the preter-set should be vulnerable to your influence. However, you will note that I mentioned previously the fact that a muse's power affects animals and _most_ supernatural creatures. A vampire is the sole exception to this rule."

He was smooth, I'd give him that, and could really think on his feet. Nicely played, Dr. Hendry, nicely played.

"Now then, regarding Esteban," he continued, refilling our glasses with the last of the wine, "please keep in mind another bit I've just mentioned. A muse possesses three powers, which in the case of a siren may be, and often are, used sequentially—communication, persuasion, and attachment. This is not an immediate process, firstly, and secondly, a raiment's particular reaction to the attachment element is one of ownership . . . a bit of an oil and vinegar situation, really. Use of your gift in some ways exacerbates things."

I was beginning to feel the heat of pissed-offedness rising like smoke from the embers of the fire crackling in the big-ass fireplace across from me. Everest had a fabulous back story for his actions, but no climactic element to bring it all to a close. And keeping in mind that I was now sitting at the very literal boundary between civilization and the white, frozen wilderness, I was frightened enough to at least need to ensure my safety. I wanted to know that his strategic delusion was going to at least take us back home.

"Then what in the hell do you propose we do?" I was standing now, hands on my hips, and at the same second as I spoke I felt a draft of air pass over my chest. Fuck, my robe was gapping. Without looking down, I knew there was about forty percent boob exposure. Screw it, I was making a point and I was going to stand my ground.

By keeping my eyes locked on Everest, I could verify the forty percent boob exposure by just looking at him. His gaze was fixed on my chest, and he actually licked his lips, the hornball. So slowly that it was actually painful to watch, and not in a pleasant way, he moseyed his eyes from my tits all the way up to my face. "Elma. Sit. Down," he said.

The wine gone, we went back to the whiskey, and I reorganized The Ladies back into cooperation. Everest drank whiskey like a guy in a guy movie, rolling back his lips and letting out an audible sigh after every swallow. It was positively grating. Following his third or fourth grunt of approbation, he leaned forward with his hands folded under his chin, elbows on knees, and let me in on the bizarre plan.

"In the latter half of the nineteenth century, a clinical psychiatrist named Theobald Upping took a serious interest in the supernatural. For a human to learn about the existence of the orders at all is quite rare of itself, but Upping went deep into the subject, and became a known entity within the community of London preternaturals. For a time, he was actually a counselor of sorts to vampires, weres, etc.—a bit of an expansion of the interview and research work he was engaging in. Really a bit humorous when you consider it." He smiled disarmingly, and I remembered with a flush where his eyes had just been. "His studies and findings on the psyche of the supernatural community are quite fascinating."

"So how do you know so much about him, about his work?" I wanted to see where this was going.

"I have several of his papers on the subject, none of which were ever published." Everest tipped his head to the side, stretching out his smooth neck, and yawned. It was getting late.

Okey dokie. "You just picked them up in your research, then? Just came across a bunch of unpublished clinical studies on supernatural creatures in some old desk somewhere?"

"They were passed along to me."

"By Upping?" I almost sneered.

"Yes."

"When?"

"In 1927."

Again, heavy silence filled the room, punctuated by the occasional exploding bit of timber. So Upping and Everest met and swapped lab notes during the Prohibition and when Everest was an ovum. Priceless.

On the tip of my tongue were these words: "This is ridiculous. I'm going to bed." But they stopped where they started, washed away by curiosity and some unseen tide—empathy? Compassion, maybe? The wave moved me away from a visceral reaction and onto a calmer shore, and instead I simply said, "I see."

I couldn't say for certain, but I think I saw his shoulders relax just a little, and I saw surely that the lines accenting his eyes disappeared altogether. Something in the atmosphere clicked to a different angle. Was it me, him, or both of us? He looked at me again with those clear, unfettered eyes.

"Upping is our path—we must now find him."

"And how will that help us?" I asked.

"As said, I am equipped to best the raiment alone. However, matters are infinitely more complex, and for several reasons, I believe that simply dispensing of Esteban will only serve to exacerbate an already dangerous situation. If there is anyone who will know how to unravel all of the elements at play currently, it is Upping."

"He's still alive, then? Where is he?"

"Quite," Everest nodded, standing to stretch. I watched as he tensed and then relaxed all of his muscles, both of us heaving a sigh simultaneously but for separate reasons. "Upping is a brilliant occult scientist. Among his many achievements, he has discovered methods to alter his own aging process. Upon seeing him, one would think him rather a young man. Accessing him is the problem. I do not know how to find him, as he went missing decades ago. It is a long story which I will save for another day. But let me consider all of these complexities, Elma. It is not for you to be concerned with. Suffice it to say that, should we find Upping, we will have solved your dilemma."

"And you won't let me go until we do," I added. "Because I'm a muse, and I'm in danger."

"Correct," he said in a low voice, sitting down on the sofa next to me.

"And you'll sit here tonight and pull together a plan to find him."

"Correct." A whisper this time.

He was close to me; I looked into the deep pools of blue in his eyes, my heart thrumming noticeably in my chest. "Why do you care so much?" I asked quietly.

He lowered his head with a furrowed brow, then raised his gaze back to mine, looking not at my eyes but at my soul. "As said ...," he paused, silent for a moment, focused somewhere far from here, then at length returned to continue, " . . . it is a long story which I will save for another day." He stopped speaking, but then leaned forward in his seat, a fresh thought waiting to make itself known. "Do you have any notion of how important you are to this community, Elma?" We were almost nose to nose. I could see the intensity in his face, and his impassioned whisper singed my flesh.

I smiled now, for the first time.

"And I couldn't persuade you to let me go?"

He smiled back, then stopped. "Unfortunately not. I am unfazed by you."

"Are you?" I whispered. It was the alcohol, and in the silence that followed, heavy as the several feet of snow stacked outside the cabin walls, I did not know if unfazed was a word that applied to either of us.

In the slowest of slow motion, Everest Hendry leaned forward and took the empty whiskey glass from my hand. Reaching behind my head, he grabbed the towel wrapped around my hair and gently pulled, freeing the damp locks to fall all around me. He sent that same hand back under their wet weight, holding the back of my head in his palm. His face came toward me in an everlasting second, his lips just grazing mine en route to the side of my head. From under my hair, I felt his hot breath on my neck, and his breathless whisper in my ear.

"No."

# 31. The Other Shore

I woke up above a large spot of drool on a ridiculously comfortable pillow. How the hell did he do that? I was covered with a quilt so warm it must have been made of polar bear belly fuzz or something, and my robe was still on as well (thank goodness for that happy discovery). The retro clock on the wall said 2:30 AM.

Rising, stretching and wrapping the blanket around me, I padded over to the window and looked up at the inky night sky. It was so black it was blue, like thick velvet. How cold it was I couldn't imagine. Could anything be alive out there in the dim, frigid night? Did any creature take advantage of the dark to find its sustenance, make it's fortune? What did they call this kind of stillness?

My head began to swim a little. All the alcohol, I realized—I just wasn't accustomed to that much wine, let alone the whiskey. After a quick bladder break, I walked into the great room where we'd spent the evening. It was dark, the fire was out, and the silence was surreal. I poured myself a glass of water from the high-octane filter in the spigot and sat down to think. The concept of escape came and went like a flicker. Although Everest was fast asleep in the other bedroom, and wouldn't hear me if I were to sneak out, I would be daft to even consider trying to make it anywhere in this dead dark cold. Plus, I was still battling the mysterious pull that kept me from taking any of the intelligent steps toward self-preservation that I should. And it was still winning out. Why?

At any rate, my play for the moment was to play along, to follow my captor back down to Earth and find a way to get free once I could realistically seize the opportunity and could fully extract my head from my ass. Until then, there was nothing wrong with listening. Everest had clearly developed a very detailed and extensive alternate reality, and it really was fascinating to hear the well-defined details of his manufactured truth.

Another great benefit was his feeling for me—clear, indisputable affection. He wanted to protect me—that much was obvious. I could use this fact to my advantage, although I shook my head at myself for admitting that I wanted to do that. But in the grand scheme of things, when someone is holding you against your will, whisking you off to barren, desolate hideouts, who in her good, rational mind wouldn't use her captor's crush as a lever? It was as simple as that.

And finally, there was the room—that mysterious, disturbing and impossible to ignore space that was now open and beckoning within me. The events of the evening before shook me—had shaken me then, and continued to haunt me now. There were little specks of time when I did believe what Everest was telling me. My disbelief had been suspended, and whenever that curtain rose, I saw things differently, thought different thoughts, if just for an infinitesimal second.

I lifted the water glass to my lips again, considering all of these things, when I heard the sound. A hawk screaming, just like the one I'd heard on that first date with Mike a week and a century ago. It had surprised me then, but that was all; I too immersed in the deliciousness of the moment to register more. This time, though, the sound sent a pang of alarm and a thrill of fear through me, though I hadn't the first idea why.

My next thought was not of me, of Mike, or of the cause of this sound. It was of Everest. Only Everest. And it was urgent, an aching need to see him and know he was all right. As the seconds passed, it didn't loosen its grip on me, and I had to act on it.

The door to the second bedroom creaked once in a high-pitched squeal when I pushed against it. As the dark room came into view I could begin to make out his shape, trimmed in the tan and white sheets. The bed was large, and he took up only a little part of it, curled up on one side in warm, hushed comfort. Only it wasn't him. Panic washed over my body in a cold wave as I picked up the long body pillow in the darkness. I had to find him.

Racing across the wood floor with my robe hanging askew, I slipped into my jeans, grabbed the boots, coat, gloves and fur hat he had provided when we arrived here, and rushed to insulate myself from the cold. Then, with a great inhale, I braced myself and stepped outside.

Wind whipped me in an angry bluster, overwhelming me with painful cold. I could barely stay on my feet, and the cruel air hit me so hard I wanted to cry. I blindly put one foot in front of the other in the dark, snow reaching up to my knees. Why was I even doing this? Still, I couldn't stop myself.

An evergreen forest lined the property, and I found myself trudging toward it. There was no fence, no barrier or any other structure keeping guests from venturing out, because really, who would be crazy enough to do it? People staying in this type of cushy place likely had no desire to rough it in the Alaskan wilderness. But apparently I was different, and so into the woods I went.

If it was dark out in the open, it was, if it were even possible, darker within the dense mass of trees. I had seen the grounds as we pulled in the day before, a wide swath of flat white land surrounded on all sides by thick layers of evergreen. What lay beyond them was a mystery. Now, in the dark, all that was visible were the moonlit snow and the daunting shadow beyond that represented the pines, waving in the cold wind in warning. My conscious mind had no idea where to go, yet somehow I was turning and maneuvering around in some direction or other within these untenable surroundings. For what may have been thirty minutes I continued to trek through the woods, each step a treacherous field of obstacles and dangers.

A stumble. My foot hit something under the snow, and momentum launched me forward over it. I landed on my face, the foot-high pile of white breaking my fall. Face red and stinging, chest and arms aching, I stood again, struggling for a moment to regain my balance, and started once more to walk forward. Was I nuts?

After another ten minutes, I was so deep in the woods that I had no idea how to get out again. My hands had been cold at first, then recently had gone numb, and now began to ache in a way that worried me a little. As my feet pushed forward step by step, my inner voice of rationality began to shout at me, telling me to turn my ass around and get to safety before it was very literally too late. As she bellowed, I saw again the man on the shore, and the mermaid who was now reaching out to him, helping him to cross the water safely to her.

Step, step, step. Another stumble. The wind had kicked up, and knocked me flat on my back in a bramble of icy evergreen branches. I was scratched, bruised, and to top it off, cut my lip on my teeth. I tried to swing back onto my feet, but found that I couldn't get purchase enough on the ground to lever myself back to standing. Like Ralphie's brother in _A Christmas Story_ , the outfit I'd donned to keep from freezing rendered me so inflexible that I couldn't get up.

I also couldn't breathe, but that was now due to fear. The fear of being stranded here, unable to get back to the cabin, of freezing to death in the dark and cold night in the middle of nowhere. And the fear of not finding Everest . . .

Carefully and painfully, I rolled to my side, which opened my chest a bit and allowed me to inhale fully. I smelled smoke. Unmistakable. Where? It wasn't in front of me, and if I craned my neck around to look to my left, there was nothing there. With difficulty, I heaved my weight back and forth until I was able to fling myself to the other side, and there it was. Straight ahead, in the direction I had been traveling, was a tiny wood shack. It looked to be the size of the average living room, alone here in the barren snow, but not abandoned. There was smoke issuing from an iron pipe cut into the roof, white, billowing and scented with pine. Someone. My heart almost choked me.

"Help!" A meek whimper, barely audible even to me.

"Help me!" Some louder, but not nearly loud enough. I needed all the breath space I could possibly muster, the whole of my diaphragm, but that wasn't possible in this side position. I made it onto my stomach, head and face covered in wet snow, and, with some of the only energy I had left in my soaked, chilled body, hauled myself onto all fours. Then, with the deepest possible breath I could muster and the focus and gut-gripped vigor of a woman pushing her child into the world, I let out a guttural, piercing scream.

Two seconds later, the door to the shack opened and Everest stepped out to stare at me in a halo of light that broke the night.

# 32. The Freeze

Everest Hendry was absolutely irate. And he wasn't speaking. After he had carried me indoors, peeled off my sodden, freezing outer layer and unceremoniously plopped me in front of the potbelly stove in my robe, there was total, awkward silence in the room. Everest now sat at a little wooden table next to me, reading a huge encyclopedia. He wouldn't even spare a glance in my direction.

After what seemed like a year and a half, I just couldn't take it anymore.

"Thank you."

"That was sophomoric." A pause, the sound of fingernails scratching old paper.

"Where are we?"

"Upping's research center."

"Oh. Does he still use it?"

Everest glared down at me, condescension all over his face. "Does it appear that he's been recently?" And with that, he went back to reading.

Feeling humiliated, I quietly looked around the room. Everything was covered in semi-frozen cobwebs, and under them I could just make out the silhouettes of shelving and cabinets, which lined every wall floor to ceiling. It did indeed look like someone had worked here, but how on earth they had done it was the question. If there was an Upping, and he did do research way out here, how did he figure out how to get here without freezing to death or being eaten by something?

How he could have survived way out in this desolate place I had no idea, and I wasn't about to ask right now. Everest hadn't even deigned to ask me if I was OK . . .

I stretched out on the thin throw rug next to the stove and heaved a sigh. There was nowhere else to lay, I mused; the only pieces of furniture were the desk, the chair where Everest was studying and the small sitting room chair I had just been using. No sofa, no bed. Where did Upping sleep?

Idly scanning the shelves within my view, I saw stacks and stacks of what looked like textbooks, all dusty and grey, next to bottles and boxes and leather-bound notebooks. Tons of notebooks. There had to be fifty—no, a hundred—identically-sized and shaped small volumes, placed one after the other very neatly along the shelves. Where there weren't books, there was a funny assortment of other things—a dishful of rocks, a very old-fashioned pair of coke bottle glasses, and—what was that—hair? Bizarre.

Everest returned the encyclopedia or whatever it was to the shelf, scanned for a second, and selected another volume. He almost looked like he knew his way around this joint. He almost looked like he knew his way . . .

"Where did Upping sleep?"

Everest sighed impatiently, looked up from his book and said, "Nowhere."

"What did he eat? There's no kitchen here, no plates, no water . . . "

"He didn't eat here." Everest let out another clearly audible sigh of impatience as a message to me to stop talking.

"Where did he eat, then? He's human after all, right? A guy's got to eat occasionally."

Everest snapped the book shut loudly, and looked over at me with menace. "If it satisfies your seemingly unquenchable thirst for useless details, Theobald Upping once owned this property. The grounds, the resort, the whole of the area was his. He worked here, but ate, slept—and likely shat—on the estate. Is there anything else you would like to know at the moment, Elma?"

"No." I rolled away from him and toward the fire to think. Upping. If I were to believe Everest, there was a roughly hundred and fifty year-old doctor out there somewhere who studied supernatural creatures and did research in a deserted corner of the Arctic. And he was rich. OK, difficult to swallow that one, especially the—well, especially all of it. So what else? How else could Everest know about this place, how could he navigate right to this tiny outbuilding way out here in Alaska, and how would he know so well what was in it?

I'd already established that Everest had cash—that much was evident. What if HE owned this place—the grounds, the resort, the whole of it? It would explain the royal treatment he got, the Architectural Digest-quality log cabin, the driver. It would be a perfect spot for him to have created this whole alternate reality. Right here in this shack . . . day after day after day, imagining, fabricating, constructing, recording . . .

I looked again at the sea of notebooks along the walls, and a chill ran down my spine. He knew which book was which, he knew where in this room to pick out the right volume. This room represented so many hours of writing, of hallucinating . . . it floored me.

And again I was afraid. The sheer weight of his sickness dawned on me then, hit me like a snowdrift. He had money, he had power, and he was insane. And I was trapped in the middle of the Alaskan wild with him as my only real means of survival. And he owned and controlled everything around us.

But no, that was ridiculous. Why couldn't he have done the same work in his office at the American University, or at Straythern, for that matter? There was no reason he'd need to schlepp to the corner of civilization just to write in a notebook and dream up such fantastical shit. And he'd been busy living and working too—when would he have done all of this? To boot, everything in this room was obviously quite old, and per the cobwebs, no one had been here in decades. What, did he do all this when he was sixteen? No, didn't make any sense at all. Moreover, it just wasn't like him, as far as I could tell from our brief sequestration together. He was too . . . logical. But if not that, then what was the truth? There was a shack, and someone had worked here, and he was intimately familiar with it all.

The door to the secret compartment in my mind creaked open again. The possibility that Theobald Upping was real was as difficult to accept as Everest's empty claim that he was a vampire, but what if it were true? Number one, Upping did have a lot of detail around him. Number two, Everest gave a logical history, once you got past the fact that Upping was conducting sociological interviews with werewolves as a career and apparently had figured out how not to die of old age. Number three, Everest WAS an academic, and he did know a hell of a lot about preternaturals, or whatever he called them. Finally, I thought with a twinge of poignancy that appeared mysteriously and unbeckoned, there was something much older than forty-something about him, though I had never been able to zero in on exactly what it was. Perhaps, through the vampire fabrication, he had been trying to tell me he was different, but, for whatever reason, without divulging to me who he truly was? To tell me without telling me? Could it be, somehow? I petition the jury . . .

Was Everest Hendry really Theobald Upping? If so, Theobald Upping was pissed.

"Let's go." He was at the door, holding my fire-dried coat and accessories in his hands. He said no more, but simply pushed his arms forward to indicate I should take the proffered clothing and get my ass dressed. I shrugged into everything as best I could, over the bathrobe, trying not to flash him even more than before as I maneuvered, and walked to the door like a recently reprimanded child. It infuriated me to no end to act this way, but I had to be on his good side, if only for my own good.

We walked around to the back of the shack, and there it was. A fucking snowmobile. Really? I trudge out on a treacherous Arctic rescue on a ridiculous whim that a deranged maniac is in trouble, when all the time he's styling around on a damn Yamaha? Give me a break.

He saw what I was thinking, but he didn't even give me his typical "aren't I clever and aren't you a boob?" smile. Nothing but sternness, nothing but a frozen brick wall. Shit. Instead, he wheeled the snowmobile (which was really pretty sick), about twenty feet away from me, and started tinkering with the starter.

I sneezed, and when I opened my eyes again Everest was about to be killed.

# 33. Black and Green

His hair stood on end, jet black against the white surroundings. Every time he inhaled and exhaled, a low groan resonated from his throat and oozed into the air, carried on a warm breeze that was visible coming from his mouth and nose. Other than the rise and fall of his body in time with his breath, he was completely still.

It was so quiet.

Everest was also completely still, standing beside the snowmobile and staring. They were eye to eye, blink to blink, five feet from each other's face. Neither made a move, awaiting his opponent's action, anticipating, calculating, deciding what the next step would be. Sizing things up. Finally, one of the competitors made a commitment.

A low-pitched roar filled the space, making even the trees vibrate with sound. The bear began to circle Everest slowly, his eyes never leaving him. Everest stood stock still; whether unable to move or planning his next move, I had no idea, but his face was unreadable. The only sound was that same grunting exhalation, over and over again, like a mantra.

Another circle. Everest followed the beast's eyes constantly, never breaking the connection even for a second. I hadn't moved an inch; I was rooted to the spot like my feet were frozen in place, which for all I knew, they could be. All I saw was the pair of them, man and beast, dancing around each other like boxers in the championship ring in a battle built as much of psychology as of brawn.

The hawk screamed again.

My eyes went to Everest just as his eyes went upward. At that millisecond the bear struck, lunging forward with both forepaws up and out, speeding straight for his victim's neck. Then there was blood. Blood coloring the snow. Everest's blood dripping into the crust of pure white.

He was on the ground. No, they were both on the ground. A black beast with shiny black hackles standing straight up; under him, a bleeding man, silent, struggling, weakening. Weakening. Bleeding. Dying. Everest was dying.

A scream emanated from the bottom-most portion of my gut without my summoning it. Even to my ears it came as a shock—shrill, loud, and echoing back against the whole of the landscape around it. Everything stopped. Everything but the bear.

He walked to me seething, his breath coming in spurts, mouth open. So many teeth, it made me swoon. He walked to within three feet of me, and then he stopped.

There was nothing in my mind. I didn't think of Mills, or Mike, or my piano, or Esteban . . . or Everest. There was no image in my head as I stared at the beast in front of me. I just looked at him. And the sole thought that came into my mind in the seconds as I awaited his fatal attack was that I never knew that bears had green eyes. And I said that out loud.

But the bear didn't attack me. In the next moment I was alive, and in the moment after that . . . he stood opposite me, giving me reprieve with every hacksaw breath. "What now?" I whispered into the woods. And then, unbelievably, incredibly, beautifully, he turned around and simply walked away into the cover of the trees.

I ran to Everest. There was a sizable gash at his collarbone, and it hurt him. But when I got a closer look, it was superficial, and already starting to clot over. He was not going to bleed to death in front of me. But he was cold.

I helped him up and walked under him like a crutch back to the little shack, then threw a log into the stove and laid him in front of it. I didn't know what I was feeling, or if I was feeling anything, to be truthful. I took off Everest's boots, coat, socks, sweater, and then, with only a moment's modest hesitation, unbuttoned and slid off his slacks, which were sodden and freezing. He lay before me, lay in my arms, completely naked. I didn't look. But oh, how I wanted to. Instead, I put my own coat over him and gazed into his tired eyes.

"He didn't kill you."

"How did you know it was a he?"

"What?"

# 34. Recovery

Everest slept for most of the morning and into the afternoon. He was fine physically, but he had been wounded and had gone through not a minor trauma, and he needed to refuel. The wound was not large or terribly deep, but it did need attention, so I cleaned it as best I could with snow and dried it well. Now, as Everest lay asleep by the stove, swaddled in my winter coat, I did several things.

First, I thought. About everything. Why hadn't I been mauled to death today? Why hadn't I cried and wrung my hands when Everest was attacked? Why hadn't I been afraid when the bear's close-up was on me? Why on earth was I in this situation in the first place? As I looked around me again I marveled at the sheer implausibility of it all. How in hell could I possibly have maneuvered from the recital hall at Straythern University to this place? It was difficult, impossible . . . sad. My eyes began to well up, and so I had to refocus.

On books. So many books lining the walls of this tiny shack. Regardless of how they got here, regardless of who had filled them all with words and thoughts, it was impressive to see. Ever so gently, I lifted Everest's head from my knee and lowered it to the floor. As a last-minute afterthought, I stacked my gloves on the wood floor and gently rested his head on them, then started to get up. As I stood I saw that there were drops of his blood on the leg of my jeans. A strange irony.

Egad, I had probably been sitting there for at least two hours, and the blood throughout the lower half of my body had all pooled to one place a good while ago. Ouch. No feeling in my lower extremities, and then that pseudo-numbness that you know damned well is about to be followed by a riotous round of pins and needles. Wait for it—and there we go! It was all I could do not to screech in tickly-prickly pain as I sort-of-danced around the room trying to get the circulation fully circuiting through my legs again.

I sashayed away from Sleeping Beauty, perhaps to avoid waking him, but also perhaps to avoid tripping over his log-sawing ass in my hillbilly ballet. I don't need this shit, I thought to myself. I should be on my couch, with my puppy, waiting for my sexy-sweet boyfriend to pleasure me on a Saturday afternoon. This was clearly not my idea of a fun time.

After a few minutes, I could stop grimacing and gripping the bookcase. Several deep, cleansing breaths after that I started to pore over a few of the titles on the spines of the non-notebooks. The only problem was, they were tough to appreciate fully because most of them weren't in English. Some I could tell were Italian or French. A few bore the unmistakable Cyrillic lettering of Russian, and a bunch of others were those that I'd classify in the corner of my brain marked, "What the hell?"

Aha. An English one. It was a petite, blue hardback with delicate pages. There was a bookmark in it (how generous of him not to mar the pages with dog-ears, the big lug), and I went to it. The marker itself was a dried branch of some sort—odd. Anyway, I've seen stranger things today, I thought to myself, and smiled unwittingly.

The page marked was a poem. A poem about a siren.

SIREN

Come, worthy Greek! Ulysses, come,

Possess those shores with me!

The winds and seas are troublesome,

And here we may be free!

Here we may sit and view their toil

That travail in the deep,

And joy the day in mirth the while,

And spend the night in sleep

ULYSSES

Fair nymph! if fame or honor were

To be attained with ease,

Then would I come and rest with thee,

And leave such toils as these.

But here it dwells, and here must I

With danger seek it forth:

To spend the time luxuriously

Becomes not men of worth

SIREN

Ulysses, O be not deceiv'd

With that unreal name,

This honour is a thing conceiv'd,

And rests on others' fame.

Begotten only to molest

Our peace, and to beguile

The best thing of our life—our rest,

And give us up to toil

ULYSSES

Delicious Nymph, suppose there were

No honour, nor report,

Yet manliness would scorn to wear

The time in idle sport;

For toil doth give a better touch

To make us feel our joy,

And ease finds tediousness as much

As labour finds annoy

SIREN

Then pleasure, likewise, seems the shore

Whereto tends all your toil,

Which you forego to make it more,

And perish oft the while.

Who may disport them diversely,

Find never tedious day,

And ease may have variety,

As well as action may

ULYSSES

But natures of the noblest frame

These toils and dangers please;

And they take comfort in the same

As much as you in ease;

And with the thought of actions past

Are recreated still:

When Pleasure leaves a touch at last,

To show that it was ill

SIREN

That doth Opinion only cause,

That's out of Custom bred,

Which makes us many other laws

Than ever Nature did.

No widows wail for our delights,

Our sports are without blood;

The world we see by warlike wights

Receives more hurt than good

ULYSSES

But yet the state of things require

These motions of unrest;

And these great Spirits of high desire

Seem born to turn them best:

To purge the mischiefs that increase,

And all good order mar,

For oft we see a wicked peace

To be well chang'd for war

SIREN

Well, well, Ulysses, then I see

I shall not have thee here:

And therefore I will come to thee,

And take my fortune there.

I must be won, that cannot win,

Yet lost were I not won;

For beauty hath created been

T'undo, or be undone.

# 35. Black on Olive on Rose

He was awake. I snapped the book closed and slammed it onto the shelf like a naughty school kid caught looking at naked people in _National Geographic_. I turned around and saw that he had . . . well . . . rolled over. _National Geographic_ , my ass.

I only had five seconds to take him in before his eyes opened, but I soaked in so much during those five beats. The makeshift blanket I had provided wasn't the easiest thing to keep wrapped around you, and it was indeed off of him, lying over to his side in a clump. What was laid out in front of me was a Da Vinci portrait of utter beauty. The modest down of hair on Everest's chest was jet black and vibrant against the light olive of his skin in the low light. His bear bite was on the collarbone opposite me; I could just make out the silhouette of dried blood and new scabbing.

I realized to myself as I stood there with my mouth hanging open that I hadn't given enough appreciation to the arms that had flexed out from behind his tee shirt back in Seneca Falls. The line was marvelous, twining from bicep to deltoid to pecs, down to abs, and down again . . . he was not skinny, but lean, and fleshed out. And taut. And soft. Not jacked like Mike and his never-ending pectorals, but spare and strong. And so lovely.

His hips gave way to muscular, lean runner's legs, again covered in a thin layer of wiry down. As I gazed at them, at all of him, it sunk into me that there was no way he could be even forty years old. His skin was unmarred and pure, without a single wrinkle or dark spot anywhere to be found. There was no grey in any of his body hair at all. Any man of forty, regardless of how genetically well-endowed or careful with his body, has some kind of road map of his life etched into his flesh. Everest was a clean palate. The only marking that gave away a story was a pair of identical round scars at the base of his neck, not too far above his new wound and barely visible. But that was all. How did he stay this way, this . . . young? As I continued to study him, Upping again crept into my mind, strolling blithely into that secret compartment.

Everest's feet were nothing less than cute. His toes were perfectly distributed in size from big toe to pinky, not like my party trick giant second toe that hovered over the others like a podiatric security probe. Again, clean and smooth—no corns, no calluses, and well-manicured nails. Everest in the pedicure chair? Precious. I cast my view higher, to shapely ankles, lean shins, vascular calves, and small knees. Perfect knees with a perfectly sized knob and dimples on the sides, leading to strong, smooth thighs with . . . oh.

His penis lay against his left thigh, which was the closer one to me. Warm, soft, black on olive on rose. Generous. Yes, not Robert Mapplethorpe (and that was good), but definitely generous. Smooth skin all around with a blush in the middle. Wait . . .

He was the first uncircumcised man I'd ever seen. I noticed first how . . . nice . . . it looked, all smoothness everywhere, with no ridges or seams. It was like a sleeve around a wine bottle, the wrapping flush with the contents. It reminded me of something, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was. But I did want to put my fingers on him, to touch him and see how he changed under my hands.

I blushed at myself for taking advantage of him in this way, and pulled my eyes back up as he began to stretch. Cords in his neck strained under perfectly smooth skin shining with pulse, tension and sweat. Stunning. I turned away.

"Žena? What time is it?"

He was still half-dreaming. I couldn't answer. I felt as though I was about to weep, but had no idea why.

"Žena?"

I heard him stir, and waited a few beats for him to cover up before I turned around. But he hadn't—when I looked back he was sitting up with his knees half bent, still naked and half asleep.

"What time is it?"

"I don't know. Are you OK?"

"Of course." He sounded groggy rather than convincing. "Have a look outside. Where is the sun?"

I ambled over to the window and glanced out. An orange sun looked back at me from the side of the sky.

"Here." I pointed and turned back around to face Everest, who had come to a standing position and was in mid-stretch, arms raised and everything reaching for the sky. Oh for . . .

"Everest," I said matter-of-factly, clearly uncomfortable with his apparent comfort. He looked at me again for a long beat, and his eyes went wide. He cleared his throat suddenly, and turned to the side, hiding the goods from sight.

"We need to go. Now. Where are my clothes?"

"Why?"

He rushed around the room on a mission. "Because our driver will be arriving to pick us up at 5:30 PM. We have a plane to catch."

"What? Everest, you can't get on a plane! You just almost got mauled to death!"

"Hurry." He had his clothes on already, struggling into his boots and heading toward the door all at the same time. He didn't say anything else, just held my coat out for me.

He opened the door gingerly (who wouldn't?) and peeked around to see if the bear had come back. Then, satisfied that the coast was momentarily clear, he grabbed my hand and we spilled out into the late afternoon dusk. We raced to the snowmobile, he helped me to climb on, then he settled in front of me and we sped away. I spent the majority of the five-minute ride trying to do something other than metaphorically whack myself over the head with a mallet.

Back at the cabin, Everest called the main office and was reassured that Andrew had not yet been by. No more than five minutes later he pulled up, we gathered our things, and as we walked out the door I looked back at the rich space and recognized that something had truly happened here.

# 36. Breakthrough

"Roan?"

Vampire tears are red, and this vampire's red tears wet the white face of the index card he held, interrupting its homogeneity with rose-colored blooms.

"Roan?" Upping whispered, as if careful not to wake him from his nightmare—his waking, perpetual nightmare. His patient merely bent over in response, covering his face and tearstained fangs in his hands, the blood-dotted parchment dropping to the floor.

"Oh, mate." The two men sat in sob-dotted silence, Upping gently patting his friend's back as he cried. After a long length of moments, the aching man spoke.

"I love her, I have loved her, and I will ever love her—ever, Upping—but... it is clear," he choked, reaching for a handkerchief. "It is all perfectly clear. She is not mine to take, she is not of my kind, she is not in my grasp." He heaved a staccato sigh. "She will . . . never . . . let me in." Comprehension and heartbreak sang across his face and he again succumbed to sobs, awash in misery.

The two men sat in sob-dotted silence for several moments. On the other side of the window, the night stretched out along the street, unfolding its layers of dusk. At last, the vampire raised his head weakly to look with desperation into his companion's eyes.

"Help me, Upping," he whispered. His eyes were black with tiredness, red with blood, and purple with inhuman humanity. Roan Randall reached out, beseeching, to grasp the doctor's arm. "Please, Upping... please teach me how to stop loving her."

# 37. The Finish

The plane ride home was silent. Everest was being a righteous dick, and had been perfecting his dickliness since he'd woken up in that shack of a workshop. He hadn't looked at me or said a single, solitary word since we'd boarded the first plane, and he only talked to me before that to make sure I was taking off my shoes in security and standing in the right line. I tried to talk to him once at the airport, one very simple question about the logistics of the airport lounge, and he gave me two pissy, terse words delivered with all the delicacy of a premenstrual caveman. So screw it, I thought, we'll travel like mimes today. Fine with me—I was so tired after the trauma, drama and lack of sleep that resting my head on the back of the seat and closing my eyes seemed like the most luxurious indulgence in the world.

I had absolutely every right to be ticked off, too, I reconfirmed to myself as I drifted off. Aside from the whole kidnapping thing, there's the issue of lying. Let's be honest, if you're going to spend years of your life studying non-existent fantastical shit, the least you could do is not lie about doing it. If you've spent years in an Arctic shack writing about vampires, own up to it, for piss sakes!

And oh by the way, I do believe I would choose the emotion of gratitude if my captive had risked her life to save my freezing ass in said Arctic wilderness. I totally could have gotten lost, eaten, or gotten hypothermia and had my fingers freeze . . .

Just then the gravity of my actions hit me like a glacier. Not only had I risked my life, my safety on a gut instinct that Everest was in some type of danger, but I had risked my HANDS. The same hands I had professionally manicured on a weekly basis to keep them healthy, the same hands I protected from sports due to the risk that I might break a finger, the same hands that were my very lifeline to the musical universe that filled my soul.

Anger. Real, seething, animalistic anger. It consumed me just then, and it was all I could do to stay in my seat next to him. I spent the remaining two hours of the flight staring out the window with my fists clenched, trying to stay in any way calm. How he had gotten inside me was beyond my ken, but I had crossed the line for him. And he didn't even acknowledge it.

The clop-clop of my boots on the airport flooring was a fast and pronounced drumbeat. I didn't give half a rat's ass if he was behind me or not. Let him try to keep up. Good luck to him. He caught me around the waist at the escalator, holding me hard to him from behind. Again, no words, but in his touch I heard clearly that I needed to check myself, that I was still in his keeping, in his charge.

Onto the monorail, out to the parking garage. Clop-clop-clop. It was six AM. A hundred cars were our witnesses at this hour, but no people. He grabbed my arm and I pulled it away.

Finally brimming over with anger, I looked at him with thunder in my stare. "How DARE you!" I spat. I ran; he ran after me. He caught me, spun me around and glared at me with lightning in his eyes.

"Elma, stop this insolence right now and come with me to the car."

"Fuck you," I said slowly and clearly. I ran again, and again he caught me, discreetly but effectively squeezing the shit out of my forearm until I almost cried out. Much to my irate embarrassment, tears (tears, really?) sprang into my eyes.

"Get your hands off me," I yelled as I tried to wrench my arms out of his grasp.

"Get. In. The. Car." It was not a request, it was a warning.

"Never."

He pinned me against a Kia. "As thankless as you are, Elma, I am still concerned for your life, so stop being a petulant idiot and get in the car."

I leaned forward so we were nose to nose, and like a rabid bull, I could almost feel the steam issuing from my nose and mouth.

"You are a liar, Everest, an ungrateful and demented liar. How COULD you? You rip me from my life, subject me to whatever perverted shit it is your brain has signed on to, and what do I do? I go along with it! I humor you! You haul me all over the fucking world as your hostage, and I just accept it. I listen to your deluded explanations, I go to the enth degree for you, and what do you do? You LIE to me!"

"What are you raving about?" He was incensed. "It is you, madam, who owes me an apology. I have tried so very hard to keep you from harm, and this is the result? I have never for one instant led you astray, Elma. If you think otherwise, you are a stupid, stupid woman."

"You bastard!" I seethed. "You have done nothing but lie to me!" I was screaming now. I could hear my voice reverberating off the walls of the garage, but I didn't care. "Let's go north, you say. We'll find a plan, you say. We'll figure out how to find this Upping, you say. I almost lose my ability to play during this wild goose chase for you, and all the while, it's YOUR cabin, YOUR resort, YOUR perverted command center you drag me to! Everest, I have played along, I have given you the benefit of the doubt, but you tricked me, and you're still treating me like a fucking prisoner!"

He screamed now too. "Elma, it was YOU who broke our agreement, not I. The moment you tried to escape, the fact that you were so desperate as to do something so utterly mindless to get away from me . . . " A second's pause, his hands running through his hair. "HOW ELSE CAN I TREAT YOU?" he roared. His voice echoed off every wall of the garage, making his left hook words have triple the effect as they ricocheted through the quiet space.

First, tears of anger made their way up to my eyes. Then a hot flow of fury began to work its way up from my gut, sailing fast, needing to hit their mark. Everest stared at me with ferocious light, and I stared back at him with a fire of my own that was equal to anything he could dish out. Now I spoke softly enough to make his ears bleed.

"You think I was trying to escape?" There was a rudely incredulous smile on my face as I asked the question; I could feel it. "You asshole, you absolute asshole, did it ever occur to you that I was trying to help? I heard a sound, I didn't see you, so I went looking for you. I almost got hypothermia," I hissed, holding up my hands. As he stared at them, now I roared. "I RISKED MY LIFE FOR YOU! What a mistake."

I turned away from him, hit the elevator button and walked through the opening doors, not caring whether or not he was behind me. He was.

His face transformed; his expression was now unreadable. He was searching me, confused, wounded. There was nothing else to say, no other barbs to throw as the doors dinged open at ground level. So, I just turned around.

# 38. The Rescuer

Esteban's frantic face filled my view. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen in my entire life.

"Come with me," he commanded without even pausing to look in Everest's direction, and, grabbing me by the arm, he began to pull me from the elevator car. I looked behind me once—Everest wasn't there. But in the next instant he was behind Esteban, gripping his arms and trying to shift him off balance. I was shoved at an odd angle as he got a better hold of Esteban's left arm, and I toppled onto the cement floor with a thud. From my vantage point, I could see Everest hovering over Esteban against the wall, then shoving him around and punching him, sending him reeling across the dark parking lot. Then Everest was headed back to me, arms outstretched to gather me up. But before he could reach his destination, he let out a pained cry, grabbed the back of his head and shrank to the floor. From his sitting position across the room, Esteban had hit him with something. As he reached in his pocket for a second round of whatever he was packing, he let out a loud directive. "Elma—run! Get to the doors!"

I was on my feet in a heartbeat, so relieved to find that I wasn't injured and could indeed run up the inclined driveway back to the main entrance at terminal level. I shrank behind a Suburban until I saw Esteban approaching, seeming to run faster the closer he got to the entryway.

"We have to hurry." He grabbed my hand and we ran out the exit onto the sidewalk. It was a clear morning, and the sudden change from darkness to rising sun made it tough for me to see. The next thing I felt was Esteban lifting me into his arms and running with me toward his Jeep Wrangler parked a few hundred feet away in the car service lot amidst all the shiny Lincolns.

Again with the cars. Esteban started the ignition, drove us out of the airport and out of Newark without a word, and headed back to the interstate. This time, though, instead of being in the clutches of a kidnapper, I was safe, and I was on my way home. Finally.

"You saved my life," I said at length. No reply, so I continued. "But we have to get him locked up. He's been stalking me, Esteban—he knows so much about me, I'm sure he knows where I live. I can't go back until he's gone."

"We're going to my parents' cabin—you'll be safe there." Of course he'd realized I was still a target. This was a great idea. Everest couldn't track us, and I certainly couldn't have left any breadcrumb trail to a place I didn't even know about yet. Relief coursed through me in a welcome warm wave, and I felt every muscle relax.

"Oh, thank you," I sighed, resting my exhausted head on his thick, strong shoulder. Consciousness started to drift away from me almost immediately as the Jeep gently hummed beneath us. I was so, so tired. Every part of my being was exhausted; emotionally, mentally, as well as physically, I just had nothing left.

"Get some sleep," I heard Esteban whisper from outside my little cocoon. And finally, I could sleep—safe, unharmed and on my way out of this bizarre nightmare. The things I had started to think, to consider . . . so many impossibilities Everest had made me somehow begin to believe. Even now, just a few minutes after it had ended, I could already see the absurdity of it all. At the same time, I began to feel afraid by how Hendry had begun to affect my sanity. Was this how cult thinking or brainwashing began? The things I had started to believe could be true! How could I have slipped from reason so quickly?

It had all been so unreal, I mused under a veil of sleep, perhaps it had been a nightmare indeed. Perhaps, I thought as I began to rouse a bit, it was this nightmare I was now waking from. Maybe the vector of sleep had taken me straight through the horror and back to reality. Regaining consciousness little by little from my delicious floating, I could smell Esteban's cologne, and understood that it could be true, I could be simply waking into my old life. Opening my eyes, I saw his car's interior—the same as it had always been. To the left, the ripped knee of his favorite jeans, his boots pressed against the gas pedal. Next to him, my own jeans, the left knee dotted here and there with . . . blood. And my chest panged.

"Hi," he said simply. "Are you feeling OK, Elma?" he asked with eyes still fixed on the road.

"I think so," I replied hazily, still a little disoriented. I leaned back in the seat again and rubbed at my eyes, images of the past days shooting back at me from my closed lids. "I thought he was going to kill me. Esteban, he's deranged, he was saying all of these bizarre things." I yawned, exhaustion once again beginning to overtake me after just a few moments of wakefulness. "How in the world did you find me?" I yawned again, doing serious battle with the sandman now. All of a sudden, though, an alarming thought worked its way in and caused me to sit bolt upright. Mike. "We need to tell Mike. I called him too. He's (ugh—we never did get to that conversation) . . . he's a . . . a . . . friend. He could be worried sick or on his way here. Where's your phone? Shit—"

As I fished around his person looking for his iPhone, I watched Esteban's hand come down on my own and clamp it, hard. Really hard.

"You are mine," he said in a completely emotionless voice, but the look on his face when he turned to me—rabid, crazed, yet emotionless and devoid of any threads of the Esteban that I knew—rendered me once again alive with panic.

# 39. When the Dust Settles

Many, many sad miles later we were back in Winter Rain. Two hours or so earlier I had attempted to open the door and jump onto the now only slightly snowy shoulder as Esteban drove along a country road, so he'd pulled over and tied me to the seat. He had my shoes. He had my purse. He had my broken heart in his pocket.

We were well away from the populated neighborhoods, driving along a quiet street bearing a few houses between patches of open land. I knew this part of town very well—I drove along this street almost every day on the way to rehearsal. It was usually a lovely area, but today the bare trees looked like skeletons in the unyielding glare of late afternoon sunlight against a clear sky. We turned down a few side streets, then came up to a house I remembered having passed by a few times over the years, a huge, old estate-style home now boarded up and long since deserted. Esteban pulled into the drive while I looked on, dumbfounded and terrified. There was no cabin. But he could have taken me anywhere at all—why had he brought me back here to this town? Why this place?

He untied me quickly and lifted me into his arms as though I weighed nothing at all. Who was this beast? He was hot to the touch, and groaning quietly under his breath as he walked. We were face to face, but he wouldn't look at me, continuing to stare forward with singular focus. So instead of continuing my efforts to make eye contact, I let my gaze move over his features, which were indeed altered. He absolutely looked like a bird, from the slope of his nose to the way his eyes darted back and forth. He was beautiful and frightening.

The house was cold, filthy, and cobwebbed. The boards had been removed from most of the enormous windows, sending sunlight streaming through the open space. We passed through the main hall into the sitting room, and then Esteban wasted no time in tethering my hands and feet together so that I couldn't move, depositing me along the wall below one of the windowless windows. As he worked, he must have noticed me shivering. He moved suddenly into the foyer and then I heard a loud crack; seconds later he returned with a piece of wood that looked to have come from a banister or railing somewhere. He tossed it into the fireplace and lit a match.

I took a chance. "What are you going to do with me?"

"We are going away."

"Where?"

"Far from here." As he spoke, there was absolutely no change in his expression. It was positively chilling.

With that, he left me alone in the room again. I could hear him working somewhere else in the house, doing I knew not what. I could hear his voice every once in a great while, cold and staccato, then silence or quiet movement.

"Call him."

The whispered sound came right next to my ear and almost made me scream. I turned my head to find Everest's face at the window, the rest of him hidden below the ledge among brambles that probably used to be a manicured flower bed years ago. He was flushed and dirty, with spots of blood on his face and hands. "Call him. Now." For one eternal second we locked eyes and spoke an entire language of I'm sorry's and thank you's to each other. Finally, I obeyed his command, beckoning Esteban in a loud, pained voice. He came running.

Now what? I thought to myself. "The ropes . . . they're cutting into my skin. Can you fix them?" Well, they were, after all. He bent down, adjusted my bindings, and carefully massaged the chafed spot on my wrists with two fingers.

"Thank you." Finally, he looked into my eyes, and I could indeed see some care there.

Without responding, he rose and moved again toward the door, possibly to continue whatever project he was working on in the next room. But before he reached the doorway, I saw something hit him with the speed of a train.

The movement was too fast for me to follow, but suddenly Esteban was on the floor, and I heard a snap. He didn't move. But the form on top of him did, and came toward me. Everest.

He was breathless and concerned, looking into my eyes and lifting my chin to make sure I was fully conscious and uninjured. His tenderness, the knowledge that I was safe, the shock of seeing Esteban sprawled on the floor in front of me, the confusion over why I had been in danger, the absolute exhaustion—all of them together overtook me, and I began to weep as he held my face in his hands.

"Oh, Elma," he whispered. "Don't cry, all is well. You are well. Yes. There." He held me, stroking my hair as I cried, and I drank in his feel and marvelous fragrance, which no longer signaled an enemy but instead a partner, a comforter, a shore. I bathed in him. He waited until I had settled down to move his hands to the ropes at my wrists. He untied each one delicately, carefully navigating the raw, open cuts from the chafing. When he progressed to my ankles my belly fluttered as I watched him manipulate my legs.

After freeing me, he merely sat down beside me on the dirty wood floor. Heaving a sigh, he cleared his throat and looked at me with a seriously stern expression. Here it comes, I thought.

"You could easily have been killed, you realize. Running was quite a stupid thing to do."

"I know." A pause. "Is he dead?"

"Yes."

I fought back a sob. Everest patted by hand and waited for me to recover. Everything was spinning.

"How did you move so fast? I couldn't even see you! Everest . . . " I looked at him, my heart ready to leap out through my mouth, and he gazed back at me kindly, patiently waiting for my thought, for the answer that I already knew, that he had already confided in me honestly, to fully formulate. Time moved at a snail's pace. Finally, I said it. "What are you?"

"As said," he responded tenderly, with a smile full of kindness lifting his lips, "I am a vampire."

I was ice cold and hot, shaking and dull-limbed. I looked at him again and saw the blood on his face, on his chin, a small speck of red crust at the corner of his mouth. I wanted to be so afraid, but I simply didn't know which fear was the right one.

"There's blood on your mouth."

"Yes."

I could barely get the word out audibly. "Why?" I finally managed to whisper, looking into his eyes and avoiding the evidence below them of the truth in this impossibility. I knew the answer, of course, but I had to hear him say it.

"I had to feed."

"Had to . . . had . . . did you . . . who did you . . . " I stuttered, and continued to try and make a sentence, turning over and over the same words in my mouth like an old engine that wouldn't start. I couldn't stop myself . . . sounds were coming out that I couldn't control, in one long, hysterical chain. I started to get lightheaded from the constant talking and the inability to pause and catch my breath. Faster, faster, like a machine gun. "I don't . . . why . . . you can't be . . . you didn't kill . . . how can it . . . I don't . . . "

Suddenly Everest moved in front of me and put both hands around my face. In the next instant his mouth was on mine, warm, filling, shocking me out of my panic attack. It was a chaste kiss, but firm, and he covered my rebelling mouth like a blanket.

When he drew away I could breathe again. He placed our foreheads together in silence, and for a moment I just listened to my breath going in and out, more and more regular each time.

From just beyond my lips came his voice. "You cut your head on the lamp, yes?"

"Yes." Memories of my ballsy escape attempt at the Seneca Falls Hyatt flew back into my mind.

"You also cut your carotid artery. You were bleeding to death, there before me. I had to help you, so I gave you my blood." The tinny taste in my mouth that I remembered, that was not the result of a split lip after all, but was Everest's blood . . . likely a lot of his blood, as he had been so pale. I suddenly felt nauseous.

"I never feed on blood, Elma. Without it I have the same strength as anyone else. And not only was I unfortified, but giving you my blood made me . . . "

"Weak," I finished for him. I remembered his pallor as he had looked down at me with such joy . . . only joy . . .

"I killed no one but Esteban, Elma. Know that. But I had to save you . . . I had to be a fitting opponent to him. So I had to feed. Do you understand?"

I nodded my head almost imperceptibly in assent. He sighed long in relief and raised his head to look at me. "Are you all right now?"

I took stock of myself silently, and nodded again. Everest moved back, turned around and resumed his position by my side, head resting against the wall.

"Excuse me for that," he said, indicating with a wave of his hand the connection we'd just shared.

"It's OK—it worked." A long pause. I looked up at him in alarm, wide-eyed. "Wait! Will drinking your blood make me . . . a . . . "

"No," he said with an entertained smile. "It is much more complicated a process than that."

"Good." I rested my head against the wall and closed my eyes. It felt sooooo goooood.

At length, Everest spoke next. "What did you tell him?"

"What?"

"Esteban—what did you say to make him come over to you? Sorry, I'm merely curious."

Maybe I was still in need of some air, but I didn't understand. "You were right here," I responded, looking up at him. "You heard me."

He smiled again. It was a welcome sight. "Yes, Elma. I heard you, but it was not a language I am familiar with. High-pitched calls like that are quite a different thing."

I looked at him dumbfounded, wondering if he really was unstable after all. As he caught my mystified gape, his expression changed from smiling amusement to genuine surprise.

"Elma—do you recall our conversations? Do you remember?"

Piece by piece the sound bytes came back to me, my brain now re-compartmentalizing all of Everest's comments from the "deluded serial killer" bucket to the "actually plausible" pile. My hands started to shake, and my breath came in spurts again as everything turned fuzzy in my field of vision. I'll never forget the next words I said.

"I'm a siren?"

"Indeed."

It was too much. Way, way too much. "I don't understand any of this!" My voice cracked as the sentence left my lips, and I was crying again.

"Elma." Everest moved closer and turned his body to face me, supporting my face in both his hands again. "I cannot imagine how bewildering all of this is for you . . . just impossible. But let me help you, please? We'll walk through all of this together. I will explain everything to you. You have my oath."

I didn't respond, but continued to weep, head down. Then I felt his finger under my chin, pulling me up to meet his gaze. His tender, sorrowful, pained-enough-to-make-me-cry-again gaze.

His lavender gaze.

Even as I stared, I could not deny it. Everest's eyes were no longer the soulful blue that had haunted me since that bizarre first meeting in the recital hall, but were now a luminous, deep and resonant violet, the most beautiful hue I had ever seen. They looked down on me now with singular focus, sympathy, and heartbreaking tenderness.

"Elma."

"Help."

It was an endlessly slow moment; Everest dried my tears with his thumbs, even as a droplet teetered at the corner of his own eye. Then he traced my cheeks, then my lips with the pads of his thumbs. His face came closer, his lips drawing toward mine, smelling of tin and sweetness . . .

A cough from the other room froze him in space. Another cough. The precious moment over, he rose and extended his hand to me.

I walked carefully behind Everest through the old house, squinting my eyes against the thick sheen of airborne dust and the sun streaming in through the uncovered windows. Something moved in the corner. I walked ever closer, slowly and carefully, and when I saw his face my knees buckled under me. Mike. I ran the few remaining steps to his side, wrecking him in a crushing hug, only to hear him call out in pain.

"Careful—he's chained and likely injured." Everest was approaching behind me, still limping from the battle of a few minutes ago. What happened next caused me to lose my footing altogether. At the sound of Everest's voice, Mike looked up at him and, incredibly and inexplicably, burst into a wide grin.

"Roan, you ruddy old bat! Have you so much indelicacy as to call on me without extending the mere civility of ringing up! I may have been _déshabillé_ , or in another similarly unpolished state!" And slowly and painfully turning his head, he looked to me, smiled Mike's trademark puppy dog smile, and said in a low, disarming voice, "Hallo, little songbird."

The sound coming out of him was polished and quick, and wrapped in such a thick English accent that he sounded like a character from Downton Abbey . . . that or Mary Poppins. I reached out to grab the nearby mantel as consciousness began to escape me, but Everest caught me midway to the ground, and supported me in his arms. My own English failed me—I could only stand there staring, mouth open in disbelief, eyes filled with confused tears.

Everest's voice brushed past my ear, his tone surprised and—quite genuinely—warm.

"Welcome back, Upping," he said. That's when I fainted.

# 40. The Arrangement

When I came to, I was laid out on the grimy wooden floor of the old house with a makeshift pillow--it must have been a jacket, from the feel of it--under my head. With my eyes still closed, I heard the back and forth interplay between the two men--Everest's now-familiar pan-Slavic tones and Mike's brand new and mind-blowing Masterpiece Theater British.

"Everest . . . really? Egad, man, that's even worse than Roan Randall, and that one was only slightly less painful than any of the character names on The Young and the Witless! Now then, what have I missed? Clearly about twenty-odd years of full lucidity, but what other than that?"

"Do you know who brought you here?" Everest queried.

Mike shook his head slowly. "I remember the face, but it bore no recognition. Very Native American-looking chap, long hair, high cheekbones, bit of a homicidal gleam. Can you enlighten me?"

Everest--Roan--whoever the hell he was--scratched audibly at his chin and cleared his throat. "A raiment."

"Bollocks!"

"I'm sure of it. He was enraged by your connection to Elma, I imagine."

Mike rubbed his eyes in confusion. "But I'd not lain eyes on the man before this unfortunate incident. How would he possibly know?"

The image of Mike and me kissing in the coffee shop sprang to mind. Perhaps he saw us?

Roan was continuing his assessment. "I imagine he was planning to retire you, as it were. Unfortunately, I've killed him, so there will be no way to extract any information from him."

A cough rose up in my throat precisely as I was trying to be quiet as a mouse, and of course, I was totally unable to suppress it. Opening my eyes, I found both pairs of theirs trained on me.

Mike smiled. "Welcome back, Elma. Are you well?" Everest scurried over to me and looked into my eyes, scanning for any sign of injury.

"I'm fine," I retorted, pushing him away and wrestling into a sitting position. "Now what the hell is going on?" I was again on the brink of tears, but at this point even more in need of clarity and some kind of logic, so I found I could use that energy to push away the waterworks.

Mike spoke first, scooting slowly over the floor a few inches to sit across from me, legs folded in a lotus position in front of him. "Poor dear, I'm sure you're splendidly confused, aren't you? Roan, shall I?" He looked up at Everest, who merely nodded in reply, and then turned his eyes back to me with a gentle and understanding smile.

"First priority, then. Dr. Theobald Upping here, at your service. Clinical psychologist by day, semi-capable scientist of the occult by night. Born 1825 in London, and feeling every day of my age at this particular moment."

I just continued to stare at him, so he continued to talk.

"Right. As you have likely deduced by now, Roan--your Dr. Hendry here--and I are acquainted. Professionally at first, and then on a more personal level. Now we're just 'besties,' aren't we, mate?" He grinned playfully at Everest, who merely sighed and scratched at his chin again.

"But more on that later. Of immediate import is our friend in the next room, who it would seem is not the same bloke you once knew so . . . ahem . . . metaphorically." Mike stopped to cough, the sound reverberating through the empty building.

"Are you all right?" Everest walked toward him and surveyed him quickly.

"Yes, yes, not a problem, though I believe I may have broken a rib or two," he said, and added, after palpating his chest, "or perhaps three."

Everest knelt down and lifted a corner of Mike's sweater. The finely chiseled topography of his abs was scarred with bruises and open gashes, the skin graduating in places from pink to blue to deep, angry purple. Everest put his left index finger to his mouth as if he were picking out a morsel of stuck food, then pointed that finger at one of the open wounds. Two drops of blood dripped into it, and even as I watched in dumb amazement, the open skin immediately sealed itself over and returned to its normal, ruddy peach hue. The rest of Mike's body followed, the correction creeping up from his abdomen to his chest, neck and face, finishing with a magical facelift that converted him instantly from ragged to rosy.

"Cheers, mate," he said to Everest with a genuine tip of his head, and Everest smiled back at him in reply.

"Brilliant," he said with a contented smile and a sigh of comfort. "Now then." Mike hopped to a standing position, adjusted and dusted his clothes, and began pacing the room as he resumed his lecture. "Your Esteban was what we call a raiment. They are quite rare, really, and haven't been seen for roughly a century. I myself have never seen one, though I'm well-chuffed indeed to have an unmoving specimen right next door to study as I wish."

"Can you?" Everest asked with concern lining his face.

"Beg pardon?"

"Upping, can you see him?"

Mike stopped pacing and stood where he was, lost in thought. Finally he dropped his hands in defeat, addressing Everest with his face in a downward bow.

"No, I cannot."

"We must find them, then, clearly. Have you any idea where they are?"

"None." Mike sighed in frustration.

I was totally lost. Tired of the verbal Ping-Pong, I threw myself into the conversation. "What's going on?"

Everest spoke first. "Upping is not a supernatural, he's a scientist. Many years ago he created for himself a special set of spectacles that allows him to see into our world."

This was just getting weirder by the minute. "But he can see you and me just fine."

"But not our supernatural entities. When he looks on Esteban, for example, he sees a man rather than a bird."

This was like a flipping Fellini film. "Why in the hell would he see a damn bird?"

Both men turned to stare at me, then stared at each other, then stared at me. It was almost funny. Almost.

Everest spoke first. "Elma, what did Esteban look like to you just now?"

"Like he always had . . . tall, with long black hair. He seemed taller than I remembered, and . . . I don't know . . . thinner, his face was more angular. He did kind of look 'birdlike' in a way. But other than that, not unusual. Aside from being a totally different person, that is." Memories of the vacant, brutal concentration in his stony face brought renewed chills down my back.

"I've no idea, truly." The two men were staring at each other again, Mike answering the question in Everest's eyes before he asked it.

Everest walked quickly over to me, bringing his face up close to mine, and tipped my chin with his hand so that I looked directly into those incredible eyes. His touch still sent shock waves through me, even though Mike was right beside us.

"Elma, what color are my eyes?" he asked softly.

"Purple," I replied without hesitation, even as I lost myself in them again.

"Good." He smiled, a smile just for the two of us to share for a moment.

"Excellent," Mike chimed in with good-natured sarcasm, "we've established a basic understanding of the color wheel. Shall we move on to the ABC's now, perhaps?"

Everest merely nodded to himself, drew a small, slow breath of air, and moved away to address us both. "Allow me to explain, apologies." Now he started to pace. Academics--such drama queens. "Theo, Elma has only just come to acknowledge that she is a muse. Throughout her ordeal with the raiment, she was unaware of her power. I assume, and please correct me if you do not concur, that this blocked her ability to fully function as a preternatural. Elma, this issue should now be resolved, as you are seeing me adequately."

Mike gave a thoughtful "hmpfh" and considered the theory for a moment, hand on his chin. Then he joined Everest in the professor hustle around the room.

"I agree with your assessment, especially in light of the curse."

"Indeed."

"What?" This from me, lost again and now getting annoyed. They didn't hear me; they were on a roll.

"But if I'm to be of any use to you in dealing with this situation, I need to be able to work," Upping offered, now adding hand gestures to his version of the dance.

"Do not worry, my friend--we will find them."

"Whaaaaaaat?" Apparently, yelling like a banshee did the trick. "What curse, what situation? What are we finding, damnit? Help me out here!"

They both stopped where they stood; Mike came over and put his arm around me. "There is a virtual Mount Everest--no pun intended, mate--of information on which to debrief you, and apologies for creating such confusion for the moment. May I propose that we spend an appropriately mountainous period of time doing just that after I have found my spectacles?" Spectacles. The shack. The coke-bottle glasses I had seen on the shelf in the shack. Now that it was definitely Upping's shack, they had to be Upping's glasses.

"Wire rims with string wrapped around the earpieces and really thick lenses?" I posited.

Mike looked at me with eyes stretched to the same width as those lenses. "Yes!

You've seen them?"

I looked back at Everest. "In the shack. In Alaska."

Mike hugged me hard, beaming, and Everest patted my shoulder. "Well done, little muse," said Mike. Then to Everest, "We cannot go without protection, under the circumstances, not until I am equipped fully. Sadly, given that I've been in an altered state for the last few decades, I've not been joining in the local preternatural tea parties and poker nights. I don't know of any weres nearby, I'm sorry to say."

"I do." I swiveled my head around to stare at Everest in disbelief. He knew werewolves? Close to us? Seriously?! "We must not waste time--let's go."

As we passed through the main sitting room on the way to the front door, I looked to the floor beside us and saw, piled in an unmoving heap, an enormous bird with a foot-long beak, sharp talons like fists and a mass of royal blue feathers that were each as long as my arm.

#  About the Author

Zaide Williams is a corporate professional with a background in the study of literature. For the past decade, she has been working through the ranks of operational management in the public and private sectors, but over the last few years has gradually begun to turn back to her first love—writing. In addition to _Overture_ , Zaide publishes culture and lifestyle blogs and is currently at work on _Allegro_ , the second book in the _Overture_ series. She resides in South Florida with her husband and son.

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