Bite Me

but he’s a lot bigger, and I think—” I paused. It was very dramatic.
    And Foo’s like, “Tell me!”
    I sort of fainted all emo into his arms. And he totally caught me like the dark hero of the moors that he is, but then he harshed the romantic drama of it all by tickling me and going, “Tell me, tell me, tell me.”
    So I did, because I was close to peeing myself, and I’m totally not into that kind of thing. “I think we have to worry about the little samurai guy turning, which would not be good, as he is full badass, despite his deeply stupid hat and socks.”
    And Foo was all, “Did he bite them?”
    And I was all, “He was full-on covered in vampyre kitty blood. Maybe some drops got in his mouth. Lord Flood said he accidentally turned that blue ho from one kiss on the bloody lips.”
    And Foo’s like, “Well we need to find him, then. Abby, we may not be able to handle this. We need help.” And he’s all nodding to the statue of the Countess and Lord Flood.
    And I’m all, “Do you know the first thing that will happen if we let them out?”
    And Foo’s all, “Jody will totally kick our asses.”
    And I’m like, “ Oui, mon amour, epic ass-kickings pour toi and moi . But you know what’s even scarier?”
    And Foo’s all, “What? What? What?” Because French drives him mad.
    So I’m like, “You still have wood!” And I squeezed his unit and ran into the bedroom.
    ’Kayso, Foo chased me around the loft a couple of times, and I let him catch me twice, just long enough to kiss me before I was forced to slap him—well, you know why—and run away. But as I was prepared to let him think I would surrender to his manly deliciousness, I’m all, “You could turn me to a vamp and I could use my dark powers to scoop Chet’s litter box of destruction.”
    And Foo was all, “No fucking way. I don’t know enough.”
    Then someone started pounding on the door. And not a little “Hey, what’s up?” pound. Like there was a big sale on door pounds down at the Pound Outlet. Buy one, get one free at Pounds-n-Stuff.
    I know. WTF? Privacy much? Pounding on the love lair.
    JODY
    It was like perpetual “not quite lunchtime” in her cubicle at the insurance company, back in ancient history, three months ago, before she was a vampire. Every sundown, for about fifteen seconds, Jody awoke and panicked overthe hunger and constraint until she was able to will herself into mist and float in what she thought of as the blood dream, a pleasant, ethereal haze that lasted until sunup, when her body went solid inside the brass shell and for all practical purposes, she became dead meat until sundown came round again. But sometime around the end of the first week of freakouts, she realized that she was touching Tommy. That he was in the bronze shell with her, and unlike her, he couldn’t go to mist. She should have taught him, she knew, just as the old vampyre had taught her, but now it was too late. Maybe, since she couldn’t move enough to tap a message with her finger in Morse code, let alone talk, she could reach out to him, somehow connect with him telepathically. Who knew what kind of powers she might have that the old vampyre had forgotten to tell her about. She concentrated, pushed, even tried to send some sort of pulse to the places where their skin touched, but all she got back was an extended, jagged, electric panic.
    Poor Tommy. He was there all right. Alive and mercilessly aware. She tried to reach him until she could bear the weight of her own hunger and panic no longer. “Abby, if I ever get out of here, your narrow ass is mine,” she thought before fading to mist and blissful escape.
    INSPECTOR RIVERA
    It wasn’t a homicide, strictly speaking, because there was no body, but there was a traffic enforcement officer missingin action, and it had involved the Emperor and a certain block of light industry buildings and artist lofts south of Market Street that Rivera had flagged for notice if anything happened there. And something had definitely happened here, but what?
    He lifted the collar of the empty traffic officer’s uniform with the tip of his pen to confirm that the fine gray ash was not on the sidewalk underneath, and it wasn’t. Inside the uniform, on the sidewalk at the cuffs and collar of the uniform, yes, but not on the sidewalk under the uniform.
    “I don’t see a crime,” said Nick Cavuto, Rivera’s partner, who, if he’d been a flavor of ice cream, would have been Gay