Blood Debt

each took a step forward.
    "HEY!" Celluci's voice didn't so much cut through the tension as smash it aside. "Get a grip! I expect this sort of thing from mongrel dogs but not from two supposedly sentient people." No longer able to blush, they both suddenly became interested in the toes of their shoes.
    "Times change. Change with them, or admit you can't and stop wasting my time—I've a hell of a lot less of it than you do."
    Gaze still on the floor, Vicki murmured, "Tell you what, Henry. I promise to not go on a childish rampage through your territory if you promise to let go a little."
    "It won't be easy."
    "Nothing worthwhile ever is."
    "Oh, spare me," Celluci muttered.
    Henry stepped away from the window and Vicki backed up, carefully maintaining the distance between them. He paused for a moment, as though testing their relative positions. When neither of them seemed inclined to move closer, he said, a little wearily, "I've got the supplies you'll need to secure that window down in my locker.
    Why don't you two check out your accommodations while Tony and I go get them?"
    Barely suppressing the urge to snarl as he went by, Vicki nodded, not trusting her voice. Celluci took one look at her face and pulled her carefully to his side. She jerked her arm free but remained close, using his scent to mask Henry's.
    "There," she said when the door closed and they were alone, "that wasn't so bad. We've definitely made progress."
    "So unclench your teeth."
    A muscle jumped in her jaw. "Not yet."
    When it seemed that time enough had passed to give them a clear path out the door and down the hall, they made their way to number 1409.
    "Jesus H. Christ."
    "On crutches," Vicki added.
    The walls had been marbled. The windows wore four different types of swag. The furniture appeared to have been upholstered in raw silk.
    The overlapping carpets were Persian. Artwork, two dimensional and three, had been arranged for effect. Number 1409 looked like it had been decorated for the benefit of photographers from Vancouver Life Magazine.
    "I didn't think people actually lived like this." Turning her back on the splendors of the living room, Vicki started down the hall. "Do you think the rest of the place is the same?"
    A pair of concrete Chinese temple dogs guarded a huge basket of dried roses in one corner of the master bedroom. One end of the king-sized bed had been stacked with about fifty pillows in various shapes and shades. The silk moire duvet cover matched the wallpaper. The drapes, although the same fabric, were several shades darker.
    "This room probably cost as much as my whole house," Celluci muttered.
    "Certainly classier than the Holiday Inn," Vicki agreed, stepping back into the hall and opening the door to the smallest of the three bedrooms. "Oh, my God." She froze in the doorway. "I can't stay in this."
    Celluci peered over her shoulder and started to laugh.
    A huge doll, with a pink-and-white crocheted skirt, sat in the middle of the pink satin bedspread. The pink frilly bedskirt matched the pink frilly curtains which complemented the pink frills on the pale pink armchair tucked into a corner. The dresser and the trunk at the foot of the bed were antique white. The bed itself was the most ornate brass monstrosity either of them had ever seen, covered in curlicues and enameled flowers, with a giant heart in the center of both the head and footboard.
    Laughing too hard to stand, Celluci collapsed against the wall clutching his stomach. "The thought," he began, looked from Vicki to the bed, and couldn't finish.
    "The thought…" A second attempt got no further than the first.
    "What's the matter, chuckles? Can't handle the thought of a vampire in such feminine surroundings?"
    "Vicki…" Wiping his streaming eyes with one hand, he waved the other into the room. "… I can't handle the thought of you in these surroundings. I hadn't even started thinking about the other."
    Her lips twitched. "It does look like it's been decorated by Polly Pocket, doesn't it?"
    A few moments later, Tony found them sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the hall floor, wearing the expressions of people who've nearly laughed themselves sick. "No one answered when I knocked,"
    he explained. "What's so funny?"
    Vicki nodded toward the room and gasped, "A pink plastic crypt that fits in the palm of your hand."
    "Yeah. Okay." He glanced inside, shrugged, and looked back down at the two of them. "I have no idea of what you're talking about, but the stuff to