Living Dead in Dallas

lasted two centuries.) I knew from Bill’s briefing before we left Louisiana that the Dallas vampires lived in an especially large nest.
    I’m no brain surgeon, but even I realized that for a vampire as powerful as Stan to be missing one of his nest brothers was not only very unusual, it was humiliating.
    Vampires like to be humiliated about as much as people do.
    “Explain the circumstances, please,” I said in my most neutral voice.
    “My brother Farrell has not returned to his nest for five nights,” Stan Davis said.
    I knew they would have checked Farrell’s favorite hunting grounds, have asked every other vampire in the Dallas nest to find out if Farrell had been seen. Nevertheless, I opened my mouth to ask, as humans are compelled to do. But Bill touched my shoulder, and I glanced behind me to see a tiny headshake. My questions would be taken as a serious insult.
    “This girl?” I asked instead. She was still quiet, but she was shivering and shaking. The Hispanic vampire seemed to be the only thing holding her up.
    “Works in the club where he was last seen. It’s one we own, The Bat’s Wing.” Bars were favorite enterprises for vampires, naturally, because their heaviest traffic came at night. Somehow, fanged all-night dry cleaners didn’t have the same allure that a vampire-studded bar did.
    In the past two years, vampire bars had become the hottest form of nightlife a city could boast. The pathetic humans who became obsessed with vampires—fangbangers—hung out in vampire bars, often in costumes, in the hopes of attracting the attention of the real thing. Tourists came in to gape at the undead and the fangbangers. These bars weren’t the safest place to work.
    I caught the eyes of the Hispanic vampire, and indicated a chair on my side of the long table. He eased the girl into it. I looked down at her, preparing to slide into her thoughts. Her mind had no protection whatsoever. I closed my eyes.
    Her name was Bethany. She was twenty-one, and she had thought of herself as a wild child, a real bad girl. She had had no idea what trouble that could get her into, until now. Getting a job at the Bat’s Wing had been therebellious gesture of her life, and it might just turn out to be fatal.
    I turned my eyes back to Stan Davis. “You understand,” I said, taking a great risk, “that if she yields the information you want, she goes free, unharmed.” He’d said he understood the terms, but I had to be sure.
    Bill heaved a sigh behind me. Not a happy camper. Stan Davis’s eyes actually glowed for a second, so angry was he. “Yes,” he said, biting out the words, his fangs half out, “I agreed.” We met each other’s eyes for a second. We both knew that even two years ago, the vampires of Dallas would have kidnapped Bethany and tortured her until they had every scrap of information she had stored in her brain, and some she’d made up.
    Mainstreaming, going public with the fact of their existence, had many benefits—but it also had its price. In this instance, the price was my service.
    “What does Farrell look like?”
    “Like a cowboy.” Stan said this without a trace of humor. “He wears one of those string ties, jeans, and shirts with fake pearl snaps.”
    The Dallas vampires didn’t seem to be into haute couture. Maybe I could have worn my barmaid outfit after all. “What color hair and eyes?”
    “Brown hair going gray. Brown eyes. A big jaw. About . . . five feet, eleven inches.” Stan was translating from some other method of measurement. “He would look about thirty-eight, to you,” Stan said. “He’s clean-shaven, and thin.”
    “Would you like me to take Bethany somewhere else? You got a smaller room, less crowded?” I tried to look agreeable, because it seemed like such a good idea.
    Stan made a movement with his hand, almost too fast for me to detect, and in a second—literally—every vampire, except Stan himself and Bill, had left the kitchen. Without looking, I knew that Bill was standing againstthe wall, ready for anything. I took a deep breath. Time to start this venture.
    “Bethany, how are you?” I said, making my voice gentle.
    “How’d you know my name?” she asked, slumping down in her seat. It was a breakfast nook chair on wheels, and I rolled it out from the table and turned it to face the one I now settled in. Stan was still sitting at the head of the table, behind me, slightly to my left.
    “I can tell lots of things about you,” I said,