Living Dead in Dallas

and his date had a Coke. The vampire looked almost as rosy as the boy.
    Farrell had never actually seen me, so he was delighted to make my acquaintance. He was clad from head to toe in western regalia, and as he bowed over my hand, I expected to hear spurs clink.
    “You are so lovely,” he said extravagantly, waving the bottle of synthetic blood, “that if I slept with women, you would receive my undivided attention for a week. I know you are self-conscious about your bruises, but they only set off your beauty.”
    I couldn’t help laughing. Not only was I walking like I was about eighty, my face was black-and-blue on the left side.
    “Bill Compton, you are one lucky vampire,” Farrell told Bill.
    “I am well aware of that,” Bill said, smiling, though somewhat coolly.
    “She is brave and beautiful!”
    “Thanks, Farrell. Where’s Stan?” I decided to break this stream of praise. Not only did it make Bill antsy, but Farrell’s young companion was getting entirely too curious. My intention was to relate this story once again, and only once.
    “He’s in the dining room,” the young vampire said, the one who’d brought poor Bethany into the dining room when we’d been here before. This must be Joseph Velasquez. He was maybe five foot eight, and his Hispanic ancestry gave him the toast-colored complexion and dark eyes of a don, while his vampire state gave him an unblinking stare and the instant willingness to do damage. He was scanning the room, waiting for trouble. I decided he was sort of the sergeant at arms of the nest. “He will be glad to see both of you.”
    I glanced around at all the vampires and the sprinkling of humans in the large rooms of the house. I didn’t see Eric. I wondered if he’d gone back to Shreveport. “Where’s Isabel?” I asked Bill, keeping my voice quiet.
    “Isabel is being punished,” he said, almost too softly to hear. He didn’t want to talk about this any louder, and when Bill thought that was a wise idea, I knew I better shut up. “She brought a traitor into the nest, and she has to pay a price for that.”
    “But—”
    “Shhh.”
    We came into the dining room to find it as crowded as the living room. Stan was in the same chair, wearing virtually the same outfit he had been wearing last time I saw him. He stood up when we entered, and from the way he did this, I understood this was supposed to mark our status as important.
    “Miss Stackhouse,” he said formally, shaking my hand with great care. “Bill.” Stan examined me with his eyes, their washed-out blue not missing a detail of my injuries. His glasses had been mended with Scotch tape. Stan was nothing if not thorough with his disguise. I thought I’d send him a pocket-protector for Christmas.
    “Please tell me what happened to you yesterday, omitting nothing,” Stan said.
    This reminded me irresistibly of Archie Goodwin reporting to Nero Wolfe. “I’ll bore Bill,” I said, hoping to get out of this recitation.
    “Bill will not mind being bored for a little.”
    There was no getting around this. I sighed, and began with Hugo picking me up from the Silent Shore Hotel. I tried to leave Barry’s name out of my narrative, since I didn’t know how he’d feel about being known by the vampires of Dallas. I just called him “a bellboy at the hotel.” Of course, they could learn who he was if they tried.
    When I got to the part where Gabe sent Hugo into Farrell’s cell and then tried to rape me, my lips yanked up in a tight grin. My face felt so taut that I thought it might crack.
    “Why does she do that?” Stan asked Bill, as though I weren’t there.
    “When she is tense . . .” Bill said.
    “Oh.” Stan looked at me even more thoughtfully. I reached up and began to pull my hair into a ponytail. Bill handed me an elastic band from his pocket, and with considerable discomfort, I held the hair in a tight hank so I could twist the band around it three times.
    When I told Stan about the help the shapeshifters had given me, he leaned forward. He wanted to know more than I told, but I would not give any names away. He was intensely thoughtful after I told him about being dropped off at the hotel. I didn’t know whether to include Eric or not; I left him out, completely. He was supposed to be from California. I amended my narrative to say I’d gone up to our room to wait for Bill.
    And then I told him about Godfrey.
    To my amazement, Stan could not seem to absorb Godfrey’s death. He made