You Suck: A Love Story

you’re too good for the dead, is that what you’re saying?”
    Abby stepped behind Tommy and peeked around. The kid was still out of breath from trying to keep up with Tommy, and now she was frightened, too. “No, Mistress, I think the nonliving are great. I’m all about dead people. I have a ‘I Fuck the Dead’ T-shirt even. I can wear it tomorrow if you want. I didn’t mean…”
    “It’s okay, Abby,” Jody said, waving it off. “Just fucking with you.”
    “Jody!” Tommy said, scolding. “Don’t scare the minion.”
    “Sorry,” Jody said, thinking, once again, that she might be evil. “What about the new apartment. Did you look at it?”
    “We went by it. It’s only a few doors down. We don’t even have to cross the street.”
    “You think that’s far enough? They won’t find us there?”
    “Well, at least they won’t find us here. I don’t think anyone’s going to think that we’d only move a few doors down. They’ll think we’ve at least left the City. What kind of idiot would only move a few doors
    away? It’s brilliant.”
    “Plus an easy move,” Jody said. “You guys can do it without a truck.”
    “You guys?”
    “Well, I’ve got to find William, and you can’t exactly run around until the shedding has subsided. Abby, do you have enough makeup to cover his face and hands?”
    “Tons,” Abby said. She held up her messenger bag. “But I can only help for a little while. I have to get home.”
    “Why?” Tommy asked. “We require your services.” He meant to sound sophisticated and European, but it came out sounding lecherous.
    “He means moving,” Jody said. “I’ve got his other services covered.”
    “I can’t,” Abby said. “My sister has lice.”
    S o,” Abby said, “the countess is kind of a bitch.”
    “No, she’s just a dark creature of unspeakable evil,” Tommy said. He had the futon on his back and was making his way down the street as Abby followed him with a lamp in one hand and a blender in the other. “In a nice way,” he added-thinking that maybe he’d already made enough of an impression on Abby.
    Although it was early in the evening, and it was a little unusual to see a guy walking down the street
    carrying a futon, followed by a Goth girl carrying a lamp and a blender, it was just unusual enough that people would have felt stupid if they asked what was going on and someone pointed out it was modern dance, or performance art, or people robbing an apartment. San Francisco is a city of sophisticates, and except for a homeless guy who remarked on the tackiness of Tommy’s Pier 1 Imports decor, they had moved half of the furniture and clothing without comment.
    “Do you need to feed?” Abby asked when they got back to the old loft. They were standing in the living room, where there was little left except some bookcases and the three bronze statues.
    “Huh?” Tommy replied.
    “I’m guessing that you need to feed,” Abby said, pulling her hoodie aside and offering up her neck. “And I have to get going. I have to get to Walgreens and catch the bus home before the parental unit goes critical. Go ahead. I’m ready.”
    She closed her eyes and started breathing hard, as if bracing for the pain. “Take me, Flood. I’m ready.”
    “Really?” Tommy said.
    Abby opened one eye. “Well yeah.”
    “You’re sure?” Tommy hadn’t bitten another woman. He wasn’t sure if it might not be cheating. What if the whole sex thing went off the way it did with Jody? That kind of activity would kill a normal human woman, plus, he was pretty sure that Jody would not approve. “Maybe a little from the wrist,” Tommy said.
    Abby opened her eyes and pulled up her sleeve. “Of course, so you don’t leave the mark of nosferatu.”
    She said it with a hiss-nasss-sssss-fer-a-too-like she was speaking snake.
    “Oh, it won’t leave any marks,” Tommy said. “You’ll heal up like instantly.” He was starting to feel the hunger rise in him, he could feel his fangs pressing down from the roof of his mouth.
    “Really?”
    “Oh yeah, Jody bit me almost every night before I changed over, and no one ever noticed down at the store.”
    “The store?”
    Oops. “The ye olde porridge and leeches store, where I worked, in the ye old days.”
    “I thought you were a lord?”
    “Well, yeah, I mean, I owned the store, and some serfs, and scullery maids-couldn’t get enough of the scullery maids-but I put in a shift now and then. You know, help to