Chapter 2

At some point in the past century my mother had the old carriage house on her property converted into a fully outfitted gym for Chivalry. In the past, I’d avoided the gym just as I’d avoided anything that hinted of exertion or some kind of sporting event, but the events of several months ago, plus my new responsibilities within Madeline’s power structure, had forced me to admit that I needed to be less easy to beat up. So, not without a few reservations, I’d gone to Chivalry and asked him to help.

What had followed was the most physically grueling summer I’d ever experienced. Every day I’d driven down to the estate and spent hours working with various cardio and weight-training devices of torture until I was nothing more than a limp rag on the floor, at which point I then got the pleasure of getting in my car and driving forty-five minutes back to my own apartment in Providence to head off to work.

Realistically, it hadn’t made much sense to keep living in my apartment, working at whatever abysmal minimum-wage job I could find to eke out a living where I barely made my bills, and even then had to have a roommate. There was a large and luxurious room for me at the mansion, and I was well aware that my mother would’ve started paying my bills and providing me with a more-than-generous allowance the moment that I moved in.

But I’d spent nine years living in the mansion, from the day my foster parents had been killed until the day I left for college, and I had no intention of going back. I never felt like I could really breathe there—not in the beautifully appointed rooms, not walking around the gorgeous grounds and looking out over the wide expanse of ocean, not even when I was just in the surrounding town of Newport. Everything was wonderful, and every part of it was a reminder that I wasn’t really human. I was turning into something else, my body transitioning, and I hated all reminders of that.

After all, a vampire had killed my foster parents. It was my own older sister, Prudence, who’d sprayed their blood on the walls of their little house in Cranston, with the same emotional involvement that most people engage when swatting a fly. From what I’d recently seen of other vampires, she was the typical example of our species. There were a lot of reasons why I’d spent years pretending as hard as I could to be human.

I’d had to give in a lot lately, though. In the old days I’d avoided Newport, coming down only when my biological needs couldn’t be put off any longer. At my age, I didn’t feed off of human blood; I drank my mother’s. I’d pushed it off for four or five months when I could, but once I’d started training with Chivalry I’d started feeding every other week. I hadn’t wanted to, but the results had been hard to argue with; fed by my mother, I healed far faster than any human could. I’d had a fractured arm at the beginning of Chivalry’s brutal training regimen, but the cast had come off in two weeks rather than six. Bruises went away faster; sore muscles recovered practically overnight.

I benefitted from all of it, but I didn’t have to like it. All of it worried me, no matter how essential it was. I’d spent seventeen years waking up from nightmares about my foster parents’ deaths, dreams where I’d had to relive every horrible moment in Technicolor. Lately those dreams had changed. Now, Jill and Brian still died, but now I watched it happen and felt nothing. I woke up sweating and afraid after those dreams, worse than ever before.

I tried to avoid the dreams by wearing myself out physically, hoping that if I could just get tired enough, I would drop into a sleep so deep that my brain wouldn’t start up the REM cycle. That motivation had helped me continue walking into the gym each day.

Chivalry had a more purist approach to working out than I did, but he’d given in and had a TV installed in the gym after it became abundantly clear early in training that I was incapable of working out with nothing to distract my brain except counting my sweat droplets. With a degree in film theory, my previous favorite activity in the world had been lying on my couch and watching movies. Working out while watching movies wasn’t quite as fun, but it was an acceptable compromise. Since Chivalry always made sure that he was in the gym every minute I was, the better to monitor my every heartbeat, I’d taken the opportunity to expand his appreciation of movies. I liked a lot of Chivalry’s favorite movies, but his enjoyment of cinema started stagnating when color was introduced, and lately the only movies he showed any interest in seeing were foreign art-house flicks. What was any self-respecting younger brother to do except forcibly expose him to Hannah Montana: The Movie? It had been fun for a while, but I’d finally had to tone things back after Chivalry completely lost it and threw a seventy-pound kettlebell through the screen halfway through the Justin Bieber movie. He’d replaced the TV, and I’d agreed to moderate my movie selections.

My film geekery was a freshman conversion in college, but the rest of my interests had deeper roots, harking back to eighth grade and my conversion into the lifestyle. Before then I’d spent a lot of years afraid to make close human friends after what had happened to my foster parents. But eventually I’d drifted into the orbit of a few other outcast boys, and in the hobbies and fandoms that I shared with them I had found a sense of community—and, better, a sense of escape. Playing video games or raiding an imaginary dungeon in a friend’s rec room had helped make me feel human. My mother had encouraged human friendships when I was younger—superficial ones, preferably, and with children who would bring good connections with them. She’d envisioned me forming social ties to the sons and daughters of the politicians and preeminent city lights who graced her dinner table. Her disappointment in my preferred companions had been palpable on the many afternoons that I’d headed to my friend John’s house for a day filled with Nintendo, Star Wars, and tabletop role-playing games rather than sailing, tennis, or any of the other activities that she and my siblings wished I’d embraced.

After my television détente with Chivalry, I’d taken the chance to expose him to all five seasons of Babylon 5—a small piece of vengeance, perhaps, for the hours of lectures on preferred socialization that I’d endured from him over the years.

Today there had been an hour of workout, and then Chivalry had shifted us into his regulation boxing ring. He’d taken up boxing back in the late 1880s, when it had enjoyed a surge of popularity among the younger upper-class gentlemen that he was friends with, and had continued practicing on his own even when other fads eventually replaced it. Even with all of the new working out, I still lacked the strength and speed of a full vampire, so my brother had decreed that some self-defense work was in order. Accordingly, he had proceeded to instruct me in the correct Marquis of Queensberry rules of boxing.

“You’re showing good improvement, Fort,” he said brightly to me. He was bouncing around in front of me, arms up in perfect form, having spent the last two hours doing nothing but blocking punches and giving me reminder taps with his fists whenever I dropped my guard. He looked crisp and fresh, practically a deodorant ad.

I, on the other hand, had plopped on the floor like an exhausted toddler and was barely able to lift my arms anymore. I was sweating so badly that I looked like a miniature rain cloud must be directly above me, and I could actually track my recent movements by looking down at the damp trail on the canvas of the ring.

“Stop trying to encourage me,” I panted.

“No, I really mean it,” he said. “You have the strength and speed of an exceptional human.”

“Which still leaves me well below the level of an asthmatic vampire.” I tried to wipe my face with my shirt, but since it was completely saturated with sweat, it was like using a warm washcloth. I gave up and just let it run down my face.

“Well, yes,” Chivalry conceded. “But that’s still an improvement.”

It was true. Four months ago I’d been a mugger’s dream come true. Of course, I’d still managed to kill a vampire older than Chivalry. I’d almost died in the process, but it had happened.

There was a long moment where the only sounds were the ceiling fan and my panting breaths.

“Come on,” Chivalry said, breaking the silence. “One more round, then showers, then second breakfast.” I’d also made him watch all three of the Lord of the Rings movies—extended editions. It had had an impact.

Every muscle in my body shrieked as I pulled myself upright and into the stance that my brother had drilled into my bones: gloves up, ready to block or throw a punch. Feet moving at all times, even if it was just a little shuffle. I’d asked Chivalry to help me get into shape, I reminded myself.

Chivalry gave me an approving smile, then put up his own gloves. “All right,” he said. “Now hit me.”

•   •   •

I didn’t, of course. My trying to land a punch on my brother was like a kitten trying to attack a cougar. I reflected on that as I stood in the gym shower, letting the cool water drench me. Compared to the opulence of my mother’s mansion, Chivalry’s gym was extremely austere, something that had required a few compromises. One of those was the bathroom. The gym was all gray slab cement and plain walls, but the bathroom was my mother’s creation. The tiling was mosaic style, with individual tiles smaller than a quarter, all in dusty orange or black and used to recreate scenes from Greek mythology—in the case of the shower, Hercules cleaning out the Aegean stables. My mother’s decorating often reflects her highly questionable sense of humor.

Feeling halfway human again, I dried off quickly and changed into the clothes from my gym bag, jeans and an old Farscape T-shirt. There was a huge selection of hair-care products, as well as three different brands of cologne, laid out beside the sink. All of them were unopened. My brother came of age in a time when men had grooming expectations that would boggle most modern metrosexuals, and he never gave up attempts, both subtle and overt, to bring me up to snuff. I ran a comb quickly through my wet hair and, not bothering to shave, called it a morning. I could do that later, after the sight of my stubble had caused my brother to despair. After all, what were little brothers for?

I walked slowly across Madeline’s lawn, which would put most golf courses to shame in terms of regimented grooming, and waved to the gardeners already hard at work. Chivalry’s promised second breakfast was waiting on the back terrace. I’d been fairly lanky before I’d started working out, and Chivalry had fully embraced the caloric challenge I faced. There are, after all, a wide range of fit body types—take a look at an Olympic long-distance runner sometime, then compare that to the guy playing water polo. One is built like a beanpole and the other is built like a tank. We were going for something in between those two, though my body seemed to naturally gravitate toward beanpole. Thus the completely bizarre situation of working out for three hours, then having my brother try to fatten me up.

My first breakfast of the morning had been light out of necessity—eating heavily before working out was a quick recipe for vomiting. Now there was a buffet selection of eggs, sausage, bacon, and silver-dollar pancakes, along with the makings of either fruit smoothies or mimosas, all set up with white linen tablecloths and fine china. Casual dining was a foreign concept to my family.

I stared at the buffet and sighed a little. My vegetarianism was something else that Chivalry was determined to reform. I went for toast, pancakes, and a hefty shovel of perfectly scrambled eggs, resolutely avoiding the siren smell of sausage and bacon. One strawberry and banana smoothie, and I was set. Once I got all the plates over to the table, I started doing my best to inhale breakfast.

I was almost done when I heard the soft noise of a wheelchair being pushed across Persian rugs coming from the morning room that accessed the terrace. I controlled a wince as I turned to see what I’d been trying to avoid. Chivalry appeared, recoiffed (not that he had gotten all that messy to begin with) and dressed in ironed khakis and a blue polo shirt, looking ready to head off to the country club. His wife, Bhumika, sat in the wheelchair that he was pushing. She didn’t always join us in the mornings—her health had been deteriorating steadily for the past year, and there were some days that she didn’t leave their bedroom at all. Today was a good day, though, since she wasn’t using a full oxygen mask, just subtle tubes in her nose to make her more comfortable. She was dressed in a beautifully embroidered set of turquoise shalwar kameez—traditional Indian loose cotton trousers and a matching shirt. We’d had a long summer this year, and even now the early-October morning held a breath of heat, but a cashmere blanket was still carefully wrapped around Bhumika’s shoulders.

Her smile was as brilliant as ever as Chivalry carefully pushed her wheelchair down the small ramp that, like all the ramps in the house, had appeared overnight when she’d first started needing assistance to walk. They were all fully integrated into the house, and not a single one of them had the slightest feel of impermanence. They were beautiful, all lovingly crafted out of hardwood and designed to fit the look of whatever room they were for. A few were made out of stone.

None of them were new, of course. Madeline’s staff had simply removed them from where they’d been stored after Chivalry’s last wife, Linda, had died. And before that, I’d seen them set up for his earlier wife, Carmela. We’d all known from the first day that we’d been introduced to Bhumika, the day of her wedding to Chivalry, that she would end up like this. So had she, of course. A few short years of health, then a long decline that ended only one way.

I leaned down and kissed her cheek carefully. Her long black hair was starting to thin a little, a few strands clinging to the back of the wheelchair. Chivalry transferred her to one of the terrace chairs, making sure it was the one with the best padding, in her favorite sunny spot. Then, while Bhumika and I talked (mostly she talked and I listened—I never felt completely comfortable with her, even though she’d always shown me nothing but loving interest), Chivalry carefully filled a plate with her favorite foods, approaching the task with complete absorption, sorting through the entire bowl of strawberries to make sure he’d chosen only the best pieces.

When all three of us were settled around the table we spent a few more minutes like that. Bhumika was telling me some anecdote about her rose garden, and I was nodding mechanically. Chivalry was eating the omelet that had been prepared for him in advance, periodically nibbling at a sausage. Vampires continue to eat food for centuries after our transitions, but the selection starts narrowing the older we get. For Chivalry, the morning sausages that he’d enjoyed for two hundred years were becoming harder to handle, even though he still loved them. Had my mother been at the table with us, all she would’ve been able to sample were the mimosas.

Of course, breakfast with Madeline always had to be held in rooms that had no windows.

I forked the last of my pancakes into my mouth and had just started my good-byes when Bhumika abruptly said, “Honey, I’d love it if we could find the time for one last sail with Fort this year.”

I couldn’t help the expression of surprise that I knew had appeared on my face, and I looked carefully over at Chivalry, who had gone completely poker-faced at the comment. Chivalry was a huge fan of yachting and owned a fifty-two-foot cruiser-racer boat that was completely sail driven and whose deck I had spent many grumpy hours swabbing as a teenager. Early in his marriage, he and Bhumika had done a lot of sailing in all weather, once even participating in the annual Newport-to-Bermuda yacht race, but they had cut back considerably in recent years. In the entire summer, I actually thought that they’d been out on the water only twice. “I don’t know, Bhumika,” I said cautiously. “I have been pretty busy. Training with Chivalry, plus all our outings, plus my work schedule . . .” I let my voice trail off.

Chivalry smoothly added his. “It’s hard to say how much longer this weather will last. And even with these temperatures, I don’t know if I’d want to take the Gay Belle out for anything other than an afternoon sail.” Chivalry had named his yacht back in the 1880s, and even though he’d had it completely dry-docked and rebuilt multiple times down at the Newport Shipyard, he’d always kept the name, even as the connotations of the words changed very fundamentally and various other yacht owners periodically gave him sidelong looks, or, depending on their feelings on the topic, enthusiastic toots of their horns. As a teenager, I had repeatedly begged him to change the name to something slightly less mortifying, but Chivalry flatly refused. Of course, no one understood the art of outlasting a fad like a vampire, and he remained convinced that eventually the word would swing back to the old meaning. Of course, he’d also held on to his entire collection of top hats, cravats, and VHS tapes.

“I thought it would be nice to do, though,” Bhumika said. Her tone was pleasant, but I got the impression that she was digging in. “After all, I’d hate to wait all winter before we all went out together again.”

I glanced frantically over to Chivalry, waiting for him to say something. Everyone at this table knew that even if Bhumika lived through the winter, she’d never be going out on the water again.

My brother reached out and ran his fingertips gently across the back of Bhumika’s hand. “We’ll see if the schedules work out,” he said, very quietly.

For a man who killed all of his wives, it was always stunning how very much Chivalry loved them.

A chill ran down my spine, and I wondered if someday that would be me, caressing the hand of the woman who I was slowly killing. Abruptly, it was all too much for me, and I made a quick escape from the table. I dropped a kiss on Bhumika’s cheek and waved to my brother with a promise to see him again tomorrow. Then I was off to my car at a lope that was as close to a run as I could get without being rudely obvious.

Cutting through the house, I did my best to avoid getting in the way of two maids who were giving the front entrance hall its thrice-weekly mopping, and only barely avoided knocking over a bucket of sudsy water. Out the front door, I walked across the white crushed-gravel driveway, giving in to the urge to kick a few times and listen to the pattering sound of dispersed stones falling back to the ground.

My car came into sight, tucked in like a mutt among show dogs, and I froze. Chivalry was leaning against the side of my dilapidated Ford Fiesta, watching me patiently. He must’ve run around the outside of the house to beat me, but he was looking cool and casual, as if he’d just strolled over.

There was no escaping him, so I trudged over.

“Is this about the trolls?” I asked, hoping to distract him. “Or maybe we’re going to go feed sardines to mermaids on tomorrow’s field trip?”

He stared at me for a second, then slowly raised one eyebrow. The rest of his face stayed completely bland.

I’ve never been able to withstand Chivalry’s bland expression. “I don’t want to go sailing,” I said mutinously. “I’m working forty hours a week and taking the Chivalry Atlas program for bodybuilding. My afternoons off are rarer than bald eagles, and I’m not going to spend one of them with a sweater tied around my shoulders while you nag me about moving sails around or hoisting the spinner.”

“That’s not why you don’t want to go,” Chivalry said, his voice cool.

I glared at him. “It’s one of the reasons. Isn’t it enough?”

“Bhumika has asked for this,” he said. He met my glare and simply looked back at me. We have the same hazel eyes, but as I watched, his pupils slowly began expanding until the hazel was completely covered. Besides the occasional fang flash, the eyes are where vampire tempers are most apparent. I looked away—lately I’d spent a lot of time nervously checking mirrors to make sure that my eyes weren’t pulling that trick.

I glanced back, and Chivalry’s eyes had returned to normal, and now he looked thoughtful. “She isn’t asking for much, Fortitude,” he said. He always used my full name like most parents use middle names: when I was in trouble.

“Yeah, fine. Put something together,” I said, looking away again and leaning down to ostensibly brush at the side of the Fiesta. Chivalry had surprised me with a professional paint job for my elderly car, but a few weeks ago I’d come out of a grocery store to discover that some asshole with faulty spatial relations had practically sideswiped my car. There hadn’t been any serious damage, but now my blue Fiesta had a streak of transferred orange paint completely up one side that I had been utterly unable to remove. “You have my work schedule,” I muttered, wiping ineffectually at the streak with the hem of my T-shirt. “Call me with a time.”

Chivalry didn’t say anything, but he stopped leaning against the car and strolled a few steps away, toward his own Bentley. My brother was as bossy as they came, but at least he never rubbed it in whenever he won on something.

I’d unlocked the Fiesta and slid into the driver’s seat when Chivalry spoke again, sounding almost tentative. “You know, I read a good review the other day of Peláez. Perhaps if Bhumika is feeling well tonight she and I could—”

“Oh, don’t even think about it,” I said, shooting a dark look at him. “I told you when I got that job—if you go there, you do it when I’m not working.”

Chivalry frowned and made an expression that on any other guy I actually would’ve called a pout. “I don’t understand this attitude, Fort. I’ve been to many of the establishments that you’ve worked at. I’m simply being supportive of your career choices.”

“Being a waiter is not a career choice; it is a job-hunt default,” I said. “Plus, you are not fooling me. You’ve been desperate to eat there ever since you found out that the staff is in black tie, and I refuse to feed into this formal-wear fetish that you have.”

“In more civilized times, all gentlemen wore formal clothing in the evenings,” he sniffed, grumpy because I’d seen his motive so clearly.

“Yeah, those gentlemen also died of dysentery because they didn’t wash their hands after they took a crap.” I slammed the Fiesta’s door shut. While it suited my mood at the moment, that actually wasn’t the reason I’d done it. Lately the driver’s door was having trouble latching, and had popped open a few times at stoplights. Since I had about five issues more immediately concerning about the car to bring to the attention of a mechanic whenever I finally saved up the money, I was trying to figure out how to live with this one.

It was all part of the Fiesta’s charm.

The drive from Newport to my apartment in Providence was between forty minutes and an hour, depending on the traffic. Today there hadn’t been any elderly drivers or sightseeing tourists on the two-lane road that always made or broke my time, and I pulled into the small parking lot behind my building just after ten a.m.

I lived in an old three-story Victorian that had been broken into apartments sometime in the 1950s. The first floor was an upscale women’s lingerie shop, which actually sounded more exciting than it was, since usually the women going into it were the ones who could afford expensive undergarments—mostly middle-aged to elderly women. Each of the upper floors was a single two-bedroom apartment in a state of highly questionable repair, and the owner had a policy of ignoring necessary fixes until we tenants either gave in and fixed it ourselves or just moved out in disgust. Since moving in four years ago, I’d learned a lot about emergency plumbing.

Climbing up three flights of stairs always felt like the last-rep set after a morning of working out with Chivalry. During the first few weeks, I’d actually started giving serious consideration to the thought of moving somewhere that had an elevator, but had given up the idea after I remembered that I’d then have to move all of my stuff out—down all those stairs.

My sofa had originally belonged to a couple in the second-floor apartment. During their move out, they’d abandoned it halfway down the staircase. After climbing over it for three days, I’d finally decided it was good and abandoned and hauled it up to my own living room. Those thoughts kept me company as I made my way to my apartment in a zombielike fugue. In my door, through the dual kitchen and living room, and then I was tumbling into my bed, asleep almost before I hit the sheets.

•   •   •

It felt like barely ten minutes had passed before I woke up to a hand shaking my shoulder none too gently. I came into consciousness in slow stages, registering first the hand, then the loud beeping of my alarm, and finally registering that I hadn’t even bothered to take off my shoes.

“C’mon, Sleeping Beauty,” my roommate said. “You have to get up.”

“Don’t want to,” I muttered, pulling my pillow over my head. It was immediately pulled away from me.

“Either get up or turn the alarm off. I can hear the damn thing out into the hallway.”

“What time is it?” I asked muzzily.

“It’s a quarter after twelve, dude,” Gage said, jostling my shoulder one last time.

I was suddenly, horribly awake. “Oh, fuck me.” I pulled my head up and stared at my roommate in horror. “I overslept by half an hour?”

“Apparently. I just got home and heard the alarm going off.”

I’d had a lot of horrible roommates in the past, all of whom would’ve heard my alarm going off, known I’d overslept, and probably just laughed about it while they dropped a wet towel on the hardwood floor. Whether I’d just finally run through Providence’s available jackass male roommate population or whether I’d cashed in some karmic bennies, the result was that I’d put out my usual Craigslist ad and had found Gage, who was not only a nonasshole (as specified in my ad), but was actually a decent guy.

Gage watched as I half rolled, half fell out of bed, and gave a wholly exasperated sigh. This was unfortunately not the first time this scenario had played out. “Dude, I can run you over if you don’t think you’d make it on time with the bus.”

I was already halfway across my room to pull my work clothes out of the closet, and I stopped and said, “That would completely save my ass. But are you sure?”

Gage shrugged. He was even taller than I was, and a former college wrestler built like he was ready to audition for 300. His dark blond hair tended toward the sheepdog look, and a recent set of Celtic tattoo bands at his wrists and upper arms had just healed enough to remove the bandages and serve as catnip for every girl he passed in the street. At first glance he looked like the kind of brain-dead douche who needed an operating manual to toast bread, but he was actually completing a master’s degree down at Brown University.

Burned too many times before, I’d been a little reticent when he’d first moved in. But he’d done his share of cleaning, kept his stuff from encroaching on the common areas, and always paid his half of the rent on time. Admittedly he made a huge lasagna every Wednesday that incorporated about two pounds of Italian sausage and ground beef and forced me to undergo a test of willpower every time I opened the fridge and saw the delectable leftovers sitting in conveniently-portioned plastic containers, but no living situation was perfect.

“I just got back from class,” Gage said. “It’s not like I’m in the middle of anything. Besides, it’s not exactly in my best interests for you to get fired.”

Given that he’d signed a yearlong lease, that was certainly true, but beneath Gage’s grumbling I knew that he would’ve ferried my oversleeping ass to my job regardless. I routinely caught him helping our elderly downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Bandyopadyay, carry in her groceries. Each time he claimed he was just keeping his kept boy-toy options open.

“You’re saving my bacon, Gage,” I called as he left the room.

“Yeah, your tofu bacon,” he grumbled loudly from the living room.

I changed as quickly as I could in the bathroom. My stubble was reaching wolfman proportions, and in my hurry to shave it off I nicked myself three times, once badly enough that I had to stick on one of those little round Band-Aids. My hair was a predictable disaster, but the restaurant I worked at had specific hair policies, so I shellacked it down until I looked ready to head out to a Prohibition speakeasy. Basic needs met, on went the tuxedo pants and the white buttoned shirt. Technically we were supposed to get them dry-cleaned between every two shifts, but since the restaurant refused to reimburse us for the costs and paid only minimum wage, I got by with just Febrezing the crap out of them each day and tossing them into the laundry at the end of each week, while keeping my fingers crossed that the delicate cycle would be okay. Then I pulled on my black dress shoes, which I’d purchased secondhand and which had required only a few applications of glue and a Sharpie to look (from a distance) acceptable. Then the black vest, and finally I put the finishing touches on my bow tie. There was a rule against clip-ons, so I’d had to learn how to actually tie it—after months of practice, I’d gotten to the point where the end result was only a little crooked.

A glance in the mirror confirmed that my appearance met and did not exceed the base minimum standards expected at my job. It would have to do, so I shrugged and grabbed my keys, ran out the door, and pounded down the stairs. In the parking lot, Gage was already waiting in his little green hybrid. I jumped into the passenger’s seat, and he handed me a sandwich.

“I was making my own lunch anyway,” he said, clearly heading off my thanks before I could even start. “And if you pass out from hunger during your shift, your boss would probably take the opportunity to fire you.”

I took a huge bite and groaned. “I’ll do your dishes for a week,” I promised.

Gage glanced over at me from the road. “A straight guy just made you food. Try again.”

I took another bite. “Two weeks?”

Now he shot me a grin. “Sounds a little closer.”

“I know your game. You’re just trying to guilt me into more dishes.”

He shrugged. “Or, you know, doing a real grocery run when it’s your turn.”

“I’m a vegetarian, Gage. I have moral objections to standing at the deli counter.” Mostly because of how good everything looked. I’d gone vegetarian in order to date a vegan, but I’d stayed one because it helped suppress some of my creepier vampire instincts. That didn’t make being around a sizzling hamburger patty any easier, though.

“And I have moral objections to tofu hot dogs. Also, beer?”

“I got the beer! Keystone Light!”

Gage rolled his eyes. “Like I said. Beer?”

“You’re a snob,” I accused him. After all, the Keystone Light was drinkable. Kind of. Mostly it was just really cheap.

“I’m just saying, Fort. When it was my week I bought Sam Adams. After one of those bottles of piss that you’re trying to call beer, I was giving serious consideration to going and siphoning off some of your Fiesta’s antifreeze instead.”

I finished the last bite of the sandwich, balled up the paper towel that he’d wrapped it in, and threw it at his head while we were stopped at a red light. Gage whipped it right back, but I ducked and it went out the open window, where it bounced against the Honda next to us. The girl driving was so involved in her texting that she didn’t even react, and we both cracked up.

“That crazy fitness routine of yours is paying off,” Gage said after a final snicker. “Your reflexes are getting fucking catlike here.”

I managed an uncomfortable little chuckle. Working out was why a drag queen had wolf-whistled at me last week when I’d been bending down to pick up a quarter at the bus stop. The evolution of my reflexes from their previously arthritic state was part of the transition, and something I preferred to try not to think about.

“Oh, hey. Are you just working the lunch shift today?” Gage asked.

“No, dinner as well. Full nine hours. Why?”

“That speed-dating thing is tonight and I just wanted to check to see if you had changed your mind.”

I snorted. “I appreciate the offer, but I still don’t even know why you’re so excited about it.”

He shrugged. “Looks fun, and I’ll be meeting twenty women in an hour and a half. Plus finger food. It’s worth trying.” He slanted a look at me. “Why, did something interesting happen to you during your ten free minutes last week?”

“Yeah, I figured out that the reason the shower is draining so slowly is because your boy-band hair sheds like a Wookiee.” Gage laughed again and let it drop. We talked about other things for the rest of the drive, until he dropped me off at work with five minutes to spare.

Since breaking up with my last girlfriend, Beth, I hadn’t gone out at all. Part of it had been sheer exhaustion from my new schedule, but a large part had also been reticence. Dating Beth had ended pretty badly, with her cheating on me blatantly and often. Gage had heard the whole story, and seemed to have made it his private mission to prove that there were plenty of nice women out there. I’d stopped bothering to count the number of times that we’d been picking up takeout or going to a movie and just happened to run into one of the women from his master’s program, or that I’d come home to find that an old friend of Gage’s had just stopped by for a drink, and just happened to be adorable, single, and age appropriate. It hadn’t worked, of course. It wasn’t Gage’s fault that I was less human than I used to be, and feeling a little conflicted about going out on a date with some nice nursing student whose blood I might sometime in the future want to drink.

Clocking in and getting to work was a relief because it got my mind off of both my existential moral headache and the thought of just how long it had been since I’d gotten laid. I’d worked in food service before (sometimes I thought I’d done just about every possible minimum-wage job before), but mostly at diners or the occasional chain buffalo-wing joint. Working at Peláez had been a very new experience. For one thing, there was the joy of carrying huge trays of food while in black tie. For another, they actually employed a guy whose entire job was to go over to the table and advise people on their wine selection. Then there was the food itself.

In most restaurants, bringing the food over was a maximum of three trips. Once to bring over salads or appetizers, another for the entrée, and one last visit to bring over dessert and coffee. Peláez, though, took itself pretty seriously. Part of that manifested in its no-clip-on-tie policy, but the bulk of it resulted in portions so tiny that a typical plate actually consisted of a single mushroom wrapped in bacon and sprinkled with caviar. Serving a single person their lunch involved ten trips with ten different plates, and I wasn’t allowed to just stand there while he popped the bite into his mouth, and whip the plate away. Oh no. I had to busy myself by scampering over to another table and bringing over their minuscule bite of food. Then swinging back to pick up the now-empty plates from table one and bring those ones back.

It was probably a good thing I’d started working out, because all those trips from the dining room back to the kitchen racked up some serious miles.

The benefit to the job was that it left me with very little time to brood. On the downside . . .

“Where’s the fucking vegetarian?” boomed across the kitchen halfway through the main lunch crowd. Like a deer in the headlights, I froze in the act of taking a plate. All down the line, the sous-chefs and assistant cooks eyed me while keeping up the controlled chaos of chopping knives and boiling pots. Down the main aisle rolled my personal nemesis, Chef Jerome, and all around him people ducked down into instinctive head bobs of respect, doing everything possible to avoid attracting his gimlet eye.

I gave a deep sigh. “Here, Chef,” I called.

He came toward me. Chef Jerome looked like old photos of Rasputin, only instead of weird robes he wore bright orange Crocs and an impeccable white chef’s coat. His long wiry mass of black hair was always contained in a ponytail, but he’d had to rig an old hairnet into a beard net to prevent his strange, straggly, end-of-days-prophet, chest-length beard from contaminating the food. His eyes were always dialed to ten on the fanatic scale, but for Chef Jerome, the only true religion was Foodie, and I was a heretic in the eyes of his lord.

Coming up to me, he held a fork wedged into a single mouthful of food. Also known in this restaurant as a thirty-nine-dollar entrée.

“Open,” he said balefully.

I did my best. “Chef, really, I—”

“OPEN.” The vein on his forehead started to throb, a sure sign that he was nearing the breaking point. The last time he’d hit it had been last week, when Lorraine was on meat duty and had miscalibrated her micrometer, resulting in lamb cubes that were two centimeters larger than Chef Jerome had asked for. The ensuing fit had broken eight plates, violated two chicken carcasses, and required fourteen completely comped meals for the people in the dining room who’d overheard language that made Gordon Ramsay sound like a Mormon.

Heeding the throbbing vein, I shut up and opened my mouth. Like the parent of a toddler, he popped the little food niblet in.

Chef Jerome’s feverish eyes documented every movement of my jaw as I chewed. “And?” he asked, his eyes going full Manson-lamp.

I swallowed reluctantly, my mouth already mourning the loss even as my stomach practically danced a jig. “Yes, it’s amazing,” I muttered.

“Filet mignon in an orange glaze with a dusting of jalapeño, motherfucker,” Chef Jerome screamed in my face. Then he looked up and shook his fist at the ceiling, as if challenging the heavens. “There will be no goddamn vegetarians in this kitchen!” This Scarlett O’Hara moment of Chef Jerome’s happened several times a week. And it was a small comfort that as bad as things were for me, they were far worse for Josh the vegan.

My day then got even worse as I walked back into the dining room and noticed the homicidally envious looks that my fellow waiters were shooting me. That only ever meant one thing, and I gulped as I went back to my tables.

Sitting in the middle of my section was Suzume Hollis, kitsune, sometime friend, and all-time tormenter. She caught my eye, raised her wineglass ever so slightly, and gave me the smallest curl of that smile that always hit me like an electric shock to my spine. Then, without missing a beat, she turned her attention back to the expensively suited middle-aged man who sat across from her.

I’d met Suzume when my mother hired her as my bodyguard, but after she’d risked her life to save me from a homicidal pedophile vampire we’d kind of become friends. Being friends with Suzume involved receiving a lot of forwarded e-mail humor and having to endure her love of pranks. In the first month alone of being friends, she’d TPed my car twice, sent a male stripper-gram to my door, and broken into my apartment to fill my closet with 237 cotton-candy Tribbles.

Those incidents had been various levels of amusing (particularly the Tribbles, which had been funnier before Gage and I had had to get down to the serious business of actually trying to eat 237 cotton-candy Tribbles), but then Suzume had decided that my work hours were fair game.

All of the kitsune in Providence were the daughters and granddaughters of the White Fox, who had been a geisha in Japan before emigrating to America. Upon arrival, she’d gone back to what she’d known best and had set up an escort business. While none of the kitsune actually did any of the escort jobs themselves, they did manage and run all of the other aspects of Green Willow Escorts, and lately Suzume had been put in charge of screening prospective clients.

The other waiters were insanely jealous because Suzume never sat in their sections. Instead she was always perched in mine, balancing perfectly on that edge where appropriate business attire starts meeting the opening act of a male sexual fantasy. Today she was in a dark blue silk blouse tucked into a black skirt that ended demurely just below her knee but was so formfitting that I wondered how the hell she maneuvered herself into her car. The string of black pearls around her neck made her skin look luminously pale, and her black hair was in a sleek yet complicated arrangement held together by two long red lacquered chopsticks. She had only a little makeup on around her eyes, drawing attention to the most obvious marker of her Japanese ancestry, and making them look even darker than usual. The man sitting across from her, who probably spent all of his time in boardrooms or wherever rich and powerful men hung out, was clearly already completely enraptured by the time I went over to tell them the day’s specials.

I wasn’t sure if it would make my fellow waiters more or less jealous to know the particular method that Suzume used to torment me during these meals. Somehow she arranged the conversation so that every time I arrived at the table it was just in time to hear the filthiest, most ear-searing and brain-fragmenting portion of a conversation focused on what particular sexual practices this potential client was interested in. And each time I had to try to keep a straight face after hearing a horrifyingly salacious fragment concerning people’s front ends, hind ends, or other parts that I’d never even particularly considered, she’d look up at me with the most demure and ladylike expression, blandly asking for another roll or complimenting the most recent dish, and her eyes would be gleaming with foxy amusement. Meanwhile the rich and powerful men across from her would be putty in her hands, completely eager at the end of that dinner to pay the exorbitant fees that Green Willow Escorts charged.

After an hour of torture, I was finally able to bring over the bill. As always, Suzume reached for it just a hair too slowly, and the newest client insisted on paying it himself, puffing up with importance as Suzume murmured her appreciation in velvety tones.

The next time I swung around, her dinner partner was gone and Suzume was nursing a cup of coffee. She always stuck around—she couldn’t stand not being able to gloat to someone.

“Did you like the bit about the hot wax?” she asked as soon as I came over. With her financial prey gone, she’d dropped her Mysterious and Demure Woman of the East routine and was grinning at me with her usual enthusiasm.

“I am going to have nightmares for a week thanks to you,” I bitched as I started collecting the dessert plates. Usually I’d leave that for the busboys, but despite my front I could never resist the chance to spend a few minutes talking with her.

“I almost thought you were going to miss the spanking bit, but then you showed up with the reconstructed artichoke. It was awesome.”

“The food or the other thing?” I asked. “I would’ve thought that you’d heard every weird sexual fetish on the planet by now.”

“I have,” she admitted frankly. “But watching your face makes it interesting all over again.”

“Damn it, Suze, he stole the freaking napkin. You do this on purpose every time. Get them all riled and worked up, and then I’ve brought the coffee and they have to walk out of here, so they grab the napkin to provide a visual block.”

She gave me a very smug look.

“Do not look that proud,” I scolded. “That’s not nice to do to any guy.”

“Are you saying that on behalf of your gender, or”— she swept her gaze downward—“are you speaking from more personal experience?”

“I’m immune to you now,” I said, picking up the pile of plates and stomping off to the kitchen.

Not fast enough, because I could hear her taunting, disbelieving laugh behind me.

She was right. I wasn’t immune at all.

Suzume was gone when I went back to deliver more huge plates with tiny portions to the rest of my tables, and the rest of the night dragged on, noticeably duller after the excitement of her presence.

We stopped seating people at nine, which meant that the last stragglers didn’t head out the door until quarter past ten, and the cleanup didn’t finish for me until almost eleven. I pulled off my bow tie and wadded it into my pocket while I waited at the bus stop, keeping a leery eye on my surroundings. Peláez was in one of the nicer sections of Providence’s downtown, near art galleries and the theater, but it was still dark and nearly deserted, so I stayed as alert as my poor, tired brain could manage. It had been a long week, and I felt deep relief when the bus finally pulled up and I climbed aboard. Tomorrow was Saturday, and it was not only my day off work, but the only day that I wouldn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn and drive down to Newport and train with Chivalry. He and Bhumika always had a standing date on Saturdays—brunch at a charming local restaurant, then over to one of their favorite auctions.

Gage was still out when I got home. He was a night-owl kind of guy, and usually he and I would watch a few episodes of whatever was on Adult Swim that night while I ate a quick dinner. But his shoes weren’t in their usual spot by the door, so he was apparently out somewhere, still having a great time. I grumbled a little to myself as I heated up my cup of ramen noodles and reflected on the sadness of our standard routine being one of the highlights of my current social life.

Tonight it was a rerun of The Venture Brothers, but my sleep-deprived eyes started getting bleary halfway through it. I tossed the ramen noodle cup in the trash and staggered off to bed, deciding that a shower could wait until tomorrow. My head hit the pillow just after midnight, and I was asleep almost instantly.

•   •   •

I woke up suddenly, in one of those complete awakenings that left me confused but alert, catching the end of a loud crashing sound that echoed through the apartment. It was followed immediately by a dull thud. I glanced at the clock and saw that I’d slept for only two hours.

My hearing had been intermittently flirting with achieving vampire levels lately. Most days I had regular human hearing; then suddenly the sound of Buttons, Mrs. Bandyopadyay’s bichon frise, scampering across the linoleum sounded like he was right next to my ear. Five minutes later everything would be back to normal. Chivalry had told me that this was a normal part of transition, but had been his usual tight-lipped self with any other information, like how to make it stop or if this would eventually become my new normal.

I waited a moment but couldn’t hear anything else, which meant that I was back to regular human levels and my auditory system had just gone haywire again. This wasn’t the first time that Gage coming home had sounded like an approaching army, and I relaxed back into my pillow, listening for the rest of his usual routine. Gage swore by the properties of an antioxidant juice for warding off hangovers or the aftereffects of a late night—I’d tried it once on his urging, and had spent the next ten minutes running my mouth under the faucet to try to clean out the taste, which had been on par with raw sewage. I waited for the sound of the juicer to begin.

I waited, but there were no sounds in our apartment—not the juicer, and not even the usual sounds of Gage’s feet across the floor.

I sat up in bed and called softly, “Gage?”

Just silence.

I got up completely and walked out of the bedroom. The living room was dark except for the small light above the main door, which I’d left on when I went to bed so that Gage wouldn’t have to fumble around completely in the dark when he got home. I glanced down at the small mat beside the door, noting that Gage’s sneakers were still missing. He hadn’t come home yet.

That sent my mind back to the noise that had woken me up. It had sounded like it had come from the apartment, but if vampire hearing had been involved it might well have been feral cats knocking over the outside trash cans again.

Maybe. But I was less trusting than I used to be, and I padded quickly back to my room to retrieve the .45 Colt automatic that was hidden under my bed, disguised under an old pair of boxer shorts. My foster father had raised me with a strong respect for proper gun safety, meaning that I felt daily guilt over not keeping the Colt locked in a regulation gun safe, but the guilt wasn’t enough to overpower my desire to be able to get at the Colt quickly if something not entirely human presented itself.

The ammo was separate from the gun, hidden in the toe of an old slipper that also stayed under the bed. I slid the clip into the Colt with the ease of long practice, then, feeling significantly braver, left the bedroom again.

The thing about having a roommate was that it made it a lot easier to go back to sleep after a weird sound, because there was always a built-in explanation available. With Gage still out, there was no way that I was going to be able to close my eyes again until I’d checked everywhere. I started with the bathroom, because that was on my side of the apartment, right across from my door. Then I went back to the main room, checking around the sofa, looking under the kitchen table.

I tapped lightly on Gage’s door and called his name again. He was regular in his habits, and I was confident that he wasn’t home, but I had no desire to run the risk that he’d gone straight to his room without taking off his shoes or drinking his antioxidant crap. Really, there would be no good outcome to that one—particularly since I hadn’t exactly mentioned to him that I was a gun owner.

There was no response, and I held the Colt in my left hand, down at my side, while I reached for the doorknob with my right. For a moment I smelled something weird, and I paused, sniffing. It was almost familiar, but then it was gone again. Shit, now my nose was getting in on the transition business.

I opened the door and looked around. The dark room looked normal. A cool breeze came in from his open window, and the moonlight was bright enough to illuminate Gage’s neatly made bed.

Nothing weird at all. It must’ve been feral cats. I started to turn, but then I suddenly smelled that weird thing again, and this time it was much stronger. I sniffed, trying to place it. For a moment I couldn’t think of it, then it suddenly hit me what I was smelling. Blood. Not a lot of it, but enough that it was tickling at the part of me that was a vampire, like a chocoholic would feel walking past the open door of the Newport Fudge Company.

I walked farther into the room, raising the gun so that now I was holding it in a two-handed grip at chest level, no longer bothering to hide it. Closer now, I could see that the window I’d assumed was open was actually broken—someone had knocked a hole in it so that they could get to the lock, and there was glass on the floor that I tried not to step on.

I still couldn’t see anyone, but I could definitely smell the blood, and the glass on the floor was probably from the sound that had first woken me up. I leaned back quickly and flipped the wall switch.

Cheery light filled the room, illuminating what had been hidden in the shadows at the base of the bed. Gage lay facedown on the floor of his room, completely naked, with both arms outstretched. There was something wrong with his arms, but at first my brain refused to register what it was.

I was moving toward him before I fully registered what I was seeing, and it wasn’t until I reached down and actually touched his shoulder that I realized that he was already dead.