He rubbed the spot where she had bitten him. "It's fine. I can't even feel a mark."

"You don't feel weak?"

"No more than usual."

Jody smiled. "I don't know how much I… I mean, I don't have any way of measuring or anything."

"No, I'm fine. It was kind of sexy. I just wonder how I healed so fast."

"It seems to work that way."

"Let's try something." He held his hand by her face. "Lick my finger."

She pushed his hand away. "Tommy, just finish eating and we can go home and do this."

"No, it's an experiment. My cuticles get split from cutting boxes at the store. I want to see if you can heal them." He touched her lower lip. "Go ahead, lick."

She snaked out a tentative tongue and licked the tip of his finger, then took his finger in her mouth and ran her tongue around it.

"Wow," Tommy said. He pulled his finger out and looked at it. His cuticle, which had been split and torn, had healed. "This is great. Look."

Jody studied his cuticle. "It worked."

"Do another." He thrust another finger in her mouth.

She spit it out. "Stop that."

"Come on." He pushed at her lips. "Pleeeeze."

A big guy in a Forty-Niners sweatshirt leaned over from the table next to them and said, "Buddy, do you mind? I've got my kids here."

"Sorry," Tommy said, wiping vampire spit on his shirt. "We were just experimenting."

"Yeah, well, this isn't the place for it, okay?"

"Right," Tommy said.

"See?" Jody whispered. "I told you."

"Let's go home," Tommy said. "I've got a blister on my big toe."

"No fucking way, writer-boy."

"It's low in calories," Tommy coaxed, prodding her foot with his sneaker. "Good, and good for you."

"Not a chance."

Tommy sighed in defeat. "Well, I guess we've got more to worry about than my toe or your weight problem."

"Like what?"

"Like the fact that last night I saw a guy in the store parking lot that I think was the other vampire."

Chapter 16

Heartwarming and UL-Approved

There was a bum sleeping on the sidewalk across the street from the loft when they returned. Tommy, full of fast food and the elation of being twice laid, wanted to give the guy a dollar. Jody stopped him and pushed him up the steps. "Go on up," she said. "I'll be there in a minute."

She stood in the doorway watching the bum for movement. There was no heat signature around him and she assumed the worst. She waited for him to roll over and start laughing at her again. She was feeling strong and a little cocky from the infusion of Tommy's blood, so she had to fight the urge to confront the vampire, to get dead in his face and scream. Instead she just whispered, "Asshole," and closed the door. If his hearing was as acute as her own, and she was sure it was, he had heard her.

She found Tommy in bed, fast asleep.

Poor guy, she thought, running all over town doing my business. He probably hasn't slept more than a couple of hours since we met.

She pulled the covers over him, kissed him on the forehead, and went to the window in the front room to watch the bum across the street.

Tommy was dreaming of bebop-driven sentences read by a naked redhead when he woke to find her sleeping next to him. He threw his arm over her and pulled her close, but there was no response, no pleasant groan or reciprocal snuggle. She was out.

He pushed the light button on his watch and checked the time. It was almost noon. The room was so dark that the watch dial floated in his vision for a few seconds after he released the button. He went to the bathroom and fumbled around until he found the light switch. A single fluorescent tube clicked and sputtered and finally ignited, spilling a fuzzy green glow through the door into the bedroom.

She looks dead, he thought. Peaceful, but dead. Then he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. I look dead too.

It took him a minute to realize that it was the fluorescent lighting that had sucked the life out of his face, not his vampire girlfriend. He affected a serious glare and thought about how they would describe him in a hundred years, when he was really famous and really dead.

Like so many great writers before him, Flood was known for his troubled countenance and sickly pallor, especially under fluorescent lighting. Those who knew him said that even in those early years they could sense that this thin, serious young man would make his presence known as a great man of letters as well as a sexual dynamo. His legacy to the world was a trail of great books and broken hearts, and although it is well known that his love life was his downfall, he felt no regret, as illustrated in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "I have followed my penis into hell and returned with the story."

Tommy bowed deeply before the mirror, careful to keep the Nobel Prize medal from banging the sink, then began to interview himself, speaking clearly and slowly into his toothbrush.

"I think it was shortly after my first successful bus transfer that I realized the City was mine. Here I would produce some of my greatest work, and here I would meet my first wife, the lovely but deeply disturbed Jody…"

Tommy waved the microphone/toothbrush away as if the memories were too painful to recall, but actually he was trying to remember Jody's last name. I should know her maiden name, he thought, if just for historical purposes.

He glanced into the bedroom where the lovely but deeply disturbed Jody was lying naked and half-covered on the bed. He thought, She won't mind if I wake her up. She doesn't have to be at work or anything.

He approached the bed and touched her cheek. "Jody," he whispered. She didn't stir.

He shook her a bit. "Jody, honey."

Nothing.

"Hey," he said, taking her shoulders. "Hey, wake up." She didn't respond.

He pulled the covers off her as his father used to do to him on cold winter mornings when he wouldn't get up to go to school. "Up and at 'em, soldier — ass in the air and feet on the floor," he said in his best drill-sergeant bark.

She looked really great lying there naked in the half-light from the bathroom. He was getting a little turned on.

How would I feel, he thought, if I woke up and she was making love to me? Why, I believe that I would be pleasantly surprised. I think that would be better than waking up to frying bacon and the Sunday funnies. Yes, I'm sure she'll be pleased.

He crawled into bed with her and ventured a tentative kiss. She was a little cold and didn't move a muscle, but he was sure she liked it. He ran a finger down the valley between her breasts and over her stomach.

What if she didn't wake up? What if we do it and she doesn't wake up at all? How would I feel if I woke up and she told me that we had done it while I slept? I'd be fine with it. A little sad that I missed things, but I wouldn't be mad. I'd just ask her if I had a good time. Women are different, though.

He tickled her just to get a reaction. Again, she didn't move.

She's so cold. With her not moving at all it might be a little morbid. Maybe I should wait. I'll tell her that I thought about it and decided that it wouldn't be courteous. She'll like that.

He sighed deeply, got out of bed and pulled the covers over her. I should buy her something, he thought.

Jody snapped into consciousness and bit down on something hard. She opened her eyes and saw Tommy sitting on the edge of the bed. She smiled.

"Good morning," he said.

She reached for whatever was in her mouth.

Tommy caught her hand. "Don't bite down. It's a thermometer." He checked his watch, then pulled the thermometer out of her mouth and read it. "Ninety-five point two. You're on your way."

Jody sat up and looked at the thermometer. "On my way to what?"