"Tommy, leave these poor people alone," said the redhead.

"No, wait." Flannel turned to Abby and smiled. "Do you guys know where they keep the syringes?"

Abby looked at Jared, who looked at the guy in flannel. "Well, you can't just buy them," Jared said. He was fiddling with the leather straps on his bondage pants, looking coy. Abby slapped his hand.

"You need a prescription to buy syringes," Abby said.

"Do you really think I look like a heroin addict?" Jared threw his bangs out of his face dramatically. His head was shaved except for his bangs, which reached to his chin, specifically so he could throw them out of his face dramatically. "I was, like, thinking that maybe I should bulk up. You know, eat and stuff, but—"

"Well, thanks," said Flannel Shirt. The redhead moved off down the aisle. "I was going to try some heroin, but if you can't buy needles, well, there you go. See you guys. Nice shirt, by the way."

Abby looked down at her T-shirt, black, of course, with the image of a poet taken from a nineteenth-century etching. "Like you even know who it is."

" 'She walks in beauty, like the night, " quoted the flannel-shirt guy. He winked at her, then grinned. "Byron's a hero of mine. See ya."

He turned and started to walk away. Abby reached out and snagged his sleeve. "Hey, there are needle exchange programs all over town. They're listed in the Bay Guardian."

"Thanks," said flannel. He turned and Abby grabbed him again.

"We're going to be at the Glas Kat. There's a Goth club tonight. Five-hundred block of Fourth Street. I know a dealer there. You know, for your heroin."

The flannel-shirt guy nodded, and looked at Byron's picture on her shirt again, then at her face. Fucksocks. He's so looking at my streaking eye makeup.

"Thanks, milady," said Flannel Shirt. And he was gone, off over the dark moors of the tampon aisle.

"What was that about?" whined Jared. "He's so, so Happy Days." Jared White Wolf spent a lot of time watching Nick at Nite when he wasn't brooding or fussing with his appearance.

Abby walked into the flap of Jared's black duster and pounded his slight chest with her palms. "Didn't you see. Didn't you see?"

"What, you acting like a complete ho?"

"He had fangs," Abby said.

"Well, so do I," Jared said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a pair of perfect, dentistry-quality vampire fangs. "Duh, everybody does."

"Yeah, but his grew! I saw them. Let's go," Abby said, pulling Jared White Wolf by his great bat-wing lapels. "I have to change into something hot before we go to the club."

"Wait, I want to get some Halls. My throat is raw from all the cloves we smoked last night."

"Hurry." The buckles of Abby's black platform boots jangled as she dragged her friend past the lipsticks and hair products before he could get interested.

"Okay," said Jared, "but if I don't meet a cute guy tonight, you have to stay up all night and hold me while I cry."

"You should try black lipstick sometime," Tommy said to Jody as they approached their building, their arms loaded with packages. He was still thinking about the kids at the drugstore. It was the first time since tenth grade that he'd used his knowledge of Romantic poetry. For a while he'd tried molding himself into the tragic Romantic hero, brooding and staring clench-jawed off into space as he composed dark verse in his head. But it turned out that trying to appear tragic in Incontinence, Indiana, was redundant, and his mother kept shouting at him and making him forget his rhymes. "Tommy, if you keep grinding your teeth like that, they'll wear away and you'll have to have dentures like Aunt Ester." Tommy only wished his beard was as heavy as Aunt Ester's—then he could stare out over the moors while he stroked it pensively.

"Yeah," Jody said, "because I need to make it more obvious that I'm an undead creature that feeds on the blood of the living."

"You make it sound so sordid."

"No, I meant it in a nice way."

"Oh."

"Because it's not like people wouldn't understand if they found out we were vampires, because we slipped up and, oh, I don't know, UNSHEATHED OUR FANGS IN THE FUCKING DRUGSTORE!"

Tommy almost dropped his packages. She hadn't said a word about that all night. He'd hoped she hadn't noticed. "It was an accident."

"You called that girl 'milady. "

"She was impressed with my Byron."

"Yeah, well, your Byron was probably sticking out a little, too, wasn't he?"

"It wasn't like that."

"You drooled." Jody paused at their security door and dug into her jacket for her key.

Tommy stepped around her. "I'm still new at this. I think I'm doing pretty well. My ghastly pallor obviously impressed the lady at the needle exchange." He reached into his bag and fanned out a handful of sterile-wrapped and capped syringes.

"Congratulations, you can now pass as an HIV-positive heroin addict."

"Très chic." He grinned like he imagined a sexy Italian man-whore might.

"Who drools in public," Jody said.

Damn, she's immune to my sexy Italian man-whore grin, Tommy thought. He said, "Be nice, I'm new. My lips don't fit together right when my fangs are out."

She turned the key and swung the door open. There, passed out on the landing, was William the huge cat guy and sleeping on his chest, Chet the huge cat.

"I told you it would work," Tommy said.

Jody stepped into the stairwell and closed the door behind her. "You go first."

Fifteen minutes later, as he placed five syringes full of blood in their refrigerator, Tommy said, "This vampire thing is going to be great."

He'd had a moment when he'd bitten William—not just getting over the idea of being that close someone who smelled that nasty, but also being close to another man period. But after cleaning William's neck with an alcohol swab they'd gotten from the drugstore, and consoling himself that most literary vampires seemed sexually ambivalent anyway, the blood hunger pushed him through.

He was feeling more relaxed, now that they had the food problem solved—for a while, anyway. If his friends didn't kill them in the next couple of days, he might even enjoy life as a vampire. Then he turned to Jody and frowned. "But I can't help but think that it may be wrong, taking advantage of a homeless alcoholic."

"We could just hunt and kill people," Jody said cheerfully. She had a little crust of William's blood in the corner of her mouth. Tommy licked his thumb and wiped it away.

"We did give him a nice sweater for his huge shaved cat," Tommy said.

"I loved that sweater," Jody said. "And we are giving him a warm landing to sleep on," she added, diving onto Tommy's rationalization dog pile.

"And if we only take a little bit each day, he'll actually feel better. I know I did."

"And we won't become alcoholics ourselves."

"How are you feeling, by the way?" Tommy said.

"Better. Hair of the dog. You?"

"Two-beer buzz, max. I'll be fine. You want to try the experiment?"

Jody checked her watch. "No time. We'll do it tomorrow night."

"Right. So, on to the list. Looks like hot monkey love."

"Tommy, we need to find a daytime person to help us. We have to move out of this place."

"I've been thinking about Alaska."

"Okay, good for you, but we still need to find a place to live where the Animals and Inspector Rivera can't find us."

"No, I'm thinking we should move to Alaska. For one thing, in the winter, it's dark for like twenty hours a day, so we'd have plenty of time. And I read somewhere that Eskimos put their old people out on the ice when they are ready to die. It would be like people were leaving snacks out for us."

"You're kidding."

"Eskimo Pies?" He grinned.

Jody put her hand on her hip and looked at him, her mouth hanging open a little, as if she was waiting for something more. When it didn't come, she said, "Okay then, I'm going to change."