The poor bastard waiting to use the toilet backed up, until Parker couldn’t see his shoes. “What did you say?” He probably thought Parker was high on something.

“Nothing,” he wheezed. When he found that bitch, he was going to kill her. Kill her dead. Deader than dead.

After he got her to remove the goddamn curse.

“Oh Goddess!”

“What?”

Parker groaned. “I think I shit out my spleen.”

Boston, Sometime in the 1980s…

Parker pushed the shopping cart around the store and did his best to ignore the strange looks people gave him—or rather, his grocery cart. He’d gotten used to them over the last decade or so, but at least he had a better handle on what the witch had done to him. The experiments to find what he could and could not eat had not been pleasant. Memories of the infamous Cactus Incident haunted his dreams during the day.

A vampire cursed to drink nothing but the blood of plants. What the hell had she been thinking?

His butt cheeks clenched at the horrible memory of that day in the restroom.

Everyone knew cacti produced water, which was why he’d attempted to drink from it. What most people didn’t know was the water they contained also produced diarrhea, nausea and vomiting in anyone who drank it, like vampires who were stuck on a restricted diet.

Thank the Goddess for Greg, who’d helped him figure out what the hell he was living with. If not for him, Parker probably would have starved to death or, worse, gone feral and been hunted by his kind. Once Greg heard what he’d been through (and had stopped laughing long enough), he’d concocted a plan to help Parker survive without Terri.

At least he’d managed to avoid her the last few years. The last time she’d caught up to him had been the worst. He’d woken up to find her snuggled up against him, her spooky green eyes boring into him, her scent both tantalizing and repulsive at the same time. His fangs had descended in preparation for feeding, startling him. She’d had him by the balls, her nails lightly scratching the wrinkled skin. “I’ve missed you,” she’d crooned.

He’d never moved so fast in his life. He couldn’t believe he’d been forced to streak through New York City at rush hour. He was lucky he hadn’t been arrested and thrown in a nice cell block with Bubba the Butt Buddy. The sunburn had taken days to heal.

He finished his shopping and headed for the checkout. He placed ten bottles of all-natural maple syrup, a potted spider plant, a bouquet of carnations and a box of caramels on the counter.

The cashier looked at his purchase and frowned.

Parker shrugged. “What? I like caramels.”

She rang him up silently, much to his relief.

The light was on when he got back to the apartment, which meant Greg was probably there. Parker opened the door and picked up the grocery bags, his stomach grumbling. “Honey, I’m home!”

Greg West, his roommate and resident pain in the ass, sauntered out of the kitchen. A Kiss the Cook apron barely fit his athletic body. You’d never know he was both an accountant and a witch. He looked like a fullback for the Giants. “Knock it off with that honey shit, or I won’t feed you dinner.”

Parker held up the bags and grinned. He shook the right one gently, hoping to bribe Greg into a better mood. “I bought you caramels.”

Greg rolled his eyes and headed back into the kitchen. “Did you get the plant?”

“Yup.”

“And the syrup?”

“Uh-huh.” Parker followed Greg, more than ready for his dinner.

“Over there, then.”

Parker deposited the bags on the table. “What’s for dinner?”

Greg sighed. “The usual.”

“Yum.” Parker blinked. Was he beginning to like his curse? He supposed it was possible. One of the things he’d come to appreciate about his changed diet was the variety. O-negative might be different from O-positive, but in the long run, it all tasted like blood. Now he got to try all sorts of flavor and texture combinations he’d have been forced to vomit back up in the old days.

Greg snipped a piece of the spider plant and put it in the blender. Maple syrup was then added, along with some of the leaves off the bouquet of carnations. “Felt like a change?”

“Something like that.” Parker put the carnations in some water. It would help them live a few more days. Besides, he loved the scent of the flowers but couldn’t eat the blossoms, only the leaves. Stupid curse. When Terri had cursed him to drink nothing but green, leafy blood, she’d been serious. Greg had helped him figure out it took a delicate balance of human blood, tree sap and leaves. Too little blood, and Parker would begin to lose weight. Too much, and his body would try to reject the extra protein.

Greg shrugged and grabbed a knife, then pricked his finger and added some drops of blood to Parker’s dinner. He put the lid on and hit Liquefy.

No matter how many times the man had said I told you so, Parker owed him.

Parker’s mouth watered. “Have I mentioned how much I hate that bitch?”

“Every night at dinner.” Greg turned off the blender and poured the sticky golden-brown mess into a glass. He added a corkscrew straw and handed him the concoction. “Bon appétit.”

“Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it.” Greg went back to the steak he’d been sautéing. “How are the studies going?”

Parker took a long swallow. “Not bad, might go for my doctorate.”

Greg choked out a laugh. “You? A PhD?”

“Why not?”

“Sorry. I’m trying to picture you as Dr. Parker Hollis, professor of botany.”

“Yeah. Not exactly the way I’d envisioned my life after life.”

“I never expected I’d wind up living with a vegetarian geek vampire.”

Parker blew Greg a raspberry.

Greg leered back. “So. How much pussy does a botanist get anyway?”

Parker smirked. “Let’s see. There’s the regular pussy willow, the weeping pussy willow—”

“Man. Shut up. Idiot.” But Greg was laughing, which was a good thing, considering the bomb Parker was going to hit him with.

“I’m thinking about pursuing a minor too.”

Greg stirred the steak, adding soy sauce to the stir-fry. “In what?”

He coughed into his fist. “Witchcraft.”

“Parker,” Greg groaned.

“What?”

“First off, no respectable university offers witchcraft as a minor.”

Parker sniffed. “I never said it was respectable.” In fact, the dean of admissions had promised to do things to him that a porn star would consider disreputable.

“Second, what did I tell you about the crazy? Any place that hands out a degree in witchcraft is either a scam or up to the brim of their pointy hats in crazy.”

“But her—I mean their—work/study plan was excellent.”

Greg smacked him upside the head. “Tell Little Parker to shut the hell up for five minutes. He’s the one who got you into this situation, remember?”

“Little? I am insulted, sirrah.” Parker whipped out the straw and brandished it, waving it around like a deranged musketeer. “En garde!”

Greg lifted his spoon and assumed the position. “You are so on.”

The two dueled until, in a frenzy of soy-sauce and maple-syrup splatters, Parker lay on the floor, defeated. He lifted the broken straw and glared at it. “You failed me. Damn you, corkscrew straw.”

Laughing, Greg helped him to his feet. “Dude, I know you want to find a way to end the curse, but seriously? I don’t think that’s the way to go about it.”

“And you would know?” Parker drank the last of his dinner and placed the glass in the sink.

One raised eyebrow was all it took to remind Parker that, yes, his friend would know. “I warned you off her.”

“Yes, mama.”

“But no, you had to have a piece o’ that.”

“Fuck off, Greg.” He stared at the blender.