I willed my fingers back to the keyboard, but they ignored my brain’s command, and kept clenching into fists instead.

“I suppose it was very satisfying for you, those few months as Coven Leader. You’d obviously want to recapture that sense of importance.”

“It was never about being important. I just wanted to—”

I stopped and resumed typing.

“You just wanted to do what, Paige?”

The flight attendant stopped by. I ordered a coffee. Cassandra took wine.

“You wanted to do what, Paige?” Cassandra repeated when the server was gone.

I turned to look at her. “Don’t needle me. You always do this. You’re like one of those sitcom mothers-in-law, poking and prodding, feigning interest, but only looking for a soft spot, someplace to sneak in an insinuation, an insult.”

“Isn’t it possible that I’m not feigning interest? That I really do want to know more about you?”

“You’ve never been interested in me before.”

“You’ve never been interesting before. But you’re finally growing up, and I don’t just mean getting older. In the last year or so, you’ve matured into an intriguing individual. Not necessarily someone I’d choose to be stranded on a desert island with, but conflict of opinion can make for more interesting relationships than common interests. If I challenge your opinions, it’s because I’m curious to hear how you defend them.”

“I don’t want to defend them,” I said. “Not now. Your questions feel like insults, Cassandra, and I don’t want to deal with them.”

To my surprise, she didn’t say another word. Just sipped her wine, reclined her seat, and rested for the remainder of the flight.

Disconnected

VAMPIRES ARE A RACE OF CITY DWELLERS. THAT MAY SEEM obvious, since it’s far easier to kill undetected in a city with hundreds of annual unsolved murders, rather than in a small town that might see a single homicide a year. In truth, though, that’s not a major factor in their choice.

Real vampires aren’t the marauding bloodsuckers you see on late-night TV, racking up a dozen victims every night. A real vampire only needs to kill once a year, though they must feed more often than that. Feeding is easy enough—if you ever pass out in a bar and wake up the next morning with a hangover that seems worse than normal, I’d suggest you check your neck. You may not find the marks, though. Unless you know what you’re looking for, vampire bites are nearly impossible to see, and the aftereffects are no more debilitating than donating blood on an empty stomach.

Since a vampire bite is rarely fatal, it would be easy enough for vamps to live outside the city and commute for their annual kill. It might even be safer. The problem is that pesky semi-immortality. When you don’t age,people notice. It may take a while, but they eventually start to ask what brand of moisturizer you’re using. The smaller the town, the more people pay attention, and the more they talk. In a big city, a vampire could stay in one spot for fifteen to twenty years, and never hear more than a few snide Botox comments. Plus, there’s the whole boredom issue. Small towns are great for raising a family, but if you’re single and childless, Saturday nights on the front porch swing get a little dull after the first hundred years.

So, vampires like the city life. In North America, they also prefer the sunshine belt, with over half of the continent’s vampires living below the Mason-Dixon line. Northern winters probably lose their appeal pretty quickly when you realize you could lie on the beach all day and never risk so much as a sunburn. And it’s much easier to bite someone in a tank top than to gnaw through a parka.

Cassandra had arranged to meet Aaron in a bar on the south side of Atlanta. I’d never been to Atlanta, and our quick taxi ride from the airport to the bar didn’t provide much opportunity for sightseeing. What I noticed most was how modern it was. It looked, well, it looked like a northern city, very high-tech, very efficient, very un-southern. I’d expected something like Savannah or Charleston, but I saw little that reminded me of either. I suppose if I’d considered my history first, I’d have known better than to expect much Old South in Atlanta. General Sherman took care of that.

The taxi drove us to a neighborhood best described as working-class, with row houses, postage-stamp-size lawns, and streets lined with ten-year-old cars. The driver pulled up in front of a bar sandwiched between an auto-supply store and a Laundromat. The sign on the door read LUCKY PETE’S BILLIARDS, but the BILLIARDS part had recently been stroked out.

Cassandra paid the driver, stepped from the car, looked at the bar, and shook her head. “Aaron, Aaron. Two hundred years old and you still haven’t developed an iota of taste.”

“Seems fine to me. Hey, look, the sign says Fridays are Ladies’ Night. Cheap beer after four. Is it past four?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

I spotted Aaron on my first survey of the bar. I would say, with some certainty, most women would spot Aaron on their first survey of any bar. He’s at least six feet two, broad-shouldered, and tanned, with sandy blond hair and a ruggedly handsome face. Aaron sat at the end of the bar, engrossed in a beer and a cigarette, and ignoring the glances of a secretarial quartet behind him. As Cassandra approached, she took in his muddy work boots, worn jeans, and mortar-dust-coated T-shirt.

“How nice of you to dress up for me, Aaron,” she said.

“I just got off work. You’re damned lucky I even agreed—” He saw me and blinked