"You sound like a lawyer marshalling his defense," Victor said with a smile.

DJ shrugged. "Maybe I will defend her in front of the council. I like her."

"You haven't even met her yet," Victor pointed out with a laugh.

"Well, I like her restaurant, and I read Brunswick's mind," DJ announced. "He thinks she's a 'damned fine woman' always there to help others, and a pillar of the community all her life. She apparently volunteered at everything before she was turned and still does. She's a good woman, Victor. The very fact that her friends would go to all this trouble for her says as much."

"Hmm." He frowned. "Then we'd best find out all we can so that the council can make a fair judgment. Otherwise, I fear she could lose her head."

Mouth tight, DJ nodded and led the way out of the bathroom.

"Are you ready now?" Brunswick asked when they reached the table.

When both men nodded, he heaved out a little breath, and stood. When the other men stood as well, he said, "Now, just remember to keep your traps shut about this ad business and restrict yourself to only saying hello until Mabel has a chance to explain."

"Why not wait to introduce us until after Mabel's explained?" Edward asked dryly. "Surely that makes more sense."

"Not if you know Elvi," Brunswick assured him. "Once she knows what we've done she'll be mad as hell, but she'll also be terribly embarrassed and if she hasn't met you already, she'll no doubt refuse to do so." He shook his head. "No, this is the best way. Now, come on."

As had been the case throughout, the man didn't wait for protests or agreement, but simply gestured for them to follow and turned to head back the way he'd come.

"Well?" Harper asked, glancing to Victor for guidance.

Shrugging, he turned to trail Brunswick, aware that the rest of the men followed suit.

They nearly reached the booth this time. Victor was just walking past the shelf with the statue of the iguana family on it when he noted movement out of the corner of his eye. Then part of the statue separated from the rest and launched itself at him.

And all hell broke loose.

Chapter Five.

"I told you I saw it move," DJ muttered.

Victor didn't pay him any attention. All his focus was on the petite woman presently fussing over him and pressing a napkin to his ear and neck. Victor's roar when the iguana landed on his neck and shoulder and latched onto his ear had managed to get everyone's attention, but the whole place had erupted in shouts and screams when he'd begun to claw at his neck and spin on the spot.

Shouting for someone named Pedro, Elvi had abandoned the birthday boy and hurried to Victor's side. She'd removed the iguana, passed it off to a little Mexican man who'd come running from the back of the restaurant, and then had snatched up napkins from the nearest table, cooing as she fussed over him.

"I'm so sorry. He's never done anything like this in the five years we've had the restaurant," she repeated, tugging at his arm to force him to bend over so she didn't have to continue to stand on her tiptoes to see his wound.

Victor grunted and bent obligingly forward, blinking as he found himself peering down the low neckline of her dress at her considerable cleavage.

"Oh dear. We'd best clean this up and put a bandage on it." Her voice sounded shaky as she stepped away from him, removing her bountiful breasts from his view. "You better come with me."

Victor straightened and waited as she excused herself to the birthday boy and his family. He then followed her gyrating hips in the tight skirt as she led the way through the beaded arch and turned into a small office with a desk, two chairs, a small refrigerator, a filing cabinet, and a tall metal cabinet with double doors.

"Have a seat." Elvi gestured to the two chairs in front of the desk. She moved to the metal cabinet and opened one of the doors to reveal shelves stacked neatly with paperwork and various other items including a first-aid kit. Retrieving the small white kit, she set it on the desk and opened it. After a pause, she removed a swatch of cotton, then opened a dark brown bottle and poured some of its contents on the cotton before moving to him.

"This will sting," she warned and set to work cleaning his ear and neck.

Victor sat completely still, hardly noticing the sharp stinging she caused as he inhaled her scent. She smelled of vanilla and spices from the kitchen, a delectable combination that made his mouth water. Tightening his lips, he tried to ignore the smell, but found his nose working to inhale more of it.

"Hmm," Elvi murmured at his side, her breath teasing his ear. "It isn't as bad as I first feared. More blood than damage, thank goodness."

Victor didn't comment. The wound had been quite deep; however his body had started to repair itself at once. This answered one of their questions, however. She couldn't recognize another immortal. It was usually instinctual with their kind. Although, unless taught, they wouldn't recognize the signals their mind and body were sending.

Aware her hands had gone still and hearing her swallow thickly by his ear, he turned to peer at her. Her eyes must have been hazel as a mortal, now the green shone with silver and the brown around the outside glowed gold. She was biting one corner of her lip, a sharp fang poking out as she peered at his still bleeding ear. He wasn't terribly surprised. She was pale and obviously hadn't fed enough. The blood would be tempting to her. He waited curiously to see what she would do.

"Oh." Elvi gave her head a sudden shake and stepped back, one hand coming up to cover her mouth and the fangs he'd glimpsed pushing past her lips. Turning away, she threw the blood-soaked cotton out as if it were on fire. "I'm sure it will heal quickly. Though you might want to let a doctor take a look at it tomorrow."

"There's no need for a doctor," Victor murmured, watching her closely. "Our kind heal quickly and well."

Elvi stilled and turned slowly back.

"Our kind?" she asked uncertainly, still shielding her mouth with one hand.

"Immortals," he said quietly, then used the term Brunswick and Mabel had repeated several times. "Vampires."

Elvi sucked in a breath. "You-You're... one too?"

When Victor nodded, her hand fell to her side and she dropped into the opposite chair. She was silent for the longest time, simply staring at him, seemingly at a loss. It was long enough that her teeth withdrew back into their resting place before she finally said, "When I first got back from Mexico, Mabel and I tried to find others, but..."

Elvi paused and raised one shaky hand to push the hair back from her face.

"You need to feed," he said mildly.

Nodding reluctantly, she stood and moved to the small refrigerator behind the desk to retrieve a bag of blood. Avoiding his gaze, she grabbed scissors off the desk, clipped off a corner of the bag, and poured half of the blood into a glass on her desk.

Elvi started to raise the glass to her lips at once, then paused and, apparently remembering her manners, held it uncertainly out to Victor.

When he shook his head, she lifted it to her lips, and then turned self-consciously away as she drank it. The action seemed one of habit more than anything and Victor watched her curiously. Elvi drank the glass quickly as if knocking back a shot of whiskey. She then poured another glass.

"I thought Owen was to be your meal this night," he commented. "You'll be too full to feed from him."

A small laugh slipped from her lips as she sipped the second glass. "Not likely. I'm pretty sure he's going to chicken out like the rest of them do."

"Chicken out?" Victor asked with interest.

Elvi nodded as she licked her upper lip, then explained, "Most of them do and it's really all just a big bother, but..." She shrugged and lifted the glass to her lips.

"If so, then why not forsake this Birthday Bite business?" he asked.

She lowered the glass and peered at him curiously. "You know about that?"

"Your Captain Brunswick was explaining it to me," he admitted.

Something in his tone must have revealed that he wasn't impressed with the whole deal. She nodded and peered down into the glass, then explained, "It all started as a joke. A group of teenagers came in one night. One of the cockier ones was teasing me, trying to get me to bite him. He even went so far as to slice his palm with a pocket knife and hold it out."Elvi shook her head at the memory. "I wanted to take a switch to his behind. But, of course, I couldn't do that. Instead, I just laughed and said I didn't bite babies." She grimaced. "Foolishly I added, 'Come back when you're a man'."

Elvi sighed and shrugged. "Two months later he returned. It was his eighteenth birthday. "I'm a man now, Elvi," he says. 'Legal. I want my bite."

Her mouth tightened. "I tried to laugh it off, but he wasn't having any of it. He and his friends were causing such a fuss, Mabel finally said, 'He's of age, if he wants it, bite him. It just means one less bag of blood we have to come up with'."

"So you bit him," Victor murmured.

She nodded. "Much to his friends' disappointment, I made him come to the back office for it. I wasn't biting him in front of everyone like some freak show. Besides, I-"

"Besides?" Victor prompted when she fell silent.

Elvi shook her head. "It doesn't matter," she murmured, then continued, "a couple weeks later they returned. It was his friend's eighteenth birthday. I could tell at once that the friend wasn't like the troublemaker. He didn't really want to be bit; he just didn't want to look like a sissy in front of his buddy. I brought him back here, told him he didn't have to do it, and gave him a bandage for his neck so no one would know.

"I was sorry I'd been so nice about it when I overheard him bragging to his friends about how 'hot' it had been." She rolled her eyes. "Of course, with that kind of press, a couple weeks later another showed up for his 'Birthday Bite,' then another. It became almost expected.

Turning eighteen? Go to Bella's and have Elvi bite you," she said wryly.

"They all come now, but half of them are only here because their friends push them into it, while others want to but are more afraid than they are excited at the prospect. Then some arrive high or bolstered up by liquid courage and I won't bite any of those. But, they all come to my office and-bite or no bite-get a bandage so everyone thinks they went through with it."

She ran her finger around the top of her glass. "I'd guess one in five actually gets bitten, but they all get a cake now and a bandage."

"And bragging rights," Victor murmured.

Elvi shrugged. "Boys will be boys."

Victor was silent. This information did affect things. It might even save her beautiful neck. He wasn't sure. There was some biting between immortals and their lovers who were willing and that was mostly ignored by the council. But while all of these boys were willing, they didn't classify as lovers and the sheer number of them would upset the council. Then there was the fact that she wasn't living quietly and trying to avoid detection. Everyone in this town seemed to know what she was.

A knock at the door had Elvi frowning and glancing toward it. She set her glass aside and moved to answer the door, revealing tonight's birthday boy, Owen.

"Mabel said I should come back here," the boy said nervously, his eyes slipping from Elvi to Victor, then away.

"Of course," Elvi murmured, ushering him inside. She then turned to peer at Victor apologetically. "If you'll excuse us?"

Victor hesitated, then stood and left the room. He pulled the door closed, but rather than return to the table, paused and stayed to listen through the door.

Elvi stared at the closed door with regret. She'd never met another vampire and had a million questions she would have liked to ask. She feared she'd missed her opportunity, however. He wasn't a local. Obviously he was just passing through town. She had no idea why he'd stopped at the restaurant. Perhaps those men he'd been with were mortals and had needed to stop for a late dinner. She supposed she'd never know. The man would no doubt return to his friends and leave before she finished with Owen and made her way back out to the dining area.

It was the first time in five years Elvi had met another of her kind and what had she done? Chattered nervously about the Birthday Bite and its origins. It was true he'd asked about it, but if she hadn't been so overset, she might have had the good sense to ask at least one or two of the questions she had. Like what was she? Could she get her soul back? How could she end her existence?Instead she'd babbled about the biting.

It hadn't just been the fact that he was a vampire that had left her so unsettled. It was the man himself. He was tall and gorgeous and smelled good and Elvi had found him terribly attractive before she'd even found out he was a vampire. That in itself had been disturbing. Elvi hadn't reacted to a man this strongly in years. In her whole life, if she were to be honest with herself. Her husband had been her high school sweetheart. She'd grown up with him and known him all her life. They'd had a comfortable, loving relationship, but she didn't recall ever finding herself responding to his very presence with every fiber of her being as she had to this man's nearness. She'd been so disconcerted by just being near him she hadn't noticed her own reactions to the smell of his blood until her teeth had started to shift, and then her only thought had been to get away from him. While gaining a little distance from him had eased the blood hunger, it hadn't eased her other reactions to him. Elvi had acted like a nervous teenager on her first date, babbling like an idiot about nonsense instead of asking the very important questions she had.

Now she was just feeling confused and torn. Part of her was glad she wouldn't meet him again and be forced to deal with the reactions he caused in her. The other part of her was upset. The idea of another five years passing before happening onto another of her kind and getting the answers she wanted was terribly disheartening.

Sighing, Elvi turned to face Owen.

"So..." She eyed him, noting the pallor to his cheeks and his lack of excitement. The boy was staring at the floor, a fine tremor running through his body.

Shaking her head, she said gently, "We don't have to do this, Owen."

He raised his head hopefully, but then his expression and shoulders drooped again just as quickly. "If we don't, my friends will tease me until I die," he said glumly. "We have to do it."

Elvi frowned, thinking that peer pressure sucked. But there was no way she wanted to bite someone who was so obviously terrified of the very idea.

"They don't have to know," she assured him and moved to her desk. Opening the top drawer, she pulled out the box of special bandages for just this sort of occasion. Choosing one with Happy Birthday stamped on it in purple, she slid it from the pack and held it up. "Put this on and we'll both just pretend it happened. No one has to know I didn't bite you."

Owen stared at the Band-Aid as if it were a life raft, but asked uncertainly, "What do I say when they ask me what it was like?"

Elvi shrugged. "Just tell them you don't kiss and tell."

His eyes widened with new interest. "There's kissing?"

"No," she said quickly and then chuckled softly at his disappointment. "It's just an old expression that means you won't be indiscreet enough to tell."

"Oh." He sounded disappointed. Apparently if there was no kissing, he wasn't interested. She suspected if she'd said yes, there was kissing, he might have changed his mind and decided to go through with it, but while biting was one thing, she was not going around kissing teenage boys. She might look twenty-five, but Elvi felt every minute of her sixty-two years... Which was rather odd when she thought about it.

Before she'd turned, Elvi had always felt like a sixteen-year-old trapped in an old woman's collapsing body. While her body had aged on the outside, gaining wrinkles and weakening with age, she'd never really changed inside. She'd still felt like the same young, hopeful woman she'd been at sixteen, eighteen, and twenty. Now that she'd turned, however, she felt like a sixty-two-year-old fraud hiding in a young woman's body. It seemed she couldn't win for losing.

"Here, put this on your neck." Elvi tossed him the bandage and then moved to her desk to pick up her glass again. She automatically began to gulp it. The flavor had horrified her at first even as she'd craved it. It no longer bothered her, but she wouldn't do anything as crass as savor the flavor in front of Owen. She already knew from Mabel's reactions that it was just gross to actually appear to enjoy the taste of blood, but as it was her only source of nutrition, she couldn't help it.

"What's it taste like?" Owen asked curiously.Elvi lowered the glass and considered how to answer the question. She finally said, "Surely you've cut a finger or your hand and stuck it in your mouth at some point or other?"

"Yeah," he admitted.

"Well." Elvi shrugged and set the glass down to pour in the rest of the blood. "Then you know what it tastes like."

Owen grimaced. "Doesn't it taste different now that you're a vampire?"

"A bit," she admitted reluctantly. Uncomfortable with the conversation and the fact that it reminded her that she was now something of a freak, Elvi gestured to the door. "You should go eat your cake. I made it myself."

Owen nodded and moved to the door, then paused to glance back.

"Thank you," he offered and ran a finger over the bandage on his neck. "For this."

"You're welcome, Owen. Happy Birthday."

"Thanks," he grinned and reached for the doorknob, adding, "and good luck tonight."

Elvi had started to turn away, but paused and glanced after him with confusion. "What do you mean 'good luck tonight'?"

Owen appeared surprised at the question. "You know... the vampire guys that came to town."

"What?" Elvi stared blankly.

Owen frowned at her confusion. "You know... that guy who was in here and his friends." When her expression didn't change, he looked worried and murmured, "I know it was supposed to be a secret the last few weeks, but I thought Mabel would have told you by now. I mean they're here. She has to tell you."