"You too," Tommy said. He gathered up his stuff and left the office whistling.

Fashionable SOMA looked to Tommy an awful lot like a light industrial area: two- and three-story buildings with steel roll-up doors and steel-framed windows. The bottom floors housed ethnic restaurants, underground dance clubs, auto-repair shops, and the occasional foundry. Tommy paused outside of one to watch two long-haired men pouring bronze into a mold.

Artists, Tommy thought. He had never seen a real artist, and although these guys looked more like bikers, he wanted to talk to them. He took a tentative step through the doorway.

"Hi," he said.

The men were wrestling with a huge ladle, the two of them gripping the long metal handle with asbestos gloves. One looked up. "Out!" he said.

Tommy said, "Okay, I can see you guys are busy. 'Bye." He stood on the sidewalk and checked his map. He was supposed to meet the rental agent somewhere around here. He looked up and down the street. Except for a guy pa.s.sed out on the corner, the street was empty. Tommy was thinking about waking the guy up and asking him if this was, indeed, the fashionable part of SOMA, when a green Jeep pulled up beside him and skidded to a stop. The driver, a woman in her forties with wild gray hair, rolled down the window.

"Mr. Flood?" She said.

Tommy nodded.

"I'm Alicia DeVries. Let me park and I'll show you the loft."

She backed the Jeep into a spot that seemed too short for it by six inches, running the wheels up over the curb, then she jumped out, dragging after her a purse roughly the size of Tommy's suitcase. She wore sandals, a dashiki, and multicolored Guatemalan cotton pants. There were chopsticks stuck here and there in her hair, as if she were prepared at any minute to deal with an emergency stir-fry.

She looked at Tommy's suitcase. "You look like you're ready to move in today. This way."

She breezed by Tommy to a fire door beside the foundry. Tommy could smell the patchouli in her wake.

She said, "This area is just like Soho was twenty years ago. You're lucky to have a shot at one of these lofts now, before they go co-op and start selling for a million dollars."

She unlocked the door and started up the steps. "This place has incredible energy," she said, without looking back. "I'd love to live here myself, except the market's down right now and I'd have to sell my place in the Heights."

Tommy dragged his suitcase up the steps after her.

"Do you paint, Mr. Flood?"

"I'm a writer."

"Oh, a writer! I do a little writing myself. I'd like to write a book myself some weekend, if I can find the time. Something about female circ.u.mcision, I think. Maybe something about marriage. But what's the difference, right?" She stopped at a landing at the top of the stairs and unlocked another fire door.

"Here it is." She threw the door open and gestured for Tommy to enter. "A nice work area and a bedroom in the back. There are two sculptors that work downstairs and a painter next door. A writer would really round the building out. What's your take on female circ.u.mcision, Mr. Flood?"

Tommy was still about three topics behind her, so he stood on the landing while his brain caught up. People like Alicia were the reason G.o.d made decaf. "I think everyone should have a hobby," he said, taking a shot in the dark.

Alicia jammed like an overheated machine gun. She seemed to look at him for the first time, and did not seem to like what she saw. "You are are aware that we'll need a significant security deposit, aware that we'll need a significant security deposit, if if your application is accepted?" your application is accepted?"

"Okay," Tommy said. He entered the loft, leaving her standing on the landing.

The loft was roughly the size of a handball court. It had an island kitchen in the middle, and windows ran along one wall from floor to ceiling. There was an old rug, a futon, and a low plastic coffee table in the open area near the kitchen. The back wall was lined with empty bookshelves, broken only by a single door to the bedroom.

The bookshelves did it. Tommy wanted to live here. He could see the shelves filled with Kerouac, and Kesey, and Hammett, and Ginsberg, and Twain, and London, and Bierce, and every other writer who had lived and written in the City. One shelf would be for the books he was going to write: hardbacks in thirty languages. There would be a bust of Beethoven on that shelf. He didn't really like Beethoven, but he thought he should have a bust of him.

He resisted the urge to shout, "I'll take it!" It was Jody's money. He had to check the bedroom for windows. He opened the door and went in. The room was as dark as a cave. He flipped the light switch and track lighting along one wall came on. There was an old mattress and box springs on the floor. The walls were bare brick. No windows.

Through another door was a bathroom with a freestanding sink and a huge claw-foot tub that was stained with rust and paint. No windows. He was so excited, he thought he would wet himself.

He ran out into the main living area where Alicia was standing with her hand on her hip, mentally shoving him into the pigeonhole of abusive barbarism she had made for him.

"I'll take it," Tommy said.

"You'll have to fill out an -"

"I'll give you four thousand dollars in cash, right now." He pulled the wad of bills out of his jeans.

"How many keys will you need?"

Chapter 14 Two Losts Do Not.

Make a Found Consciousness went off like a flashbulb of pain: a dull ache in her head, sharp daggers in her knees and her chin. Jody was slumped in the shower. The water was still running had been running on her all day. She crawled out of the shower stall on her hands and knees and pulled towels out of the rack.

She sat on the bathroom floor and dried herself, blotting away the water with rough terry cloth. Her skin felt tender, almost raw. The towels were damp from fourteen hours of steam. The ceiling dripped and the walls ran with condensation. She braced herself against the sink and climbed to her feet, then opened the door and stumbled through the room to the bed.

Be careful what you ask for, she thought. All the regret about waking up a little too alert, coming out of sleep like a gunshot, came back on her. She hadn't thought about falling asleep in the same way. She must have been in the shower at sunup, dropped to the shower floor, and stayed there throughout the day.

She sat up on the bed and gently touched her chin. Pain shot up her jaw. She must have hit it on the soap dish when she went out. Her knees were bruised as well.

Bruised? Something was wrong. She jumped to her feet and went to the dresser. She turned on the light and leaned into the mirror, then yelped. Her chin was bruised blue, with a corona of yellow. Her hair was hopelessly tangled and she now had a small bald spot where the water had worn away at her scalp.

She backed away and sat back on the bed, stunned. Something was wrong, seriously wrong, beyond her injuries. It was the light. Why had she turned on the light? The night before she would have been able to see herself in the mirror by the light filtering in under the bathroom door. But it was more than that. It was a tightness in her mouth, pressure, like when she had first gotten braces as a child.

She ran her tongue over her teeth and felt the points breaking through the roof of her mouth just behind her eyeteeth.

She thought, I'm breaking down from lack of... She couldn't even make herself think it. This will get worse. Much worse.

Now she could feel the hunger, not in her stomach, but in her entire body, as if her veins were going to collapse on themselves. And there was a tension in her muscles, as if piano strings were tightening inside her body, sharpening her movements, making her feel as if she would jump through a window any second.

I've got to calm down. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.

She repeated the mantra to herself as she got up and walked to the phone. It seemed to take an incredible effort to push the zero b.u.t.ton and wait for the desk clerk to come on.

"Hi, this is room two-ten. Is there a guy in the lobby waiting? Yes, that's him. Would you tell him I'll be down in a few minutes?"

She put down the phone and went to the bathroom, where she turned off the shower and wiped down the mirror. She looked at herself in the mirror and fought the urge to burst into tears.

This is a project, she thought. She turned her head and looked at her bald spot. It was small enough that she could cover it with a new part held by a couple of hairpins. Her bruised chin might require some explaining.

She started to run her fingers though her hair to facilitate the preliminary untangle, fighting the tension in her arms that seemed to be increasing every second. A large moth buzzed into the bathroom and went for the light above the mirror. Before she knew what had happened, she s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of the air and ate it.

She stared at her reflection and was horrified by the red-haired stranger who had just eaten a moth. Even so, a warmth ran though her like good brandy. The bruise on her chin faded as she watched.

The first thing she saw when she turned the corner at the lobby was Tommy's grin.

"Good," he said. "You're dressed for moving. I like your hair pinned up like that."

Jody smiled, and stood awkwardly in front of him, thinking she should greet him with a hug, but afraid to get too close to him. She could smell him and he smelled like food. "You found a place?"

"An incredible loft, south of Market. It's even furnished." He seemed as if he would burst with excitement. "I used all the money; I hope that's okay."

"Fine," Jody said. She just wanted to get him alone.

"Get your stuff," he said. "I want to show it to you."

Jody nodded. "I'll be just a minute. Have the desk clerk call a cab."

She turned to leave. Tommy caught her by the arm. "Hey, are you okay?"

She motioned for him to move within whisper range. "I want you so badly I can hardly stand it."

She pulled away and ran up the steps to her room. Inside she gathered what few belongings she had and checked herself in the mirror one last time. She was wearing jeans and the chambray blouse from the night before. She unb.u.t.toned her blouse and did a straitjacket escape from her bra, then b.u.t.toned the blouse halfway up. She stuffed the bra into her day pack and locked the room for the last time.

When she returned to the lobby, Tommy was waiting outside by a blue DeSoto cab. He opened the door for her, climbed in, and gave the driver the address.

"You're going to love it," he said. "I know you are."

She moved closer to him and held his arm tightly between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "I can't wait," she said. A tiny voice in her head asked, What are you doing? What are you going to do to him? It was so faint and foreign that it might have come from someone outside on the street.

Tommy pulled away from her and dug into his jeans pocket, coming out with an envelope. "Your check's in here. I didn't open it."

She took it and put it in her day pack, then moved on him again.

He scooted to the door and nodded toward the driver, who was watching them in the rearview mirror. "Forget him," Jody whispered. She licked Tommy neck and shuddered with the taste and warmth of his flesh.

"I couldn't get your car out of impound. It has to be the owner."

"Doesn't matter," she said, nuzzling into the s.p.a.ce under his jaw.

The cab stopped and the driver turned to them. "Six-ten," he said.

Jody threw a twenty over the seat, reached over Tommy and opened the door, dived out and dragged him out of the cab after her. "Where is it?"

Tommy just had time to point to the door before she pushed him at it. She climbed on his back as he unlocked the door, then bolted past him and dragged him up the steps.

"You're really excited about this, aren't you?" he asked.

"It's great." She stopped at the fire door at the top of the stairs. "Open it," she commanded.

Tommy unlocked the door and threw it open. "This is it!"

She went through, catching the front of his shirt and pulling him in.

"Look at all these bookshelves," he said.

She ripped his shirt off and kissed him hard.

He pulled up for air and said, "The bedroom doesn't have any windows, just like you wanted."

"Where?" she demanded.

He pointed to the open door and she pushed him through it. He fell face down on the bare mattress. She flipped him over, hooked her hands into the waist of his jeans and ripped them off him.

"So you like it?" he asked.

She ripped her shirt open and held him to the bed, one hand on his chest while she took off her own jeans. She climbed on him and m.u.f.fled his next question with a kiss.

He finally got the message and returned her kiss and tried to match her urgency, then didn't have to try at all. She pulled away from the kiss as her fangs unsheathed, then guided him into her as he moaned. Jody growled deep in her chest, pushed his head to the side and bit him on the neck.

"Ouch!" Tommy shouted. She held him down and snarled into his neck.

Dust from the old mattress filled the air and was stirred by the movement of their bodies.

"Oh jeez!" Tommy shouted, digging his fingers into her bottom. Jody answered him with a catlike scream as she came, then fell on his chest and licked the blood that dribbled from the punctures on his neck.

She twitched and shuddered while he repeated, "Oh jeez," over and over again between gasps. After a few minutes she rolled off him and lay on the bed feeling the warm nourishment running though her.

Tommy rubbed his neck. "That was great," he said. "That was incredible. You are -"

Jody rolled over. "Tommy, I have to tell you something."

"You're beautiful," he said.

Jody smiled at him. The urgency was gone now and she was feeling guilty. I could have killed him, she thought.

Tommy reached over and touched her lips. "What's that on your teeth? Did you hurt yourself?"

"It's blood, Tommy. It's your blood."

He felt his neck again, which was completely healed. "My blood?"

"Tommy, I've never done anything like that before. I've never been that way before."

"Me either. It was great!"

"I'm a vampire."

"That's okay," Tommy said. "I knew this girl in high school who gave me a hickey that covered the whole side of my neck."

"No, Tommy. I'm really a vampire." She looked him in the eye and did not smile or look away. She waited.