"I do not invade personal privacy unless there is a pressing need. We only did it because our lives are at stake. It seemed unlikely that Beckett-Witherspoon had used you to get access to us, but we had to take every precaution. You did talk to him at the party and you did go to the hotel with Oswald-"

"Oswald picked me up! Oswald lied to me!" I was back in exclamation-markville, wiping tears from my face and sniffling. The Juicy Fruit was bitter, bitter in my mouth.

"Mil, you're an attractive woman. I'm sure you know ways of encouraging susceptible men to make the first move."

"Oh, so I stage a fight with Sebastian in order to gain Oswald's attention? Why the hell would I want Oswald's attention in the first place? Your cousin is a nut and a loser!"

"You don't mean that, Mil," Sam said calmly.

"Yes, I do. I sincerely pity Winnie for what will undoubtedly be a horrible extended vampire lifetime of marriage to him and his cheating heart and slacker ways. Just because he is a liar, that's no reason to assume that I am some CACA stooge!"

He spoke mournfully, as if the truth hurt him personally. "Mil, Mil, you did withhold information, specifically about your relationship with Beckett-Witherspoon."

"I have no relationship with him," I said, but I knew how it must have looked to them.

"But you did once," someone said in the doorway. It was Oswald.

I saw from his expression that he'd heard me call him names. "Yes, I was his friend once. That was a long time ago."

"Friend?" Oswald asked. "Or something more?" He wore a ridiculous T-shirt from some town called Ypsilanti, Michigan, that said "Baiter late than never" and had a chorus line of dancing fish.

"Friend. I thought he was my friend. I was wrong. Sometimes I'm wrong about people. For example, I was wrong thinking you were harmless. And you have never even apologized to me for what you've done!"

"I wish it-" Oswald began.

Sam quickly cut him off with "Oswald, let me handle this. Please go."

Oswald looked as if he was going to argue, but then he turned and left.

I didn't realize I was shaking until Sam put his arms around me. "Mil, it was something we had to do. As you know from personal experience, Beckett-Witherspoon is capable of anything."

The more I tried to stop crying, the worse I sobbed, all the while fully aware that I was lowering myself in Sam's eyes. Since when did I need the approval of the undead? I pulled away from him and rushed from the study.

As I ran through the kitchen, I saw Edna at the table eating a sandwich and reading a book. Without glancing up, she said, "Your lunch is in the fridge when you want it."

I made an unsuccessful effort to speak in a normal voice. "Thank you, Edna." I then went to my room and locked the door. I wasn't lying. Sebastian had been my friend.

Chapter Fourteen

a million tears

Of course, I'd wanted more: I'd been in love with Sebastian.

By the time we met, I'd dabbled in relationships, never satisfied with one or another. I can say with some certainty that my beaus had felt the same way about me. Sebastian's girlfriend was a refined brunette named Tessie Kensington, who dressed in casual, subtly expensive clothes. She was pretty, but not too pretty, as if excessive prettiness was gauche. She hadn't seemed to mind Sebastian's friendship with me because she was absolutely confident that she was worthy of his utter devotion.

As our relationship evolved and deepened, I convinced myself that friendship was enough. Sebastian liked teaching me and I liked being taught. He showed me the world that he knew and it was one filled with art and culture and beauty.

Previous I remembered everything about our last day together. Sebastian had been house-sitting for a professor and invited me to join him for dinner. I asked him if Tessie would be coming, too. Sebastian reached for my hand, squeezed it, and said quietly, "I've been wanting to tell you-we broke up. It was for the best."

We went shopping and bought fresh crab, vegetables, bread, raspberries, and chocolate. While we waited in line, he ran back to the wine shelves and picked up a bottle of champagne. "For my favorite girl," he'd said with a dazzling, joyful smile that made my heart stop.

The professor's house was one of those perfect places with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, old rugs, and antiques. We cooked and drank, had dinner and drank, and talked and laughed. We were sitting close to each other in front of the fireplace, listening to music, when Sebastian kissed me for the first time.

We made love on the sofa and then went to the bedroom. All through the night, we explored each other and talked and laughed until our bodies were worn and our voices hoarse. He said he loved me. I told him I loved him and always would. He was beautiful, brilliant, and mine.

It was the happiest night of my life.

The next morning, Sebastian took me back to campus, kissed me, and told me he would see me the next evening. He would take me out to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday. He held me tightly and his last words were, "I already miss you so much, Milagro."

And he never spoke to me again. Until the night at Kathleens. I'd heard later that he and Tessie had reunited, but they broke up again soon after his graduation.

In the years that passed, I had been with men I cared for and men who were far more experienced and men who seemed genuinely delighted to be with me and a few men who swore their love. My experiences with these men had been nothing compared to what I had shared with Sebastian-until that bewildering, dizzying encounter with Oswald.

This proved that desire would only lead me to worse men. Not that I could get much worse than a corporate supremacist maniac and a cheating, slacker vampire.

I cried until I bored myself. Sometime around three, I snuck out to the refrigerator. There was a tuna sandwich with a side of carrot salad on a plate. I took the plate and a bottle of cranberry juice to my room.

I couldn't even think of facing these quasi-people again when Edna barged through the door.

"I'm going into town. Winnie said you 'misplaced' your iron supplements. Come along and you can get some more."

"I don't feel like going."

"Young lady, your feelings are hurt, but Sam is a good, decent man who was looking out for his family. So let's get on with our lives." This argument for rational behavior wasn't working, so she added, "If you behave, I'll buy you a mascara."

I only went because the mascara I'd bought before was too clumpy. On the way to the car, I noticed that Ernie had put in all the fence posts. Edna didn't speak until we got out on the road to town. "Young lady, in my experience I have found that sulking is a particularly unrewarding activity."

"Edna, why do you always call me 'young lady' instead of using my name?"

We were at a sharp curve in the road, so it was lucky Edna didn't do any eyeball gymnastics. "I call you 'young lady' in the hope that you will be motivated to act like a young lady at some point."

We were entering the town. It was as cute as a bug. Small stores lined one main street. I saw signs for a feed shop, a post office, and a few breakfast joints.

"Well," I asked, "what would you do if you found out that someone had dug up your life history without your permission?"

Edna turned into the parking lot of a medium-sized market. "I would be delighted that anyone was interested enough to investigate my life."

"Okay, but what if much of the information was incomplete or distorted?"

"So long as it was intriguing, young lady. After all, what history is not inaccurate?"

We went into the store and I pushed a cart around while Edna loaded it with food. The store was modern and attractive, with tiers of brilliant fruit and vegetables. There was a mix of products catering to both winery owners and their workers. Edna picked up some pricey cheese and good red wine and I lingered near a display of tortillas and Mexican spices.

"Go ahead and get whatever you want," she said. "I expect you to do more than wash vegetables at some point."

"I'll try."

"Didn't your mother teach you to cook?"

"My mother Regina considers eating to be a moral weakness. She subsists on black coffee, Diet 7-Up, rice cakes, and iceberg lettuce dressed with lemon juice."

"That's preposterous."

"Oh, we are on the same page, Edna." It was my theory that culture was carried through cuisine and that my mother Regina had deprived me of part of my heritage because she had not cooked for me. It was my father's mother who had fed me chilled slices of watermelon with a tang of lime juice and salt, chocolate flavored with almonds and cinnamon, frijoles savory with chorizo... Her food had been love and history and artful compositions of color, taste, and texture.

My mother Regina would have been happy if everyone ate freeze-dried space meals.

True to her word, Edna took me to the drugstore, where I picked out iron supplements, a tube of mascara and a bottle of pink nail polish. This should have cheered me up, but on the way back to the ranch I felt peculiar.

Edna didn't seem to mind the silence-then she caught sight of me. "What is it?" she asked in alarm.

"Edna, I feel peculiar."

Chapter Fifteen

do the hokey-pokey and turn yourself around

I thought I felt peculiar in a sensitive, philosophical way, but I was entirely wrong. Edna hauled the car to the side of the road just in time for me to try to release my inner peculiarity. My stomach heaved, but nothing came up. My once-trustworthy carcass was attempting to turn itself inside out, like a double-sided coat.

Previous Long story short: the sensation that I was burning, blurred vision, and a race back home. Edna pounded the horn as she sped down the drive and Sam came running out. He carried me into the house, which made me feel annoyingly helpless. I said, "I thought I was supposed to be better."

"At least she can still talk," said Edna.

"It's a gift," I answered.

"Samuel, look at her face."

"My God!" he said in shock. "How did this happen?"

Sam carried me to my room and put me on the bed. I was dripping in sweat and I kept trying to pull my clothes off, but my fingers had ceased to function. "I'm hot, so hot..."

"She was crying. Maybe the tears washed off her sunscreen," Edna said to Sam. "Young lady, did you remember to put on sunscreen before you went out?"

I shook my head and it felt as if my brain was melting and might spill out of my ears. "Shouldn't I be in a hospital?" I asked before I passed out.

Then I dreamed. I dreamed that Oswald was in the room with me and he had Winnie's medical bag. The water was running into the bathtub and he went to the doorway and shouted, "I need more ice!"

Sam dashed in with trays of ice and took them to the tub. He asked Oswald, "What do you want me to do now?"

"Just let me take care of her and I'll call you if I need anything." Oswald closed the door behind Sam and came to me.

He must be playing vet again. "I may ruminate, but I am not a ruminating animal," I said. I was a witty dreamer.

"How do you feel?" Oswald said.

My dream was so vivid that the touch of his hand burned my wrist as he checked my pulse. His eyes were a gentle dove color and I told him so.

He smiled and said, "We need to get your fever down." He began undressing me. In the natural perversity of dreams, his actions were not sexy at all, but beautifully efficient. Even so, I shivered under his hands. He carried me to the bathroom.

The tub was almost full and ice cubes floated on the surface. He slid me into the chilly water and it felt as refreshing as a breeze.

I sunk in further, enjoying the sensation. Oswald yanked me up just as my head went under. He grabbed a washcloth, dipped it into the icy water, and draped it across my forehead.

"Milagro, I need you to stay above the surface of the water, okay? Can you do that for me?"

"Oswald, I am not unreasonable. I am a serious and sincere young woman." From my angle below I could see all his eyelashes and the copper tones in his hair. "Your hair is pretty."

"Thank you and please listen to me. You have a temperature of one hundred and eight and I need you to stay awake."

He rushed out of the bathroom and I tried to remember what I had promised him while sliding deep into the water. When he returned with the medical bag, I sat up to admire ice cubes bobbing around my breasts. Oswald filled a glass with water, then opened a plastic bottle and shook out two pills. "Mil, acetaminophen will help bring your fever down."

"You give me fever, Oswald."He fed me the pills and held the glass to my mouth so that I could drink. Taking a tube from the bag, he said, "This antibiotic ointment will help stop infection. It doesn't sting." After kneeling beside the tub, he very gently stroked the ointment onto my face.

"Oswald..." I reached for his hand and placed it on top of my breast. "Oswald, is my heart still beating?"

"Yes, Milagro, your heart is still beating."

"Does your heart beat?" I stretched out my hand to his chest, but there was no reassuring pulse. "Ah, poor Oswald, you are undead and your heart does not beat!"

He moved my hand to the left side of his chest. I could feel the rhythm beneath my palm. I smiled at him. "You're not heartless."

"No, Mil," he said softly, "I try not to be even if I don't always behave the way I should."

"Don't I mean anything to you?" I asked, but before he could answer, a horrible knifelike pain went through me. I cried out and pulled my knees up, trying to endure it.

"What is it?" Oswald asked anxiously.

The jabbing came again, harder and longer, and I couldn't even speak.