"I'm not talking about s.e.x." He reached for her arm again.

Julie pulled away. "If you're not talking about s.e.x, then what are you talking about? Unless you know about a s.e.x change operation I might have had in the few short hours I was unconscious, I'm still a woman and therefore-"

"Could you shut up long enough to get up the stairs?" William left her standing in the hallway and took the steps two at a time.

"Sheesh, woman."

"Ah hah! You admit it. I am a woman, therefore a lady." She followed behind him. Taking the same steps he did, two at a time. She never took steps two at a time. Normally, she was wheezing and gasping for air as she climbed steps one at a time, never mind two at a time. But here she was taking two...and she tried it...three steps at a time. No problem. Maybe she should get conked on the head more often. It beat the h.e.l.l out of a regular workout routine.

Much as she'd like to get a shower and head for bed, she needed to know a few things. "By the way, William, why was I sleeping in an alley like a homeless person?"

He waited for her to cross his threshold, and then he closed his door and pushed the bolt home. "Now, that we're inside and don't stand the chance of being seen or overheard, I can fill you in. Why you couldn't just keep quiet until we got here, I don't know." He took a deep breath and stared down at her.

"I never was very good at surprises and I get the feeling you're about to surprise me. I'm not going to like the surprise, am I?"

With a worried frown, William blew out a long, steady breath. "Maybe you better sit down."

Uh-oh. She didn't like the way he was stalling. "What, did the landlord evict me and I stumbled out into the street, devastated and homeless?"

"No, nothing as simple as that."

"That's simple?" Double uh-oh. She perched on the edge of his bomber-jacket brown leather sofa. "Okay, I'm sitting. Just tell me already. I'm dying here."

"You can't die, Julie. You're already dead."

Her mouth dropped open. "Huh?" Who was he trying to kid? She was a walking, talking, gawking person sitting in his living room. "Uh, William. Have you been smoking some wacky weed or something? h.e.l.looooo. If I'm here talking to you, how can I be dead?"

"It's complicated."

"Try me."

"Then keep an open mind." His eyebrows dropped toward the bridge of his nose in a V.

"I'm open."

"Julie, last night, you were turned."

"Turned?" She grasped for any possible meaning she could come up with for the unfamiliar phrase. "Like a fruit held too long on the branch turned?"

"No."

"Like coming out of the closet gay turned?"

"No."

"I give up." She sat back against the couch, her arms crossing over her chest. "What do you mean?"

"Turned as in from human to vampire."

She could have caught flies as low as her jaw dropped. "William, I've known you, what, a year and a half, maybe?"

"Yeah." "And this is the first time you've ever done anything remotely weird."

"So?"

"So." She pushed up from the couch and strode for the door. "I'll cut you a break. I'm going home to shower and bed. When I wake up, maybe we can start this conversation all over. 'Cause I know you didn't just say I've been turned to a vampire, and I know you're not crazy. I'm counting it as a really bizarre nightmare I'll wake up from after a decent amount of sleep."

William appeared in front of her, blocking her path to the doorway. "It's true."

Wait a minute. One minute he was behind her at the couch. Now, he was in front of her. When had he made the trip? Had she blinked? She shook her head.

He grinned. "It's one of the perks."

"What's one of the perks? And perks of what?"

"Speed. Vampires are really fast."

She put a hand up. "No, wait, forget I asked. I don't want to hear any more trash talk about vampires. You know and I know they don't exist. You sound like that Bob Marley guy we sedated at the hospital earlier. He was ranting about vampires loose on the streets of Houston."

"They are."

"But everyone knows vampires are just a bizarre manifestation of some writers' fancy. Like werewolves and demons."

"They exist too." William's face set in grim lines.

Julie shook her head, having a hard time grasping reality. "You do that so well."

"What?"

"The straight-faced thing." Julie laughed out loud and looked around the room. "All right Kim, you can come out now. I know you're hiding back there somewhere."

The confused expression on William's face looked very real. "Kim who?"

"My practical joking friend from the hospital. That's who." Julie poked a finger into William's chest. "She put you up to this, didn't she?"

Her neighbor grabbed her finger and pulled her hand into his. "Look, Julie. This is a lot to take in all at once. But no kidding.

You're a vampire. And as a vampire, there are certain, shall I say, rules you have to follow. The immortality thing is only if you follow the rules."

Julie's heart sank into her belly as dread washed over her like a mudslide in California. "You're not joking are you?"

"I'm sorry to say, no."

"But how?" She sank onto the couch staring up at him as his words sank deeper.

"Come with me." He grabbed her hand and marched her into his bathroom. When Julie stood in front of the mirror, William lifted the hair away from her neck."See the bite marks on your neck?"

"s.h.i.t." She leaned closer, rubbing at the six puncture wounds scattered across the column of her throat in sets of two, conveniently aligned with her jugular vein. "Where the h.e.l.l did these come from?"

"A vampire must have gotten you last night."

"If I am a vampire, how come I can see myself in the mirror and where are my fangs?"

With a chuckle, William shook his head. "The mirror thing is a myth. The fangs will fill in by tomorrow night."

She turned her head to stare at the sets of puncture wounds. "You sure these aren't spider bites?" she asked weakly.

His apologetic smile had more of an impact than any words he could have spoken.

That sick feeling in her gut intensified as an image of the dark man with the spiky blond hair blocking her path last night wedged its way into her fuzzy memories. "Does this have something to do with that man I ran into on my way home?"

"Probably I received word another human got nailed, so I came out looking and found you." With a nod toward the mirror, William noted. "You see the blood on your lips?"

Her hand rose to touch the dried blood. "What's this?"

"That would be the vampire's blood. He made you drink his blood in order to turn you."

As if burned by a hot iron, she jerked her finger away from the blood and bent over the sink, scrubbing at the spot with clean, cool water. She reached for a towel.

William turned her toward him, towel in hand, and patted her face dry. "Do you remember what he looked like?"

Julie squeezed her eyes shut and thought hard. "White-blond hair, very tall and I remember this...he had red eyes." She opened her eyes and stared at William. "You think he did this to me?" Was she really a vampire?

"Sounds like one of the rogue vampires we've been looking for."

"One?" Julie shook her head. "You mean there are more?"

"Yes, there are hundreds of vampires in Houston. Ever since Hurricane Katrina, they've spread from New Orleans to other major cities across the U.S."

No, this couldn't be true. "I'm not believing this. Vampires don't exist in real life."

"No, but they exist in death."

"And I'm a vampire? A real live vampire?"

"Ahem," William cleared his throat. "Not live. Not really. You're considered one of the living dead."

"But what about my life? My job. My family?" She stared up at him as she realized how all the threads of her former existence were unraveling around her.

"It's totally up to you what you do about your family and your job. You may choose to disappear and start over somewhere else or continue on as though nothing's different." He held up a finger. "With some exceptions."

"Exceptions." The world was crashing around her ears and William was talking about exceptions. She had trouble even focusing on what he was saying.

"You can't go out in daylight or you'll fry into a crispy critter and die."

"No more sunrises, or sunbathing in the nude." Not like she'd get up early enough to watch a sunrise. But she'd always dreamed of sunbathing on some Greek island absolutely naked. Then again, when would she make enough money to go to the Greek Islands?

William droned on. "Avoid falling on or being pierced with sharp wooden objects, silver knives or bullets. Any of these items through the heart are deadly to a vampire."

"What if I stab myself with a pencil?" she asked, not sure it was really her voice.

"As long as it's not through the heart, you're okay. But if it makes you feel better, use pens or mechanical pencils. It's best to feed at least every other day to keep up your strength."

"Feed? As in sucking blood from other people?" Her stomach churned. "Ewwww."

"Yes. But the upside is you'll have superhuman strength. You'll be stronger than Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vin Diesel put together."

"Really?" Perhaps there was an upside to this vampire thing. She could quit worrying about putting her back out when helping patients in the hospital. "My job! What about my job?"

"I suggest you put in for permanent night shift to avoid daylight hours."

"I can keep my job? They won't fire me or anything?"

"Not unless you tell them you're a vampire. In which case, they'll commit you to the psych ward or give you over to science to dissect."

"Immortality spent in a padded room?" Julie laughed, her world was spinning around her completely out of control and she was making jokes. h.e.l.l, the joke was on her!

"Exactly. We in the vampire community keep knowledge of our ident.i.ty to ourselves and a limited few we can trust."

Huh? "So, you're a vampire?" And all this time she'd never even suspected. "How?"

"I was turned over a century ago by a lovely lady in Boston." He sighed. "She truly was a beauty. Dark hair and brown eyes that could melt you on the spot."

"What happened to her?"

"Someone ratted on her and they staked her." A flash of something, pain maybe, crossed his eyes before he turned his attention back to her. "You'll be okay. And I'm just across the hall if you need anything."

"Like?"

"You might need some help with your first feeding."

"Do I really have to bite someone? I can't imagine walking up to a stranger and saying, "Excuse me, could you spare some blood?"

William laughed. "It's not quite done that way." "Then how?" She really was clueless, and if she wanted to survive, she'd have to learn. Wow. Was she really buying into all this?

Julie Taylor? A vampire? Never to see the light of day again? "Who did this to me?"

"By your description, I'd bet it was a two-hundred-year-old vampire named Luke Hester. He's been a bit out of control over the past couple weeks. Gives the rest of us a bad name."

"Luke Hester?" A shudder snaked its way down her spine as the memory of that big man in the alley surfaced from the fog of the previous night. "But he had red eyes? Why don't you?" She spun toward the mirror and breathed a sigh of relief when the reflection still showed green eyes. "Or me for that matter?"

"The red eyes come from turning bad. He came over from England before I was turned and basically has been causing trouble since. But lately more so than usual."

"So Bob Marley wasn't crazy."

"Bob Marley?"

"He said he was a vampire hunter. When they brought him in, he was talking nonsense about vampires on the rampage and how he was determined to kill every last one of them. We thought he was on drugs, but he tested clean. So we committed him for psychological evaluation. Poor guy was right."