It came to me slowly. "What?" Then I went cold all over. "Dead?"

Damien nodded. "They were very thorough. The Mount h.o.r.eb Hospital files are gone. Any notes with your name on them went up in the fire along with Marsh's house. And, of course, the good doctor.

It's the one fatality on my list that could be dismissed as an obvious accident."

"It wouldn't be a coincidence," I said, bitterness flooding my mouth like vinegar.

"No, it isn't."

My hands balled into fists. "So, anyone else I know on your list? Have they tried to silence any of my friends, my coworkers?"

He shook his head. "The rest is puzzling. It's as if they're looking for something else, now. As if they're casting about for a new scent, a new trail." He looked up at me. "You bite anybody on the neck during the last year? Leave your own trail of corpses?"

"That's not funny." I turned and walked to the door. "Not funny at all." I kept going.

Deirdre caught up with me halfway down the hall.

"I want to apologize for Damien," she said, catching my arm and linking it with hers. "He's outlived all of his family, his contemporaries, all of his human friends-"

"What about you?""I'm human, so he knows that he will outlive me, as well. He has a different viewpoint on death. He sometimes forgets what it's like to be mortal and attached to other mortals." She squeezed my arm.

"Please don't be angry with him."

"I'm not, I guess." It was difficult to be angry when someone like Deirdre was squeezing your arm and gazing up at you imploringly. "Marsh's death is a shock. And I'm furious at the people who did this."

"Let me buy you a drink."

"I'm not really thirsty."

"Neither am I. But I want to talk to you and it just seems easier to observe the social amenities as an icebreaker." Now her arm was locked in mine and she took me in tow.

The night was young and the main room spa.r.s.ely populated. We ordered drinks and found a distant table next to the wall. I sat with my back to the main stage to avoid distraction and quickly decided that that was a mistake: I needed a distraction from those luminous blue eyes, that perfect face, those curvaceous red lips, her- "I want to offer myself to you."

I sat there, my train of thought utterly derailed. "Excuse me?" I said after a long pause.

She smiled and leaned toward me. "I'm offering myself to you, night or day, for as long as you can use me. Oh my." Her smile grew deeper. "The expression on your face."

I stared at her. Words wouldn't come.

"Didn't Suki mention anything about this?"

I managed to shake my head-that much I could do.

"I want to help you."

"Help me," I managed further.

"Research," she coached.

"Research. Ah."

"Your presence here is more important than you could possibly appreciate." She put her hand over mine. "But I appreciate the potential you bring. And I want to help tap that potential."

"You do."

She nodded. "So use me."

"Use you," I said.

"I'll do research, run errands, transcribe notes, verify test results."

At that point our drinks arrived, along with my grasp on reality.

"So, you're interested in unlocking the secrets of the vampiric condition," I said, pouring my Perrier over ice.

"Oh, yes!"

I smiled and patted her hand in return. "You and Damien are very much in love, aren't you?"

She nodded and her smile grew into something extraordinary.

"I can see why coming up with a cure for this disease is so important to you."

The smile faltered. "Cure?"

"If Damien could be freed from his curse-"

"Curse?"

"I thought. . ." I stopped. I wasn't sure what I thought anymore.

"Chris, I'm not looking for some magic potion to make Damien mortal, again. I want to be like him."

"Like him?" Great. First I'm echoing her, then she's echoing me, and now I was back to parroting her, again."I want to be a vampire."

"Um. Okay. Why?"

"Why?" The question seemed to surprise her. "Power. Immortality-or at least near invulnerability.

Eternal youth." She looked down into the mud-red depths of her b.l.o.o.d.y mary. "And then there's Damien.

I cleared my throat. "Under these circ.u.mstances, I can see how a mixed marriage would be more problematic."

"The Doman has Taj working on too many projects to give your research anywhere near her full time and attention. I've been doing a lot of my own research in the library and on the databases. I thought we might work together, you and I-pool our efforts." She picked up her drink and her gaze wandered off, over my shoulder.

"What about Damien?"

She shrugged. "In a way, he'd be working with us. What he's doing now may coincide with some of the answers that we're looking for. But the Doman's got him busy on other projects, too. We barely see each other some nights." Her eyes came back to my face. "I need something constructive to do."

"Well. . ."

"Say yes. You won't be sorry!"

"Deirdre, I haven't had a chance to figure out where I would really start, what directions to go, what paths to pursue."

"You need to get organized. I can help you right there: I'm a very organized person." Her eyes drifted to the right again. "I think you have an admirer."

"Admirer?" d.a.m.n! The sensibility of this conversation had slipped away yet again.

She nodded. "Over there. Near the door to the kitchen. No, don't look!"

"Why not?"

"You'll spook her. She's really staring!"

"Anyone you know?"

She shook her head, raised her drink to her lips and peered over the rim of the gla.s.s. "I've never seen her in here, before. Hmmm. She's rather striking. . . ."

"Striking?"

"Attractive . . . but. . . ."

"But?" I sipped my Perrier.

"There's something about her . . . something that's somehow . . . wrong."

"Describe her."

"Tall, maybe five-nine. Slender-no, skinny: almost emaciated."

"The waif look. Very chic."

"Dark eyes, dark hair. Something about the eyes, though. . ."

"What?"

She shook her head. "She's wearing her hair in a French braid."

Sometimes Jenny had worn her hair in a French braid-she knew I liked it that way. . . .

Stop it, I thought.

"She's wearing a white dress with poofy sleeves."

"Poofy sleeves." Jenny had a dress like that. Kept it in a plastic bag at the back of her closet. It was still there-just six or seven months ago-before I had closed her closet door for the last time and promised myself I would only open it again when I was ready to throw everything out or donate-stopit, stop it!

Deirdre sipped her drink. "Unusual attire for this time of the year."

I turned and looked. And, of course, because I was thinking about my dead wife, the woman across the room looked just like her for a moment.

The moment stretched endlessly. The reason the woman across the room looked like Jennifer was because it was Jennifer!

"She seems to know you," Deirdre said as Jenny crooked her index finger into a "come here" gesture.

I couldn't move.

How?

The answer was quite simple: Jenny hadn't died after all.

You know better.

I never saw her dead.

You were in and out of consciousness for a week. The hospital didn't release you until ten days after the funeral.

Precisely, so how do I know her body lies moldering in a Kansas cemetery?

Your family and hers-made the arrangements, attended the funeral.

Hearsay.

The county coroner-medical doc.u.ments.

Could have been forged.

To what purpose?

I don't know!

There was only one way to find out: I wrenched myself up and out of my seat, knocking the chair over with a m.u.f.fled crash. The rest of the room got quiet. Only my wife was moving. Toward the kitchen.

"Jennifer," I croaked. "Jenny!" I stumbled after her. She was through the door before I was halfway across the room. I ran through the kitchen looking this way and that. She was gone.

I grabbed a busboy. "A woman-about this tall-brown hair, white dress-which way did she go?"

He shrugged.

I released him and whirled about: side doors? Left or right would put her into corridors that kept her inside the building. Only the back door was a direct exit to the outside. I ran for it, yanked it open.

Nothing. No one in sight.

A taxi sat, idling, in the service alley, twenty yards away from the rear loading dock. The rear pa.s.senger door was open on the side nearest me.

"Jenny?" I called.