The thing leaps across the room, knocking her to the floor and holding her with supernatural strength, digging its claws deep into her flesh.

The long phone cord wraps around her body as the creature easily flips her onto her back and squats on her chest, crushing her with its weight. It reaches down between its feet, touching her chest. Her flesh sizzles and pops like fireplace logs as the impossibly hardened hand pushes into her chest and the air fills with the smell of burning human tissues. Too stunned to put up any resistance, Sara watches helplessly as it pulls out her beating heart.

"...I just wanted to see how it went at your grandparents' house over Thanksgiving," Mummy said, leaving a message. "I know how much you love your father, and it's really great that you have such a wonderful relationship with him. I guess you must be doing well in school these days, then. Not that I ever hear anything about it, of course."

Sara managed to force her eyes open, discovering that she was lying on the floor in front of her dresser. Instinctively she sat up and raised both hands to her chest, feeling for a wound. The message went on.

"You've got to be a winner to survive in that family. Remember, even your father never did anything good enough for your grandparents. But that's what you'll have to deal with if you want to keep getting your father's money, I suppose. G.o.d knows I don't have any money to give you.

"I went out to see Aunt Hope and Uncle Bill in Arizona, you know," Mummy went on. "I hadn't heard from you, so I called them and invited myself for the holiday - you know, so I wouldn't have to be alone." She paused. "But they didn't pretend they wanted me there. I would've been better off by myself." Her wet sniffle coming over the speaker sounded like something heavy sliding over a sandy floor.

Sara's hand found the receiver. "Mummy? I'm so sorry. It's just ... My life's really a mess right now and I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I'm so sorry about Thanksgiving. I didn't realize it was coming up."

Her mother's end had gone silent. Sara tried to push herself up into a sitting position but she couldn't muster the strength. She ended up on her back, trying to hold the phone against her ear with one limp hand.

"I ... I think I should move back home, Mummy. I'm not doing very well out here."

Silence.

"Mummy?"

"Sara," Mummy said, talking now in the haughty voice she used with waiters and gas station attendants. "I'm surprised at you."

"But, Mummy ... I'm really ... kind of in trouble. And I need help. And, you know ... I miss you."

"This is not some flop house where you can just pop in and out whenever you like, Sara. I simply won't have it. You've known me too long to think I'd just let myself be taken advantage of like that."

"I thought you wanted to see me more, Mummy. I thought- "

"You just ignore me over the holiday and then you tell me you want to live in my house? I cried and cried over Thanksgiving. And you didn't even pick up the G.o.dd.a.m.ned phone. I'm sure your grandparents don't approve of you calling me, of course ...

"I didn't go there! I forgot the holiday! I didn't see anybody!"

" ... And now you want to live in my house? How dare you! You little s.h.i.t! What? You think I don't know your father put you up to this? Is he paying you to spy on me? Well, you can just go snuggle up with him and give him a big, wet, sloppy kiss and tell him I said he can go f.u.c.k himself! You're just like him, nothing but- Sara lowered the phone into its cradle and allowed herself to lose consciousness again.

CHAPTER 8.

The Undead and the Dead SARA SHELTERED A Salem Light with her hand as Miguel lit it.

He nodded slowly. "How are you tonight, Sara?"

"Great," she said. "I kind of like washing dishes. It's a lot less stressful. Still weird that Alexander and Neil both quit working here, though."

He shrugged. "I'm sure you still see Alexander enough."

She nodded. "Lonelier working here without him, though."

"It happen a lot," Miguel said. Some people, they quit, you know? They just don' want to work like we do. I'm glad you are still here."

She smiled at him. He stared back.

"It is a busy night," he said, p.r.o.nouncing it bee-cee. When she nodded and took another drag, he added, "It looks like you are keeping up okay."

Something in his voice gave her the feeling that he knew why. She turned her face away but kept her narrowed eyes on him.

He threw his cigarette down and stepped on it. "I have to go back inside," he said. "I will see you later."

"Yeah. I'll be right in," she said, taking another drag off her cigarette.

The door closed behind him, leaving Sara alone in the alley. She fished her c.o.ke bottle from her pants pocket. A T-shaped tube in the lid allowed her to snort directly from the bottle, but controlling the dose was difficult. Sometimes she got too much, but many times she got almost nothing at all.

She took a quick sniff with each nostril. The familiar numbing in her face meant she'd gotten a decent dose.

"Ladies don't read things like that, Sara," Mummy said, plodding into the kitchen, her spread fingers ma.s.saging her forehead. She headed straight for the cabinet above the coffee maker.

Sara closed the comic book.

"I hope no one saw you buy it," Mummy said. She was moving slowly, reading a pill bottle label, probably looking for the "diet pills" that made her talk fast. It was a little early for the Librium she took when she was "feeling anxious."

"No," Sara said. "I got it from my friend, Josh. I saw him reading one at school, and last week we walked home together. I stopped in and he gave me a few comics to take home." A wave of warmth flooded through her as she remembered.

Her mother's pivot reminded Sara of an ice skater. Her stare looked like a predator about to strike. "You went to some boy's house?"

"Well, yeah, just to pick up some comic books ..."

Her mother shook her head. "Sara, how many times do I have to tell you? Everywhere you go, people can see you. What will they think if you're going into boys' houses? What'll they think of me? That I raised you to be some loose, easy girl who just goes giving it away to whoever wants it? Is that how you want us to be seen?"

"Mummy, n.o.body-"

"People are always watching, Sara, I've been telling you that your whole life. They're always evaluating. You can never let your guard down and let them see you as a common wh.o.r.e. Never! Understand?" Pointing at Sara with the pill pinched between her fingers and thumb made her look like she was lecturing with an invisible piece of chalk.

"Oh, you mean like when you tried to smash Daddy's windshield with a can of paint?"

Mummy gaped. She dry-swallowed the pill. "So that's what you're doing now," she whispered. "You make up lies about me and tell people, don't you? You and your father do it together! You sit together when I'm not around and you plan and you scheme and you make up your filthydirty lies and then you spread them! You spread them like s.h.i.t, all over this neighborhood! Don't you? Don't you!"

"I saw it with my own eyes," Sara said. "You were yelling at him. He got in the car. Then you grabbed the can and kept banging it against the windshield until he backed out of the driveway and took off."

Her mother stared, her eyes wide open with shock, her jaw tight with rage. She fumbled with the bottle of pills, trying to open it again while staring at Sara as if she was a dangerous animal she'd just discovered in her house.

"And it isn't like I see Daddy any more than I see you," Sara said. "How would I plan anything with him?"

Her mother nodded. "You won't get away with it, you know. I've already told them what you're really like. I've told them about how mean you are to me and how you try to hurt me. The neighbors, his friends, your teachers. I told everybody. They all know what you're really like. You and that a.s.shole. They know."

"No," Sara said, "f.u.c.k that. This is a Mercedes Benz, not some clunk-a-junk. I'm not leaving it on some street around a corner."

She pulled into the parking lot and killed the engine, reaching for the door handle. Cameron stood next to her window. Neil was at Alexander's. They were close enough to prevent the doors from opening.

Alexander's gun appeared in his hand.

Neil backed away from the door just enough to allow Alexander to open it. Cameron let Sara open hers. Neil gave a halfhearted shrug without smiling. Leering at Alexander, he announced in a monotone, "We're just f.u.c.kin' around with you." Alexander did not reply. The gun stayed in his hand.

They went up the stairs and into the apartment and Sara sat in her chair off to the side of the living room again. Alexander went to get the scale. Neil removed his own gun- the largest handgun Sara had ever seen- from under his arm and set it on the coffee table, angling the barrel to point directly at Alexander's seat.

Alexander brought out the scale, looked at the gun, and then placed his own gun to point back at Neil.

Sara filled her brown snort bottle with the remainder of her latest eight-ball. After a few more snorts from the bottle, she got up to pour herself a drink, peering in at Hippy Joe through his open door as she pa.s.sed. Joe was lying pa.s.sed out on the floor, bathed in the red light of his lizard cage. With her enhanced vision, she could easily see the lizard basking in the warmth of the red light, and even the meal worms wriggling in its food dish.

The Jim Beam she found wasn't enough to fill her gla.s.s. She didn't want to have to keep getting up to fill it. She added generic vodka from a plastic bottle in the freezer until the mixture was almost to the rim.

Both guns stayed on the table as they cut another kilo.

Sara shuddered. None of these people had ever liked her even half as much as they'd once liked each other. If they were turning on each other like this...

She did some more c.o.ke to keep her head straight.

Maybe she hadn't been paying enough attention to where she was sitting. Maybe it was some kind of evil the other vampires had brought with them. Sara didn't know exactly what had happened, but there were insects moving under her skin.

Sara's drink crashed to the floor as she moved her left hand down her right arm, trying to push the bugs back down to her fingertips. They were crawling up both her arms and up her legs, trying to reach her brain. She crossed her arms to run her hands down both forearms at once. She uncrossed them again to use her hands to try and push them back down her legs. She threw herself onto the floor in hopes of smashing the ones between her shoulders before they reached her brain. Bits of broken gla.s.s ground into her back as whiskey and vodka soaked her sequined dress.

She continued to fight them with her hands, but it wasn't working. She bit at the flesh of her arms in a futile attempt to stop them. Some of them reached her brain. Lights flashed behind her eyes every time one of them made it into her skull.

She was losing the battle. Alexander was beside her, watching her writhe and moan. "Help me!" she screamed. "They're biting me! They're biting me everywhere! They're moving!"

He didn't seem to understand. Why wasn't he helping her?

"Bugs! Bugs!" she yelled, hoping he would see what she was trying to do. "Make them stop!"

She was too panicked to cry. She just kept inhaling so hard that it made a kind of whistle. Alexander took her face in his hands. "Sara," he said. "It's all right. Sara!" He reached behind her and helped her sit up. She forced herself to exhale and try to listen.

"It's all right. This happens. It's not real."

Neil's voice came from over her shoulder. "It's just c.o.ke bugs, you dumb c.u.n.t."

Cameron laughed.

Alexander's hands firmly turned her head to make her look at him. He spoke. "Sometimes when you have a big dose of c.o.ke, you get the feeling that there are bugs moving under your skin. But they're not real bugs. It's just a feeling."

She shuddered and tried to swallow.

"You're O.K.," he said, looking over her head at the other two. She understood why he wasn't making eye contact. There was too much c.o.ke on the table to trust Neil and Cameron alone with it, although she did notice that Alexander had at least tucked his gun back under his belt. If they tried anything while Alexander was dealing with her, it would be her fault. She nodded and took his hands, moving them in the direction of the coffee table to show she understood. He helped her to her feet and then returned to the coffee table, replacing the gun to the position where it pointed at Neil. Her wet dress sagged and plastered itself to her back as Sara made her way to the bathroom.

She closed the toilet seat and sat down, covering her face with her hands. Crying would probably help, but she was too charged up to be able to cry. At least she could sit here and be away from the tension for a little while.

That's it. No more c.o.ke; I can't keep doing this.

She forced herself to take a lot of deep breaths, then slowly stood again. She didn't bother to check the mirror on her way out of the bathroom.

Pa.s.sing by Joe's door, she stopped to look in. Whatever he'd been on when he'd pa.s.sed out must have been strong. His head was c.o.c.ked at a weird angle, and it was obvious that he was going to wake up with a stiff neck and a really bad headache. It made her uncomfortable just looking at him.

Straightening him out a little would settle her nerves.

"Uh-uh," Neil said to Alexander. "Don't try that s.h.i.t on me. I ain't- "

"f.u.c.k you," Alexander said.

Sara entered Joe's room. She saw him pretty clearly in the red light coming down from the lizard cage on the shelf: His eyes were half shut, and his mouth was open in an expression that looked like he was belching. Something crunched under her shoes as she came closer: a bottle of pills was spilled on the floor. She touched Joe's shoulder to roll him toward her.

He was cold. He was stiff.

She walked back into the living room and made the announcement to the group in an unnaturally calm voice.

"Joe's dead."

"We've already got more than ten ounces bagged," Alexander said. "Let's finish this last one, I'll take the eleven and we'll call it done."

Neil nodded. The scale balanced at twenty-eight. Neil and Cameron disappeared back into the night.

Together Sara and Alexander stood in the doorway of Joe's room and looked at his body. "What now?" she asked. "We call the police or something?"

He shook his head. "Can't."

She sighed. "Yeah, I figured it wouldn't be easy."

"Even if I get the bags of c.o.ke out of here, there's probably traces of it everywhere. In the furniture, stuck to the walls, in the fabric of the clothes in the closets ... everywhere. And since they'd say it was a 'drug related' death, they'd come in looking." He took out a cigarette and fumbled in his pocket for his lighter. She decided to have one, too. They ended up standing in the kitchen, flicking ashes into the sink.

Alexander shook his head. "Even if they didn't do anything tonight, they could suspect something and start watching this place, or even following me around." He blew smoke up at the ceiling, then shook his head again. "We can't call anybody."

Sara took out a new cigarette and used the old one to light it.

Alexander calmly retrieved the box of black plastic trash bags from under the sink. Sara had brought them when she'd brought over her microwave, trying to clean up the place and make it feel more comfortable. He set the box on the coffee table. They both sat on the couch and did a few very fat lines.

Joe's eyes stared at nothing. Sara flicked the light switch but apparently the bulb had burned out. They struggled to get Joe's head into one of the garbage bags, working in the red light from the lizard cage. There was no way to fit his entire body into just one bag, so they put another one over his feet.