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that interest, but not because I wanted to take advantage of you against your will.”
    “Of course,” she said, fighting a stammer. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to suggest you did.”
    He suspected they both were lying, which possibly proved her point about on-the-nose dialogue. He turned his head to the doorway, cursing softly in Schwyzerdütsch. . He asked himself what would be so wrong about taking advantage. Given what she’d done to him, no matter if she didn’t remember, didn’t she deserve it? He certainly deserved something. Needed it, if it came to that.
    His legs were sprawled beneath the little eat-in table, his bare feet so close to hers he couldn’t help but register her heat. He wanted to tug at his jeans, his now huge erection uncomfortable. He gripped the table’s molded steel edge instead.
    “I’ll read the script,” he said, harsh and low. “Come back tonight at nine. I’ll give you my answer then.”
    Grace pushed awkwardly from her chair, the slight human imperfections in her movements unacceptably appealing. “Of course. I’m sorry for dropping in unannounced. I’ll return later.”
    “Grace.” His voice stopped her at the kitchen doorway. When she turned, he feared his heart would pound through his chest. The hesitance in her expression, the lush beauty of her features, were exactly as he remembered.
    “Yes?” she asked breathily.
    He was nearly breathy himself. “When you come back tonight? Be sure you come alone.”
     
     
    D espite his piled-up years, Christian hadn’t read ten pages before he saw what Grace meant about this being a story young people could relate to. I Was a Teen-Age Vampire was operatic, with a generous ladling of high school angst. Its central characters were teenagers, the few adults little more than mustache-twirling obstacles to the young people’s seemingly just desires. The villain was Joe Pryor’s father, who locked horns with his son in a classic intergenerational struggle. Age versus youth. Corruption versus ideals. The plot couldn’t have been heavier-handed if he’d written it himself when he was Joe’s age.
    He finished the tale in half an hour, with the back of his neck tingling. When he reached the scene where Joe’s power-hungry father slew one of his friends, Christian gasped audibly. The dead boy was called Matthew, and though it wasn’t spelled out, he might have been romantically involved with another gang member named Philip. Matthaus and Philippe had been Christian’s friends when he was mortal—a difference of a few letters. They’d died not at his father’s hand, but certainly at his behest.
    Substitute a band of Swiss mercenaries for a motorcycle gang, and it sure looked like Grace was stealing pages from his past.
    “Christ,” Christian said and flipped faster to the end.
    When Roy returned at noon for lunch, Christian was still slumped in the kitchen chair, his hands feathering slowly across the first page of Grace’s script. The sun that snuck past the edges of the window shades wasn’t strong enough to burn him, only to make him drunk. His thoughts were so sluggish they could have been waterlogged. The effect was pleasant if dangerous: an opium dream for vampires.
    Roy gave him a look that said he knew what he’d been doing and didn’t approve. He strode past Christian with a grunt, retrieving a sandwich and a beer from the Frigidaire. Roy didn’t cook any more than Christian did. A woman from town delivered supplies to them every couple days. Roy unwrapped his sandwich, cracked the beer, then took a pull from it. Almost as familiar with Roy’s rhythms as he was with his own, Christian knew he’d be saying his piece any moment now.
    “Didn’t feel like sleeping today?” Roy asked.
    “Couldn’t,” Christian returned.
    “You know you shouldn’t sit up like this. It makes you blue. Who was that gal anyway?”
    “Someone from my past.”
    Roy thunked his Lone Star on the counter. “How can that be? She was