Thin-framed and of average height, Napoleon was forever doomed to look like a first-year college student. His nose was like a blade, long and slender, and below it was his weak attempt at showing maturity. Having never reached the age when his beard would grow in completely, Napoleon could only produce a small tuft of ginger curls at the tip of his chin, the color two shades paler than the spiked, vibrant tangerine hair atop his head. It had been dyed hundreds of times, Napoleon’s vanity trying to extinguish what some believed to be clownish, but like the endless tattoos he’d attempted to have inked into his skin, the regeneration afforded to vampires caused the dye to fade in only a few days.

Napoleon pushed himself out of the chair, closing his silk robe as he moseyed over and perused the selection of liquor on the bar. “I’d offer you a drink, except that would be cordial, and I don’t like being cordial to you. Makes my teeth hurt,” Napoleon said after filling a glass with gin. “So, cut to the chase, Archer. Why are you darkening my doorstep tonight?”

“As if you have to ask.”

“Oh, goodie, we’re playing a riddle game,” Napoleon said, clapping his hands together. “Tell me, how many clues do I get, or is this the one where I have to buy a vowel?”

“The only thing you’re going to buy is a one-way ticket out of Massachusetts for you and that cackle of hyenas out there.”

“I prefer to think of them as a cloud of bats or perhaps even a murder of crows.”

“I don’t care what you call them, but you’ve been sending your crows into my neighborhood to murder innocent people, and it’s going to stop.”

Napoleon’s beady ferret eyes grew even smaller, and he tapped his finger against his chin. “Interesting how you call them innocent. Why are they so different from those you murder?”

“I don’t make a habit of killing.”

“But you have.”

“Yes, you’re right. I have,” Bennett said, taking another step. “If I see a man raping a woman or I see a man molesting a child, they will never again see the light of day, for they do not deserve to live.”

“Putting aside the fact that you’ve made yourself judge and jury, if you ask me, it sounds like you have a problem with men. Missing the penis, are you, Archer?”

Bennett snorted and shook her head. “When are you going to realize that your flippant, adolescent responses only prove what I’ve been saying for centuries? You’re a child, Napoleon; a spoiled, hedonistic child who continues to prove his lack of worth through barbarous crimes that put us all in danger, and to what end?”