I could swear he sighed. He gestured me to precede him into the living room. The lamps were off. Bill had lit candles. I counted eight. I wondered what he’d been doing, sitting alone in the flickering light. Listening to music? He loved his CDs, particularly Bach. Feeling distinctly worried, I sat on the couch, while Bill took his favorite chair across the low coffee table. He was as handsome as ever, but his face lacked animation. He was clearly suffering. Now I knew why Sam had wanted me to visit.

“You are well?” he asked.

“I’m much better,” I said carefully. He’d seen the worst they’d done to me.

“The scars, the . . . mutilation?”

“The scars are there, but they’re much fainter than I ever expected they’d be. The missing bits have filled in. I kind of have a dimple in this thigh,” I said, tapping my left knee. “But I had plenty of thigh to spare.” I tried to smile, but truthfully, I was too concerned to manage it. “Are you getting better?” I asked again, hesitantly.

“I’m not worse,” he said. He shrugged, a minimal lift of the shoulders.

“What’s with the apathy?” I said.

“I don’t seem to want anything any longer,” Bill told me, after a lengthy pause. “I’m not interested in my computer anymore. I’m not inclined to work on the incoming additions and subtractions to my database. Eric sends Felicia over to package up the orders and send them out. She gives me some blood while she’s here.” Felicia was the bartender at Fangtasia. She hadn’t been a vampire that long.

Could vampires suffer from depression? Or was the silver poisoning responsible?

“Isn’t there anyone who can help you? I mean, help you heal?”

He smiled in a sardonic sort of way. “My creator,” he said. “If I could drink from Lorena, I would have healed completely by now.”

“Well, that sucks.” I couldn’t let him know that bothered me, but ouch. I’d killed Lorena. I shook the feeling off. She’d needed killing, and it was over and done with. “Did she make any other vampires?”

Bill looked slightly less apathetic. “Yes, she did. She has another living child.”

“Well, would that help? Getting blood from that vamp?”

“I don’t know. It might. But I won’t . . . I can’t reach out to her.”

“You don’t know if it would help or not? You-all need a Handy Hints rule book or something.”

“Yes,” he said, as if he’d never heard of such an idea. “Yes, we do indeed.”

I wasn’t going to ask Bill why he was reluctant to contact someone who could help him. Bill was a stubborn and persistent man, and I wasn’t going to be able to persuade him otherwise since he’d made up his mind. We sat in silence for a moment.