Immy and Oliver dance. She’s in his arms, really, his hand on the small of her back. It’s sort of a waltz that they’re doing, which doesn’t really suit whatever song this is, but Oliver can do either the waltz or the tango—or a kind of sway-y standing-there dance. Sky bounces around with Alan, who still has his wolf head on. Alan is actually more fun to dance with than Oliver is, although the bouncing gets tiring after a while.

“Are you happy, darling?” Oliver the Vampire Boyfriend says, so softly Immy has to ask him to repeat himself. Not that this is, strictly speaking, necessary. Oliver always asks the same questions.

“Sure,” she says. Then, “Well, I don’t know. Not really. I could be happier. I’d like to be happier.” Why not? If you can’t be honest with your best friend’s Vampire Boyfriend, who can you be honest with? Vampires are all about secrets and unhappiness. Secret unhappinesses. You can see it in their black and fathomless eyes.

“I wish you were happy, my love,” Oliver says. He presses her more firmly against his body, nuzzles her hair. “How can I be happy if you are not?”

“Ainslie’s your love. Not me,” Immy says. She really isn’t in the mood. Besides, sometimes it’s just really too weird, playing pretend eternal love with a borrowed Boyfriend when what you really want is your own Boyfriend. It would be so, so much nicer to have your own. “So, I mean, don’t be unhappy on my account.”

“As you wish,” Oliver says. “I shall be unhappy on my own account. How happy it makes me, oh delicious one, to be unhappy together with you.” He clasps her even tighter in his arms, until she has to ask him to ease up just a little. It’s a fine line between being cuddled and being squeezed like a juice box, and Vampire Boyfriends sometimes cross right over that line, maybe without even noticing.

There is also the endless hovering and the endless brooding and all the endless talk about how delicious you are and eternity and they like you to read poetry at them, the old-fashioned rhyming kind, even. It’s supposed to be educational, okay? Like the way Werewolf Boyfriends go on and on about the environment, and also are always trying to get you to go running with them.