After all this time, the demon lover doesn’t really remember what she looked like. There were a lot of girls and a lot of parties and that was another country.

She had long black hair. Big eyes.

He and Meggie are both wasted. And the girl is into both of them and eventually it’s the three of them, everyone else is gone, there’s a party going on somewhere else, they stay, she stays, and everyone else leaves. They drink and there’s music and they dance. Then the girl is kissing Meggie and he is kissing the girl and they’re in the bedroom. It’s a lot of fun. They do pretty much everything you can do with three people in a bed. And at some point the girl is between them and everyone is having a good time, they’re having fun, and then the girl says to them, Bite me.

Come on, bite me.

He bites her shoulder and she says, No, really bite me. Bite harder. I want you to really bite me. Bite me, please. And suddenly he and Meggie are looking at each other and it isn’t fun anymore. This isn’t what they’re into.

He gets off as quickly as he can, because he’s almost there anyway. And the girl is still begging, still asking for something they can’t give her, because it isn’t real and vampires aren’t real and it’s a distasteful situation and so Meggie asks the girl to leave. She does and they don’t talk about it. They just go to sleep. And they wake up just a little bit later because she’s snuck back into the house, they find out later that she’s broken a window, and she’s slashed her wrists. She’s holding out her bloody wrists and she’s saying, Please, here’s my blood, please drink it. I want you to drink my blood. Please.

They get her bandaged up. The cuts aren’t too deep. Meggie calls her agent, Pike, and Pike arranges for someone to take the girl to a private clinic. He tells them not to worry about any of it. It turns out that the girl is fifteen. Of course she is. Pike calls them again, after this girl gets out of the clinic, when she commits suicide. She has a history of attempts. Try, try, succeed.