The Professor opened the desk drawer and pulled out a ruler. I hated the ruler. He said, “Do you expect me to believe you when you can do this?” He came to me and struck me hard across the face. The metal edge cut into my skin and I tasted blood on my mouth, but the taste of my own blood didn’t do anything to sate my craving. Then my skin mended over smoothly.

“How do you do that if you’re not a vampire?” the Professor asked, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

I could have told him things. I could have told him that I had been a normal human chica until I’d gone to a party and met a rather fabulous man. A moment of passion with Dr. Oswald K. Grant, certified plastic surgeon and vampire, had infected me, but my own freakish immune system kicked into high gear and fought off death.

I could have explained that I was the only known Normal—well, normalish—survivor of the infection, which caused a craving for blood and had given me the ability to heal quickly from minor cuts. Unlike born-vampires, I could enjoy daylight without sunblock.

A second infusion of blood by a more powerful vampire, Ian Ducharme, had saved my life after an attack by a rogue vampire. But the cure had been almost as deadly as the injury. When I’d finally recovered, I was unusually strong, able to heal from serious injury, and I could see in almost total darkness.

Ian’s blood had also transmitted a condition he had that was rare even among vampires: when I touched someone, skin to skin, I got a delicious buzz. The sensation almost compensated for the fact that alcohol and drugs didn’t affect me.

I got a rush from drinking blood. Now, blood and sex … that was a thrill.

I could have mentioned that I’d been engaged to Dr. Oswald Grant, but so many forces had conspired against our marriage that our relationship shattered like a thin crystal goblet on a stone floor.

I could have relayed my adventures with heiresses, tabloid writers, has-been actors, shapeshifters, and the nutcase who’d hired me to ghostwrite his memoirs, which became an international bestseller, but my interrogator seemed tragically humor-deficient.

If I felt confessional, I might have shared my inability to stay away from goddamn Ian Ducharme, a man with too many secrets who also believed he was exempt from the law. A man who would kill for me and might kill because of me.

The Professor asked, “Where are you from? Whose orders are you following?”

“I’m under no one’s orders. I don’t know what you think I am, but I’m an ordinary human girl.”