“I’m Dru,” I said mechanically. Gran would be proud of my manners at least. “Dru Anderson.”

“Is that a nickname?” This from the Japanese kid. “I’m Hiro, by the way. It is a pleasure to meet

you.”

Charmed, I’m sure. “It’s going to take me awhile to tell you everything.” And I don’t know what

I’m going to be leaving out yet. My palms were damp. I scrubbed them against my jeans and

wished the chair wasn’t so hard. But if I got up now it would be weird.

Weirder. Maybe. I don’t know.

Hiro gave me a look that could only be described as kind. He deliberately pulled out the chair to my

left and folded himself down into it. “We are Kouroi. Djamphir. We have, my dear, nothing but

time.”

That brought up another question. “How . . . I mean, you guys are old. Older than a lot of djamphir

I’ve seen. And Benjamin, he’s older than Christophe. How long do you . . . we?” I decided I

couldn’t include myself with them. Or could I? Jesus, I had so many questions, it wasn’t even funny. “How long do you live?”

Bruce just kind of appeared out of thin air next to me. I strangled the urge to flinch and smelled

cologne and fabric softener on a warm draft. None of them smelled like Christophe, either—the

spiced-apple aroma that followed him around didn’t rub off on other djamphir. I wondered about

that, too. How would I even begin to ask? Hey, you guys don’t smell like bakeries. What gives?

“We are Kouroi,” Bruce repeated and set a plate in front of me. Half a Belgian waffle, scrambled

eggs, a small mountain of bacon, and a small glass dish that held melon balls and grapes as well as

quartered strawberries like blood clots. “We live until the night hunts us down. Just like nosferatu,

but without their . . . disabilities.”

“Except the hunger.” Alton played with the silver thing that wasn’t a coffeepot. “Always excepting

the hunger.”

Hunger. Why don’t they call it thirst? The weird place at the back of my palate quivered. The place

that liked warm, red, copper-salty fluid. The spot that pushed a button in my head and turned me into a clear-glass girl full of red liquid rage.

And that was another thing, too. Christ, now that I knew what it was like to want to drink someone

else’s blood, I was having a hell of a time holding on to anything about myself. It was all a whirling

mass of things changing before I could get a grip on them.

I stared at the food. Was there a hook hidden in it? I was too hungry to tell. I didn’t have Dad’s arm

to hold onto.