With her attention split between the computer screen and the bookshelves over her desk, she located the course handbook for the college. It was beat-up and dog-eared, but she flipped it open to the section on the staff of All Saints College. “Come on, come on,” she murmured, barely managing to stay on top of the conversation discussing the ritual of drinking blood and the sexuality inherent in the act.

“Yuck.” She shuddered. “No thanks.” Flipping the pages, she finally saw Dr. Grotto’s picture. Damn, he was good-looking. Piercing eyes, strong chin, high forehead, and dark hair. Underneath his photo she read: Dominic Nicolai Grotto, PhD.

Could it be?

DrDoNoGood and Dr. Dominic Nicolai, one and the same?

She couldn’t prove it, but she felt a rush, the same gut instinct her father experienced when he would figure out a clue in some homicidal maniac’s twisted game.

“Like father, like daughter,” she told herself as she asked a simple question about the class.

She wondered if there was a way to uncover his identity, some way to flush him out. Maybe she could pander to his vanity, complain about him as a teacher and see what happened.

Still reading the conversation, now about cultural mores and human blood, she pulled out her class notes. Maybe if she quoted him, she’d get a response…and if she said something about him being more an actor than an intellectual, more into theatrics than literature, she was certain he’d be unable to pass that up. She pulled up another screen in the program on which she kept her notes, but before she could come up with a significant question, he logged off.

“What! No!” she cried, and quickly reopened the other chat room screens, hoping he’d show up somewhere else. But he wasn’t anywhere she could find. If he’d entered another cyber chat, it was one she hadn’t located. “Of all the bad luck!” She tossed the school catalogue aside and was about to close out the windows for the chat rooms when she saw a strange question in the room so recently vacated by DrDoNoGood.

Deathmaster7 asked: Do you wear a vial?

Kristi froze.

Three people responded with a yes while one, Carnivore18, answered with a question mark. Obviously Carnie didn’t get it either. One person didn’t respond and two typed in no. Kristi decided to go with the flow and responded yes.

Carnivore18 created a line of question marks. He clearly felt out of it. “Join the club,” Kristi said, and wondered how she should prod the conversation along. But she remembered something—hadn’t Lucretia mentioned that some of the girls in the “cult” and Dr. Grotto’s class wore vials of their own blood?

Deathmaster7 asked: Whose?