She stared at him as if he were a cretin. “Do you even watch TV? What”—she made air quotes—“‘they’ can do is very sophisticated. Maybe not CSI sophisticated and certainly not so quickly, but sophisticated nonetheless. With enough time, oh, yes, they can link that damned limb to whichever girl it belonged to and eventually to us!” Scratching her long neck thoughtfully, Elizabeth, ever restless, kept up her pacing, then stopped short as she caught her reflection in one of the mirrors he’d placed in the room. Her fingers curled in on themselves until she realized what she was doing, that she might mar her skin with her scratching. Momentarily distracted, obsessed with her image, she also took in several deep breaths and made her face a calm mask once again. The lines of consternation and frustration between her brows and around the corners of her eyes smoothed, and the expression of seething fury disappeared.

“We have to step things up. Immediately.” She said, more evenly, “You know what to do. We’ve planned for this day, I just wish it hadn’t happened so soon.” Sighing, she shook her head, her dark hair sliding across her shoulders. “This Friday,” she said with a note of wistfulness. “It will be our last performance here.”

“And then?”

She arched a perfect brow. “We start over, of course. We just need to get enough blood to last until we settle somewhere else.” She seemed to have chased away her anger with thoughts of a new future, a new place, new young, supple bodies. “But for now, we must concentrate.”

She crossed the cavernous room to his desk alcove and saw that he’d already strewn campus ID pictures across the top, photographs of those he thought most worthy. Leaning one hip against the desktop, she quickly slid aside those she deigned not pretty enough, or supple enough, or fresh enough. She hesitated over a few and clucked her tongue at opportunities missed.

In the end three pictures remained. “These are the ones,” she said, and he stared down at the beautiful girls in the pictures. Each was a younger, more vibrant version of Elizabeth.

The center photograph was of Kristi Bentz.

“Three will be difficult.”

“Then you’ll just have to hone your skills, won’t you?” She smiled at him, a careful, poised grin that showed few lines. “If you can’t get them all, at least be certain you get the Bentz girl.”

All too gladly, he thought.

“And remember, these”—she swirled a finger over the photographs—“are just the ones we need for their blood. There are others who have to be disposed of as well.”

Of course he knew what she was talking about: the clean up. Getting rid of those who could ruin them. That thought was more than pleasant. He couldn’t wait to get rid of them. They’d been pains in the neck from the get-go.

They deserved to die.