We entered the house. Though it looked spotlessly clean, the interior of the house smelled. I remembered that from the first time I had visited here, but it was worse than I remembered, as if I’d filtered some of it out in my memories. My nose caught the charnel-house odors of blood, meat, feces, urine, and that odd smell of internal organs. Faintly but pervasively, I could smell an underlying scent of something rotting.

Adam took point, and I followed, watching behind us as I had on the porch. Wulfe’s sheep led us into the kitchen, where we were treated to the sight of Wulfe lying down on top of one of those 1950s chrome and green Formica kitchen tables. There were three chairs that matched the table: two of them were knocked over, and the third was tucked in where it belonged on the side of the table where Wulfe’s head was.

Like the guy who was ushering us into the house, Wulfe was naked from the waist up. Wulfe had been about fifteen when he was made a vampire, old enough to hint at the man he would never become. His ribs showed, and his skin was almost powder white, a shade paler than his hair. Last time I’d seen Wulfe, his hair had been buzzed, but it was longer now, maybe half an inch long, and it had been shaped.

He lay faceup, back slightly arched and eyes closed. One foot, wearing a purple Converse tennis shoe, was flat on the table, pushing his knee up. The other leg was outstretched, that foot bare and pointed like a ballet dancer’s. He’d painted his toenails green, and they matched the color of the Formica tabletop. I didn’t know if that was on purpose or not.

The light over the dining-room table was on, and someone had put daylight bulbs in the fixture because the tabletop looked more like an operating table than a place people might sit down and eat breakfast.

“Wulfe,” Adam said dryly. “It’s what’s for dinner.”

“Yes!” Wulfe said, suddenly sitting cross-legged and facing us. “See, Bryan? I told you he would get it!”

“Actually, you said she would get it, master,” the man who’d let us in said.

Wulfe looked at him thoughtfully. “Am I still allowing you opinions?”

The man blinked at him.

“How long have you belonged to me, Bryan?”

Bryan had been the name of my foster father. There were lots of people named Bryan. It shouldn’t bother me so much that they shared a name, this man who was the victim of a vampire and my foster father.

“Two days?” Bryan sounded unsure.

“That’s right,” said Wulfe. “I let you think until the third night. What happens on the third night, Bryan?”