It wasn’t unheard of. He’d helped his father sacrifice vampires for centuries. But the key word was vampire. Why was he human?

He had just gotten comfortable when a soft knock sounded.

“What?” He picked up the nearest object—a bar of soap—and flung it at the door.

The Mouse came in with a pile of neatly folded clothes. “Father Bart was shorter than you. And fatter.”

“Pick up the soap.” Cyrus watched as she bent to retrieve it. Nothing to write home about, he decided, tilting his head to study her backside.

In the past, he would have fed off her. She had long, slender legs that would have been heaven wrapped around him, and hair just the right length to pull and bare her throat for a bite. But her face was too innocent, her whole manner too timid. Her faded cotton sundress told endless tales of trips to Wal-Mart in Daddy’s pickup truck, Garth Brooks blaring over the roar of the road through the open windows.

The vampire Cyrus would have taken his pleasure and her blood in one night, and she wouldn’t have lived to see the dawn.

He missed blood more now than when he’d drifted aimlessly on the other side of the veil. He didn’t want to think of it anymore.

When she stood and handed him the soap, he snatched it away. “What are those?” he snapped, gesturing to the clothes. “Polyester?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, read the bloody tags. Are you completely worthless?” He grabbed the shirt from the top of the pile and scanned the care instructions before flinging it aside in disgust. “I only wear natural fiber.”

The girl nodded uncertainly. “I don’t think Father Bart had any—”

“The dead priest is not my fucking problem!” He slammed his fists down on the water, sloshing it over the sides of the tub.

The Mouse shrank away, screaming. It lifted Cyrus’s spirits considerably to see the girl frightened.

“Get out. If you can’t find anything suitable for me, you’ll have to ask those morons upstairs.” He leaned against the curved back of the tub and closed his eyes, savoring the girl’s litany of pleas as she cowered on the floor.

Max arrived five hours later. I was buried beneath the covers on Nathan’s bed, clinging to his scent like a life raft and trying to ignore the bedside radio he always kept on. The classic rock station was in the middle of a Fleetwood Mac Rock Block. “Gypsy” was just finishing up when I heard the front door burst open.

“Carrie?” Something heavy hit the floor in the living room. Probably the duffel bag Max always carried with him. Loud footsteps ran down the hall and I climbed from beneath the blankets in time to see him skid to a stop at the doorway.