These old row houses were connected by shared walls. Miriam passed silently across the tar-paper roofs until she reached her objective. The landlord of the target house had been clever. He had gained an extra apartment by building a bedroom on the roof. The apartment was a duplex, fashionably provided with a spiral staircase to connect sleeping and living quarters. Miriam considered it an ideal early evening choice because you could get into the upstairs bedroom and await your chance at the top of the spiral stairs. From there you had a view of the whole living-dining room below.

The bedroom had a door to the outside, locked by a spring-loaded dead bolt. You could open it from inside, but not from the roof. Or so they had assumed. The lock hadn’t been changed. It was still the same substandard mechanism that had been there six years ago. She was inside within thirty seconds. There were three steps down to the bedroom floor.

Looking down the spiral stairs from the darkness above, she evaluated both occupants. The girl was the lighter, she would be the one to be taken alive. Miriam watched the man. He fit her personal needs very well. The last time she had been here all had been as now: a young couple, dinnertime. The only difference was that John had been with her then, and they had shared their meal on the bedroom floor.

Miriam used the same ploy she had before: she hissed. Dinner stopped downstairs. She did it again, louder.

“Is that a cat?”

She repeated the sound.

“Frank, there’s a cat upstairs.”

“Goddamn it.”

She did it another time, imagining herself to be a cat in pain.

“Frank, go see. It sounds like it’s hurt.”

His chair scraped. Instantly, Miriam stepped back into the bathroom. A moment later the bedroom light came on and Frank’s heavy tread sounded on the stairs. She watched him from the shadows, tensing for the kill. He did exactly the same thing his predecessor had done: looked around and, seeing nothing, bent to peer under the bed.

Miriam had no need of a scalpel. Nature had given her race a tongue proper to its uses and she penetrated the flesh instantly. He sucked in his breath, kicked once against the floor, and was dead. In ten seconds she filled her body with the fire of his life.

“Frank? What’s that sucking?”

Miriam removed her chloroformed rag from its Ziploc bag and once again withdrew to the bathroom. She took with her the loose bundle of clothing that had been the male.

“Frank?”

She made the hiss of the cat again. Then she stomped on the floor.

“Are you killing that animal? Frank, that’s probably Mrs. Ransom’s cat, you realize that!” Another strangled hiss. “Frank, don’t!” The scrape of a chair, patter of feet.