I was up at first light, and, as my strength gently dwindled with the sunrise, I made my way into the kitchen to begin our preparations.

Fallon had a core of about a dozen friends who were her lifelong posse. Most she knew from high school and college, but a few were her true heartmates from childhood, the young lasses who had stood by her through the worst of the abuse she had suffered as a youngster. The posse would be coming over in the midafternoon for a bon voyage fete.

It was my duty to make sure everything was perfect, a task I took on with no small enthusiasm. Was I an above average cook and baker? Yes, no gourmet, but good enough to put on the eats. More importantly, I knew the wine list like the back of my hand.

Preparations only faltered somewhat when Fallon rose from bed an hour later and dragged me back into our room for several rounds of loud and energetic lovemaking. She then was off to her errands and meetings while I prepared the house. I didn't mind playing the house frau in the least.

The first of our callers showed up remarkably early, at a little past noon. It was no secret that I was generous with food and libations while I cooked. Most of Fallon's friends were painfully thin, and a few were borderline anorexic so carefully did they manage their eating, but Bess's cooking and Fallon's departure were good reasons to break the rules.

By and large, I liked Fallon's friends. There were one or two who I could have done without, and one who made a poor show of hiding her dislike for me. But who was I to say? Fallon was a grown woman, 22 years old, and she was perfectly capable of picking her own friends. I did toy the previous year with the idea of extinguishing one of her companions, so annoying did I find the woman. More than just my dislike, I sensed a deep and profound maliciousness in the lass, who went by the name Brigit.

I finally decided against doing the woman harm. Fallon had lost enough, and, despite Brigit's otherwise malevolent character, the two seemed to get along well. Happily, Brigit moved cities for a job and now wasn't so much in our company. But I still was gripped at times with the idea of removing her from the equation. She got on my nerves.

Once the first guests arrived—a pair of debutantes from Fallon's college—I laid out some snacks, laid on some nice music, cracked a decent bottle of wine, and entertained the lasses as best I was able.

There still was occasional teasing about me being a vampire. Fallon thought it was cute that I had introduced myself to her in such a cockeyed fashion, so it did come up from time to time. No one took it seriously, so I went along with the joke, regaling the young women in the circle with tales of my coldblooded and sordid past whenever they asked to hear of them. My stories were always true, which I felt added to their flavor.

No doubt they all thought of me as some sort of eccentric writer or would-be actress, the very types of people who would dream up what to them would seem such a crackpot notion. I enjoyed the repartee.

For her part, Fallon did not believe me to be a vampire.

No, it was far worse. After her severe injuries at the hands of my departed nemesis, Whitefarrow, Fallon's memory had been dodgy for a time. She did recall that she and I had been in an explosion, but as she began to heal, she wondered why I hadn't been injured.

How to explain that my wounds healed totally within a few hours, while the mending of her body took many months? Even more, where were my scars? I had not a mark on my body. Fallon's scars, once livid and puckered, now were mere white whisps after the careful attention of the best cosmetic surgeon I could find. Faint though they were, they were real scars. I had not so much as a scratch on me.

My first response was to tell her that I was unmarked because she had sheltered me with her own body. It had seemed an innocent fib at the time, and I didn't feel that explaining to her that indeed, yes, I truly was a blood drinker was a good conversation to have while she convalesced from injuries that nearly had killed her.

But then my friend's memory slowly returned, and soon she recalled just enough from that day to remember that it was I who had sheltered her with my body and no doubt had saved her life. Much to my surprise, when my dear friend confronted me with this fact it was not in fear or acrimony. On the contrary, Fallon drew a simple conclusion: I was unhurt not because I was a vampire, but because I was a superhero.

There was no arguing the point with her, and how could I? I was in fact the next best thing to being completely indestructible. And why would the lass imagine that I really was a blood drinker? To her, the answer was obvious. She was living with a superhero, full stop.

Oy vey.

At about 2:00 in the afternoon, a steady stream of friends and supporters began to arrive, and I was beginning to lay things out on the sideboard for our afternoon lunch. Fallon arrived from her business meetings not long after, and for the next six hours the festivities were in full swing. It was a most splendid occasion.

There was only one moment where the otherwise sublime vibe faltered even a little, and that not much. At about an hour before guests began to leave—almost all of whom were women—Fallon's former beau arrived, alone and palely loitering on the front porch. She had tried very hard to keep the young man in her life after their split, and he since had attended a few get-togethers. Alas, he ordinarily had sulked and lurked about as one who wanted nothing more than to find his way back into Fallon's heart.

For her sake, I had made it a point to try to befriend the hapless lad, and to my surprise he seemed quite cheered by the attention I gave him that evening and was able to interact with me and others in something other than his normal sullen way. I know it gladdened my friend that he did so.

Not long after that time, the last of the guests departed, and I spent the next hour or so helping Fallon pack for her trip. Her interests and affairs were diverse, and her social media following had bloomed to many millions.

On this trip, she would travel to Paris, Dubai, Mumbai, and Sydney, helping to advertise a new line of luxury cars. But that was only part of it. The premium accommodations her client rented for her would be the site for a series of photo shoots promoting her personal brand. In between, she was to speak at a set of symposia on domestic abuse.

Fallon had, in the short year since her injury, become active in a number of organizations that assisted survivors of childhood and domestic abuse. Those latter were the true focus of her passions—helping others. It was something to which she placed the lion's share of her time and energy. The other things—promoting luxury brands, fine jewelry, haute culture clothing, was all a way to make money to do the things she believed in. I truly and deeply admired her commitment and helped any way that I could.

She threw me into a powerful lock after we inventoried her checked bag for the last time and planted a solid kiss on my lips. "Are you sure you can't come?"

It wasn't my friend's first trip away from home in recent months, but it was the longest. Unfortunately—and you might find this hard to believe—I had other affairs to which I needed to attend. My life had become, how should I say, complicated since I had interred my nemesis.

"Next time, definitely," I said before returning her embrace.

"But you have those things you need to tend to," she added on my behalf.

"Yes," said I. "Once I've finished sorting out company affairs, I'm all yours."

That was the long and the short of it. After I had done away with Whitefarrow the previous year, I not only plundered his home and his corpse, but I'd made it a point over the next months to pillage his every asset, down to the last shirt button. I didn't share all of those wicked details with Fallon, but I had bent my every device to ransack every penny, every shilling, and every shekel the man had squirreled away.

The operation had entailed a great deal of theft, bribery, extortion, and no small number of murders. I had no legal claim to even so much as a farthing of what I siphoned from Whitefarrow's estates, so my rapine had required extraordinary measures.

The sad part—the sad part for me, that is—was that I'd kept only a small portion of the scoundrel's vast wealth for myself. Why is that you ask? By killing the creature, I had thrown a monkey wrench into a large number of intricate and profitable enterprises by which a great many of my fellow blood drinkers had enjoyed a great many profits.

I had by that time already earned a terrible reputation for myself in the community of blood drinkers, and the only way I had to avoid future conflict was to spread Whitefarrow's wealth as widely and as liberally as possible. That is what I did. I passed veritable fortunes around to those who had invested with my enemy, and fortunes more went to those who had found their hands in his pockets in other ways.

Don't get me wrong. I kept a modest slice of cake for myself. But the greatest piece of that leviathan financial pastry went onto the plates of others. Thank heavens most of that was finished. After Fallon's departure, I would travel for a day or two to Chicago, where I would deliver the last of the necessary papers to my friends Rohan and Isolde, both of whom had helped me in this venture. And that would be the end of that—I deeply hoped.