I dropped Fallon at the airport in the early AM and immediately was on the road. I'd decided to drive from New York to Chicago instead of flying if for no other reason than to return Rohan's Jaguar to him.

It wasn't like I needed the vehicle. The thing had sat in the garage for most of the last year, so I had it tuned up and cleaned inside and out in anticipation of restoring it to him.

It was a regal gesture on his part to give it to me—no, what am I saying? I extorted it out of him. But it was a grand gesture on his part nonetheless, the first of many. He and Isolde both had been patient and useful in helping me liquidate all of Whitefarrow's holdings. All they asked in return was a majority ownership in a couple of the businesses that they and Whitefarrow still had owned together.

It was a paltry asking price for all that they had done.

There had been rough water between my friends and me, most of which was my doing, but the current had smoothed considerably in the past year. I actually was looking forward to seeing both of them.

My greatest fear while being in Chicago was that I might not have the willpower to resist going to see my beloved Freya-Lynn, a woman whose life already had seen too much trouble from knowing me. No, I needed to fight that urge, no matter how great it might assail me.

I spent part of the trip trying to figure out what had gone on near the bodega on the evening before. Clearly, Officer McConnell had it in for my friend Fallon. But what was the reason? Was it simple, garden-variety homophobia? I'd met men like that before, the type who were so shocked to see two people kissing in public that they felt the need to turn to violence or worse. Or was it something else, something even more malignant? And why Fallon and not me? I was good to look at, but Fallon was a heart stopper. Was it just that?

The fellow didn't stink of being a lacky or a Renfield of any type, but one could never know for certain. Although I seldom saw any, there certainly were blood drinkers in the city. It was a place so large that a few extra corpses could go unnoticed, and, though I didn't go looking for other blood drinkers, I did follow the news and read the local papers. One learns over time how to see certain patterns, such as unexplained disappearances and the like. Those told me there were at least a few of my kind eating actively and regularly in Manhattan and the Bronx.

Might I have some hidden enemy out there? Despite my openhandedness with Whitefarrow's fortune, there was no question some blood drinkers still held ill will toward me over my killing the man and ransacking his assets.

Even if I had placated each and every one, there always was the possibility some wildcard might be in play. There was no familial piety among my kind. If another blood drinker saw me as an obstacle to getting something they wanted, my being like them would not protect me. Might such an enemy be foolish enough to use a lackey to come at me through someone I loved? That goes without saying.

I was just happy to place Fallon on her flight to Paris. She would be safe with her producer and with the two bodyguards my friend Corey had arranged to go with her. She would be gone more than two weeks, which was more than sufficient time for me to sort things out back in New York.

Still, the problem ate at me, and I gnawed back at it from every angle and still was gnawing when I pulled up to Isolde's lovely Kenilworth mansion just as evening set.

My timing was perfect, and I was assaulted by a rush of hunger and nostalgia. Isolde and Rohan were waiting for me like a pair of perfect and most elegant hosts. It took no small effort for me to hide from them how excited I was at that moment.

I got out of the car, gently waved the file-folder with the last of the papers in them, and said, "This is the last of them."

Isolde broke into a smile and kissed me on either cheek.

"Time to drink," said a laughing Rohan.

And we drank—not blood. No, not that. You may find it hard to imagine, but civilized blood drinkers celebrated good news and happy occasions just like everyone else, and my emphasis is on "civilized." That evening, the three of us ate, drank, danced, and told stories, each taking our turn, telling wild tales that the others had heard before, and making up new and outrageous bullshit to entertain our companions.

Our kind seldom ever grow tired, and we had many hours until dawn to scratch whatever celebratory itch that we had. The imbecile Whitefarrow was gone, and the last of his business empire now was dissolved into the hands of others. It was a great time to celebrate.

You may think I boast, but I am a spectacular dancer, and I have danced professionally many times over the years. Even during the daylight hours, when my speed and agility are not so great, I move across the floor like a swan. At night, though? My skills are stupendous, and my hosts had made our table in a large ballroom near the center of the enormous building for just that purpose. The ceilings were high, and the floor was wide and deep.

As Isolde regaled us with a story of some silly happenings in the 1950s, I paced the floor, spinning and gently swaying, my eyes all the time on our storyteller.

It was delightful.

I must say, alcohol does not have the great influence on blood drinkers as it has on normal folk, but enough of the right kind could get me in the right mood. As Isolde finished her story—a tale of some Japanese politician with whom she'd had a tryst—she skipped out of the room to further plunder the wine cellar, and Rohan launched into a long tale about a time before he and I had met.

I'm not sure I had heard that particular story before. I probably had, because he and I were together for quite a long time as blood drinkers measure such things. But the details didn't sound familiar. It was only as I spun and danced, pirouetted and swayed, that the story reminded me of something important about my old lover, something I'd always found endearing.

It took years of my listening to his bawdy tales of wild excess to understand one crucial thing about him. Rohan had lived a rough and tempestuous life, and he was capable of doing wicked and cruel things. I'd seen that side of him, had even shared in it more than once. But only when you listened to his stories with great care would you truly understand that the wildest, cruelest, most bloodthirsty time of his existence was before his second birth, when he was a mere mortal like the rest of you.

Rohan was the fifth son of a minor Rajput lordling born 500 and some years ago, and his youth was one of selfish indulgence, violence, and hedonism. In those days, he denied himself nothing, and he was, he himself admitted, a scoundrel and a narcissist.

Those facts about him were things that always gave me heart, always convinced me that we blood drinkers were not a lost cause. The Rohan that I had known, on and off, for more than a century was capable of moments of pique and cruelty, it's true, but, more than that, he was a person capable of great generosity, patience, and thoughtfulness. The blood drinker that he had become was a far better and much finer man than the mortal human he had been. We are, all of us, in the end, capable of being better people than we once were. Even blood drinkers.

He seemed to sense something in me, for at about that time he looked at me and said, "You know, Adia. I do believe you're right. It was 1864."

I stopped so suddenly that I nearly fell to the floor. I knew precisely what he was talking about.

Before I could say a word, he said, "Yes, I remember it was right before John Hanning Speke shot himself. ... Damned Internet."

I let out a whoop so loud that I startled myself. Before I knew it, I was dancing in great bounds and twirls around the vast room, letting my strength and agility carry me from one side of the room to the next, spinning, leaping, howling, and bounding so high that I nearly brushed the high ceiling as I sailed about the place. I'd seldom been so happy.

Throughout most of the 1890s and after, Rohan and I had argued about when we first had met. He always claimed it was the summer of 1865. I was convinced it was some time in 1864. It wasn't a bitter thing, but it was the source of many a frustrated teasing and good-natured bickering over the years.

And he'd finally put two and two together. The Internet truly was a wonderful thing.

I continued to dance that way for nearly an hour. By that time, Isolde had returned with more wine in tow, and she and Rohan laughed and clapped at my wild dervish-like capering until I thirsted for more wine.

And then the fun truly began.