I met Freya at her hotel at a little after 7:00 that same evening. I purposefully was a few minutes late so as to avoid again seeing her as my evening surge engulfed me. That sensation was heavenly, but simply too overwhelming. I couldn't always control my various aches and urges.

"Sorry I'm late," I called out when I saw her.

She met me with a kiss, one not quite on the lips but very close. I made myself a promise at that moment. I would behave myself. But my word, she was so beautiful at that moment. The woman could make any outfit, at any time of day, appear sensual. And there was something about her face, the intensity of her gaze, that left me breathless.

"Another minute and a half!" she replied in mock outrage. "I'm not sure I can tolerate anymore of this tardiness."

"If I can shave it down to an even minute, can we still be friends?"

"Get it to a minute, and I'll consider putting you on a probationary status."

"Thank you. I like having something to work toward. You look marvelous this evening, by the way. How was the conference?"

"Dry. Stuffy. Very much like a conference in every way."

By that time, we were walking toward the main drag. We'd decided to follow the wind that evening and to allow our noses to make the choice on where to eat. There were plenty of places nearby. No doubt one would appeal to us.

"I appreciate a person who doesn't like talking about work," I told her. "Especially when it's boring."

"Nah," she said. "I don't really find it boring. But most people would. And I always try to draw clear lines between work and play."

"Play?"

"Well, isn't that what we're here to do? Speaking of which"—she did a quick look around—"where is our friend Fallon?"

"I put her on a plane home right before I came to meet you."

"That seems abrupt. Is everything okay?"

I nodded. What would a normal person say to that? There were some types of talk I had to pick my way around. I finally said, "She was rather in a bad way, I think. Some family and friend issues. She told me a little about it when we went out to shop for a new phone today."

"Bad?"

"I shouldn't say." I pondered another moment, and then spoke from the heart. "I've run away from problems before. It's almost never a good approach. In the end, I encouraged her to go home and to take things by the horns. I hope it works out."

"You must be very persuasive. I can never get youngsters to do anything."

"I've had lots of practice. All I had to do was point out all the flimflam artists and confidence tricksters plying their trade on unsuspecting lasses here in the south. She beat feet north."

"No kidding. Did you get a load of the two reprobates she had dinner with last night?"

"I hear it ended in a brawl."

Our slow amble allowed me to regard her face with some care, and for a moment I thought she might say something. Then it appeared she changed her mind.

"How old are you?" she asked instead.

"Old enough to know better, but young enough to remember how much fun it was," I replied.

"No, really." She gently caressed my right arm before taking it in hand, a move that nearly made me leap. "I was looking at your skin the other day. You have zero signs of sun damage, but you have this incredible tan."

"Good genes, I guess." I scarcely knew what genes were, but I knew it was the kind of thing to say.

My friend's hands slid down to my own—she really did have the lightest touch—and she came to a stop, regarding the back of my hand carefully. "You don't have a single mark on your hand."

"So?"

"I've treated fight injuries before," she said. "There are always cuts and gouges on someone's hands."

I took her hand in mine, giving it a gentle squeeze and casting her my best smile. This was an impasse. I so far had told her the whole and unadulterated truth about me, knowing that she'd treat it as a jest. But that was when I thought she was someone I'd never see again.

Would I see her again? If so ... well. Perhaps letting her figure things out on her own was the right way. I'd revealed myself to people in the past, truly revealed. It hadn't always gone so badly. But neither had it always gone well.

"Freya, what kind of story do you want?"

"What do you mean?"

"I could say that my vampire super healing caused the nicks on my knuckles to close and heal within an hour. That's one story."

She gave me the skunk eye, the real skunk eye. And it was formidable. "Okay, what's the other story?"

"That I hardly touched that guy the other night. He was so blotto drunk that all I had to do was wave at him and he fell down."

"But ... it looked so ...."

"No, for the sake of this story, just say I swung at him really hard, but I mostly caught wind. Then he fell down and cracked his face against the tile floor."

She gave my hand an affectionate squeeze, and the skunk eye disappeared.

"Which story sounds more fun?" I asked her.

There was a moment's hesitation, then she resumed walking, pulling me along by the hand as she went. We soon were walking down the main drag, hand-in-hand.

"Tall, lean, beautiful vampire I had to fall in with," she said in a voice just above a whisper.

***

I have to admit, I missed Fallon at dinner that night. Any guilt I might have had over that feeling—assuming I'd ever experienced such an emotion—was thoroughly assuaged when Freya said the same thing moments later. In our friend's absence, I pulled out my phone and, as we awaited our meal at the Italian place we'd selected, I showed Freya the Instagram account that Fallon had set up for me while we were at the airport.

I must have sounded like a kid to Freya the way I clucked on about it. "She wanted to keep in touch, and I go through phone numbers so often that she insisted I have an account. That way we'll never fall out of contact."

"What is that?" she asked.

"That's a picture of my right foot. I wanted to post something."

"Why not just take a selfie?"

"You know us vampires don't show up on film."

"Really?"

"No, I show up on photos fine."

Freya liberated my phone from me, and soon she'd clicked several pictures of us together and posted them on my account. It took no time at all, far less than the forever it had taken me to post a picture of a single foot. Then we spent some time leafing through the long portfolio of Fallon's photos.

"Oh, my heavens," Freya said several times. "Oh, my heavens."

"She is rather pretty, isn't she?"

"The word 'pretty' doesn't do her justice. I think the kids nowadays would say she's 'fine as fuck.' And whoever her photographer is, they deserve a raise. These are great photos."

Freya and I huddled dangerously close to one another over the tiny screen, and her scent mesmerized me. My arm was around her, our cheeks nearly touching, and the sweet pulse of her body was so loud I could have danced to its rhythm. I never wanted to move from that spot.

That's when I saw him.

As focused as I was on that moment of pleasure, I'm always aware of my surroundings. I can't help but be. Over near the front window of the tiny eatery at which we sat, a face peered inside. The man to whom it belonged lingered but a short time, but I was certain it was one of the creatures that had surrounded Marion.

I usually didn't loiter long after having killed someone. It wasn't the police I feared, per se. As near as I could tell, Marion's body hadn't even been discovered. No, there was always the off chance I might bump into one of the dead person's comrades. Cutting off someone's head has a way of announcing one's presence and of irking that person's friends.

It wasn't always a problem. In my tiny little world, friends and colleagues tended to scatter when one of our kind showed up dead. But there always was the possibility one of the fellow's comrades might be on the lookout for me. I should have been more careful, should have left town the moment I completed the deed.

But what am I saying? You know why I didn't do that.

Well, shit. It probably was nothing. The fellow I saw in the window wasn't a blood drinker, just some human hanger on, some type of flunky. People like Marion often had a dozen or more such creatures floating around, most of whom were at least somewhat aware of what we were. This fellow might just have been out looking for a place to eat.

But I couldn't risk that. If it were just me, I could hop on the Kawasaki and be three states away by the morning's light. But if this lackey saw me with Freya?

No, I would not allow her to be dragged into this any more than I would Fallon.

"Could you do me a little favor," I whispered in her ear.

"What favor?" she whispered back, as if the two of us were in some sort of spy movie.

"Could you stay here until I get back, and promise not to leave the table, no matter what?"

She gave me a queer look.

I gave her a pleading look in return.

"Vampire stuff?"

"Yes," I said as I stood. "Promise not to leave the table?"

"Promise," she said. The look she gave me was perplexed but accepting.

I took a quick loop of the property. Paranoia is not a dirty word, and I know how cunning and deceitful my kind could be. Along with a penchant for amorality, that base duplicity is what comes from living an unnaturally long life. Our scheming nature is one of the few things books and movies get right about my kind.

It would be well within the character of one of my enemies to send that lackey to make himself seen, just so I would follow and leave my friend unguarded. So I took some time to poke around and make sure no one else was there, before following in the direction I thought the man to have gone.

It took no time at all to find the fellow. And, yes, it was one of Marion's people. Phil, I'd heard him called a few times.

It first seemed as if the man was looking for a place to eat, but was there something off? He seemed less intent on the menu in the window than he did on who was inside each place of business. Was he just looking for a friend?

A quick decision was in order. Ignore the man, and hope he wasn't on the lookout for me, or wait for an opportunity to get him alone and cancel his ticket.

"Well, shit," I whispered.

A dead man meant ... well, it meant there would be a body and a police investigation. And a dead body also might signal to my enemies that I still was in the area. But if I did nothing, and someone had seen Freya and me together ...?

I was such a selfish ass. Come on, what did I expect, dallying with my two new friends? I really was a selfish ass. But for many years no one but me had needed to face the repercussions of that fact. I should have left town the moment I finished with Marion. And if I did stick around, I shouldn't have cozied up to two people of whom I'd quickly grown so very fond.

I kept out of sight and watched Phil at a distance. My hearing and eyesight are very keen, especially at night, so I didn't need to stay too close. After just a few minutes more, I nearly had decided to head back to Freya. Phil hadn't seen me if, in fact, he truly was looking for me. Perhaps he was on another errand entirely. I saw not a hint of any of Marion's other hangers-on.

And then Phil raised his phone to his head, and I heard him speak at a distance. "Nothing here. Ask Renard where he wants me to look next."

"Well, fuck me," I whispered. Renard was one of Marion's friends, a blood drinker like me. Why did Renard assume I still was in town, and why was he looking for me? I could beat the hell out of Phil and find out where Renard was, but the man could be calling from the far side of the world by now.

I turned and went back to the restaurant. Renard had no idea where I was, and Phil didn't know what I looked like. The man had more or less looked right at me at the restaurant. To my knowledge, the only pictures of me in existence were the two photos Freya had posted on Instagram, and I did my best to obscure my face in each. Phil was working from a description someone had given him, obviously not a very good one.

The last day of Freya's convention was tomorrow, and she was scheduled to fly home the following morning. Part of me imagined that I should depart Miami immediately. But if there was even a faint chance Freya might be in danger, it was because of me. I owed it to her to stick around and see her safely home.

That was my plan as I rounded the corner and headed back to dinner. And then I saw him.

Renard was standing on the sidewalk speaking with two other men, not a half block from where I'd left Freya.