LITMIR.BIZ

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were shining on them, twisted vines of red against a pink sky. At each beat of my heart waves of blood crashed against my skin. I could no longer hear the music or feel the couch I was lying on. Everything was Eric.

      Then the world went black.

      I woke up sprawled on the couch with Eric smoothing my hair off my face. I heard his voice before I opened my eyes.

      “Angela, are you awake?”

      I heard myself mumble, “Yeah, okay, must have been the drink, not used to hard liquor. I think I need to go to the bathroom, wash my face…”

      He tried to stop me, telling me to lie still and rest, but I slid off the couch and stumbled away. Kimberley and the Macabre Factor people were no longer in the bar, thank goodness, so I was able to get to the women’s room without being seen by anyone who knew me. I went into a stall and sat on the toilet without lifting my dress. The fog had cleared a bit but my memory was still very fuzzy. I was fully clothed, down to my bra and black stockings. My body had the shuddery, slippery feeling of postcoital release but there was no evidence that sex had happened. At least not sex as I had thought of it previously. Something had happened, something powerful and earthshaking, and I felt excited, happy, and desperate to touch Eric again. Also scared by his power over me, embarrassed that I didn’t remember the consummation, and worried that I’d let everything move too fast.

      I smacked myself on both cheeks and told myself to snap out of it. A plan had to be formulated. I firmly believed my mother’s admonitions against being “loose,” not because I wanted to save anything for my husband, but because the few hook-ups I’d had were humiliating wastes of time and body fluids. The guys involved treated me like a piece of chewed-up bubblegum afterward. I wanted, no, needed, to see Eric again, for him to want to see me. I didn’t regret our encounter, far from it, but I felt I had to exert some control over the situation.

      I stood up, straightened my stockings and dress, and left the stall. I couldn’t use any of the mirrors because they were all occupied, one by a woman so beautiful you would never guess she wasn’t female until you saw her big hands, another by a pair of huge breasts topped by an insignificant head, and the last by a skinny man applying black eyeliner onto the eye that wasn’t covered by a pirate patch.

      In a lounge filled with threadbare velvet chairs two women were snorting cocaine off a glass coffee table. One of them held a straw out to me, but I shook my head.

      “I think I’ve had enough,” I said.

      Eric was where I had left him, arrayed casually on the velvet couch, knees crossed, arms spread. In the dim light his face and hair gave off a faint glow, like a candle glimpsed through a curtain. He stood when I approached and made a little bow, then handed me my purse.

      “You forgot this.”

      As I received it our eyes met and I felt dizzy again. The current pulling me toward him was frightening in its intensity. I forced my gaze down to the tie tack in his cravat, a coiled golden snake with a ruby eye.

      “So, I need to be going, I’m feeling a little unwell, but, um…” I fumbled in my purse and took out a business card, “but I’d really like to see you again, if you’re thinking about doing any advertising for your businesses…” Oh, shut up, already! I handed him the card.

      He smiled and put it in his breast pocket. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay?”

      “No, I mean, yes.” This was really embarrassing. “I really should go.”

      He reached out and smoothed some hair off my cheek, letting his fingers glide around my chin and down my neck, leaving everywhere he touched tingling.

      “Could I have your card?” I whispered. Propriety be damned, I couldn’t take the chance of not being able to find him again.

      He took out a wallet and handed me a card that was square and thick, nothing like a regular business card. I held it under the light of the candle.

      M. ERIC TAYLOR

       HARBINGER, INTERNATIONAL

      I looked up. “There are no numbers on here.”

      He shrugged. “I prefer more traditional methods of communication.”

      What could be more traditional than the telephone, I wondered.

      “Ink and paper has been used for two thousand years. The telephone is barely one hundred.”

      There it was again, another comment that sounded like he was reading my mind.

      He laughed, which was another non sequitur—unless we were having a separate conversation from the verbal one.

      “Let me see you to your car.” Eric held out his arm with the elbow bent, a gesture I hadn’t seen since my father asked me to dance at my sister’s wedding.

      I shook my head. “No, please don’t.” I couldn’t trust myself if he took me to my car. What if he asked to come home with me? I turned and left the room without looking back.

      It wasn’t until I was in my car, checking my face in the rearview mirror, that I saw the dried blood on my neck, glowing purple in the street lamp’s fluorescent light.

      Morning again, and the shifting clouds cast bands of light and shadow across my bed. I had forgotten to close the blinds last night, in fact I hardly remembered getting home. The black dress lay in a heap on the floor, next to my purse, keys, and pantyhose. My head throbbed, my tongue and teeth felt fuzzy, and one of my eyes was partly glued shut. My muscles ached like I’d slept on a bed of rocks. The light from the window was killing my eyes, so I pulled the covers over my head.

      I tried to go back to sleep, but my thoughts kept jostling each other like kids at an ice cream truck. Maybe I did get drunk last night and blacked out, I thought. How else to explain the gaps in memory and the hangover? I only recalled having one drink, but I rarely drank, so I didn’t have much experience with its effects. My behavior had been unlike me in so many ways—the drinking, leaving clients unattended, not to mention making out with a guy I just met. And then feeling like I would jump off a cliff if I couldn’t see him again. All these things—not like me at all.

      Just the thought of Eric reignited an eagerness I hadn’t experienced since junior high, when I still believed in love at first sight. Being with him had been a breathtaking experience, literally. Was it possible to pass out from sheer excitement? I closed my eyes and remembered the sweet scent, the luminous blue eyes…

      Time for another symbolic slap on the cheek. And a reality check. What the hell happened last night?

      Telling myself to be clinical, I touched my body from face to knees, with each part trying to remember exactly what had happened. I was remarkably unsuccessful. The encounter with Eric remained a glorious blur. There had been kissing, I recalled the velvety feel of his lips and tongue against mine. There had been touching, from what felt like a dozen hands at once, all over my body. Yet I had come out of it wearing all my clothes. Was it possible to have had the greatest sex in my life without actually having sex? It reminded me of my mother’s favorite movie, Ghost, which she watched on DVD at least twice a year. In it the woman’s boyfriend is killed but he comes back and makes love to her, except he has no body, so it’s all in her head, or all spiritual, or something like that, but it’s staggeringly sexy.

      But Eric had been undeniably corporeal. And I did have one clear memory, from the car, while looking in the rearview mirror.

      I went to the bathroom and examined my neck, standing on my tiptoes to lean in close. There were a few rusty smudges still, so I wet a washcloth and wiped them off. Sully and Moravia had never mentioned that those in the vampire lifestyle actually used those faux fangs to suck each other’s blood, but then why would they? I would never think of telling them what I do in bed (of course there would be precious little to tell). I cleaned my neck but kept scrubbing because I was sure there was a wound somewhere, but there wasn’t.

      I walked past Kimberley’s room. Her four-poster bed with the fluffy white

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