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Shakespeare, and I was not in the mood to play Juliet’s Shakespeare game. Juliet hated the Bard—with good reason, actually, but that was beside the point. You’d think after a few centuries she’d quit ragging on the guy.
    “But you know,” she sighed dramatically, “the course of true love never did run smooth.”
    She could keep this up all night. Shakespeare had written a gazillion lines about star-crossed love, and Juliet could quote them all. I, on the other hand, boasted a C-plus as my best-ever English grade. I’d been way more interested in demonology books than old, incomprehensible plays and poems. So I tried to turn the conversation back to her. “Looks like I’m not the only one without a date tonight.” She blinked at me. She wouldn’t answer unless I said it in Shakespeare. So I tried. “Where … uh, wherefore art, um, is —whatever—tonight’s Romeo?”
    She pouted, like the game had been my idea and she was already bored with it. “No one looks appetizing tonight. Now you’ve made it worse, mentioning him .”
    That surprised me. “Who, Romeo? Don’t tell me you’re getting all nostalgic about young love.”
    “Hardly. What I miss are the days when you could drain a body dry and cast it aside.”
    My roommate was the Juliet—as in Juliet Capulet, sweet-heart of Romeo Montague in fourteenth-century Verona. That’s why she hated Shakespeare; everyone knows his version of the story and, according to Juliet, he got it all wrong. The way Juliet told it, Friar Lawrence hadn’t given her a sleeping potion; he’d made her a vampire. Later, when she woke up in the family tomb, the grieving Romeo had been her first victim. One she’d drained dry and cast aside.
    “Is that supposed to be a joke?” I asked.
    Juliet shook her head. She seemed in a strange mood tonight. “Let me try to explain what it’s like for me. Imagine you’re hungry, absolutely starving, and you go into a restaurant. All around you, people are eating delicious meals. Juicy steaks, delicious-smelling pasta, roast turkey …”
    I was suddenly aware that I hadn’t eaten since before the MIT job. “You’re making me hungry.”
    “Good. So at the restaurant, you start with an appetizer. Say you order scallops.”
    My nose wrinkled. “I don’t like scallops.”
    “All right, make it shrimp cocktail, then.”
    “Actually, I’m not all that big on seafood.”
    “Oh, for Hades’ sake. What would you order?”
    “Um, nachos?” I picked up my bottle. “To go with my beer.”
    She raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. “So that’s what you’re drinking. I wondered. All right, nachos. Fine. Now may I continue?”
    I nodded graciously.
    “So you order nachos. And the waiter brings you one. Just one. A tortilla chip with some cheese, a jot of salsa, and a single jalapeño. A dollop of sour cream, and another of guacamole. It looks delicious, and you’re hungry, so you eat it.”
    “Then I tell the waiter to hurry up and bring the rest of my appetizer.”
    She shook her head. “Then the waiter tells you that’s it. Pay up and get out. If you want more food, you’ll have to find another restaurant.”
    Oh. Now I saw what she was getting at. Vampires were legally allowed to take one pint of blood per human per night. Getting greedy and sucking down more than a pint could lead to expulsion from Massachusetts and taking your chances in a state that was less enlightened about PA rights, a state like New Hampshire or Rhode Island, where unprovoked staking was legal. For Juliet—or any vampire—getting a full meal meant negotiating with several humans each and every night.
    “It’s not that bad, is it? I mean, to use your own analogy, you’ve got the best restaurants in town begging you to stop in for a bite. On the house. You could have any human in this place.”
    “I know.” Juliet turned on her bar stool, surveying the room. She turned back to the bar and sighed. “But when the hunger is deep, it’s hard