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vampire suffragette ? Oh, my reputation.
    "I . . ." I'm criminally stupid? "I don't really--"
    He cut me off with a smile that was oddly reassuring. "No one's ever seen Rinaldo. Least not one of us. Sure as hell not Giuseppe, poor fool. Closest we ever get is his second, that Dore. A century old if he's a day." He twirled the icicle, blindingly fast, in his fingers for a moment and then let it fall and shatter on the ground. "You don't want to meet Dore, and you sure don't want to get noticed by Rinaldo. So whoever you're helping, do you both a favor and tell him to scat. You've had better ideas, you know?"
    My mouth twisted in a derisive half-smile. Truer words had never been spoken. I started to respond, but he just nodded and walked back inside.
    The prosaically human jeers of the men as I hopped back on my bicycle were almost reassuring. At least their eyes didn't glow. At least, however poorly restrained, they did not long for my blood.

    My voice was unusually breathy during the chants at our "Night Hours, Equal Pay" City Hall demonstration. Our Honorable Mayor Jimmy Walker, who owed half his good fortune to his looks and the other half to Tammany Hall, was considering a veto on legislation that would help increase the wages of Others who worked night shifts on construction sites and factories. I hadn't helped organize this demonstration, but I was a member of both citizens groups that sponsored it--the Human Coalition for Others Rights and the Family Action Committee for Nonhuman Laborers. I attended their meetings only occasionally, as I was already so busy with my thirty-one other societies. Daddy says I'm a bit of an overachiever. Aileen says I'm a softhearted moron. I'm sure they'd have a great deal to discuss if the earth imploded and they managed to meet.
    I was standing next to Iris Tomkins, a woman whose dedication to progressive causes was matched only by her girth. She was in the minority of local activists who could claim some social standing among New York's elite. On the bottom rung, to be sure, but Iris played her role as society dame to the hilt. I rather liked her, particularly because she shared my opinion of the frequently tendentious ramblings that passed for discussion at suffragette meetings. She described herself as an Anarcha-Feminist Socialite--Emma Goldman with just a dash of Oscar Wilde. Right now, her bellowing chants of "Fight for the night--Jimmy, do what's right" made my labored contributions perfectly unnecessary.
    Eventually, I just gave up and mouthed the words. It would appear that my vampire confrontation skills were sorely rusted. Before, with Daddy or Troy, I had never been so unnerved after a fight. Of course, I had never been alone in a cave full of them. I had never been threatened by someone I had known for more than a year, and I had never seriously considered courting the danger of a master vampire.
    Dear old Jimmy was obliged to walk past us on the way to his car about an hour after noon. The press had arrived in force by then, and were snapping photographs and scribbling notes throughout our crowd. I was standing in the front row, my right arm trapped in Iris's sturdy elbow and my left holding up one end of a sign that read:
    JIMMY, WOULD YOU TAKE 50C/ A NIGHT?
    Iris had decided to bolster my apparent lack of spirits with her own, which she correctly judged to be more than sufficient for two people. Her voice was so strident she was practically singing the chants. I leaned on her and was grateful for the support. It seemed to have slipped my mind to eat anything this morning, despite the fact that I had given breakfast to hundreds of indigents.
    "Are you okay, dear?" Iris paused, midchant, to ask. I straightened immediately and then waited for the white haze to clear.
    "Oh, sorry, I think I'm just a little hungry."
    She nodded sympathetically and patted my hand. I was spared any remonstrances about my deplorable eating habits because "Beau James" Walker, the Night Mayor of