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why he always seemed so jealous of her now. Maybe it was because he would never be able to match her acceptance of the cruelty that their new existence demanded.
    Miranda parked the car on Beverley Street, just south of Dundas. Matt glanced at her. “We’re going down to Queen? Just the two of us?”
    “Does that frighten you?”
    Matt snorted and swung his door open. A small group of people was just walking past, heading south, laughing and discussing some art movie they had seen. Matt’s door opened right in front of them, forcing the young man who was in the lead to come to a sudden halt or run into the vampire. The laughter stopped instantly. For a moment the young man stared at Matt, his expression neither angry nor frightened, but simply blank. Then he said, politely and automatically, “Excuse me,” and stepped around the open door.
    One of the young man’s friends laughed again, a brittle laugh. The group sluggishly resumed its movement and continued on, down toward Queen Street. Matt sneered after them. “Too terrified to recognize danger.”
    “They aren’t the only ones.” Miranda got out of the car as well. “We’ll go down to Queen Street as a pack.” Blue was waiting for them on a bench in the park across the street. The rest of the park was empty except for the few streetpeople who slept there, too desperate or too deranged to go elsewhere. “Tolly?” asked Miranda.
    “Keeping an eye on our boy.” Blue rose to meet them. He was big, and the shirt he wore, flannel with the sleeves torn off, only emphasized it. If Matt hadn’t actually played rugby, Blue probably had, dragged into it because of his size and build. He still looked like the cop he had wanted to be: square-jawed, short-haired and grim. He seldom smiled. The fangs of other vampires might extend only when they were angry or hungry, but Blue’s were always visible. Miranda liked him, maybe because he was more like her than any other member of the pack. Not entirely like her, of course. Blue might have been a predator, but it was instinct that drove him. A vampire had to think, as well. “He went into Calais — no telling if he’s still there. He might have moved on. Tolly will stay with him.”
    Miranda nodded. “So then we have to find Tolly. Matt?”
    In the shadows, she could only make out. the ghost of a smirk on his face. Miranda longed to wipe the smirk off his face. But she didn’t. They needed him, and he knew it. “Well?” she asked again.
    “I can do it,” he said confidently. Almost cockily. Miranda refused to give him the response that he was looking for. She simply turned and walked into the darkness of the park, leading them south.
    The park was old, once the grounds of an estate, later willed to the city. The trees were dark and twisted, the bushes thorny. An old iron fence still encircled it, and gates, though welded open, still guarded its entrances. The only concessions to the present were garbage baskets and, by the south gate, a wide asphalt pad with ugly concrete planters filled with tired geraniums. Someone had scrawled political graffiti on the asphalt. In chalk, of course, not spray paint. This was Toronto, after all. Even the vandals had manners.
    South of the park was Queen Street. Queen Street West, the heart of Toronto’s club scene, Toronto’s alternative scene, Toronto’s hip, cool, epitome-of-style scene. The place to be seen. A dangerous place for the pack.
    There were people here, many people, walking along the sidewalk, sitting on the patios of bars and cafes, clogging the narrow street with their cars. Miranda, Matt and Blue joined the crowds. Few people seemed to be going anywhere; most just wandered, alone or in groups. Miranda, in her black clothing, fit right in with them. Matt and Blue stood out only a little, no more than the occasional cluster of punks or handful of hammered university students. The crowd still parted around the vampires, though. Miranda almost wished they