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thready.
    “No, you won’t be,” he said more gently. “You’ll heal. Quickly. I have a cure. But you have to be willing.”
    “Then trot out the cure,” I whispered. “I’m going.” I could feel the pull the grayness was exerting on me.
    In the little part of my mind that was still receiving signals from the world, I heard Bill grunt as if he’d been hurt. Then something was pressed up against my mouth.
    “Drink,” he said.
    I tried to stick out my tongue, managed. He was bleeding, squeezing to encourage the flow of blood from his wrist into my mouth. I gagged. But I wanted to live. I forced myself to swallow. And swallow again.
    Suddenly the blood tasted good, salty, the stuff of life. My unbroken arm rose, my hand clamped the vampire’s wrist to my mouth. I felt better with every swallow. And after a minute, I drifted off to sleep.
    When I woke up, I was still in the woods, still lying on the ground. Someone was stretched out beside me; it was the vampire. I could see his glow. I could feel his tongue moving on my head. He was licking my head wound. I could hardly begrudge him.
    “Do I taste different from other people?” I asked.
    “Yes,” he said in a thick voice. “What are you?”
    It was the third time he’d asked. Third time’s the charm, Gran always said.
    “Hey, I’m not dead,” I said. I suddenly remembered I’d expected to check out for good. I wiggled my arm, the one that had been broken. It was weak, but it wasn’t flopping any longer. I could feel my legs, and I wiggled them, too. I breathed in and out experimentally and was pleased with the resulting mild ache. I struggled to sit up. That proved to be quite an effort, but not an impossibility. It was like my first fever-free day after I’d had pneumonia as a kid. Feeble but blissful. I was aware I’d survived something awful.
    Before I finished straightening, he’d put his arms under me and cradled me to him. He leaned back against a tree. I felt very comfortable sitting on his lap, my head against his chest.
    “What I am, is telepathic,” I said. “I can hear people’s thoughts.”
    “Even mine?” He sounded merely curious.
    “No. That’s why I like you so much,” I said, floating on a sea of pinkish well-being. I couldn’t seem to be bothered with camouflaging my thoughts.
    I felt his chest rumble as he laughed. The laugh was a little rusty.
    “I can’t hear you at all,” I blathered on, my voice dreamy. “You have no idea how peaceful that is. After a lifetime of blah, blah, blah, to hear . . . nothing.”
    “How do you manage going out with men? With men your age, their only thought is still surely how to get you into bed.”
    “Well, I don’t. Manage. And frankly, at any age, I think their goal is get a woman in bed. I don’t date. Everyone thinks I’m crazy, you know, because I can’t tell them the truth; which is, that I’m driven crazy by all these thoughts, all these heads. I had a few dates when I started working at the bar, guys who hadn’t heard about me. But it was the same as always. You can’t concentrate on being comfortable with a guy, or getting a head of steam up, when you can hear they’re wondering if you dye your hair, or thinking that your butt’s not pretty, or imagining what your boobs look like.”
    Suddenly I felt more alert, and I realized how much of myself I was revealing to this creature.
    “Excuse me,” I said. “I didn’t mean to burden you with my problems. Thank you for saving me from the Rats.”
    “It was my fault they had a chance to get you at all,” he said. I could tell there was rage just under the calm surface of his voice. “If I had had the courtesy to be on time, it would not have happened. So I owed you some of my blood. I owed you the healing.”
    “Are they dead?” To my embarrassment, my voice sounded squeaky.
    “Oh, yes.”
    I gulped. I couldn’t regret that the world was rid of the Rats. But I had to look this straight in the face, I couldn’t