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stewardess stopped. She organized her face into a carefully professional smile. “Yis,” she said, uttering what was probably one of her few English words. Yis. Nah. Okeh .
    “Water,” Miriam said, pointing to a bottle with blue Thai writing on it.
    The girl gave her the water and moved off nervously. The plane shuddered, the tone of the engines changing. Miriam fumbled with her water bottle. She knew that the sounds weren’t abnormal, but they still made her uneasy.
    Again, the plane shuddered. It was heading down, definitely. Surely there wasn’t a situation. The engines were fine; she could hear that. But what if they were having control problems?
    She took in breath, prepared to tighten the muscles that might be needed if she had to tear her way out of a crumpled fuselage.
    But no, the plane was landing. Or more accurately, beginning its descent. She fumbled her itinerary out of her purse. Yes, the flight was forty minutes, and running exactly on schedule.
    The flaps went down, making a terrific racket. Her startle reflex made her suck her water bottle so hard that it became involved with her teeth, and she accidentally shredded it. Water gushed down her front. Wiping her breast, she stuffed the ruined bottle down into the space between the seats.
    She sat facing straight ahead, ignoring her accident. They didn’t notice, anyway. They were too preoccupied with their snacks.
    The plane was so thick with the smell of human blood that she would have liked to have gone into some sort of feeding frenzy like a shark. Total indulgence.
    She’d never been on an airplane while this hungry before, and she resolved never to do it again. She should have eaten that samlor driver. She closed her eyes. Time passed, one minute, then another. She found herself inhaling the smell of her seatmate. He was a plump little thing, just popping with sweet blood. Délicieux . The odor of his skin was lively. This was a tasty morsel, sitting here. She sucked in more scent.
    She began to imagine how she’d take him. She’d pretend to be one of those European whores who did such a lively trade in Asia. They’d get off the plane together, and then — well, sooner or later the moment always presented itself.
    She could get a very nice feed out of this creature. He had noticed her glances and was scanning her. She could smell the spicy scent of his interest.
    “Lovely flight,” she said.
    “Oh, yes,” he answered. His English was good, which was a nice convenience.
    She gave him a smile, very slight, a bit arch.
    He squirmed in his seat, his eyes flickering between her folded hands and her face. Male victims always felt as if the strange woman who had taken notice of them was the most beautiful, most desirable creature on earth. Females found her personable and engaging. They never knew that they’d been bred to react this way to interest from their Keepers.
    He crossed and uncrossed his legs, tossed his head, then leaned a little forward. “You spending some time in Bangkok?” So, he was available for consumption. She considered. She might miss her flight to Paris, and the rest of the world had to be warned about what had happened here, and at all speed. But by the moon and the stars, she was so hungry!
    “Perhaps,” she said softly.
    His smile widened to reveal a gold-capped tooth. She glanced down at his fingers, at the shimmering of his wedding ring. There would be a complication right there — a disappearing husband.
    He followed her glance, shrugged.
    Her gut hummed.
    The pitch of the engines changed again. She evaluated the sound, concluded that all was still normal.
    She lifted her fingers, poised them above the back of his hand. To touch him now was an ancient act of possession, by which the Keepers had claimed their prey from time immemorial.
    She lowered the cool tips of her fingers until they came into contact with his skin. “I’m staying in Bangkok for a few days.” She laughed, a musical trill. “At the Royal