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want another, lady?”
    Annabelle smiled. “I guess not.”
    The bartender's annoyance barely showed. “You're sure?” he pursued.
    She paused, seemed to take the question of chemical ~suicide seriously, then shook her pretty head again. “I guess not,” she repeated and then she was gone.
    Her men all but leapt at the opening she had provided.
    “I guess not, too.” “Me either, now that I think about it.” Both burst out in the rapid staccato of machine-gun fire.
    The bartender stared at them, glanced at the rest of the lounge, which was completely empty, and sighed. Too good to be true, he thought. He'd known that just three people making his overhead for the day was too good to be true. But still, they'd almost made it.
    Annabelle neither heard nor cared about any of this. She was too busy stamping her awkward path to the ladies room door, bashing it open with both hands and part of her hairdo, jerking herself awkwardly into a stall, unsheathing herself, and then reveling in one of those mini-orgasms reserved for those lucky creatures made in God's image.
    Later she thought: I'm so tired.
    It had been a busy two weeks for her. With Jack in Rome it was left to Cat and Carl and herself (meaning her) to handle all the arrangements. Contacting the next of kin had been easier than it might have been. Crusader types, she had long ago discovered, had a tendency' to be loners.
    Except for Anthony. She had gone to San Antonio to tell Mrs. Beverley in person. When that sainted woman had opened the door and seen her she had known. The two of them had held each other and rocked and cried and rocked and cried for two straight hours, their minds filled with the rich memories of the sweet, handsome, brave huge black Anthony they had loved so, much. No loss, except of her husband Basil, had ever touched her so much. And she had known right then that when Jack's and Cat's time came-as it certainly would-that would be all for her.
    She knew it was up to her to keep going. She knew that Carl Joplin, as amazingly competent as he truly was, would need her desperately. Would fail, probably, without her help.
    She knew this and she didn't care. When Jack and Cat went, that would be it. Even the hinted image of that loss, -so wickedly brutal, so thoroughly devastating, was intertwined with one of herself sitting quietly in her room lining up the pills to swallow. Interesting enough, it bad never occurred to her that she might die another way. Vampires? She had never seen one, never wished to, and could think of no reason in the world why she ever should. That was the men's job. They were hers.
    Later, of course, when the horror was roaring in on them, it would be different. But she couldn't have known that now.
    Her thoughts turned to the move. They were leaving Pebble Beach and moving back home to Texas. To Dallas. They were going to miss their mansion with its view of the bay and the sculptured golf courses and the ocean fog rolling across the tops of the pine trees and, most of all, the miniature deer eating her flowers every morning.
    She had claimed, loudly and often, that she hated the creatures and believed them to be a scourge of nature. The world, she insisted, would be better off if every single deer was burned at the stake.
    “Bambi, too?” someone would invariably ask.
    “Especially Bambi,” she would sharply retort. “That vile little mutt has only encouraged them.”
    This fooled absolutely no one, of course. But still every morning she would put, on her sneakers and her one pair of blue jeans and her late husband's lumberjack shirt, tie her hair back in a scarf, grab her weapon (the back porch broom), and rush out to do battle. Everyone would race to the windows, even braving some truly monumental hangovers, to laugh and applaud and tap on the glass and just generally on the deer. Especially that one awful creature who was certain was the leader. So smug and cocky and sure self, it would actually stop eating and stand