I untied and retied my shoes on the dark, busy sidewalk. It was a balmy Saturday night in the French Quarter. A tourist tripped over me every time I knelt down, which must have been about twelve times by then.

            “Lorraine,” Gregor said, “we’re going to be late.”

            “I know,” I told him, tying a complicated triple knot so that I wouldn’t be tempted to stop again. “My shoes feel too tight.”

            “Are they too tight?”

            “Yes.” I stood up, and pulled at my shirt sleeves. “No. I don’t know. Everything feels too tight. I’m hot. My stomach feels weird. Maybe I should just go home.”

            “You haven’t eaten yet, have you?” he asked me.

            “I can’t. I haven’t been on a date in fifty years. I don’t even know how to act.”

            “I keep telling you to be yourself, but this I-can’t-tie-my-shoes version of you is not sexy.”

            I didn’t know what the sexy version of me was supposed to be. Vampires were always confident and gorgeous in movies. Gregor fit that image. He was tall, had smooth, dark skin that shone in the moonlight, a broad, muscular chest, and a lyrical voice. He was literally forever twenty one. I’d been turned the night before my thirtieth birthday, which was old for 1870. I’d been an unmarried governess, a bit overweight, pale, pasty, and prematurely gray. That night I’d stepped out to a pub to celebrate with my employer’s maid. I’d been smitten with her, and I think she liked me too looking back on it. I didn’t get a chance to ask her because, one, it was the Victorian era, and two, because the vampire who attacked us drained her. What a cock blocker.

I don’t know why he chose to turn me instead. At any rate, I became a vampire and ate my employer. As the years went by I dyed my hair black, but the weight never came off. That wasn’t a big deal. Who wants to spend eternity getting bikini ready? But my face was plain and my style was plainer.

            Enter Gregor, my gay vampire best friend. Every immortal needs one.

            “At least you didn’t wear sweatpants,” Gregor told me, pushing through the crowd.

            “Sweatpants are the best thing to happen to women in 100 years.”

            “No, YOU’RE the best thing to happen to women in 100 years! Let me hear you say it!”

            “Uuuuugh.”

            “Come on.” Gregor nudged me. “Paul thinks you’ll like her. He and I will be with you so if you’ve got nothing to talk about we can swoop in. And it’s a ghost tour. You love ghost tours.”

            “What if she doesn’t like me?”

            “Who cares? Chat up the ghosts.”

            We made a quick stop to get daiquiris because the myth that vampires can only drink blood is just not true. I’ve seen movies where a new vampire will try a bite of food and it makes them sick. That’s so closed minded. We need blood, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a pretty rum cocktail.

            Gregor handed me two Styrofoam cups with the idea that I would greet my prospect with a tasty beverage, and we turned onto Royal Street.

            A group of ten people or so hung outside of the Lalaurie Mansion waiting for the tour to start. Half of them were vampires. Most of us love ghosts and good stories. Nighttime entertainment and charming company? We were all over it. There was an unspoken rule that we didn’t pray upon the other guests or the guide, just to keep things light and uncomplicated. So if you don’t want to be hunted by a vampire, your best bet is to hide in ghost tours, bar crawls with a theme, serial killer tours, and, yes, vampire tours. I know that seems counter intuitive, but we just love hearing about ourselves.

Gregor’s boyfriend, Paul, was talking to a woman with a purple crew cut on the outskirts of the crowd. She had a pretty laugh, and dangly gold coin earrings that accentuated her long, elegant neck. She sipped a bright red drink through a straw.

            “Hello, darling,” said Paul, giving Gregor a kiss.

            Paul was from England, I think. It’s been sixty years since he told me. He was either from England or faking a British accent.

            He gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “Lorraine, this is my friend Dusty. She just got into town.”

            “Nice to meet you,” she said, extending a hand.

            Mine were filled with cups.

            “Sorry,” I said. “This one was for you.”

            She smiled. Dark as it was, she had a goddamn sparkle in her eyes. “That’s sweet of you, thanks. Paul said I needed to try this.” She held up the drink. “Storm?”

            “Hurricane,” Paul said.

            “It’s delicious no matter what it’s called,” she told me.

            She asked me what I had, I answered, and then I stood there like a moron.

            “So,” she said. “Do you like ghosts?”

            “Depends on if I killed them,” I said, and laughed at myself.

She did not laugh. “I think they’re nice.”

“Oh, yeah. Some of them are great. I had trouble with one once who wasn’t happy about being dead.”

“Did you kill them?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“I only drink evil people.”

“Of course,” I said. “So do I.”

I did not.

“I’m glad my victims have never come back. I didn’t know they could haunt you.”

“You’ve never known anyone who was haunted by a kill?”

“I haven’t met any other vampires besides Paul and the one who made me.”

“Your maker should have told you.”

Her sparkle dimmed. “She didn’t tell me much before she left.”
Sooooo she just got dumped.

“I didn’t really know what to do,” she said. “I thought I’d try a place I’d never been. New Orleans seemed interesting.”

I forced a smile and nodded. “Well, there’s definitely enough evil to pick off.”

A man in a top hat with black smudge under his eyes and a thin mustache called us to attention with a booming voice.

“Good evening mortals. Are we ready to leave the land of the living, and visit the dead?”

The crowd cheered. He launched into the history of the Lalaurie Mansion and the people who were tortured and killed inside its walls. I pulled Gregor aside.

“She just got out of a relationship,” I said.

“You can be the rebound.”

“I don’t want to be a rebound.  And she’s a hippie.”

He glanced at her. “She doesn’t look like a hippie.”

“She only hunts evil.”

“That’s because she’s new.”

“How new?”

“About a year.”

“Gregor!!”

I watched her talk to Paul. She looked about twenty five years old.

“She’s a hundred years younger than me!”

“Give or take.”

“I’m going home.”

“So she won’t get your pop culture references? So what?”

“‘Pop culture’ wasn’t even a term when I was born. You set me up with a kid.”

“Don’t be rude, Lorraine. She’s a nice girl. Stay a while. Finish your drinks.”

I gave one of the daiquiris to a homeless woman walking by and sipped the other until my forehead froze.

The tour guide let us know that if we looked closely we could see the specter of a little girl standing on the roof of the Lalaurie. A couple of people in the crowd swore that they saw her, but I’m pretty sure it was a pigeon.

What I did see, though, was a pair of red eyes from the second floor window. Red as Dusty’s hurricane, and staring right at me.

“Come mortals!” the guide implored. “We have much to see.”

“Can I eat him?” I asked Gregor.

“No.”

We shuffled down the street to the next building. The guide began to tell us a story of heartbreak, murder, and revenge.

“Ah,” said Paul. “Love gone wrong makes the best ghosts.”

“I don’t understand anyone who would want to haunt an ex,” Dusty said.

“It’s other people, happy people they target mostly,” I told her. “They’re bitter and they don’t want to see other relationships working out.”

The red eyes appeared in the alley between two mansions. Usually I didn’t let other creatures like that bother me. They just want to stare at you and make you feel uneasy. But this one felt really uneasy.

“Gregor,” I whispered. “There’s something in that alley.”

“I know. It was staring at me back at Lalaurie’s. It’s following me.”

“I thought it was following me,” I told him. “It’s been looking right at me.”

“It’s definitely been looking at me.”

“You always think you’re being targeted.”

“Supernaturals love me.”

“Well, would you ask it to go away then? It’s creeping me out.”

Gregor flicked his hand at it. “Go away. Shoo.”

“Our next stop,” said the guide, “is a bar where the ‘boos’ isn’t always in the glass.”

At the word “boos” he wiggled his fingers and stretched out the “ooooo” sound.

“You can kill him,” Gregor said.

“Thank you,” I said.

Dusty gave me a sad look. “But he hasn’t done anything to us.”

“We’re only kidding,” I said. “So you’re from Miami?”

She told me about growing up in a rural town in Florida and then going to the University of Miami. I was listening, I really was. But I had also just noticed a little girl, as dark as Gregor wearing a blood-stained rag of a dress, who was jumping from roof top to roof top to keep up with us and who was definitely not a pigeon.

The “boosy” bar did have a ghost, but he was dull and none of the living patrons noticed him. He sat on a stool with his chin in his hand and a look of longing as he watched people guzzle down beers. Dusty offered him a sip of her hurricane, and he said he appreciated it but there was nothing to be done. He proved his point by waving his hand through her cup.

“Watch out for The Gathering tonight,” he said, in an off-handed way.

“What gathering?” I asked.

He disappeared. Of course he disappeared.

When we got back on the street, I had an idea of what he meant. Staring down at us from the rooftop of the bar was the little girl. Two more children stepped to either side of her, and then two more next to them. Finally, there was a row of ten school-aged spirits, some in tatters, some in Victorian dresses and slacks. The blood was fresh on the faces of the youngest ones. All of them glared at us.

And then there were twenty.

The street lights burned out with a pop and the bar door slammed shut. Our group screamed. Dusty grabbed my arm. The last thing I saw before everyone around us disappeared was a pair of glowing red eyes.           

Then it was just me and Dusty clutching my arm.  I couldn’t see much on the dark street, but I could hear cries from inside the bar and pounding on the door.

“What just happened?” Dusty asked.

“I don’t know.”

She tried the doorknob. It rattled in her hand. Gregor cried my name on the other side.

“We’ll have to bust it down,” said Dusty.

“Do you know how to do that?” I asked.

“Yeah, don’t you?”

“Well, yes, I just didn’t know if you knew, since you weren’t taught anything, that you have super human strength.”

“Some things I’ve figured out on my own.”

“Lorraine, for God’s sake, open the door!” Gregor hollered.

“Right, I’m sorry. She just seems so gentle, I-”

Dusty kicked the door in. The bar was dark and quiet. One figure stumbled onto the sidewalk. It was the ghost from earlier. He was shaking his head.

“Poor bastards,” he said, shuffling past us.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

“The Gathering got ‘em.”

“Who has them?”

The dead bar fly turned slowly around. “Their kills.”

Against our better judgement, we walked in.

“Why didn’t they take us?” Dusty asked.

“I don’t know.”

The red eyes shone from the balcony overlooking the bar.

“Oh God,” Dusty said, meeting the eyes’ gaze. Her voice quivered. She said to me, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know she’d follow me here.”

“You know that demon thing?”

“She’s not a demon.”

“What are you doing in here?” a voice cried. “Leave!”

“Are the eyes screaming at us?” I asked.

“I’m not going anywhere, Liz!” Dusty yelled.

“They want to kill you,” Liz said. “It’s why they’re gathering, they want to kill all the vampires who’ve killed them.”

“But I haven’t killed any kids,” Dusty said. She looked at me. “Have you?”

Um. Did I tell her how tender the preschoolers are?

“No,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Liz said. “They hate all vampires. If you try to save your friends you’ll die too.”
            “Why don’t you tell us how to save them rather than telling us to go away?” I said.

The eyes bore down on me. “Who’s this hag?”

“My date,” Dusty said.

One eye rose higher than the other. “Seriously?”

“It’s time to move on, Liz,” Dusty told her.

The eyes rolled and Liz gave an exasperated “tsk.” Then she disappeared.

“Liz?” I asked Dusty.

She looked a little sheepish. If she were alive I would swear she was blushing.

“My ex,” she said. “She’s been a little stalky.”

“She’s been watching me,” I said.

“Since when?”

“Her floaty red eyes have been following me since the tour started.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I just met you. I didn’t want you to think I was weird. Gregor noticed them too. He thought they were looking at him, but I think they were definitely pointed at me.”

“They weren’t looking at either of you,” Dusty said. “They were looking for me.”

“How does your ex have blood red eyes?”

“She poked them until they got that way.”

I’d heard of vampires who did that – mangled themselves to look creepy. As if having no heart beat wasn’t creepy enough.

“I wanted her to teach me how she does that thing where she’s invisible except for her eyes, but I didn’t get a chance to learn before we broke up. Do you know how to do that?”

“No.”

“She’s been around a long time. She said she’s learned a lot of tricks.”

“How old is she?”

“Eight hundred, I think. I seem to have a thing for older women. I don’t hear anyone now.”

“Neither do I. Let’s check upstairs.”

We took the stairs, climbing quietly. I don’t know why. Can you really sneak up on a ghost? Apparently not. The little girl was at the top of the stairs.

“Why aren’t you with the other vampires?” she asked.

“We don’t know where they are,” I said. “Tell us and we’ll catch up to them.”

“You just want to save them.”

“Of course we want to save them, asshole. It’s why we’re here.”

“You’re the asshole,” she said. “You kill kids.”

“For food. And not primarily.”

“You said you didn’t eat children,” Dusty said.

“Well, who asks that question on a first date?” I said.

“A person being haunted by dead kids.”

The ghost leaned on the railing and sized us up. “You guys are on a date?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“She could do better,” the ghost said to me.

“What’s your name?” Dusty asked.

“Martha.”

“What is it that you want, Martha?” Dusty asked.

“What do I want?” Martha asked. “If I could have anything?”

“Yeah.”

“I want to drain your blood.”

The children appeared all around Martha. They held long slivers of wood, thin as needles. They scowled and hissed. Their jaws dropped open, as if bearing fangs instead of baby teeth. They rose from the floor, their collective, misty bodies becoming a sickly blue cloud, and rushed through Dusty, leaving her as pinned as a Voodoo doll.

Dusty howled, and crumpled onto the steps. Wooden needles stuck out of her face, throat, chest, legs, and the palms of her hands that she’d tried to shield herself with. I checked her heart. She wasn’t crying, not like I imagined someone would be who’d been stabbed fifty times. She gnashed her fangs and moaned, blood streaming down her face.

“You’re going to be all right,” I told her. “They didn’t get your heart.”

“I’d be dead already if they had, wouldn’t I?”

“Yeah. Assholes.”

“They were murdered by us,” Dusty said through her teeth, plucking a needle from her kneecap. “Of course they want to stake us.”

“You’re going to defend them now?” I asked, pulling a needle from her face.

“I’m just saying, I can see their point.”

“Of course you do.”

“What does that mean?”

I took a needle from her neck and sighed. “You’re young.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“How many years ago were you turned?”

“Three.”

“It took me fifty to be comfortable with it. Not that it ever really gets comfortable, I guess. Or easy. It just takes most of us a long time to accept.”

“Accept what?”

“Killing people.” She sat still while I talked and pulled needles from her. “I understand why you would only drink the evil ones. But you’ll be around for hundreds of years. If you’re lucky. You could technically live forever, but something usually comes along to take us out. After, say, forty years, night after night, odds are you’ll have at least one night that you won’t find a son of a bitch to drink. I know it’s hard to believe because the world is crawling with assholes, but the truth is that most people aren’t that bad. The truth is that just in the last three years someone that you’d decided was evil was probably an average person, desperate and down on their luck. I stopped seeing people as good or bad a long time ago.”

She was quiet a moment. “But these were just children.”

“I know.” I pulled the last needle from her hand. “Kids are the worst ghosts.”

I stood and offered her a hand. She winced as I pulled her up, but she stayed on her feet. Blood streamed down her long, delicious neck.

“What?” she asked, and I realized I was staring at her.

“I’m sorry, you’re just really hot like this.”

She rolled her eyes, but I could swear she smiled.

“Come on,” she said, walking up the stairs. “Before they torture our friends.”

“But where are we going?” I asked. “Are they even here?”

“We’re here!” Gregor cried.

It was like his voice broke through a barrier. After he yelled we could hear the others screaming above us.

“Where are you?” I said.

“The roof!” he hollered.

He said some other things that were probably useful but he was washed out by the screams of our tour group.

The layout of the second floor was identical to the first, except that there was a railing to lean over and watch whoever graced the stage on the first floor. It would have been helpful if there was a door that said, “Roof.”

“There’s got to be a way up there,” Dusty said.

Liz’s red eyes appeared over the bar. “There is a way. But don’t look for it. You should go home.”

“We’re not leaving,” said Dusty. “How do we get there?”

“Don’t be stupid. The others are trapped. They want to trap you too.”

“Why weren’t we trapped in the first place?” I asked.

“Because I protected you, stupid,” Liz snapped. “I mean, I protected Dusty. She was touching you for some reason, otherwise you’d be up there screaming with the rest of them.”

“How did you do that?” I asked. “And how come you weren’t taken?”

“Because I’m awesome,” she said, like it should have been obvious.

“How do we get to the roof?” Dusty said.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on.”

“Seriously, I don’t know,” Liz said. “But I can tell you that the kids are most powerful when they’re gathered together. That’s how they scooped everybody up like that. Try not to face them in a group.”

The eyes vanished.

“If you’re so awesome why don’t you help us find them?” I yelled.

“You don’t have to be so loud, I’m right here,” Liz said, stepping in between me and Dusty.

Her eyes were red and her hair was an ungroomed, oily black. Her skin, a pasty gray, looked cold to touch.

“I didn’t mean it,” I said. “I was just giving you a hard time. You can go.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes?” I said, hopefully.

“I would like that,” Dusty told her. “I don’t need you to protect me.”

“You’re covered in blood.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t know how to protect yourself.”

“That’s because you made sure not to teach me. And then you left.”

“I was coming back.”

“You were gone six months!”

Dusty took my hand and pulled me away from the bar.

“She’s gone,” I said, looking back where Liz had been.

Dusty let go of my hand. Damn. I’d liked the way her hand felt in mine.

“Good,” she said. “There’s got to be a staircase or something.”

We opened all of the doors on the second floor. We only found grafftied bathrooms and a closet filled with cleaning supplies and cases of beer.

“What’s that thumping sound?” Dusty said.

Behind the bar a little girl in footie pajamas was hopping with her arms stretched towards the ceiling.

“What’re you doing there, kid?” I asked.

Her voice was tiny. “I want to go up. I can’t reach.”

She reached for a piece of rope with a red ball at the end of it that hung from a trap door in the ceiling.

“I got it,” I told her.

She glanced at me. Her throat was a mess of dark, dried blood, staining the collar of her pajamas. Her chubby cheeks were bone white. The tiny specter glared at me as I stepped behind the bar. She growled low like a dog when you approach it.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said. “I just want to help.”

“You’re a vampire,” she said.

“Um. No.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, really. I stopped in for a drink.”

“You’ve already had a drink,” she said, lifting her chin to bare the gash in her throat.

I’ve bitten a lot of necks. I usually try to make a clean job of it – two pierce marks with not much bruising. If you do it right it shouldn’t hurt after the initial bite. They just feel like they’re falling into a trace that they don’t come out of. But someone really tore at that kid. So unnecessary.

I didn’t blame her for feeling raw about it, but I still screamed and ran when she leapt at me. She hopped after me like an evil tree frog, bearing her teeth, and snarling as I ran towards the stairs.

“Hold still so I can bite you,” she said.

“Hell no,” I said, making a sharp right at the stairs. I ran past Dusty and pointed at the pull cord. “Open it.”

The kid sprang from the middle of the room onto my back, tearing my shirt with her baby teeth.

“Don’t you want some help?” Dusty asked.

“No, I got it,” I said.

I reached around to grab the wraith, but my hands found no purchase.

“How are you incorporeal and biting me at the same time?” I said.

She didn’t explain, she just laughed, which was disappointing because I honestly wanted to know. Ghosts never explain ANYTHING.

The attic door creaked open. “Come on,” Dusty said.

“I can’t get her off me,” I said, my arms flailing uselessly behind me.

            More children appeared in a half circle around me. They bore their teeth and stepped forward in unison, like they’d rehearsed it. They clutched my clothes, and then the pierce of their teeth was all over my skin. I screamed, not falling into the trance of my victims, but into a different kind of darkness where there was only inescapable pain.

            “Liz!” Dusty cried. “Liz, help her!”

            “Nah, she said she’s got it,” Liz said.

            “Goddamn it, Liz,” Dusty said. “Lorraine, come to the ladder.”

            “I can’t.”

            “Yes, you can. Just run.”

            I didn’t want to, honestly. It wasn’t just that my legs, stomach, back, neck, and arms were on fire with pain, I also felt like I couldn’t move and that it would hurt more if I tried. I just wanted to stay still until everything stopped hurting. That’s when I knew I was dying.

            I moved one leg forward. I was right about it hurting more to move, and I howled in pain.

            “That’s it, keep moving!” Dusty called down from the attic.

            I Frankenstein-stepped the other leg. The wraiths bit down and pulled, tearing my skin. I staggered towards the ladder as fast as I could. Dusty reached and took my hand. If she hadn’t pulled me, I wouldn’t have made it up. I collapsed onto the attic floor.

“They’re gone,” Dusty said, kneeling next to me, with a hand on my cheek. “They went away when you reached the ladder.”

The bites stung and throbbed. “I thought they were going to kill me.”

“I did too,” she said, stroking my face. “You’re in rough shape.”

I lifted my head to do an assessment of the damage. My clothes were shredded and dripping with blood.

“Man,” I said. “Do you know how long it took me to decide what to wear tonight?”

            Dusty laughed. “I agonized over what to wear.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. When Paul showed me your picture, I thought you were cute.”

“I think you’re beautiful,” I said.

Then I passed out.

When I woke up, Dusty smiled. It was that sweet smile that she had when I first saw her.

“How long have a been out?” I asked.

“A while. Nothing’s happened. I haven’t heard the others.”

I sat up, wincing with pain. Dusty helped me to my feet. The attic was as dark and still as the rest of the place, but it was tall enough to stand in. I felt along the wall for a light and switched it on. The room was filled with more supplies and a burnt-out fluorescent sign that said “Miller Time.”

“There’s a ladder,” Dusty said.

Nailed into the back wall, mostly blocked by cases of beer, were iron wrungs that led to a door in the ceiling. Someone knocked on the other side of it.

“Lorraine!” Gregor cried. “Dusty!”

We hobbled to the ladder. I ascended first. I felt this really dumb impulse to protect her, even though her ex seemed to be doing that and I wasn’t sure I could do anything against those little dead punks other than offer myself up as meat so that Dusty could get away.

The door was bolted shut. It wouldn’t give at first. It seemed like the bolt had been locked in that position for a long time. Then it ka-chunked out of the lock and I pushed the door open to the roof.

At first the sight of all those faces was jarring. The last two collectives of people I’d seen had tried to kill Dusty and me. But Gregor was among this group, smiling down at me. Then I recognized Paul, the top-hatted tour guide, and the other people in the group. The tour guide lowered his black pantleg down the attic first, before I had time to move. Then they all clambered to climb down.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “We’re coming up.”

“We’re coming down!” Tour Guide said.

“Lorraine, move!” Gregor hollered.

“All right,” I said, stepping down.

The attic light snapped off. The children appeared. They glowed in the darkness, blood smeared across their lips and chin. Their mouths opened.

“Go back!” I screamed, shoving Tour Guide’s foot so hard he fell over. “Let us up!”

“Let us down!”

The tour group tried to push me back down. I bore fangs and hissed at them. I bit the hands of those who didn’t move, including Gregor. Dusty cried for help. I scurried onto the roof and reached for her. The ghosts grabbed her feet and pulled, but I pulled harder and they fell back. She clambered up and slammed the door behind her.

“No!” Gregor and Paul cried.

“That was our only way out,” a human said.

“Did you see what was attacking us?” I asked Gregor.

“Look at where we are!” he said.

“The roof.”

I looked around. We weren’t just on the roof. We were inside a steel cage, and surrounding that cage were ghost children with buckets.

“It’s holy water,” Gregor said. “They throw it at us if we go near the bars.”

“One of us tried,” said Paul, nodding towards a figure on the ground.

A man lay face down with burn marks on his back and hands.

“I wouldn’t turn him over,” Gregor said. “They’re keeping us out here until the sun comes up.”

“Ah. Let’s go back down,” I said.

There was a ka-chunk.Aaaaaaand the door was locked.

“Shit,” I said.

“Yes,” said Paul. “Shit. Why didn’t you let us down?”

“There were more of them down there,” I said. “They were attacking Dusty.”

“She’s right, I saw them,” Gregor said.

“What are we going to do now?” The tour guide asked.

Red eyes hovered at the top of the cage. “What are you going to do now? Miss ‘I don’t need your help.’”

“Well, things have changed a bit since you last checked in,” I said.

“Shut up, you, I can see that for myself. Might have been different if she had listened to me in the first place and stayed outside.”

“They all would have died,” Dusty said.

“And now you’ll die with them.”

“Who is that?” Paul asked Dusty.

“My ex.”

Paul’s eyes widened. “The one you told me about?”

Liz’s eyes blazed red as a stove coil. “What did you tell him about me?”

“We have,” Gregor said, looking at his watch, “four hours until sunrise. Does anybody have any ideas about how to get out of here?”

No one spoke. Then Liz chuckled.

“I do,” she said.

“Shut up, you,” I told her.

The others begged her for her idea, but she just kept laughing.

“Do you know what she’s thinking?” I asked Dusty.

“No,” she said. “It’s probably something only she can do.”

“I wish I had a raincoat,” I said. “Bending those bars wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the damn water.”

“If only,” said Liz, wistfully.

“What are you hinting at?” Dusty asked her.

“I could help you. I could get rid of these ghosts and get you out of there no problem. If you promise to take me back.”

“What? No.”

“Okay, well, then have a nice death.”

Her eyes disappeared. Our group screamed at her, and then turned on Dusty and screamed some more.

“Get back with her,” one of them said.

“Or just pretend to,” said Tour Guide. “Just until we get out of here.”

“What are you worried about?” Paul asked Tour Guide. “The sun isn’t going to kill you.”

“I don’t think these kids are just going to let the rest of us go.”

“Hold up,” I said. “Liz told us things about the ghosts when she was trying to talk us out of coming into the bar.” I looked at everyone around us. “What was it that she said?”

“She said they were killed by vampires and wanted us to die. And that they’re more powerful when they’re in a group.”

“We’re powerful in a group,” I said. “If I can bend these bars by myself think of what all of us could do together. What’s the deal with this cage, is it bolted down?”

“I don’t know,” said Gregor.

We all started checking around the floor by the cage walls. It was not connected to the roof.

“We could pick it up,” I whispered.

“But how, we can’t touch the bars,” said Paul.

“We need protection,” I said. I gestured at a woman wearing a long, vinyl trench coat. “If only all of us had something like that. And hand protection.”

“We could all use a pair of rubber gloves,” Dusty said.

“Yeah,” said Gregor. He nodded at the dead vampire on the ground. “That poor guy could have used something like that. The first thing they did was pour the water over his hands. Then they splashed his chest.”

“Gregor,” I said. “I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

“You’re going to hate it.”

“Say the idea.”

“Dusty, if there was ever a chance you would have been attracted to me, that ship is about to sail.”

“Lorraine,” said Gregor.

“Vinyl Coat Girl, I need your coat. That will cover some of me. For the rest of me…” I pulled the knife from my boot. “I’m going to make a meat coat.”

“A meat coat?” Dusty asked.

“Uck, Lorraine,” said Gregor. “Out of that guy?”

“He’s the only corpse we’ve got to work with.”

“Dear God.”

“Anybody have any other ideas?

Nobody did. I mean, maybe Liz did but she was long gone.

“Now look,” I whispered. They all closed in around me. “Liz told us not to face them in a group. So once I lift the cage, we have to split up and make them go in different directions. We can check in with each other tomorrow night, to make sure we’re all okay.”

“Where?” one guy asked.

“I don’t know, just not this bar. Taco Bell or something.”

One vamp smiled. “I like drinking people after they’ve had tacos. They taste like pico de gallo.”

None of the humans said anything, but you could tell that they would never eat Mexican again.

“Great,” I said. “Everybody clear? We split up.”

They nodded. I got to work cutting long strips off the back of that guy. I needed to cut off enough flesh to wrap around my hands and throat.

“What are you doing?” asked a small voice.

It was Martha standing on the other side of the cage.

“I’m making a prom dress,” I said.

“Do you really think that his flesh is going to protect you?”

“Worth a shot, isn’t it?” I said.

“Nothing will protect you,” she said. “You’re going to fry in the sun and we’re all going to watch.”

“This is a great afterlife you’ve got going for yourself,” I told her. “Being vindictive and mean.”

“It’s hard for you to make that argument while you’re defiling a corpse.”

            I pointed my knife at her, a strip of flesh dangling from the tip. “Don’t judge me.”

            “Watch her,” Martha told the boy ghost next to her. “Dose her with the water if she gets out of line, but only as a last resort. I want to watch her burn.”

            Dusty knelt beside me. “Is there enough to cover me too?”

            “Not all of you,” I said. “I can make you gloves and a scarf like mine, but your arms are exposed. And if the holy water touches your heart-”

            “Just make me what you can.”

            “But why? I can lift this thing.”

            “On one side? By yourself? It would be better if we tossed the whole thing over, and we can all run off in different directions. And like you said, we’re stronger together.”

            She became even more beautiful to me in that moment. “What’s your glove size?”

            Luckily the vamp was a big guy, so there was a lot of material to work with. He was much paler than we were. The ribbons of skin that we wrapped around our hands were like grayish strips of boxing tape. I used strips from the back of his arms to wrap around my throat like a ghastly turtleneck. The vinyl coat protected my chest, which was the real concern. If the holy water touched my heart, I was toast. Dusty needed something fleshy to protect hers. I affixed a good portion of his left buttock to her chest.

            “I’m so sorry,” I said.

            “This part’s no less disgusting than the rest of it,” she said, lifting her corpse-coated hands.

“You ready?” I whispered to her.

She nodded.

“Remember,” I said to the rest of them, “disperse.”

Dusty and I stepped to opposite ends of the cage.

“Get back,” the ghost child said, taunting me with the bucket.

I bent my knees and wrapped my hands around the bars. The ghost poured water over the right one and gave a wicked smile as the flesh hissed and smoked. Pain seared through the exposed parts of my fingers, but they were shielded enough that I was able to keeps my hands on the bars and lift. Maybe it was because I was exhausted, but hoisting the thing wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Dusty’s muscle was helping, but she whimpered as the kid christened her hands.

I mustered everything I had and lifted the cage over my head.

“Give me this,” Martha snapped, snatching the bucket from the guard.

I tightened my grip on the cage. I knew it was going to hurt, but when she tossed the water at my face it burned like acid. My legs buckled and I covered my eyes. The cage would have fallen, but something took the weight.

“Take her,” Gregor said, his voice close.

Someone gathered me in their arms. Wind rushed over me, and the cries of ghosts and vampires became distant. I couldn’t open my eyes yet, but one thing about being a vampire that I’ve always liked is that we heal quickly. The pain was subsiding. By the time I was set down in the grass I could open my eyes.

I was in Armstrong Park. Dusty knelt before me. She’d taken the dead skin off her hands and chest.

“You’ve got blood all over you,” I told her.

“You’re pretty gross too,” she said. “You all right?”

“Yeah. Where are the others?”

“They scattered like you told them to.”

She helped me take the dead parts off my hands and neck, and then we laid back in the grass.

“You gonna think twice before you drink a kid from now on?” she asked.

“I’m not even looking at children ever again,” I said.

“When you were passed out in the attic I thought about what you said about people not being good or bad.”

“What do you think about that?” I asked her.

“I think it’s an interesting point. I haven’t had much time to reflect on it since you said it, but I think I will.”

“Would you want to go out with me again? Maybe just for a beer?”

She smiled at me. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“Some place new.”

“Some place no one has been murdered.”

“That’s going to be tough.”

“Well,” she said. “If things get weird again, I think we can handle it.”

She took my hand, slippery with viscera and the promise of things to come.