Hunt the Moon

“Oh, so he’s not a monster all of a sudden? He got upgraded? I guess I must have missed the memo!”

I turned and walked out of the bathroom. Billy’s faintly glowing backside was sticking out of the wall above the dresser, framed in the mirror like a bizarre trophy. But all things considered, I liked it better than the other half right now. Get him wound up and he could go for hours, and I was so not up for it tonight. Or this morning. Or whenever the hell it was. The room was dark, but there were blackout shades under all the drapes in the suite, so that didn’t mean much.

“Okay, ‘monster’ is out,” Billy said, getting himself sorted. “So what are we calling him now? Sugar Tits? Baby Cakes? Angel Boy?”

I got a sudden image of a very naked Mircea, fire-warm skin backlit by flames, the same ones that had formed a vague halo around his head. He wasn’t an angel, I knew that. But regardless of what Billy thought, he wasn’t the devil, either. And it had been only one night, and he’d sworn it wouldn’t make a difference—

“Why are you here, anyway?” I demanded, going on the offensive, because my defense kind of sucked right now. “I fed you before I left.”

“Yeah, and that’s all I care about! You were supposed to be back hours ago!”

“Well, I would have been, but . . . there was a delay.”

“A delay that left hickeys all over your neck and made you walk funny?”

“I’m not in jail, you know,” I snapped. “I can come and go whenever I—” I stopped. “What hickeys?”

He pointed silently at my neck. I pushed the old-fashioned collar of the coat aside and leaned closer to the mirror. And saw—

“Son of a bitch!”

“You didn’t notice?” Billy demanded.

I winced. “No. And keep your voice down.”

“Why? No one can hear me but you.”

I rested my forehead on the cool top of the dresser. “That’s kind of the point.”

He snorted. “And to top it off, you’re hungover!”

“It was the wine. It always does this to me.”

“Then why’d you drink it?”

“Because after the night I’d had, I thought I deserved it,” I muttered.

Billy sighed, and a moment later I felt a ghostly chill on the back of my neck. It felt good. “What went wrong this time?”

“Short version: everything.”

“And the long version?”

“I’m too hungover for the long version.”

“Gimme the CliffsNotes, then.”

I pried myself off the dresser and started sorting through a drawer. “Let’s just say, it looks like my luck runs in the family.”

“Ouch.”

I went back into the bathroom to change, and this time, Billy left me alone. I pulled on an old pair of khaki shorts and tried a couple of different shirts, finally settling on one with orange and white stripes. It was soft, thin cotton with a mock turtleneck and no sleeves. It had been part of my work wardrobe, worn under a jacket to keep me from dying of heatstroke in the Atlanta summers, and it looked a little dressy for the shorts. But it was better than announcing my evening’s activities to everybody I met.

Only now that I was dressed, I found that I didn’t really feel like meeting anybody. I kind of felt like going back to bed. I walked into the bedroom, yawning. “What time is it?”

Billy looked up from his card game. “Four a.m.”

I sighed in relief and fell face-first onto the bed. Jonas was coming at one for our lesson, and I had nothing to do until then. And nothing sounded pretty damn good right now.

“Move over,” I told Billy, because he was hogging the bed as usual. He gave me maybe another two inches of space, also as usual. I turned onto my side, since it was easier than arguing.

The room was dark but the bed was spotted by watery blue-white rectangles, the light shadows from Billy’s cards. They moved across the duvet as he played, silent, intent. For about half a minute.

“You can call him what you want, but he’s still a monster,” Billy said, because of course this wasn’t over. “They all are.”

“I don’t know why you hate vamps so much,” I said sleepily. “What’d they ever do to you?”

“They’re creepy.”

“They are not.”

“Like hell.”

I didn’t point out the irony of this coming from a guy who would send most people screaming in terror if they could see him, because the door cracked open. A thin sliver of slightly less dark leaked in from the hallway and fell over the bed. It highlighted dust particles dancing in the air and a massive head poking around the doorjamb.

“Hey,” Marco said softly, like he thought I might already be asleep.

“Hey, yourself.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You have fun?”

“Yeah.”

“Thought so.” I couldn’t see his expression, but his voice was smug.

It would have been weird coming from a human, but vamps got a lot of their self-worth from their masters. Anytime Mircea did something well—negotiated a treaty, got recognition from the Senate, banged the Pythia—their egos all got a boost. In a real sense, when you dated a master vamp, you dated his entire family. All of whom thereafter took a proprietary interest in your business.

It was something I tried hard not to think about.

“You hungry?” Marco asked. “We got pizza.”

Actually, I thought one more bite of anything, and I might just pop. “I’m good.”

“Beer?”

“Just gonna get some sleep.”

“Yeah, you probably need it,” he said, sounding satisfied. The door closed.

“No, that’s not creepy at all,” Billy said sourly.

I sighed and pulled the pillow into a more comfy position. “It’s just the way they are.”

“And I don’t like the way they are.”

It wasn’t surprising. Billy had never liked any of the guys in my life, not that there had been many. It wasn’t jealousy so much—not the physical type, anyway—but more of a natural distrust. I guess getting drowned like a sack of kittens would do that to a person.

“You don’t like anybody.”

“Not when they look at you like he does,” he said sharply.

“Like what?”

“Like the way hardened gamblers on the riverboats used to look at young rich guys. Like here comes dinner.” He glanced at me. “I don’t want you to be dinner.”

“I won’t.”

“For anybody,” he added. “He’s no worse than the rest of them; they all want a piece of you.”

“That’s how the game is played.”

“Yeah, well the game sucks.” He wiped a hand across his own game and it dissipated like mist, leaving only a lightly glowing cloud above the bed. It made the room darker, but not cozier. Someone must have fixed the window, because the air conditioner was running like it was trying to make up for lost time.

I pulled up the comforter.

“What is wrong with you tonight?” I asked. Billy could bitch with the best of them, but usually he had a better reason than my missing curfew.

“It’s . . . I don’t know,” he said, turning to face me. The scruffy features under the Stetson were unusually