Bloodsucking fiends
It was a problem she had been getting around to working on before she died.
    She crawled out of bed and opened the rubber-lined motel draperies. Light from streetlights and neon signs filled the room.
    Now what?
    Normally she would go to the bathroom. But she didn't feel the need to.
    I haven't peed in two days. I may never pee again.
    She went into the bathroom and sat on the stool to test her theory. Nothing. She unwrapped one of the plastic glasses, filled it with water and gulped it down. Her stomach lurched and she vomited the water in a stream against the mirror.
    Okay, no water. A shower? Change clothes and go out on the town? To do what? Hunt?
    She recoiled at the thought.
    Am I going to have to kill people? Oh my God, Kurt. What if he changes? What if he already has?
    She dressed quickly in her clothes from the night before, grabbed her flight bag and the room key and left the room. She waved to the night clerk as she passed the motel office and he winked and waved back. A hundred bucks had made them friends.
    She walked around the corner and up Chestnut, resisting the urge to break into a run. Outside her building she paused and focused on the apartment window. The lights were on, and with concentration she could hear Kurt talking on the phone.
    "Yeah, the crazy bitch knocked me out with a potted plant. No, threw it at me. I was two hours late for work. I don't know, she said something about being attacked. She hasn't been to work for a couple of days. No, she doesn't have a key; I had to buzz her in…"
    So I didn't kill him. He didn't change or he wouldn't have been able to go to work at all in the daylight. He sounds fine. Pissed, but fine. I wonder if I just apologize and explain what happened…
    "No," Kurt said into the phone. "I took her name off the mailbox. I don't really care, she didn't fit the image I'm trying to build anyway. I was thinking about asking out Susan Badistone: Stanford, family money, Republican. I know, but that's why God made implants…"
    Jody turned and walked back to the motel. She stopped in the office and paid the clerk for two more days, then went to her room, sat down on the bed and tried to cry. No tears would come.
    In another time she would have called a girlfriend and spent the evening on the phone being comforted. She would have eaten a half gallon of ice cream and stayed up all night thinking about what she was going to do with her life. In the morning she would have called in sick to work, then called her mother in Carmel to borrow enough money for a deposit on a new apartment. But that was another time, when she had still been a person.
    The little confidence that she had felt the night before was gone. Now she was just confused and afraid. She tried to remember everything she had ever seen or heard about vampires. It wasn't much. She didn't like scary books or movies. Much of what she could remember didn't seem true. She didn't have to sleep in a coffin, that was obvious. But it was also obvious that she couldn't go out in the daylight. She didn't have to kill every night, and if she did bite someone, he or she didn't necessarily have to turn into a vampire – an asshole, maybe, but not a vampire. But then again, Kurt had been an asshole before, so how could you tell? Why had she turned? She was going to have to get to a library.
    She thought, I've got to get my car back. And I need a new apartment. It's just a matter of time before a maid comes in during the day and burns me to a crisp. I need someone who can move around during the day. I need a friend.
    She had lost her address book with her purse, but it didn't really matter. All of her friends were currently in relationships, and although any of them would offer sympathy about her breakup with Kurt, they were too self-involved to be of any real help. She and her friends were only close when they were single.
    I need a man.
    The thought depressed her.
    Why does it always come to that? I'm a modern woman. I can open jars
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