I followed her back to the front and took a seat next to a middle-aged woman with a mountain of teased up bangs only a gallon of hairspray could hold in place. I looked in the mirror behind Crye's desk and did a double take at the new me. I looked so much better. Then I noticed the red skin on my neck. It looked like a rash. Surely I wasn't going to turn into a vampire, was I? I would have felt the urge to drink blood if that were the case. I could obviously see myself in a mirror, too. Even so, I was more than a little worried I might burst into flames when the sun hit me. But I didn't know anyone I could ask for advice. Maybe Google could also give me the cure for vampirism. I sat back and Googled furiously on my smartphone until Crye walked over and lightly booted my foot with hers.

"Ready?" she asked.

Renaldo appeared from the back. He looked me up and down, his head shaking the entire time. "He does need work," he said in a decidedly deep and not-gay voice.

"Can you help?" Crye asked, as if I had some severe medical condition that only a miracle drug could cure.

"I'll do my best. Let's head to the mall."

* * * * *

I was glad I'd brought some of my ill-gotten cash with me. Several hundred dollars later, I had a nice wardrobe although I felt like a piece of meat. Every time I tried on jeans or slacks, Crye and Renaldo took a critical eye to my posterior to make sure the pants looked fitted. I felt exhausted. Crye and Renaldo only seemed to draw energy from the experience like window-shopping vampires.

I took my two helpers out for a nice meal to thank them for their help. Afterward, Renaldo gave me a hug. "Ah, my little creation. You're going to knock their panties off." He kissed Crye on the cheek and waved goodbye as he hopped in his sporty red convertible and sped away.

"I'm going to collapse," I said. My muscles still ached and my foot felt stiff as a board.

Crye smiled and punched me on the shoulder. "You survived and that's all that matters."

"I guess." I grinned. "Thanks. For everything."

I dropped her off at her car and went home. Dad was in his usual place in front of the TV. He looked like he'd been out all night and hadn't slept a wink. An advertisement for a dumbbell you had to shake like a porn star droned on the TV. I stepped to the side of the couch and peered closer at him. His eyes stared blankly at the screen, neither seeing nor caring. He stank like a dumpster and I wondered if he'd spent the night in one.

"Where the hell were you last night?"

"Hmm?"

I prodded his shoulder with a finger. He didn't look at me. That did it. I was sick of his attitude. I swung my arm to deliver a slap that would knock him out of his drunken stupidity. In a flash, his hand gripped my wrist and shoved me back several feet.

"I'm in no mood to talk, Justin." His jaw clenched so tight I could hear his teeth grind. "Leave me be."

I had never been scared of my father before, but in that moment fear slithered its cold reptilian form through my guts and into my bowels. I backed away and went into my room, locking the door behind me. Anger flared, burning away the fear and a million things I should have said to him boiled to the surface. The front door slammed. I threw open my door and looked in the den. Dad was gone again.

Anger boiled into rage. I wanted to punch a hole in the door. Smash my table lamp. Throw the book bag through the window. But none of that would solve a thing. I decided to channel the anger into something useful. I changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt so I could do some jogging, or at the very least, a lot of huffing and puffing. Victoria told me it was important for me to do cardio on the days I wasn't going to the gym. On the way out, I checked my neck in the bathroom mirror. The redness from Stacey's touch had faded. I'd checked it every chance I had while clothes shopping, petrified I'd ruin the pleasant outing by leaping on an unsuspecting shopper and slurping her blood right in front of my horrified companions.

Relief spread through me. At least I hadn't caught something nasty. That would be just my luck, still a virgin but catching some nasty vampire STD. By now I was really questioning what I'd seen. Maybe Stacey had been hopped up on steroids or drugs or something. Maybe she was like those crazy people who actually altered their bodies to look like animals.

Vampires do not exist. Crazy people on drugs, however, do.

Then my vision wavered and shook like an earthquake in my head until the bathroom was little more than a blur. Every bone in my body seemed to crack simultaneously. I cried out.

Agony overwhelmed me.

Chapter 10

I threw up so hard I blacked out for a few seconds. I flailed for the toilet. My fist connected with something and made a horrible crunching noise. My muscles twitched, tightened, and contracted so fast I fell into a shuddering heap and cracked my head on the bathtub. How I kept a grip on consciousness, I don't know. My bones felt as if they were disassembling into jigsaw puzzle pieces while evil brain fairies tap-danced with spiked shoes across my brain. I writhed and tried to scream but nothing escaped my tortured throat but rasping groans.

Heat flared in my chest, inching outward in a painful radius. Between spasms, I cracked an eyelid and looked at my hands. Blood oozed from the pores. It soaked my clothes. Wet warmth dribbled down my scalp and covered my eyes. I screamed silently as pain overwhelmed me once again and mercifully stole consciousness away.

Some undefinable time later I awoke in the fetal position on the floor. A puddle of crusted blood, vomit, and God only knew what else pooled in the middle of the white tile. My body felt lighter than air and I wondered if I'd just died and was having an out of body experience. I looked around but didn't see a spare body laying anywhere. I pinched my blood-covered skin. It hurt. I was alive despite the obscene amount of bodily fluids on the floor.

Or was I?

My stomach clenched. What if I'd turned into a vampire? I looked in the mirror. Blood crusted my face, my neck, and everywhere else. I opened my mouth and said, "Ah," to check for fangs. My teeth looked normal, albeit a little yellowish. Gross. I was going to have to do something about that. The sun shined through the bathroom window. I stuck out a tentative hand and braced for flames. The sunlight warmed my skin, nothing more. My skin was not flammable, or at least no more so than the average human's.

What had happened, then? Was this the result of my body fighting an infection? Bad Indian food? It looked like I had spilled every gallon of blood in my body on the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling. I decided to make a doctor appointment ASAP. I'd heard of growing pains, but this was ridiculous. I stripped and stared at my body in the mirror. The bruises on my arms were gone. The red spot on my neck had vanished. I wriggled my toes. They felt good as new. Aside from my usual pallor and fatness, I looked normal—well normal for someone who worked in a slaughterhouse. Something crunched underfoot. I lifted my foot and saw a bit of porcelain. Then I noticed the toilet. The side of it gaped open. I stared at my fist. No bruises, no broken bones. Had Stacey done something to me, or was this a continuation of the awful migraines and blurring vision issues that intermittently plagued me? Maybe my encounter with her had triggered an even worse episode.

After a bucket of bleach and a whole lot of scrubbing to get the bathroom clean, I took off to buy groceries and a new toilet. On the way out, I noticed Dad hadn't come home last night. Again. Screw him. My stomach growled. The food at the house was the exact opposite of what Victoria wanted me to eat, and since I had just vomited blood I decided to go organic for once. As I entered the grocery store, a strange aroma tickled my nose. In addition to the odor of breads, chicken, beef, and the slightly sour odor of a milk spill somewhere to my left, there was a mélange of perfumes, a touch of armpit body odor, and something more. Something that made my second brain perk up and take notice.

What in the world made me think there was a milk spill to my left? I followed the odor and saw a puddle of white at the other end of the aisle. The stench overpowered my nose from twenty feet away. I evacuated the area and went about the business of procuring healthy treats for my belly, starting with meat. Every scent seemed razor sharp. Beef, chicken, pork, all attacked my nostrils along with some odors I didn't recognize and did not ever want to recognize. Some people eat really gross stuff.

Separating one odor from another proved difficult unless I picked up a package and sniffed it, which made me look like an anally retentive shopper and nearly overwhelmed my brain from the concentrated odor. I grabbed a package of organic free-range chicken breasts and pushed my glasses up my nose as I read the nutrition information—no chicken hormones for me. I poked myself in the forehead instead because my glasses weren't there. I felt my face and my head to make sure I hadn't somehow shoved them into the wrong place. Considering the thickness of my goggle-like eyewear, they were hard to miss. My hands confirmed my glasses had indeed gone AWOL.

Somehow I could see just fine.

I looked toward the produce department at the far end of the store. I read every word on the sign at the far end. I could read the price for radishes, scrawled on a small chalkboard. The package of chicken fell from my hands and rattled the metal cart when it landed inside. I noticed how sharp colors and contrast seemed. Every little detail hummed, shined, and smelled vibrant—alive. It was like calibrating a TV image and realizing how dull the picture had looked on it before. If the grocery store looked this good, I wondered how a sunrise would appear.

This was crazy. I had to be dreaming. I pressed my hands to my cheeks to confirm I was awake. A woman passed by me as she looked at steaks. I caught the scent of the underlying odor that had bewitched me earlier. Except it wasn't so much of a scent as it was a combination of all my senses trying to interpret something they had never detected.

Breathing through my nose didn't matter. I could smell her with my mind. That was probably one of the dumbest things I had ever thought. Smell her with my mind? What kind of sense did that make?

At the moment, it made all the sense in the world.

"Hi," I said.

She turned and looked at me with one of those I-don't-have-time-for-you-to-hit-on-me looks. She had to be in her twenties but was still pretty good-looking for an older woman. Something burned beneath her surface, buried beneath mounds of worries and cares and responsibilities. It appeared as curling wisps of glowing vapor, a nimbus trailing behind her as she walked, or hovering around her when she stopped to inspect a packet of round-eye steaks here, and lean ground beef there. It thrummed with her base desires. Her lusts. Her carnal nature. I wanted to touch it, to make it mine. A wisp of my own darted from me and latched onto one of those seductive vapors. Tickled it. Hers curled, stretched, and wound itself around mine in a lovers' embrace.