Leischneudel, who was still jumpy from the full court press we’d gotten outside the theater, gaped at Tarr. “They’ve arrested a real vampire?”

“Actually, about a dozen of ’em.” Tarr chuckled and gave Leischneudel a friendly little punch in the stomach.

I repressed an irritated sigh. Of course the cops were arresting unruly vamparazzi. They’d been doing it for the past two nights.

Annoyed that I’d fallen for another of Tarr’s juvenile gags, I said, “What a droll wit you have.”

“Hee hee!”

When he tried to pat my cheek, I tried to bite him.

“Whoa, I think we’ve got a vampire right here,” Tarr said cheerfully.

“Now, now, children,” Daemon admonished.

“I like a woman with spunk,” said Tarr.

“I only appear spunky,” I said. “Really I’m timid and vaporous.”

He shrugged. “We could still go out.”

“No, we couldn’t.”

A staff writer for The Exposé, Tarr had been tagging after Daemon this past week, following him everywhere but the bathroom; and I gathered this would probably go on for a few more days. He was, he said, determined to get the real truth about the man behind the mask, the victim behind the vampire, the cuddly creature of the night behind the celebrity facade.

Tarr was in his early forties, stocky, and short. He had a receding hairline, a ruddy complexion, and big teeth. I found his perpetual grin annoying and somehow sleazy. His unabashed nosiness, combined with his terrier-like persistence, made it clear how he’d become a top tabloid reporter. As he told anyone who failed to flee his presence quickly enough, he had a long résumé of in-depth feature stories about major Hollywood stars and was on a first-name basis with half the celebrity parolees in Tinseltown. I gathered this was his way of saying that Daemon should be flattered Tarr was covering him.

“To return to the subject . . .” Leischneudel said to Daemon. “It might be a good idea for you to issue a statement condemning violence against your fellow actors—and, in particular, against the ladies in the cast.”

Tarr said, “This is about last night, right?”

“Once again, those razor-sharp journalistic instincts zero in on the obvious,” Daemon said, starting to apply base to his face, as he continued creating the dissipatedyet-sexy appearance of Lord Ruthven.

“Were you hurt?” Tarr said to me.

“It’s nice of you to ask, Al,” I said. “Some sixteen hours after you got into the limo with my attacker and Daemon without asking me that.”

Tarr held up his hands as if to proclaim his innocence. “Hey, they were leaving, and I gotta stick with my boy. You know that.”

“Must you call me your ‘boy’?” Daemon said.

I shrewdly sensed that Tarr’s 24/7 companionship was wearing on the vampire’s nerves. Good. Daemon should have to work hard for his money, like everyone else. The Exposé was reputedly paying him thousands for this exhaustive profile. And in addition to the money, he’d get what he valued most—even more attention.

“Jeez, everyone’s so touchy tonight.” Tarr shook his head as he ambled all the way into the room, heading toward a chair. He paused at the spilled blood. “Hey, what’s this? Did I miss a little bloodletting?”

I realized in that instant why the little bottles in the refrigerator contained blood. The Exposé’s crafty reporter was sticking his nose into every aspect of Daemon’s existence. The actor had undoubtedly supposed that Tarr would investigate those bottles. I recalled Daemon saying something, when he caught me with a bottle a few minutes ago, about his supply being pilfered. Tarr must have stolen one of the bottles so he could get its contents analyzed.

I gagged again when I realized that if Daemon had been thorough enough to anticipate that possibility, then the blood in the bottles might well be human.

“You’re sure that blood was safe?” I asked faintly.

Daemon glanced at me in the mirror. “You’ll be fine. Stop worrying.”

“You had some of that stuff?” Tarr asked in surprise.

“Quite by accident,” I said. “That’ll teach me to poke around in a vampire’s fridge.”

Daemon’s gaze returned to his own reflection as he purred, “But if you’d like to poke around in something else of mine, I have a few suggestions . . .”

“Oh, give it a rest, would you?” I was tired of him already tonight—and he hadn’t even fondled me yet.

I turned to leave the room and walked straight into Daemon’s assistant, Victor, who was rushing through the doorway. Victor rushed everywhere and seemed to exist in a perpetual state of semipanic. I found him courteous but fatiguing. An effeminate, plump, completely bald man in his late thirties, Victor had a tendency to overreact to everything—which always made me wonder how he’d wound up working for Daemon, of all people.

When I explained about the bloody carpet and apologized, Victor had a moment of near hysterics over the stain. Then he manfully pulled himself together, patted my shoulder, and told me not to worry about it.

“We can probably save the carpet. And even if we can’t, I don’t want you to feel bad about it,” Victor said warmly to me. “It’s only a thing. And people matter more than things, don’t they? So I just thank God you weren’t hurt when this happened, Esther.”

“Thanks.”

“How would she have been hurt?” Tarr asked in puzzlement.

“I don’t want you to beat yourself up over this,” Victor continued. “I want you to try to put it out of your mind. You’ve got two performances to do tonight, and the show must go on.”

I hadn’t actually planned to think about the carpet ever again, so I was able to assure Victor with all sincerity that I would refrain from engaging in distracting self-condemnation over this incident.

“Good for you!” He patted me again, then pulled out his cell phone. “Now I’m just going to call the dry cleaner and see if he can deal with this tonight.”

“You know a dry cleaner who works on Saturday nights?” I asked.

The assistant stage manager knocked on Daemon’s door. “Forty-five minutes to curtain, people.” When he saw me, he paused. “How’s the eye, Esther?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“See? She’s fine,” Tarr said to Leischneudel.

“That’s not the point,” the actor replied.

Daemon ignored us all.

“Come on,” I said to Leischneudel. “Let’s go get ready for the first show.”

We left the dressing room and walked down the hall. Victor’s voice, talking urgently on his cell with the dry cleaner, echoed behind us.

Then I heard Tarr call out, “Hey, Esther!”

I looked over my shoulder and saw him exit Daemon’s dressing room and come after us. “You and me, we have to talk!”

“No, we don’t,” I said firmly.

“You’re the only cast member I haven’t interviewed yet.”

I was aware of that. And given my druthers, I’d like to keep it that way. “I don’t have anything to say.”

“Oh, come on, I gotta have you in the article! You’re Jane, the girl Ruthven really loves.”

I blinked and looked at Leischneudel.

“I told you,” the actor said. “It’s what everyone’s talking about.”

“And those scenes between the two of you are hot, hot, hot!” Tarr let out a low whistle and waved his hand as if he’d just burned it. “Everyone wants to know what it’s like to get initiated by Daemon Ravel.”

“Initiated?”

“Into vampire sex.”

“What?” I blurted. “Are you kidding? I’ve never—”

“I’m talking about the wedding night, sweetie.” Tarr added, “You know—in the play?”

“Don’t call me ‘sweetie,’” I snapped. “And here’s what I can tell you about being ‘initiated.’ I have absolutely no idea what it’s like to be touched, embraced, or bitten by Daemon Ravel. I only know how Lord Ruthven does those things.” I grabbed Tarr’s polyester-blend collar and said between gritted teeth, “Are we clear now?”

“That’s a cute take, toots,” Tarr said. “But my readers are going to want a lot more than that.”

“Then they will have to live with the dull ache of disappointment.” I turned away and headed toward my dressing room.

“So we’ll talk later, right?” Tarr called after me. “Maybe over a drink somewhere?”

“You have to admire his persistence,” Leischneudel said to me.

“No, I don’t.”

He halted outside his dressing room and opened the door. “If you need help with your dress, you know where I’ll be.”

I nodded and kept walking. The wardrobe mistress, who didn’t like anyone but Daemon, rarely helped me. And Mad Rachel, the actress who shared my dressing room, couldn’t always be counted on.

As I approached our dressing room, I heard Mad Rachel’s voice booming forth from the other side of the closed door, and I realized that this was probably one of those nights when I would need Leischneudel to lace up my gown.

“Fuck you, you fucking cocksucker!”

I opened the door and entered the room. As expected, Rachel was on her cell phone.

“No, fuck you, you cocksucking fucker!” she shrieked.

She was already in costume, having evidently gotten Fiona, the cranky wardrobe mistress, to help her. Rachel Manning was about twenty-five, petite, and extremely pretty. She looked like someone who should be on TV, though the tremendous carrying power of her voice made her a natural for the stage.

“Go fuck yourself, Eric!” she hurled into her cell phone.

I was used to this sort of thing after so many weeks of it; but I had found it disorienting at first to see this fineboned woman in her demure Regency gown screeching vicious obscenities into a cell phone.

Rachel lived with her phone glued to her ear. Her boyfriend, Eric, was usually the person at the other end of the call, though sometimes she gave him a break and talked to her agent or her mother. And she seemed physically incapable of lowering her voice. Whether obscenely angry, as she was now, or just conversing, Rachel always yammered into the phone with the same wellsupported volume that she used onstage; she did this no matter how many times the stage manager or Daemon read her the riot act about it—which they did often, since her backstage bellowing had disrupted the performance a few times.

When she saw me enter the room, she turned away without acknowledging me and shouted into her phone, “I hate you, Eric, you fucking cocksucker!”

Half the time, she chatted to Eric about minutiae; the rest of the time, the two of them fought hysterically while Rachel cursed, at top volume, like a drunken stevedore handicapped by a sadly limited supply of obscenities.

“Go to hell, you fucker!”

It was already clear what kind of night tonight would be. Suppressing a sigh, I walked over to the makeup counter and set down my tote bag.

Rachel looked startled by this. She held the phone away from her ear for a moment and bellowed at me, “Do you mind?”

“Huh?”

“This is a private conversation.” Her tone and facial expression suggested that I had the IQ of chewing gum. “Private.”

I felt an overwhelming urge to throttle her. But if I did that, we’d have to cancel the show. And then the vamparazzi would riot.

So, in the interests of public safety, I mastered my perfectly understandable impulse to kill Mad Rachel, and said, “Then you should take it somewhere else. I have to get ready for the show, and this is my dressing room, too.”

Looking outraged, she complained to Eric, “This place sucks so bad. I can’t believe what I have to put up with!”

“Ditto,” I said sourly.

Since the men had private dressing rooms, Rachel and I, who had disliked each other from the start, had requested the same consideration. Bill, the bipolar stage manager, had refused our request. Multiple times. The reasons he gave us varied, depending on whether he was in a manic or a depressive phase of his cycle; but the bottom line was that Daemon was a star, and neither of us was. I had never had a dressing room to myself and wouldn’t normally have made such a request; but Mad Rachel pushed the limits of what I could put up with night after night.

“This fucking place!” she bellowed as she stormed out of our dressing room. “The theater, Eric. That’s what place!”

Rachel slammed the door so hard the room shook. I could hear her yakking into her phone for another fifteen seconds, until she was finally far enough away that the sound of her voice no longer penetrated the thick walls and closed door of this dressing room. When merciful silence at last descended, I took a few deep, steadying breaths, trying to calm myself and start focusing.

I took off my street clothes and my bra, and I donned the foundation garments for my costume: white stockings, pretty garters, and a translucent, strapless, push-up corset that, being wholly modern, fastened in front. Then I styled my shoulder-length brown hair into a simple Regency-era topknot, with loose tendrils framing my face. Ruthven took down Jane’s hair on their wedding night, so I never used hairspray for this show; I didn’t want lacquered strands sticking out like porcupine quills in that scene.

I cleaned off the street makeup I had worn to get past the tabloid photographers tonight, then started applying my stage makeup—more heavily than usual, since I needed to make sure the bruise around my eye wouldn’t show up under powerful stage lights. Because I was dressing a little later than usual tonight, I started doing my breathing exercises and vocal warm-up while applying my makeup, so that I could deliver my dialogue without stumbling over words, straining my voice, or failing to be heard by half the audience. When my face was done, I gave it a generous dusting of powder, and then I moved to the center of the room and started doing my stretches and physical warm-up exercises. The corset wasn’t ideal garb for that, but since I wore it the whole time I was onstage, I preferred to wear it while preparing, too.

Then I pulled on Jane’s gown, careful not to let it muss my hair or smear my face, and settled it into place over my body. It was a plain white gown, high-waisted, with a blue sash. Jane wore it for the whole play, not even changing for her wedding day; since her brother was deathly ill at the time of her nuptials, Jane got married quietly in a private service, without fanfare or festivities. I finished dressing by adding Jane’s jewelry to my ensemble: a broach and a pair of earrings.

Preferring to avoid Mad Rachel when she returned to give her face and hair a final touch-up, I left my dressing room and went down the hall to Leischneudel’s room, which I entered after a brief knock on the door. He was still working on his makeup, so I did some more warm-up exercises while waiting for him to finish that and then lace up my gown.

Glancing at me in the mirror, he said, “Good job with the eye. I don’t think the bruise will show up at all.”

I paused to say, “Good,” then returned to breathing and vocalizing while I repeatedly bent over, stretched, and rolled up slowly, warming up my spine—and ignoring the way the wires of my push-up corset poked and squeezed me.

After a few minutes, Leischneudel asked, “Any word yet on when Thack is coming to see the show?”

I decided I was prepared enough, and I slumped into a chair. “No.”

He winced at my dispirited tone. “Sorry I asked.” Leischneudel’s agent was quitting the business, and I had promised to introduce him to mine, Thackeray Shackleton (not his real name, I suspected—but then, doesn’t everyone come to the Big Apple to reinvent himself?).

“Six weeks we’ve been running,” I said, “and Thack still hasn’t come, and still prevaricates when I ask what night to hold a seat for him. In fact, this week, he hasn’t even returned my calls.” I sighed and leaned back, staring at the ceiling.

Knowing what I was thinking, Leischneudel said, “He’s not planning to dump you.”

“Of course he is,” I said morosely. “What else would explain this? Thack is conscientious. He always watches his clients working. It’s part of his job, and he takes it seriously.”

“Maybe he’s really busy and just hasn’t had time—”

“Six weeks, Leischneudel! Something’s wrong. We’re closing in two weeks, I don’t have another job lined up, I haven’t had an audition for anything . . . He’s barely even spoken to me since I got this part!”

“You got this part,” he pointed out, “and your reviews are excellent.”

“When they bother to mention me,” I grumbled.

This show was a vehicle for Daemon; the reviews mostly focused on him. After that, Leischneudel got the most attention, since the male roles were better developed than the female roles in The Vampyre—following the pattern of Polidori’s story.

Leischneudel persisted in his doomed effort to cheer me up. “And you were great in that episode of The Dirty Thirty that aired a few weeks ago. Didn’t you tell me Thack said so, too?”

“He didn’t say ‘great.’ He said I ‘did very well.’ Talk about being damned with faint praise.”

“Esther.”

“Besides, the size of my role in D-Thirty got reduced after Nolan’s heart attack, so it wasn’t as good a part as we’d originally thought it would be.”

The paycheck had been as much money as originally expected, though, thank God. In addition to the usual bills, I’d had to replace my bed and paint my bedroom after my mattress had spontaneously burst into flames one night in August. While I was on the bed. With Lopez.

There’s nothing like unexpected conflagration to ruin a moment of passion.

At the time, I thought the spontaneous combustion of my bed was an attack on me by an evil sorcerer in Harlem. Since then, though, I’d begun to suspect ...

Don’t think about Lopez, I reminded myself. Don’t.

I welcomed Leischneudel’s intrusion on that distracting train of thought when he said, “It was still a good role, Esther.”

“Yeah, but . . .” I shrugged.

The Dirty Thirty was the latest spin-off series in the Crime and Punishment empire of prestigious police television dramas. I’d been cast in a meaty guest role for one episode. My scenes were all with Michael Nolan, one of the lead actors on the show, and he’d had a heart attack while filming the episode. Nolan wouldn’t be able to work for quite some time, and when they wrote his character out of the remaining scenes of that episode, they wound up writing me out, too. So my character had less screen time than I’d hoped.

On the other hand, this was at least better than the scenario my mother (who wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of me portraying a homeless bisexual junkie prostitute on national TV) had hoped for, which was that they would pay me but never air the episode.

“Stop brooding and stand up so I can lace you up,” Leischneudel said as he rose from the makeup table.

He was right. I was brooding. Two men not calling me—even though, I reminded myself, I didn’t want one of them to call—was too disheartening. One way or the other, I needed to resolve my fear that Thack no longer wanted me as a client.

He was a young agent who had a respectable client list and was rising in his profession. Although he was flamboyant in an uptown yuppie way, he was originally from a middle-class family in Wisconsin, like me. He was also hardworking and polite, which I had so far found to be rare qualities in New York theatrical agents.

I would be sorry to lose him; but if that’s what was on the horizon, then I wanted to get it over with rather than fretting about it any longer.

“I’m going to call him again,” I said with determination. “He needs to commit to seeing the show or else he needs to tell me what’s wrong. I can’t keep chasing my tail about this.”

“Good,” my companion said with approval.

“Where’s your cell? I don’t want to risk going back to my dressing room now.”

Leischneudel didn’t bother to ask why. Although he and Mad Rachel were believable onstage together as innocent young lovers, when they were offstage, Leischneudel avoided her at all costs.

He pulled his phone out of his daypack, handed it to me, and started doing up the back of my gown while I dialed Thack’s cell phone number.

It occurred to me that when Thack saw an unfamiliar number on his phone’s LCD screen, rather than mine, he might actually answer, instead of letting the call go to voice mail ... And I was right.

“Hello?” he said after the third ring.

“Thack, this is Esther Diamond. When are you coming to see The Vampyre?” I said in a rush.

“Esther?” He sounded surprised. And not thrilled. “Uh . . .”

“We only have two weeks left. When shall I reserve your seat?”

“I thought every performance was sold out,” he prevaricated. “The show’s a hot ticket. I heard some of the scalpers are getting three hundred dollars per seat.”

“For this show?” I blurted. “The vamparazzi really are crazy.”

“The who?”

“Never mind. When are you coming?”

“Oh, I don’t see how you could even get me in, if—”

“I can get you in,” I said firmly. “Daemon’s contract allows him access to a couple of VIP seats for any performance. I’ll make him give one to me.” I figured Daemon owed me for my black eye. “How about tomorrow?”

“Well, er, I don’t have my calendar with me, so I’m not sure . . .”

“Look, if you don’t want me as a client anymore, just say so!”

In the silence that followed, I realized this was a tad more confrontational than I had intended.

Then he said, “What?”

In for a penny, in for a pound. “Is that why you’re not coming to the show? Because you’re getting ready to dump me?”

“Dump you?”

“If that’s the case, I’d rather you just tell me right now, in a straightforward way.”

“Dump you?” he repeated, sounding aghast.

His tone opened the door on a tiny glimmer of relief.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “Is that what you’ve been thinking? That I was planning to . . .” He sighed, then said heavily, “Actors.”

Leischneudel gave a final tug as he finished fastening my gown, then circled me to meet my gaze as I said hesitantly into the phone, “So you’re not planning to drop me?”

Leischneudel smiled and gave me a thumbs-up.

“No, of course not,” Thack said soothingly. “Put the thought out of your head. It never entered mine.”

“Then why have you been avoiding me for weeks?” I demanded.

“Because you keep asking when I’m coming to the show!”

“But you always attend your clients’ shows!”

“Yes, but in this case, I just ... just . . .”

“What?” I said. “You just what?”

“I just ... hate vampires,” he grumbled.

I blinked. “That’s the problem?”

Leischneudel’s eyes widened. “Thack hates vampires ?”

I whispered to Leischneudel, “You heard that?”

“Yes!” Thack cried, unburdening himself with gusto now. “I hate vampires!”

“Oh.” After a moment, I said with weary commiseration, “I know the feeling.”