“Not so far,” he said. “I’ve been lucky.”

“Oh.”

“Look, I could cope with sitting through a stage adaptation of a gothic classic that a more merciful culture than ours would have let remain neglected,” Thack said. “I really could. After all, I’ve sat through worse things. Many times.”

“Uh-huh.” I recalled now that Thack hadn’t been enthusiastic about getting me an audition for this play. He’d done so only at my insistence, after I’d heard about it from another actor.

“But a neglected vampire gothic, with a leading man who claims to be a vampire, and an audience of people who dress up in vampire costumes?” He made a sound of physical pain. “It’s obscene!”

Thack shouted so loudly that I jerked the phone away from my ear for a moment.

Leischneudel asked, “Is he all right?”

“Who is that?” said Thack.

“Leischneudel Drysdale,” I said. “He plays Aubrey.”

“Oh, yes,” Thack said, recovering his composure. “He’s been getting very good notices, hasn’t he?”

“So have I,” I snapped. “When they bother to mention me.”

“Yes, I know you have,” my agent said soothingly. “I have been following the show in the press, Esther. But I . . .” He made a muffled sound of disgust. “I loathe vampire plays.”

“Yes, I think I’ve grasped that.”

“And vampire movies. And TV shows. And vampire novels! And wine cooler ads!” He was really warming to his theme. “I just HATE them!”

“I want you to take a deep breath and calm down,” I said firmly.

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. It’s a thing.”

“I can tell.”

After a moment, Thack sighed and added, “But you’re right, of course. You’re a client, and I should have come to see you in this vampire play well before now. And I apologize for being so obtuse that you thought I was planning to drop you. So . . .” He stifled a little groan. “Get me a seat for tomorrow. I’ll be there.”

“You’re not going to have anti-vampire hysterics during the performance, are you?” I asked anxiously.

“No. Of course not.” After a moment he added, “I don’t think so.”

“Look,” I said, “maybe this isn’t such a good idea, after all.”

“No, I’m coming,” he said. “I will not neglect a client on the basis of mere . . . good taste.”

“Oookay. I’m glad. I think.” Realizing it would be kind to throw him a bone at this point, I said, “By the way, Leischneudel Drysdale needs a new agent.”

“Oh?”

I could practically hear Thack sitting up straighter. Lots of actors wanted a new agent, of course; but not many of them were employed actors getting good reviews in a high-profile show.

“Yes,” I said. “His agent is quitting show business to go raise goat cheese.”

“Goats,” Leischneudel whispered, still standing right in front of me.

“Well, not everyone loves agenting,” Thack said magnanimously.

“Or vampires,” I noted.

“It’s a thing,” he repeated. “Don’t even get me started.”

“So we’ll expect to see you tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“There’ll be a ticket waiting for you at the box office.”

After ending the call, I decided I would claim both of Daemon’s VIP seats for tomorrow’s performance. I called Maximillian Zadok, who lived and worked only a few blocks away from the Hamburg, and invited him to the show, too. He accepted my invitation with pleasure. Max had wanted to come sooner, but he’d been unable to get a ticket to the sold-out run. And, well, what with all the groping and pawing my inadequately clad character endured onstage, I’d been a little recalcitrant about securing a seat for him before now.

As I ended the call and returned Leischneudel’s cell phone to him, we heard Bill, the stage manager, say over the backstage intercom system, “Places for Act One. Curtain in five minutes. Please take your places for Act One.” He sounded depressed.

“That’s us,” said Leischneudel, donning his elegant Regency frock coat as I opened the door to exit the dressing room. He followed me out into the hallway.

He and I opened the show each night. The play’s first scene portrayed the two of us exchanging letters which established that Aubrey was traveling in Europe with the mysterious Lord Ruthven, whom he’d met at a party in London, while Jane managed her brother’s household back in England. Correspondence between the siblings was one of several ways that this stage adaptation restructured Polidori’s story to make it thriftily accommodate a cast of only four people, as well as minimal scene changes.

As we made our way to the wings, Leischneudel asked me about the man whom I had just used his cell phone to invite to tomorrow night’s performance. “Is Max a friend?”

“Yes, a close friend.”

“A potential boyfriend?” he prodded.

Leischneudel had a sweetheart in Pennsylvania whom he usually saw twice a month, and he was eager to improve his income to the point where he felt he could propose marriage to her. I had met Mary Ann briefly a few weeks ago; a nice, level-headed girl, less pretty than Leischneudel and every bit as polite. Happy in love, Leischneudel wanted to see me having a happy love life, too.

However, given the way that had been going this year—I met someone I really liked, then nearly got him killed twice—I had decided to put romance on the shelf for a while.

“No, Max isn’t boyfriend material,” I said. “He’s, uh, more like an eccentric uncle.”

“He’s older?” Leischneudel guessed.

“Yes,” I said. “A senior citizen, I guess you’d say—though I rarely think of him that way.”

In fact, although he didn’t look a day over 70, Max was closer to 350, thanks to accidentally drinking a mysterious and never-replicated alchemic potion in his twenties—back in the seventeenth century. The elixir hadn’t made him immortal, but it ensured he’d been aging at an unusually slow rate ever since. Fighting Evil for the past three centuries or so had kept him fairly fit, and constant study and extensive travel had expanded his agile (if sometimes befuddled) mind. His courtly manners, however, did not seem to have changed a great deal since the powdered-wig era.

I thought again about Max seeing Daemon fondle me onstage and figured, oh, well, it was too late to uninvite him. Besides, he was a man of the world, after all—albeit the Old World.

Leischneudel asked, “Will he be all right, rubbing shoulders with the vamparazzi?”

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” I said confidently. “Max has dealt with stranger things than vamparazzi.”

Come to think of it, so had I.

I added, “Thack, on the other hand, sounds like he’ll be a bit perturbed by the whole scene.”

“I really appreciate you mentioning me to him.”

“It’s my pleasure, Leischneudel.”

We stopped talking when we reached the darkened wings and started preparing mentally for the performance. After a few moments of silence, we gave each other a quick “break a leg” hug, then took our places onstage.

We wound up waiting there for about fifteen minutes. The frenzy outside on the street spread into the lobby as people who’d been unable to get tickets tried to force their way into the theater. We later heard there were some more arrests. However, despite that distraction and the late start, the first show went fine.

Between performances, I repaired my hair and makeup in my dressing room while waiting for our usual pizzas to be delivered, then I joined Leischneudel in his dressing room to eat. We used towels as bibs to avoid staining our costumes while we ate our late supper, trying to satisfy our hunger without getting so full we’d feel sluggish onstage afterward. Back in my dressing room, Mad Rachel was picking at her own pizza while whining loudly to her mother, who apparently didn’t mind being telephoned so close to midnight.

Daemon, as usual, retreated alone to his own dressing room. Despite the pretense that the star replenished his strength with a bottle of blood between shows, I assumed that Victor discreetly slipped some food (or at least a protein shake) into his room when everyone else was onstage. I also assumed this was why one of the few restrictions on Tarr’s access to Daemon was that he wasn’t allowed in the vampire’s dressing room during or between shows, though Daemon claimed (reasonably) that it was because he needed to focus and recharge in solitude.

Unfortunately, rather than simply leave the theater and go live his life, this meant that Tarr often prowled around backstage, bothering the rest of us. Tonight he barged into Leischneudel’s dressing room to try to get me to answer some questions, as Daemon’s “costar” in the show. (Actually, Leischneudel was the costar; and Tarr had already cornered and interviewed him.)

I was about to decline again when I realized that if I just gave Tarr his damn interview, he’d finally leave me alone. So, finishing my supper, I nodded in acquiescence and gestured to the only unoccupied chair in Leischneudel’s small, stark dressing room.

To my surprise, Tarr had done his homework and was familiar with my career, including my stint as a chorus nymph this past spring in the fantasy-oriented Sorcerer!, a short-lived musical staged at a theater only a few blocks from here. He also complimented me on my recent appearance as a prostitute on D30 (which was what fans of The Dirty Thirty affectionately called the gritty crime drama).

“You were really convincing as a streetwise crack whore,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, pleased—after all, it was my job to be convincing. “The writing on that show is so good, I really enjoyed that role.”

Surprising me again, because it was a better question than I had expected of him, Tarr asked, “So what’s it like to go from that role to playing Jane, a virginal, sheltered woman living two hundred years ago?”

So I talked for a little while about how I had prepared for a historical role, and the different choices I employed in body language, diction, tone, attitude, and facial expressions when playing a genteel Regency lady, as compared to playing a drug-addicted hooker living on the streets of New York’s 30th Precinct.

And then Tarr decided to stop humoring me. “So fans are wondering, as you must know, how real is the sexual heat between you and Daemon onstage? And does it extend to your offstage lives?”

“There is no sexual heat between me and Daemon onstage,” I said firmly. “It’s between Jane and Ruthven. Offstage, Daemon Ravel and I are colleagues and scant acquaintances, nothing more. Which you already know, Al, since you’re with him day and night!”

“Yeah, but I gotta ask the question,” he said with his perpetual grin. “So how about onstage? What’s going on between the two of you there? And don’t say ‘nothing,’ because everyone in the audience already knows better.”

“Well, Jane is completely ensnared by the handsome, worldly aristocrat who’s wooing and seducing her. And since Daemon’s performance is so good, that’s easy for me to play, of course,” I lied.

Actually, I thought Jane should have her head examined. Ruthven’s courtship of her was openly predatory and nearly sadistic at times, he was almost certainly a fortune hunter, and his conversations with her consisted of nonstop sexual innuendo. If I were on a date with this guy, I’d feign an attack of appendicitis after the first half hour.

But I wasn’t reckless enough to say any of this to Tarr, whose article would be read by Daemon’s volatile (and occasionally violent) fans.

Tarr proceeded to ask more “probing” questions about the heavily eroticized tone of Daemon’s interaction with me, which I continued deftly (and accurately) reframing as Ruthven’s interaction with Jane.

“I know Daemon likes to improvise,” Tarr said after a few minutes. “And I’ve heard the two of you, uh, discussing it backstage. How do those unscripted moments come about between the two of you, and how do you feel onstage when he fondles your—”

“Please stop right there,” said Leischneudel, who’d been listening silently until now. “You’ll need to change the subject, Mr. Tarr, or else leave my dressing room.”

Sure, he was scared of vamparazzi; but he was quite capable of standing up to Daemon or Tarr on my behalf. I was capable of it, too, but I appreciated the support. I smiled at him to let him know.

“Whoa,” said Tarr, his gaze flashing gleefully back and forth between the two of us. “Looks like I’ve been barking up the wrong leading man. So the two of you are an item?”

“No,” we said in unison.

“I’m practically engaged!” Leischneudel added.

“Ah, so you don’t want your girl to find out about you and Esther,” Tarr surmised, grinning.

“Mary Ann knows about Esther,” Leischneudel said. “I mean, she’s met Esther. I mean, there’s nothing to know!”

Obviously enjoying himself, Tarr said with mock sincerity, “You mean, you and Miss Diamond are just good friends?”

Leischneudel’s jaw dropped at how sleazy Tarr made the phrase sound, then he looked to me for help.

I shook my head, indicating we should just ignore it. Then I said to Tarr, “I think we’re done here, Al.”

“Just one more question!”

“No.”

“A real one this time,” he promised.

I sighed. “Fine. Then the interview is finished, over, done.”

“Okay.” He paused, apparently trying to build suspense, before saying, “What’s it like to work with a vampire?”

I blinked. “That’s your ‘real’ question?”

He shrugged. “I gotta ask it.”

I thought it over, then said truthfully, “Actually, it’s pretty much like working with anyone else.” After all, it wasn’t as if I had never before worked with someone who had a few pretensions or eccentricities.

“You gotta give me more than that,” Tarr said.

“Why do I have to give you more than that? In one sitting, you’ve implied that I’m sleeping with each of my male costars. Throw in Mad Rachel as my lesbian lover, and you’ll achieve a perfect trifecta of slander.”

“You call her Mad Rachel?”

I said to Leischneudel, “Oops. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“No, no,” Tarr said, waving his notebook in the air as if to assure me he wouldn’t use that slip of the tongue in his article. “It suits her. And she drives Daemon nuts. Remember a few nights ago? He’s onstage alone, rising from the dead by the light of the moon, replenished and renewed after drinking Ianthe’s blood, and the audience is so absorbed in the moment you could hear a pin drop in that theater—”

“And then everyone heard Rachel yakking into her cell phone backstage,” I said dryly. “Oh, yes. I remember.”

Leischneudel caught my eye and giggled. We all remembered. Daemon had gone on a rampage that night. But despite his star status and the fact that he was dramatically impressive in his rage, Rachel had blown him off like a cheap attempt at a pick-up in a hotel bar. Her crass indifference to the show, the audience, and his anger left Daemon sputtering and discombobulated. It was the one time in our entire acquaintance when I sympathized with him.

I consoled myself with the knowledge that, with behavior like that, Rachel’s career in our profession would be short-lived, despite how pretty she was and how well her voice carried to the back row. However, that knowledge wasn’t much of a comfort while I was still nightly sharing a dressing room with her.

“Speaking of lesbian lovers,” said Tarr, “when I was out in Hollywood—”

“Were we speaking of lesbian lovers?”

“Yeah. You and Mad Rachel.”

I said in exasperation, “We’re not—”

“Hah! Gotcha! Just kidding.” Tarr winked at me. I found that quite grotesque for some reason. “Anyhow, when I was out in Hollywood, there was this big star I covered who was a secret lesbo. So one night—”

“I’ve got a second show to go perform,” I said quickly, feeling like a cornered animal as Tarr began one of his Hollywood anecdotes. “We’re finished here, Al.”

“Wait, no, seriously. What’s it like to work with Daemon ?”

“He’s a fine actor, a true professional, and a great guy to work with,” I said, removing my towel-bib and standing up.

Tarr frowned and said to my companion, “That’s exactly what you said when I interviewed you, Lei-guy.”

Leischneudel winced at the nickname.

Tarr repeated, “Exactly.”

Leischneudel looked guiltily at me.

Tarr saw that, and his habitual grin broadened. “Ah, so the kid got that line from you, huh?”

“Let’s just call it a consistent reaction among the cast, shall we?” I checked my appearance in the mirror, expecting to hear Bill’s five-minute warning over the intercom at any moment.

Tarr chuckled and closed his notebook. “Okay. How about off the record, in that case?”

“Off the record?”

He nodded. “Yeah. What’s it like to work with Daemon ?”

I realized Jane’s lips needed a touch-up after my meal. I borrowed Leischneudel’s makeup kit for that. “This is completely off the record?”

“Yep.”

I found the color I wanted. “Off the record . . . He’s a fine actor, a true professional, and a great guy to work with.” I applied the lip rouge.

“Hey, you don’t trust me?” Tarr feigned wounded feelings.

“Go figure.” I blotted Jane’s mouth. “We’re finished now, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “So now that we’re done with business, maybe we should go out sometime. Just you and me.”

“No, thank you,” I said. “Leischneudel, time for Act One places?”

“Yes.” He recognized this cue and responded with alacrity. “Absolutely. Let’s g—”

“No pressure,” Tarr said to me. “Just a drink. We’ll see how it goes.”

I sighed. So much for the tabloid prince leaving me alone now that I had given him his interview. Determined to nip this in the bud, I said, “I want you to listen carefully to what I’m about to say to you, Al.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You and I will not be going out together.” I enunciated clearly. “It will never happen. Never.”

“Hey!” He grinned wolfishly. “Do I have a rival?”

Involuntarily, I thought of Lopez.

Looking at (I was appalled to realize) my current suitor, an ill-mannered hack with the sensitivity of a bulldozer, I was suddenly swamped with longing for the attractive police detective whom I had refused to see again.

Actually, Lopez had dumped me first (or, as he put it, he had given me up); and I tried to keep that fact in mind whenever I wanted to surrender to impulse and phone him. But when circumstances (or, rather, Evil) had reunited us after he broke up with me, he evidently reconsidered his decision . . . or at least wanted to talk about reconsidering it.

“Is there another guy in picture?” Tarr prodded.

By then, though, I knew that Lopez had been right in the first place; we mustn’t keep seeing each other.

I said, “Um . . .”

Now, as I gazed in bemusement at the man who was grinning sleazily at me, I was sharply reminded of my ex-almost-boyfriend, precisely because of all the ways in which he was nothing like Tarr.

“I mean, if you’re not seeing Daemon or the kid . . .” Tarr said.

“Esther doesn’t date actors,” said Leischneudel.

Not that I thought Lopez was perfect. Far from it. For one thing, he thought I was crazy and probably felonious (although, admittedly, he had his reasons for the former and was not entirely wrong about the latter). He could be a little cranky and rigid. He was also critical, and sometimes he was too cynical—though I supposed that this was a natural result of his profession. And I had a feeling I’d rather try to disarm a bomb than meet his mother (whom he clearly loved—though their mutual affection mostly seemed to express itself in exasperated arguments).

“Well, I’m not an actor,” Tarr said cheerfully. “So we’re good to go.”

But Lopez was fun to be with, easy to talk to (well, most of the time), brave and reliable, shrewd about human nature, full of engaging quirks, very smart, and more patient that I usually gave him credit for. And when he looked at me a certain way, I felt sexier than the highest-paid screen temptress in Hollywood.

Whereas with Tarr looking me right now, I just felt underdressed.

“I know this piano bar where they play oldies,” the tabloid reporter said, apparently interpreting my awkward silence as a sign that I was weakening. “You’d like it.”

I self-consciously tugged my barely decent neckline upward while I avoided his gaze, feeling depressed and dismayed by how much I still missed Lopez after more than two months of trying so hard not even to think about him.

Tarr added, “And I have a coupon. I can get drinks half-price there if I bring a woman.”

My powers of articulation returned to me. “Tempting though that invitation is, Al, I must decline, on the grounds that I am studying to become a nun.”

“I thought you were Jewish.” Then his perpetual grin widened in appreciation of my sly wit. “Oh, I get it! Good one.”

Over the intercom, Bill called for Act One places.

“Oh, thank God,” I muttered.

“Esther and I have to go.” Leischneudel simultaneously slipped into his frock coat and herded Tarr toward the door of the dressing room. “We open the show.”

“I know,” said Tarr. “I’m here every night, after all. Watching this goddamn play over and over. Wondering why anyone would pay three hundred dollars to see it, let alone to see it again.”

Leischneudel briefly froze in astonishment. “The scalpers are getting three hundred a seat? For this play?”

“There’s no accounting for taste,” said the reporter as we all exited the room.

Out in the hallway, we encountered Victor—or, rather, we frightened Victor. He was pacing with his back to us and whispering frantically into his cell phone. When he turned around and saw us, he shrieked in surprise, dropped his phone, and clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Jeez, pal,” said Tarr. “You really need to cut back on the caffeine.”

“Are you all right?” Leischneudel asked in concern.

Victor closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded. He lowered his hand and said, “You startled me.”

His voice was faint, and he didn’t seem to be breathing. He looked pale. Although the theater was (as I had good reason to know) drafty and cool, there were beads of sweat glinting on his forehead.

“Victor, you don’t look so good,” I said as Leischneudel retrieved the older man’s phone from the hard cement floor and handed it to him. “And I really think you should breathe.”

“Yes, breathe,” Leischneudel urged, patting Victor on the back.

Victor suddenly started panting like a nervous dog. His voice still faint, he squeezed out the words, “It sounds like something . . . something terrible may have happened.”

“Your call was bad news?” Tarr asked.

Victor panted, “I think so. It might be. I’m not . . .”

“Breathe a little more slowly.” Leischneudel demonstrated what he meant, encouraging Victor to imitate him.

“Anything to do with Daemon?” Tarr asked.

Victor flinched. “You can’t say anything to him!”

The reporter opened his notebook. “Why not?”

I took away Tarr’s notebook. “Surely that’s none of our business.”

“Just keep breathing.” Leischneudel glanced at me, aware that we needed to get to our places.

“Don’t say anything to Daemon,” Victor said frantically. “Please.”

“Don’t say anything about what?” Tarr prodded, trying to retrieve his notebook from me.

“It might turn out to be nothing. An ugly prank or a mistake ... God, I hope it’s nothing! It’s got to be nothing,” Victor babbled. “And even if it’s something, there’s nothing we can do about it right now, and I mustn’t distract Daemon.”

But distracting the rest of us was fine, apparently.

Rachel came out of my dressing room and saw us all. “God, what are you still doing here?” she said critically. “Didn’t you guys hear Bill call Act One places? Am I the only professional around here?”

She shoved her way through our little group, oblivious to me and Tarr wrestling for his notebook, and to Victor panting and sweating while Leischneudel patted his back and urged him to keep breathing.

I gave up my struggle with Tarr, let him have the notebook, and said to Leischneudel, “She’s right. We have to go right now.”

“We really do,” the actor said. “I’m sorry, Victor. Um, I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“You won’t tell Daemon, will you?” Victor said urgently. “The show must go on!”

“No,” I promised, “we won’t tell him.”

“Tell him what?” Tarr persisted.

“I have no idea. And you,” I said to the reporter, “leave this man alone.”

“Of course,” Tarr said with pellucid innocence. “Absolutely.”

Poor Victor.

Leischneudel took my arm, and we scurried toward the darkened wings to start the second show. From that moment forward, I had no room in my head to spare a thought for Victor or whatever he’d been babbling about. Also no room, thankfully, to dwell on Tarr having asked me out on a date (so to speak).

During intermission, I saw Victor backstage, but he was so artificially bright and bubbly, I assumed that the crisis, whatever it was, must have passed. Given his tendency to overreact, I assumed it was nothing—an assumption which seemed to be confirmed when he bent my ear, at length, about the carpet on which I had spilled blood hours ago, assuring me the dry cleaners thought they could get the stain out completely.

I brushed him off and found a quiet spot backstage to rest in solitude for the remainder of the intermission. This was my sixth performance in three days, I was feeling the burn, and I would be onstage for much of Act Two. Ianthe had been eaten by Ruthven in Act One, but she appeared briefly several times in Act Two, when a feverish, guilt-ridden Aubrey imagined his sweetheart haunting him for failing to save her from Ruthven. Apart from those moments, Mad Rachel would be wandering around backstage until the curtain call, complaining of boredom because too few of her acquaintances were available for phone chats this late at night. I wondered how Leischneudel, who had an exhausting part, was getting through this second show, given that he’d gotten so little sleep last night, thanks to Mimi the cat.

When the curtain rose on Act Two, though, I didn’t feel the fatigue anymore, nor did I see it in my two leading men as we performed scene after scene. That’s the magic of the stage and the synergy of actors with a live audience. I knew I’d be exhausted as soon as the show was over, but I felt energized and alert as I waited in the wings to go back onstage for my final scene, Jane’s wedding night.

Once I was onstage, face-to-face with my groom in the golden light of our private sitting room at night, and nervous about adjourning with him to the adjoining conjugal chamber, I spoke about my poor brother, who was too ill to attend the small, intimate wedding breakfast which had followed the private marriage ceremony this morning. A little while ago, my delirious sibling, openly horrified to learn my marriage was now a fait accompli, had said strange things to me about my groom, bizarre comments that were unquestionably a symptom of his brain fever ... but which nonetheless made me uneasy enough that I now tried to broach the subject of those incoherent accusations with my new lord and master.

My husband brushed aside my questions with sinister half-answers and boldly explicit physical flattery as the two of us began circling each other like swordsmen in the early moments of a mortal duel. Slowly, almost languidly, he pursued me around the room, drawing ever closer, his intense gaze, silken voice, and erotic predation wearing down my reticence until, finally, I stopped fleeing and let him touch me, claim me, own me. He spoke to me of life, death, blood, innocence, pleasure, and pain, all the while taking down my hair, stroking my body, and exploring portions of my anatomy that no man had ever touched before.

Including portions which I had specifically told Daemon not to touch again.

I found the vampire’s lengthy speech about life, the universe, and everything rather tedious and derivative, but Jane found it provocative and enthralling—as did the audience. Tarr had described the fans’ absorption well; when Ruthven stopped speaking long enough to press several slow, sultry kisses against Jane’s shoulder and neck, you could have heard a pin drop in that theater. Then when he ran his hands over my body and reached inside my dress to cup one of my breasts, I heard sighs throughout the audience, and an audible moan from someone sitting close to the stage.

My uncomfortable but flimsy push-up corset was not much protection against this sort of intrusion, and I was annoyed. Daemon’s hands, as he well knew, were supposed to stay outside my dress at all times.

Ruthven droned on for a while longer, toying with his bride, alternately seducing and terrorizing her. Although Jane by now wanted to lie down on the floor and fling up her skirts for him, I was incensed when Daemon slid his hand down to the juncture of my thighs and cupped me there. I writhed and moaned with feigned passion, which activity I used to conceal my firmly moving his hand to my hip while I stomped on his instep.

He wanted to improvise? Fine. Two could play that game.

Daemon grunted in surprised pain then snorted a little with laughter, which reaction he concealed by burying his face in my tumbled hair.

He had his revenge, though. As Ruthven swept Jane into their final embrace, his long, hard, taut body pressing against her supple and yielding one, and lowered his mouth to her unresisting neck ... Daemon bit me.

I mean, really bit me. Like he was actually trying to get blood from my veins. I uttered a stifled sound of pain as my knees buckled and I clutched his shoulders.

I heard more sighs and moans, the audience responding to Ruthven’s ruthless sexual domination and what they thought were my expressions of orgasmic ecstasy.

Then Daemon started sucking intensely. Without thinking, I gasped and reflexively shoved at his shoulders. He clutched me tighter, I lost my footing, and we began sinking to the floor together—which was not how the scene had been choreographed. The audience, a number of whom had previously seen the play and probably realized we were going off course, seemed to collectively hold its breath as our unrehearsed wrestling took us both down to our knees, pushing, clutching, and writhing.

I suddenly remembered the little bottles of blood in Daemon’s dressing room. The tinted windows of his Soho loft. His insistence on avoiding direct sunlight. As he bore me to the floor, his teeth and tongue working on the tender flesh of my throat, I panicked.

I’m being murdered by a vampire, I thought, right in front of hundreds of people!

Then I thought, And some of them paid three hundred dollars to see this show. Unbelievable!

I felt the spotlight on us intensifying and growing brighter; the effect was supposed to make Jane’s body look whiter, drained of blood as she died. I realized that if I gave a death rattle and went limp, Daemon would have to stop biting me and carry on with the scene. I tried it and, sure enough, it worked.

Daemon rose to his feet and uttered a few lines as I lay dead, my neck throbbing while I plotted his evisceration. Next, Leischneudel entered, found my corpse, and went mad with grief. Then the vampire, exercising hypnotic power over Aubrey, convinced the young man to take his own life. Leischneudel plunged a prop dagger into his torso and collapsed, staying well outside the spotlight that made me look pale enough to have been exsanguinated. The two of us lay motionless onstage as Daemon gave his final speech, a dark little homily about the price of messing with a vampire.

Two things happened as soon as the curtain came down. The audience exploded into thunderous applause and noisy cries of rapturous adulation. And I leaped to my feet, sought Daemon in the dark, and kicked him as hard as I could.

“Ow !” Leischneudel howled, flailing and stumbling backward.

“Oh, no!” I cried, realizing I had miscalculated. “I’m sorry!”

With my pupils contracted in response to the spotlight shining on Jane’s dead face, I couldn’t see anything when the stage went dark.

Leischneudel must have stumbled into Mad Rachel as she was coming onstage for the curtain call. I heard her bellow, “Oof! Goddamn it! Watch where you’re going!”

Someone touched me, and I swatted the hand away.

“It’s me,” Leischneudel said, shouting to be heard above the roar of the crowd.

“Oh! Are you okay?” I shouted back.

“Come on, hold hands!” Rachel said. “Why is everyone in the wrong place?”

“I think she tried to kick me!” Daemon sounded shocked.

“Come on,” Rachel said.

I still couldn’t see anything, but when I felt Daemon grab my hand, I shoved him. “I’m not holding your hand!”

“Here, I’ll do it.” Leischneudel shouted, “Daemon, give me your hand!”

“No! I’m not holding a guy’s hand in the curtain call!”

The curtain rose on us all standing there bickering.

We immediately fell into line for our bows, but I didn’t accept Daemon’s outstretched hand, and when he tried to grasp mine, I stepped out of reach as I smiled at the audience—who were all on their feet, shouting and applauding wildly.

We did four curtain calls, the most we’d ever done. The audience was still applauding and shouting for another one when the curtain came down again and I turned on my heel and stalked offstage, followed by Leischneudel.

“Are you okay?” I asked him, relieved to see he wasn’t limping.

“I’m fine,” he assured me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I meant that kick for him.”

“So I gathered. What’s wrong? What happened?”

“I swear, I will kill him before this run is over.”

Daemon was onstage, taking another curtain call alone. Afterward, as soon as he exited into the wings, I walked up to him and slapped him so hard my hand stung. He staggered backward, his eyes watering.

He shook his head a couple of times, as if to clear his vision, then said, “Oh, come on, Esther. They loved it! Listen to that applause. Five curtain calls!”

“If you ever do that again,” I shouted, “I will hit you that hard onstage, in the middle of the performance. I mean it!”

“Hey, great show, guys,” Tarr said behind me. “Whoa, Esther! Daemon! You guys really took that scene to a whole new level!”

I resisted the urge to slug Tarr, too, and stormed down the hallway toward my dressing room. Behind me, I heard Daemon accepting Tarr’s congratulations.

“What a jerk!” I muttered. “Leischneudel?”

He was right behind me. “Yes?”

“I’m exhausted. I want to go home. Please get me out of this gown. Right now!”

“Of course.” He started undoing my laces, trotting to keep up with me. “What happened, Esther?”

“I think he’s started to believe his own bullshit.” And for a moment there, with Daemon’s teeth sinking into my throat, I had believed it, too. Feeling sticky, tired, and cranky, I added, “God, I want this dress off.”

“Halfway there.”

“Good.” I reached my dressing room, flung open the door—and froze when I saw Detective Connor Lopez there.