swayed, her pupils dilating. After a few seconds he released her. That would be enough.
“Thank you,” he said to the woman. “I appreciate it.”
“No problem,” she said, looking a little dazed as she walked away.
He turned back to the girl. Her face was mottled white and red. “I’m gonna be sick,” she said.
“No,” he commanded, but it did no good.
She gulped twice, then leaned over and retched on the sidewalk at his feet. People walking by looked at them, then away.
“You’re disgusting,” he whispered while he held her hair back and pretended to be solicitous. “How will you find a mother if you can’t do the simplest thing I ask?”
She sobbed, and he stepped away, waiting impatiently while her crying slowed and finally subsided. Then he grabbed her neck and squeezed. “Are you done, idiot?” he whispered.
She nodded. He released her and they walked on. She was irritating, insolent, difficult, but she wasn’t entirely without sense. She’d cooperate in the end.
Tomorrow they’d return to his house in Toronto. Tonight, while they were still in Manhattan, he’d show her how to bring him what he wanted, see if she could get the job done. But for now he’d remember the days when the streets swelled with the stench of death, when so many of those bound to him ruled the city and stealing green from the bodies of children was as simple as a smile.
And even if the girl would not feed, he would.
He walked until he found an alley littered with garbage and stench. Here, they squatted down against a wall and waited for darkness, and his dinner.
Planetoid Three—Toronto Replica, Zone 12
Jaguar Addams walked in slow circles around her prisoner. He sat on the floor in the center of her circle, eyes glazed, mouth hanging open.
“This is the easy part,” she crooned, the gold flecks in her green eyes glittering in the candlelight. “We’re just on the surface now.”
He moaned softly.
“Hurt?” she asked.
His head moved up and down in something resembling a nod.
“Good,” she said, and extended her hand, two fingers moving toward his forehead.
She’d been working with this prisoner for four weeks and finally thought she could see an end in sight. He was a pedophile who strangled a girl while raping her. His wife found the little girl’s underwear in his jacket pocket and called the police. It was a straightforward case that even the Planetoid Prison testers named correctly. He feared death, and clung to children as sexual partners in order to live within the illusion of perpetual youth. That was common in pedophiles. That, and fear of powerlessness were the two fears she most frequently had to make them meet in this prison system where criminals were rehabbed by facing their fears.
And she knew how to bring them there.
She was the one Teacher on Prison Planetoid 3 who had a consistent success rate with pedophiles. Either repugnance or lack of skill kept most Teachers from getting the job done, while Jaguar used her highly developed talents in the empathic arts to bring these men to the deepest part of their shadowed selves. Alex, her supervisor and a good enough empath that he ought to know better, was always nagging her about the danger of getting shadow sickness from such contact, but Jaguar found she’d get nowhere without it. Other techniques were totally ineffective. Even the newer meds shifted only their chemistry, but not their souls.
Jaguar wanted to shift their souls. She intoned the ritual words that would begin to do so with this prisoner.
“See who you are,” she said, “Be what you see.”
She reached for him, her sea-green eyes holding him still. The air in the room grew thick with the low hum of human energy in motion.
Then, a voice called her name.
From somewhere clear as a night emptied of stars, a child’s voice called her.
Jaguar.
She went still, her focus dissipated.
Jaguar. We need you.
“Who is it?” she whispered.
Hurry Jaguar. We’re waiting for you.
“Where?” she sent back.
No answer. Laughter ran through her. Near the bookshelves that lined her living room wall she saw motion, small and quick, like a darting hummingbird. A book shook itself loose and fell to the floor. Her eyes were sharp enough to read the title on the spine.
The Etiquette of Vampires, by Lale Davidson.
Her prisoner blinked, saw his opportunity and lunged for her. And for the next few minutes she was too busy with her job to think of anything else.
Chapter 1
“Taking up a new hobby?” Alex asked, picking up a book from the coffee table in Jaguar’s living room.
On top of the book, The Etiquette of Vampires, was a disc titled Vampires of the World.
Jaguar, who was bringing a tray with honey and cups of tea from the kitchen to the living room, stopped and scanned all six feet and one inch of him, from his thick dark hair to his good black shoes. Then she brought her glance up to stay with his angular face and coal dark eyes. Alex, accustomed to her occasional need to visually frisk him for weapons, waited it out.
“Know anything about vampires?” she asked.
“That depends,” he said.
“On what?”
“On what kind you mean. The Draculas, the Japanese river creatures, the lamia. Or maybe you mean the twenty-first century romantic version?”
“Not those,” she said, and she moved toward the coffee table with her burden. “There’s no glitter in the beast, if you ask me.”
“Okay, then. Maybe the Windigo—or the Greenkeepers, as they’re called.”
Jaguar set the tray down on the coffee table and curled herself into a chair, inviting Alex to take the couch. “Apparently you do know something about them,” she said as he sat.
He tossed the book on the table between them. “I like to read, too. Did you get through Davidson yet?”
“Some of it. I had a prisoner to deal with.”
“So why are you interested in vampires?” he asked.
She poured honey into her spoon and stirred her tea with it. “Idle curiosity,” she said, and he laughed.
“What’s wrong with that?” she demanded, viewing him over her spoon as she licked the remaining honey off it.
“Nothing, except I don’t believe
