Chapter 1

ANDREA sat up and coughed out a lungful of sand. The man crouched beside her scrambled up and away, as if she had—imagine it!—come to life.

"Holy shit!" he cried. "I thought you were a corpse!"

She coughed out more sand, cursing herself. She'd been so moody last night, instead of finding a decent alley to skulk in or a flophouse to cower in, she'd just burrowed into the beach sand like a big old worm, and waited for sunset.

Except this idiot found her before she could rise.

"Did—" Cough, hack. "—you call—" Hack-hack. "—anybody?"

"Well, yeah," he said, sounding weirdly apologetic. "I mean, I was running down the beach here—I've just gotta get down to two-twenty-five, y'know, and lay off the Cheez E Brats—anyway, I was running and tripped over something, and I thought it was a piece of driftwood but it was your foot, so I started to unbury you and then I couldn't find a pulse so I called the cops on my cell phone. You didn't look, y'know, grody or anything. In fact, for a corpse, you looked pretty good."

He's an idiot. Perfect. She finished coughing. It was amazing—even if you didn't have to breathe, sand got everywhere. Every time she moved, more of it trickled into her underpants. "How long ago did you call?"

"Uh . . . coupla minutes . . . look, are you sure you're all right? The sun's just about down, and it's getting kinda chilly, even for June—"

"The sun set," she said, wiping her mouth with her forearm, then grimacing at the way the sand stuck to her lips—worse than ChapStick!—"at seven fifty-six P.M. It's technically dark."

"Well, uh, okay, but—"

"So I have time for a snack before the authorities arrive."

"Okay. Like, um, you want an Orange Julius or something? My treat."

"I know." She leaned toward him—easy enough, he was hovering over her like a—heh, heh—grave robber—and grabbed him. He was wearing a tan t-shirt and green swimming trunks and beach shoes; the t-shirt shredded under her preternatural strength, the beach shoes went flying, and then she sank her fangs into his jugular.

"Ow! Hey!" Outraged, his big hands came up to push her away. "That's—are you fucking biting me? That's so weird! And kinky! Now cut it out! Ahhhh. No, I mean it . . . stop. Don't! Don't stop!" He grabbed her head, she hung on like a leech, and they grappled in the sand for a few seconds. She could feel his throat working beneath her lips as he babbled. "Seriously, this is so bogus! I save a dead chick—sort of—and she chews on me? You just wait 'til the cops get here, chickie, they'll, like, commit you or something. Ha!"

She broke away—something she had never done before; in fact, as early as a year ago, she wouldn't have been able to break off until her thirst had been satisfied—and said, trying not to whine, "Are you going to talk through this whole thing?"

"What, I'm supposed to sit here and think about England?"

"They usually start screaming about now, and then they faint."

"Well, forget it." He jerked a thumb at himself. "Daniel Harris don't faint, baby. No matter how much you chew on him!"

She stared at him. "Daniel Harris?"

"Yup. And I don't scream, either, except for that one time I saw a really grody spider fall into the toilet when I was taking a whiz, talk about a shocker! I didn't know pee could—y'know—crawl back up if you were surprised, but I'm here to tell you—"

"Daniel Harris, St. Olaf college?"

Copyright © 2004 by Laurell K. Hamilton