I'm a Vampire for Real

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I’m a Vampire...For Real Copyright © 2005 Jackie Rose ISBN: 1-55410-595-7 Cover art and design by Marti ne Jardin

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. Published by eXtasy Books, a division of Zumaya Publications, 2005 Look for us online at: www.zumayapublications.com www.extasybooks.com

Dedication:

To the city that will not die…and if we believe our fantasy writers, many of its inhabitants won’t, either. Anne Rice, Christine Feehan and Nora Roberts all made that hauntingly clear when they chose it as the setting for unforgettable erotic romances like ‘Interview With the Vampire’, ‘Dark Magic’ and

‘Midnight Bayou’. That’s why I’m especially proud of the humorous but heartfelt tribute I paid to New Orleans when I wrote this book, months before the hurricane knocked the city down…but by no means out. Even if it were not coming triumphantly back to life again, it would still live forever in the hearts of all those who love erotic fantasy romanc e.

Book One:

I’m a Vampi

re…f

or Real

Chapter One

bove the stainless steel coffee urn on the Corian kitchen counter, a hand-printed sign read, “Your slave does not work here, so clean up after yourself. And even if he/she does, clean up anyway.” There was plenty of food to clean up after. The guests had covered the kitchen table with plastic platters of sub sandwiches (made by genuine subs), pasta salad, green salad, a green bean casserole made with canned mushroom soup, a cheese tray featuring low-fat brie and havarti, another tray of raw broccoli and cauliflower with sour-cream dip, a Jell-O mold with miniature marshmallows and Nestlé’s ready-to-bake holiday cookies topped with red and white hardcandy hearts, which had been carefully hoarded since Valentine’s Day three months ago. A bucket of Colonel Casey’s fried chicken held the central place of honor. Even as they happily filled their Styrofoam plates, the diners automatically stood aside to make room for the hostess when she strode into the kitchen. After all, she was the one who had purchased all the cages, chains, whipping posts and other toys that were needed to

turn her adjoining wood-paneled rec room into a dungeon where they could fulfill their darkest, most secret desires, before breaking for the pot-luck dinner. Dominants and submissives alike, they jumped aside as she struck the refrigerator with her short furry flogger, then put her hands on her the hips of her shiny black bustier and spread her matching boots wide apart. “Are those salads strictly vegetarian?” the Domme demanded. “No ham in the green bean casserole?” “Of course not, Mistress Legree,” answered her sub of two weeks’ standing, a young lady in black jeans and lipstick that matched her chopped-off, spiked-up hair. She already knew that Jennie Jenkins preferred being addressed by her title, even in informal gatherings, since she was rather eccentric that way. But being fairly new there, the Gothic girl decided to hazard a joke. “We don’t want even a taste of your fur flogger.” The others winced in advance. They knew what the hostess’ reaction would be, even before the implement hit the fridge again. Its eight (fake) ten-inch tails produced an even louder thud this time. “Fur, Gloria?” the dominatrix demanded, her blue eyes flashing as she tossed back her straight blond ponytail. Her lips grew thinner than ever, until they were a sharp red slash in her long, pale face. “Well, perhaps from a rabbit that had died of old age,”

the Goth girl explained feebly. She bit her lip nervously while trying hard to avoid hitting the small ruby that she had recently implanted there, giving her words a slight slur. “That would still set a bad example,” the Domme snapped back. “My whips are made of rope, my boots are vinyl and my flogger is nylon. I’ll have no animal cruelty here! We see enough of that in our lifestyle, where some even use whips that were made from murdered deer.” If she had not been such a stern mistress, Mistress Legree would obviously have burst into tears at the thought of those poor dead animals. The sight of her weeping would have made her guests just as uncomfortable as her Montessori kindergartners had been, when one of them had made the mistake of bringing his father’s mounted butterflies to show her and she had fled the classroom into tears. “Shucks, maybe I shouldn’t have brought that fried chicken,” a cowboy muttered from under his Stetson hat. Since he had recently arrived from New Jersey, the ‘shucks’ did not sound completely natural, but he was obviously making the effort. In his erotic fiction reading, he had noted that ‘Western’ was rapidly becoming a virtual synonym for BDSM. “Colonel Casey has promised more humane

treatment,” she assured him. “That’s why I did not throw out those pieces of dead birds.” Naturally, she herself ate only the strictly vegan options and her sub followed her lead without even being commanded to do so. The Domme often thought, though, that she caught the girl casting longing glances at the fried chicken even while she bit into the vegetable sub sandwich with every sign of delight. Colonel Casey was, she admitted, producing an aroma that no fried tofu could match. In the past, she had tried banning the animal entrees, only to learn, to her dismay, that her followers were adjourning to MacGregor’s Hamburger Restaurant after a night in her dungeon. If they insisted on consuming dead animals, it was better to have them doing it here, where she had some control and could at least protect her fellow mammals. “Mistress Legree is active in PUMA,” her selfproclaimed slave girl told the cowboy. The others nodded in respect to People United for Mercy to Animals. “They do very fine work,” her mistress assured them. “They are doing a lot for the vampires. Those poor creatures were virtually forced to drink the blood of helpless animals, since they had agreed to bite humans on a strictly consensual basis only. “But PUMA is buying them the finest supplies, from

writers who would otherwise have to depend on ebook sales. That makes it an act of mercy all around.” The others nodded dutifully. “And so many vampires and e-book authors depend on them,” she went on. “They may be our two fastestgrowing minority groups.” “And everyone knows how hot those vampires are.” Fearing that she had made another mistake, in the form of a sexual stereotype, Gloria glanced anxiously at her mistress. To her great relief, she saw the blond ponytail nodding agreement. “That’s in all the books, and not just those sexy stories that are published on the Internet,” Mistress Legree agreed. Her expression became dreamlike as she recalled, “Floggers, chains, cages…threesomes, foursomes, eleven-somes and even…” She glanced around, obviously feeling that she was on the very verge of going beyond the pale, as she lowered her voice close to a whisper…”even male-on-female duets!” In a more practical tone, she continued, “We should try to invite some vampires here…especially since they won’t be looking for animal blood. Why, some of them may be too kinky even for us!” Coming from this mistress of the cruelty-free fake-fur flogger, this was praise indeed. “But how can we do that?” the cowboy asked. “We

can’t just put ads in the paper.” “No, indeed,” the Domme replied, with a cruel, thinlipped smile…which was, in fact, the only kind she ever used. “We can answer some of the ads instead.” The evil grin spread to her cold blue eyes as she added, “The Fairfax Romanian is such a wonderful little weekly, with articles in both Romanian and English. And it’s just filled with ads for vampire realtors, hairdressers and everything else you can think of.” “But not all Romanian immigrants are vampires,” Gloria pointed out shyly. This time, she jumped even before the faux fur struck the automatic icemaker. “In fact, most of them are regular humans.” “Of course they are!” her mistress snarled, throu gh gritted te eth. “That’s why we will look for the ads that say ‘Evening Hours Only’.” **** But this course was fraught with peril. The first two Realtors they contacted proved to be among the UNundead, as they silently demonstrated by wearing silver crosses. When Mistress Legree (in her Jennie Jenkins mode) told them, in obviously disappointed

tones, that she was still interviewing, the Realtors shared her dejection. “You want a vampire, don’t you?” said the lady she had found from an ad entitled “List with Leontina.” With a sigh, the rejected Realtor gathered up her sheaf of references from the coffee table and replaced them in her lizard briefcase. “All of you Americans seem to.” “If you are not a vampire, why do you advertise evening hours only?” “Because I have children to watch during the day, before my husband comes home.” This left Mistress Legree feeling guilty enough to reply in defensive tones, “Well, whatever I want, it is not someone who carries around a poor dead reptile.” Opening her mouth in indignation, Leontina quickly shut it again. “But I can refer you to a very nice undead lady,” she said. There was no need to add that she expected that lady to do her a favor in return, such as passing along a client who felt uncomfortable around vampires. Leaning forward in a confiding way, the Realtor went on. “She was a bride of Count Victor Vyrdelek, the Ambassador from Romania, before he married that American girl. “And you need not look surprised at that. Being a vampire’s bride does not mean that she is married to

him…even though the INS is accepting that relationship as the basis for immigration. From what I hear, he is a real old-fashioned vampire master, too. The only modern woman who could put up with him for long is a liberated American girl who doesn’t have to.” Her listener nodded in agreement. It made perfect sense to her. Despite all the third-world refugees who were now seeking work in America, she would never have taken a slave girl who had really been a real life, you know, slave. **** As soon as she invited ‘Crina, the Golden Girl’ into her home, Mistress Legree knew that she was the real McCoy (or, in this case, Mironescu). For one thing, she obviously had to invite her, or the poor woman would have had to wait on the stoop all night. This was obvious from the way she stood as close as possible to the doorway, without setting the pointed toe of one shiny black pump over the threshold. The shoe was obviously vinyl, as the mistress noted approvingly. This meant that this Ms. Vyrdelek was either very compassionate, which would be very good,

or else very eager to please a prospective client, which could be even better. Even the business card that she proffered did not cross over that barrier. What’s more, her expert makeup job seemed to have been applied by a skilled mortician. The rouge, lipstick and eye shadow were just a touch too bright, as if intended to hide the deathly pallor on her round little face. That pale complexion seemed even more pronounced in contrast to the navy suit. Clinique now had vampire specialists at the larger cosmetics counters, like the ones at Tysons Corner, but even they could not make their clients look completely human. Still, Mistress Legree was glad they were getting the extra business, because they did not test their products on animals. “Please come in,” she said, with her least menacing smile. In consideration of her guest, she had made herself as un-threatening as possible, by wearing a flowered dress instead of her usual vinyl garb. That outfit, she assured herself, would have frightened off even a vampire master. The Realtor gratefully thrust her card through the entrance and walked in after it. The Twenty-First Century Golden logo was followed by larger gilt letters proclaiming the bearer to be ‘Crina the Golden Girl’. The photo carried out the theme, showing her shoulder-length pale gold tresses falling over her navy blazer. A glittery lip-gloss added gilded

highlights to her Cupid’s-bow lips, which were set in a dazzling smile that completely covered her pointed teeth. The message gave a more practical explanation for the title: “Member, Golden Sales Club, for $1 million worth of real estate sold.” At the very bottom of the card, the hostess read the ultimate credential: “Romanian and English spoken. Evening hours only.” And that, she thought, in addition to the lady’s appearance, might just as well have spelled out, ‘I’m a Vampire-for Real.’ And for real estate, too. “This is very impressive,” Mistress Legree said, deciding that she would keep the card on hand, in case she ever really did need a Realtor. “And I made all the sales during my very first year in the business,” the vampire proclaimed proudly. “Of course, some of it was in Romania.” She smiled in a way that was meant to be engaging. It somehow proved to be more frightening than anything even Mistress Legree could have managed on her worst night, partly because, like most Dommes, she herself did not have pointed teeth. “I would hate to say how many trillions that would be in American currency.” “So you won a Golden prize from the Golden agency. And in your first year...” For a moment, the prospective client wondered if that meant her first year

as a vampire, then decided that that was not the kind of endorsement that anyone would have printed on a business card. “Your first year as a Realtor,” she quickly continued. “And that’s how you got your name.” “Not entirely,” Crina answered, as she seated herself on the black vinyl sofa and pulled her skirt down to cover her unsurprisingly bony white knees. “My agency, Twenty-First Century Golden, is part of the Twenty-First Century Real Estate franchise. It gives the Silver, Gold, Pearl and Diamond sales prizes. The ‘Golden Girl’ comes from our franchise owner, Sylvia Golden. So it is a very nice coincidence.” Mistress Legree bit her lip, in an obvious effort to keep from asking the next question. Noting her gesture, Crina smiled even more broadly as she said, “In case you were wondering, Sylvia Golden is indeed Tiffany Golden’s aunt. I still call her Tiffany Golden, although she is now Countess Vyrdelek and the Ambassadress of Romania.” Even the dominatrix was started, as the Realtor’s eyes flashed a bright vampiric red with jealous rage. Then the blue color returned to them as the smile rejoined her lips. “But I am a licensed Realtor,” she said. “And giving service to my clients is honor enough for me.” It was almost as unconvincing as it always sounded when a mortal Realtor said it. The hostess must have

shown her disbelief, because Crina went on, “I was already in what you would call a service profession two hundred years ago. I was a governess.” At that word, Mistress Legree’s eyes lit up. The vampire went confidently on, “I taught the children of a British earl who had invited the count to his castle. My English has gotten rusty since then, of course… and I did not learn all these useful new words like Realtor and fixer-upper and location…but I still remember those days very well.” Had she been able to blush, she would obviously have done so as she added, “The countess and her daughters were all trying to attract him, but he only had eyes for me.” And fangs, too, the hostess thought briefly. Then her mind returned to the really intriguing word. For anyone in the BDSM lifestyle, it was the most thrilling of all. “You were a governess!” she exclaimed, as visions of paddles, canes and switches danced in her head. A vampire and a governess? Was there no end to the forbidden pleasures she could show? What’s more, those tools of the governess trade were all made of wood, Mistress Legree thought happily. She’d have no need to worry about her protégé bringing in a leather flogger or strap by mistake. “A good Realtor is always a teacher, too…or as you

would say, a governess.” The Golden Girl leaned forward eagerly, pressing what she thought was her advantage and bringing an expensive whiff of Shalimar. “I can teach you how to prepare your home for showing and what to look for when you are buying your next one.” “And if people do not learn quickly enough,” the dominatrix answered, her eyes gleaming blue again, “then I am sure you have special incentives for them.” For a moment, the Realtor seemed to be drawing back in confusion. Then she triumphantly replied, “Of course there are incentives! The longer the house stays on the market, the lower the price will be.” “Price?” Jennie Jenkins asked dubiously, since she had been thinking more along the lines of an incentive that was provided by paddles and things. “But it is too early to talk about price now,” Crina went on, waving the thought away with one plump white hand and its moderately long pink nail. “Let me see how many bedrooms and baths you have.” “The house is big enough to entertain my many friends. I know they would like to meet you,” the owner replied, as she led her guest upstairs to view the four bedrooms and three baths (including a master suite). “And I would love to meet them, too,” Crina enthusiastically replied. “They are our most likely

buyers. And do you have a finished basementrecreation room?” “Absolutely! With its own attached kitchen. And another bath, of course. Well, it’s really a powder room, like the one next to the front door, because it doesn’t have a bathtub,” she explained, as she led the Realtor down the stairs, “but it is very convenient to the rec room.” Looking around the wood-paneled chamber, the Realtor quickly proclaimed that it would show beautifully, especially with all those antique chains draped on the wall. “We will say it has a rough and rugged appeal, like a British manor house.” Fervently, the owner agreed, “It certainly has that!” As BDSM code words went, ‘ British’ was almost right up there with ‘governess’ and ‘vampire’. It was still far ahead of ‘Western’.

Chapter Two

obby Pearl was waiting patiently, with both paws on the wheel of Crina’s silver Lexus. That is to say, they would be paws in a few hours’ time. At present they simply looked that way, thanks to their light covering of wiry blond hairs. They matched the crew cut that was shot with grey, in startling contrast to his pink, boyish face. The gap between his front teeth would disappear at about the same time his hands did. That was, he thought, a distinct advantage to his were-beast form even if women did not seem to agree with him. They kept explaining that the gap made him look so boyish. Unlike most of his peers, he would find the transformation taking place at daybreak. Thanks to the researchers in the George Mason University paranormal medicine department, he was a human at night and a werewolf during the day. It was the least they could do for a man who had been accidentally bitten by a Were-Leading-Eye-Dog while training the full-time German shepherds and golden retrievers to serve the vision-impaired. The were-guides had since been organized into an official organization, financed by a generous donation from Mimsy Foha, a yellow-dog Democrat who really was one. No doubt she was trying to equal the achievements of her daughter, Ingrid, a were-Maltese who was also the CEO of People United for Mercy to

Animals, better known as PUMA. As he waited, he recalled how he and Crina had found each other. It had clearly been the hand of providence, acting through the Internet. She had needed a very reliable driver who could work evenings…and who was more reliable than a Leading-Eye Dog who could drive? And no one, as he now knew, needed a reliable driver more than a Realtor, even if she had not, like Crina, been born, died and come back to life about a century before the first motorcar. “As a Realtor, I have a very big, fast and comfortable auto,” she had confided. “That’s because I often take clients across long distances, and I want them to enjoy the ride. But they must be very safe, too.” Leaning forward, she had revealed the full, high bosom above her half-buttoned white silk blouse, in a way that, in a few hours, would have had him baying at the sun. The gesture brought a whiff of her Shalimar perfume, forcing him to utter a silent “Down, boy!” to himself. “Who could be safer than a Were-Leading-Eye Dog?” he had asked, with that gap-toothed grin and soft, slight Southern drawl that women seemed to find so delightful, much to his own surprise. Judging by the way those breasts started heaving, she was no exception.

“And you could protect me from humans, too,” she said, clasping her hands in delight as she stared straight up at him, her head barely reaching his chin as they sat together on her floral chintz sofa. She must have seen the startled glance in his blue eyes. Smiling ruefully, she replied, “I know, it is hard for you to imagine one of us needing protection from them. But,” and she shrugged, in a motion that forced her breasts even higher, “we can only defend ourselves by biting and we can do that only consensually. So we cannot protect ourselves when we are showing a buyer through an empty house. Of course, I take all the usual precautions, by making sure that everyone in the office sees me leaving with him, but there are times when that is not enough.” Since he himself was rather intimidating…with his broad shoulders and powerful, hairy hands… whenever she was alone with a client, now he waited in the car, to avoid frightening the customer away. He was ever alert, though, for her ‘safe sound’…the highpitched whistle he had taught his employer to produce, for his ears alone. She had not yet seen the need to do so, up to and including tonight. Still, he always felt a surge of relief when he saw her plump little body swaying towards him on her high heels, as she was doing now. She

turned and waved to the prospective client as he held open the front car door. “Well, do you think you got her?” he asked. “Not only that!” she enthused. “She has invited me back to meet all her friends. They might want to buy the house.” To his heightened animal senses, there came the faint but unmistakable whiff of bullshit. “Did you read that in her mind?” he asked carefully. “It is not ethical to read a client’s thoughts,” she answered primly. “We learned that from the ethics committee of the AOR. And you know the American Organization of Realtors has been very sympathetic to us and our special needs.” Knowing all about special needs, the were-LearningEye-Dog nodded approvingly. She had no way of knowing how happy her answer had made him. For both their sakes, her ethical st andards were more important to him that she could ever imagine. He was so pleased, in fact, he found it hard to keep shielding his thought from her vampire mind. **** The traditional Tuesday morning sales meeting was

now held Tuesday evening, out of consideration for their vampire specialist. No one would have called her that, of course, because that would have meant accusing her of steering. Realtors had lost their licenses for less serious offenses than leading vampire clients to certain undeadfriendly neighborhoods. But no one imagined she was advertising ‘Romanian spoken’ and ‘Evening hours only’ because she wanted to attract ordinary immigrants who happened to work late. She had earned such preferential treatment. As usual, there was little suspense when Sylvia Golden announced the salesperson-of-the-week. “It’s our Crina Vyrdelek again,” the broker proclaimed, beaming maternally across her desk at the plump, pretty blond, who lowered her head and would certainly have blushed if she had had any blood to do it with. The others applauded dutifully, leaning forward on the folding chairs that stood around Sylvia’s desk. “Surprise, surprise.” Marjorie Cooper did not realize that her lips were forming the words until some of her colleagues glanced towards her with ironical smiles. They did not like competing with the undead dynamo anymore than she did. There was not, Marjorie assured herself once again, any question of prejudice. But a vampire specialist did

have certain advantages. These were obvious from the expensive scent of Crina’s fragrance as it filled the little office. The advantages became even more obvious when the owner broke the ratings down. “Our Marjorie leads for the number of units sold,” Sylvia said. “But Crina is far ahead in sales income.” Marjorie forced herself to smile at the smattering of applause that was directed her way. “It would take a lot of condos to make the kind of money I can get by selling one of those big houses,” Crina said, with a smile that was obviously meant to be consoling. Her rival could barely keep from glaring in response, partly because she did not particularly want a vampire glaring back. Yes, she thought, your clients need big houses, with cellars for their coffins. A condo would hardly suit them. Which means that I work a lot harder and longer than you do, just to make ends meet. She dismissed the thought that Crina would undoubtedly have worked even longer hours, as immigrants tended to do, if she were not afraid of bursting into flame the moment the sun came out. Those vampires were not usually shopping for fixeruppers, Marjorie thought bitterly. No, they went for luxury homes. Many had started out as American tourists, who had wandered into Romanian castles, where they would not have been invited in the first

place if they had not had money to spend. And they had been sired, or dame-d, by the castle masters and mistresses, who were pretty well off themselves. And then, of course, Marjorie thought with added bitterness, their Golden Girl also had all those clients with Veterans Administration home loan guarantees. While many Realtors served veterans of World War II, Korea and the Gulf War, the vampire’s clientele also included those who had fought at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and the Alamo. More would soon be joining them. Vampires were now permitted to enlist in the Armed Forces more-or-less openly, under the new policy sponsored by the first openly undead congressman, George Zagorsky: ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Bite’. This change had naturally won the support of the new ultra-exclusive branch of the Daughters of the American Revolution, reserved for those who really were. As extra frosting on the cake-or on the jugular vein, in her case-Crina was also a former bride, if not wife, of Count Victor Vyrdelek, now the Romanian ambassador. He steered some of the diplomatic staff her way. Even more important, the relationship gave her that upscale image that Realtors needed to attract the carriage trade-or, alternatively, the hearse trade-by silently telling them, “I am one of you.” On that basis,

she even won some clients who were able to sit in a sunroom while the sun was actually shining. Lost in her bitter thoughts, Marjorie almost missed the broker’s final words, which were usually the signal to go forth and sell some more. “And don’t forget listings,” Sylvia said, wiggling her finger at them. “Listings are just as important as sales.” Her agents nodded, knowing that, once they had convinced the seller to list the property with them, they would get a share of the proceeds no matter who actually sold the house. Seeing the others rising at these words, Marjorie started to do the same. They all slumped back in their chairs, when the broker told them that she had something more to say. “I have a warning here from the AOR,” she said. “An agent in California lost her license for telling a buyer that a property was near a Catholic church. The buyer had asked about it, but that didn’t matter. The agent was still guilty of steering clients to the neighborhood on a religious basis. And,” she added, even more indignantly, “It didn’t even matter that the buyer was really a ‘tester,’ sent by a civil rights group.” A collective shudder went through the group, at the mention of the creatures who caused them more terror than vampires, werewolves and even ‘For Sale By Owner’ signs, combined. If anyone could have driven

a stake through a tester’s heart, they would have done it cheerfully. “So what do we do if a buyer asks us whether there is a church, synagogue or mosque nearby?” she asked sternly, peering over her glasses like the schoolteacher she had been before retiring from the school system. “We show them the page in a road atlas and tell them the churches are marked there,” Marjorie answered promptly. “But of course, my clients are not likely to ask me about churches,” Crina answer ed, and the o thers tittered appreciatively. You can be afford to be a good sport, Marjorie thought, unsmiling, when you are the top producer due to your particular-and peculiarclientele. **** Actually, the Golden Girl’s driver suspected that some of her UN-undead clients were pretty strange, too. “This Ms. Jenkins must be a very kind lady,” she told him, on the way to the prospect’s home. “She has a whole assortment of dog cages in the basement, so she can care for strays. The dogs were up in the bedroom, though. Perhaps she was afraid they would get lonely

in the cellar.” That took a moment to register, but not much longer. “Crina,” he said, his blue eyes narrowing, “I would like to go with you tonight.” “But why should you do that?” “Well, for one thing, if they are so happy to have a vampire at their party, they would also enjoy a werewolf.” “A were-LeadingEye-Dog,” she corrected him. “And that is a wonderful idea, because Ms. Jenkins is a lover of all animals. You can tell that from the cages.” She was surprised when he frowned at that. **** Whatever the cages normally held, they were empty as the homeowner, still in her floral day dress, led her two new guests to the basement. Ten others were waiting for them. Their folding chairs had been placed around an antique wooden chest, a brocade armchair and a standing floor lamp, arranged on a Persian rug. The light had been carefully regulated to shine down on the furniture grouping while fading out at the

spectators’ feet. Heavy incense filled the air, no doubt to drown out the more homey fragrance of fried chicken coming from the kitchen. We’ll have to take that rug out of here, the Realtor thought, because a shopper might slip on it and sue us both. Besides, that slate floor is a selling feature. The wooden chest is a nice touch, too, and that standing lamp shows it off to good advantage. Then she found herself wondering why all the other guests were gathered around those two furnishings. Clearly, they were waiting for some kind of show, in an atmosphere that was really pretty creepy, even by the naturally tolerant standards of the living dead. What’s more, she had the sinking feeling that she was supposed to provide it. The performance began when the homeowner stepped out of her frock to reveal something that might have been a bikini bathing suit-except that, first, it was made of shiny black vinyl and, second, the house did not boast a swimming pool. As her smile turned into an angry sneer, she reached into the carved box to produce something that looked like an eight-stranded whip, made of knotted rope. “Welcome, vampire and governess,” she exclaimed, in ringing, menacing tones. Her voice turned gentler, as she went on, “and welcome, Were-Leading-Eye-dog, who does so much to help us unworthy humans.”

“Of course, I am here as a Realtor,” Crina responded uncertainly, wondering what would happen if she tried to back out the door. Long before she could make up her mind, she was stopped by the realization that she would be retreating from a really fine listing opportunity if she did so. “Governess!” the owner cried again, as she struck her whip for emphasis against an empty chair, strategically placed near her hand for that very purpose. “And we have brought your costume.” On that cue, a man who seemed to be wearing his own costume, in the form of a Stetson hat with cowboy boots reached into the box and pulled out a floorlength dark-grey skirt. It flared into a stiff circle as it emerged from its hiding place, thanks to the three starched petticoats sewn inside. “That is just the kind of dress I wore when I was young,” Crina exclaimed. “How kind of you to bring it to me.” It was also rather surprising, although not completely. Some clients had hinted that they would like to see her in her filmy white vampire’s gown, and she had one on hand just for those cases. If this home seller wanted instead to see her dressed in the fashions of two hundred years gone by and was willing to provide them, she was not going to argue. Considering what a good listing this was, she would

not have objected if the seller had handed her a chicken suit. She stepped into the Victorian garment as quickly as she could, so she could get back to winning her listing. And then I’ll get the Hell out of here, she thought. Glancing at her escort, she realized he felt even more than that. He seemed, in fact, on the very verge of dragging her out of there. Her thoughts were interrupted by the hostess’ snarling tone. “I am Mistress Legree!” she said. “And you are a vampire and a governess. And here is your pupil now!” At that cue a door opened, and a young girl stood outlined by the brighter light in the powder room. She was dressed in a frilly frock from the same period as Crina herself, although the effect was rather ruined by her spiked-up short black hair. “Are we playing charades?” the Realtor asked uncertainly. “I was always good at those.” “Ha ha ha!” the hostess answered, throwing back her head in imitation laughter. The other guests did the same. “No, you are acting out a little scene for us,” the homeowner informed her, in ringing tones. “Your pupil has been a very naughty girl. Look how she got her hair cut. What will you do to her now?”

“Tell her that it is not very attractive,” Crina replied, trying to show more confidence than she felt, and wondering how she had ever gotten roped into amateur theatricals. “And then tell her how long it will take to grow out again. Then we can get back to our lessons, because her hair is really none of my business.” “Wrong!” the Domme shouted. “You do not have to pretend with us. We know how you governesses love to punish your charges…and you vampires enjoy it even more. Sit down!” The terrified disciplinarian did so, while casting anxious glances at her escort. “Won’t we be late for our next appointment?” he asked, in tones that told her clearly that, if she agreed that they would be, he would drag her out of that madhouse even if he had to fight off all eleven of them to do it. Since he was, after all, a were-beast, the odds were on his side. Then she thought of the four bedrooms, three baths, two powder rooms and finished basement with full kitchen and half-acre lot, all located near the metro station in a good neighborhood (although, of course, she could never have told the buyer that last fact). She had not, she realized, become the office salesperson-ofthe-year by being timid in the face of eccentric sellers, most definitely including vampire buffs.

“No, we still have some time,” she answered. “But I was never that kind of governess.” With some pride, she tilted up her round little chin as she answered, “I always taught refined young ladies with a real love of knowledge.” “And sometimes I am sure they had to learn it from the Board of Education!” “We had no such thing in my day,” Crina objected feebly. “And I never taught in the public charity schools.” She broke off suddenly as the cowboy leaned down to take another item from the chest…namely, a wooden paddle. As he thrust it into her hand, she realized with a sinking (if unbeating) heart, exactly what kind of board the hostess had had in mind. “It is made from recycled wood,” Mistress Legree assured her. “No animal habitats were harmed.” “Do not punish me, vampire governess,” wailed the would-be turn-of-the-nineteenth-century young lady. “All right, I won’t,” Crina replied with some relief. “Now, shall we conjugate some French verbs?” A sigh of disappointment swept across the spectators. The girl glared at her in such indignation that Crina shrank back, fearing that the youthful brunette would pull the paddle out of her hand and hit her over the head with it. Fortunately, her student chose to stay in character instead.

As though Crina had not spoken, the girl pushed her into a chair, draped herself over her lap and pulled her gown to her waist, revealing white lace panties. The audience gasped in happy anticipation. For a moment she was a governess again as she came close to pointing out that panties were not worn until the latter part of the century: the girl’s behind would have been bare. She stopped herself from saying so just in time, realizing that she was in enough trouble as it was. Losing the listing was not her only problem, although during her stellar first year as a Realtor, she had learned to always regard it as a very serious one. Who knew what they would do to her, if she failed to provide the kind of personal service they wished. It obviously had nothing to do with getting Bobby to put up her ‘House For Sale’ signs on their front lawns, as he did for her more conventional clientele. For the first time, she wondered uneasily if the cages were intended for stray animals, after all. Then she wondered how they would be filled if she disappointed the lady who owned them. Now she would not have dared to read the lady’s thoughts even if it had been ethical, for fear that she herself might be planting some that had not been there before. It was not all that hard to guess what the guests were thinking. Their eyes fairly glowed with anticipation as

they leaned towards her. She glanced, in turn, towards her driver, to make sure he was still there. “You have been a very naughty girl,” she said dismally, and gingerly tapped the eagerly wriggling bottom, hoping that her victim would respond in character. Instead, the girl turned her head to glare up angrily. “You are supposed to hit me really hard!” she demanded, in an angry hiss. Summoning all her strength…along with the image of the seller’s name on the contract…she raised the paddle high over her head and brought it down with a resounding smack. “Ow!” the girl cried, over the audience cheers. “Oh, please, governess, I promise I’ll be good from now on. Please do not hit me again!” “Very well, I won’t,” she responded, in great relief. “Now let’s get back to our French lesson.” “Ow! Ow! Please do not hit me a third time!” Obviously she was so caught up in her student role, she failed to realize that the governess had not even failed to land a second blow. “All right, since you are obviously sorry, I won’t.” “But you have to,” her victim insisted, through gritted teeth, insistently waving her slippered feet. “You are the governess. And if you need to know what your motivation is, I am the naughty student. I am a very,

very bad girl. A spoiled brat, in fact.” “I don’t seem to remember that term being used at that time.” Lowering her voice, Gloria inquired with great exasperation, “Don’t you know that ‘spoiled brat’ is BDSM code, if you are talking about anyone who is over ten years old? It means she is practically wearing a sign that says ‘Spank Me’. Haven’t you even read about the lifestyle?” “I don’t even know why I am supposed to want to hit you!” “Well, let’s see. I used to go to acting class and I learned about motivation…” It was easy to see that she was thinking hard before she announced triumphantly, “We’ll say I stole the money you were planning to send home to your poor old parents.” “I would just tell your mother.” The self-proclaimed spoiled brat had to think about that for a moment. “All right, then,” she finally said. “Let’s say you spent all day washing your clothes and I threw them all in the mud.” “In the eighteen hundreds? A laundress would have done the washing in any home with a governess,” she replied, with some authority. “Then I kicked your pet cat.” “Gloria!” her mistress shouted. “There are some limits

to obscenity, after all.” “Very well, then. Let’s say I tore up all your books.” “Let’s say you did not!” Crina retorted, standing up so suddenly that the girl tumbled to the floor. “I am not here for amateur theatricals.” “What does that mean, governess?” Gloria asked. Once again, Crina resisted the opportunity to tell her that educated people in the early nineteenth century knew about amateur theatricals perfectly well. This was no time to get off topic. “I am not your governess!” she exclaimed. “I have not been a governess for two centuries, and when I was I did not behave that way. Now I am a Realtor, and I would like to ask if anyone has a house to sell. If so, I will be glad to come visit it…with my driver, of course. If not, I had better go.” The spectators gasped again, in sheer outrage this time. “You refused to paddle me publicly!” her victim wailed, really weeping now. “I have never been so humiliated in my life. You can go as soon as you like, and leave your costume here.” “It is not that you are a poor actress,” Crina assured her in a comforting tone, wondering if she could still save the day…or the night…or the listing, at any rate. “But I really do not know how to play this kind of scene.”

“Gloria is not an actress at all,” her mistress put in. “She is a paralegal. But what kind of vampire governess are you? Normally I would never tell anyone to play a scene without giving them time to rehearse, but for someone like you it should have come naturally.” “The only thing that comes naturally to me,” she wailed, “is trying to sell your house at a profit.” “I am not really planning to sell my home,” the owner retorted. At those words, Crina’s fears instantly vanished. For a Realtor, they carried about as much conviction as a bodice-ripper heroine saying, “I would rather die than submit to your filthy desires.” Eagerly, the Realtor waited for her next cue, which was not long in coming. “Besides,” Mistress Legree added, with a shrug, “How much money could I get for this old place anyway, three hundred thousand? That’s more than twice what we paid for it.” Letting the long skirt fall unheeded to her toes, Crina pulled herself straight to her full five feet six inches as she responded, “Twice what you paid for it? You could get that much by selling it yourself. If I can’t get you five hundred thousand in this location, with an address in Vienna, Virginia, so close to the Metro station, with four bedrooms, three baths, two powder rooms and a finished basement with a second kitchen,

all in good condition, then I am in the wrong business.” “It is fifteen years old,” the hostess said dubiously. “I remember that exactly, because it was new when we bought it, right before my husband left me for a personal trainer. Not that I blame him. Now that woman knew about discipline.” “And you have a half acre lot, with all that room for your visitors’ cars…and you must also want it for privacy,” Crina replied tactfully, not wanting to get roped into another of these strange discussions of why privacy was so important…and realizing uneasily that roped was probably the right word. “What’s more, it’s that nice Colonial design that always stays in style,” she raced on. “I saw that you had refurbished the main kitchen completely with Corian counters and white appliances. Everyone likes those, too.” “The dungeon implements can stay with the house,” the owner responded eagerly. “I mean, the chains and cages and all.” “The chains will convey,” Crina said thoughtfully. “Not every buyer will want to use them, of course, but they do add to the decor. But they will all like the paneled walls in the basement, and the attached kitchen and powder room.” “Speaking of kitchens,” Mistress Legree answered

brightly, returning to her Jennie Jenkins tone. “Why don’t we go there right now for refreshments? Gloria made her famous banana bread.” Crina’s erstwhile victim nodded, obviously aware that her mistress was trying to make up for the recent humiliation she had suffered, by not being publicly spanked. Of course,” the hostess added, in a more somber tone, frowning with obvious disapproval, “we will not be drinking the blood of murdered animals…” “I don’t either,” Crina hastily assured her. “Only what we can buy from starving e-book authors.” And the home seller beamed again. She did not seem to notice that Gloria was not smiling at all. In fact, she seemed distinctly annoyed. Again, Crina needed no mind-reading powers to understand why. Not only was Gloria’s mistress failing to avenge the insult she had suffered, she seemed ready to reward the cause of it, with a listing that would bring a Realtor five-percent-of-five-hundred-thousand-dollars in commission. Glancing back at her, Crina realized that Gloria was gazing at her the way a, well, vampire stared at a victim, when about to strike. Her mistress must have seen the same thing. “Gloria, you must not be angry,” she said, in a tone of command.

“I am just a slave,” the girl answered hastily. “I cannot be angry at free people, especially your guests.” “Well, remember that.” “Yes, mistress. And…” her voice told them clearly how eager she was to please. “A girl also has a house to sell. May a girl use the same Realtor as her mistress?” “What girl? Is she here tonight?” Hastily, the mistress explained that Gloria was talking about herself in the third person that way to show that she had advanced from mere total submission to full slave-girl mode. From now on, in fact, she would be thinking of her name as starting with a small ‘g’. Crina nodded as though she completely understood. As a governess, she had taught her students that Americans called slavery the “peculiar institution.” This version was very peculiar indeed. For one thing, based on all she had heard, that nice Mr. Jefferson had called his Sally Hemings “Sally,” with a capital letter and a last name besides. Still, Crina quickly decided, a girl could call herself Queen Marie of Romania, as long she listed her house with the Golden Girl. Anyway, spelling gloria with a small ‘g’ was probably no more surprising to most people than spelling her own title with a capital ‘R’. As she was always explaining, it showed that she was a member of the

American Organization of Realtors. “It’s only a town house, with two bedrooms and one bath,” gloria added hesitantly. “But it is in Falls Church, and that’s right near Vienna.” More eagerly, she went on, “It has a special feature that might please your special clients, though. It is near a cemetery.” “I can certainly mention that to some of our recent immigrants,” Crina replied. There was no need to explain that the ones she meant were those who had been forced to arrive on evening flights. A subtle sound, almost like a growl, made her turn towards her driver. His face was expressionless, although it seemed to her that he was fighting hard to keep it that way. “And, hey, I am sorry for the misunderstanding,” gloria added, with downcast eyes. “I mean, we should not have assumed that you were into BDSM.” “Which stands for…” Crina asked, ever eager to expand her already impressive English vocabulary. “Bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism.” As the immigrant wondered if she wanted to expand her vocabulary that far, gloria’s mistress corrected her. “No, it means bondage, domination, submission and… well, I guess we run into masochism again.” “Or it could be bondage, discipline, submission and masochism,” the cowboy pointed out. “Or maybe ménage.”

To Crina, a ménage sounded like some kind of giant pudding, perhaps with whipped cream on top, but she felt fairly sure it was not. “What about bondage, domination and sub-mission?” gloria asked. “That word might have two letters of its o wn.” “Just as long as it does not stand for meat eating,” Mistress Legree pointed out sternly. Through the entire ensuing discussion, Crina kept up an appreciative smile. She did not really care that much what the letters meant to them…because, as far as she was concerned, ‘SM’ meant ‘sell more’. **** “You must be careful,” he warned her. “I am glad I had you with me,” she answered, turning to smile at him, even though she knew he could not see her. Always, he kept both hands firmly on the wheel and both eyes steadily on the road. “Otherwise, they might have made me into the naughty schoolgirl. The things people believe about vampires! They seem to think we are monsters.” “I was thinking more of your ethical position.”

She turned away uncomfortably at that thought. “I did get started by giving travelers the dark kiss in return for a listing or purchase, back in Transylvania,” she recalled, in a defensive tone. “I would even wear my trailing white vampire gown and whisper things like, ‘Let me give you eternal life with eternal youth plus a tour of my new listings’. “But,” she added hastily, noting his disapproval, “other Realtors will trade a vacation or a free furniture move or something like that, so I do not see the difference. “Besides, as soon as I came to America I started dressing for success, as you say. I soon learned that seeing me in those long, tight gowns might turn the customers on, but it did not make them want to buy… houses, that is.” Unless they specifically asked me to wear them, she silently reminded herself. She shrugged her plump shoulders for emphasis, making her bosom rise as well. Since he still did not seem convinced, she quickly went on, “And I get so much referral business nowadays, I don’t have to provide any incentives at all. Except for a nice fruit bowl, perhaps, after they moved in. “Anyway,” she added, as bitterness crept into her tone along with a thickening accent, “I had to earn my own way after the count decided to marry that American girl...instead of just making her his bride like the four

of us. “The old ways were no longer good enough for him, thanks to Meees Tiffany Golden, so we could not keep being his brides, even if we had been willing to do it. I am just glad that her aunt Sylvia has been so good to me. But you would never tell Sylvia what I said about her, would you? They are related, after all.” “Of course not,” he answered, and she heard a touc h of bitterness in his own tone. “I am your loyal employee, am I not?” Then he briefly parted his sunburned lips again, full but firm, revealing that adorable gap. She felt sure that he was about to add another warning, until, with an obvious effort, he clamped them shut tight again.

Chapter Three

rina’s own home most definitely included a full basement, with enough coffin space for four or five

houseguests, if she ever found time to invite them. It also boasted a brick exterior, three bedrooms and two baths, even though she lived (or at least resided) there alone. They would more than pay for themselves in resale value, especially now that she had converted the second bedroom into her home office, with woodpaneled walls, built-in bookshelves and, of course, computer access. Just as she constantly told her clients, any money you spent on your home was both an investment in your future and a luxury you could enjoy right now. It is true that it was a townhouse…or rather a town home, as she corrected herself, using the proper Realtor-speak for a two- or three-story residence attached to others on either side. But a townhome in McLean was worth as much as a mansion in West Virginia, with ten bedrooms, nine baths and a ballroom. Or, for that matter, she reflected smugly, a castle in Romania. Her smile faded as she remembered that the Romanian Embassy would have sold for a lot more and that someone else was the lady of that particular luxury house. Seated at the Corian (midnight) breakfast bar with her ‘Twenty-First Century Golden’ mug of O Negative before her, Crina glanced quickly around at the other

luxury features. Her good mood returned as she noted the six-burner Viking range, a built-in microwave oven and ceramic tile floor. They were also expensive evidence of her professional success. The kitchen was the best place to put your money, she knew, and she told her clients the same thing. Like all good Realtors, she regarded herself as an educator, too. For that reason, many, like Sylvia Golden, had experience as schoolteachers…although not usually governesses. And Tiffany had led her to Aunt Sylvia, who had become her mentor. Thinking of that, and remembering the five hundred thousand dollar listing she had gotten earlier that week, Crina decided to stop resenting Count Victor’s wife-as-opposed-to bride. “She might be the Countess Vyrdelek and Ambassadress from Romania,” Crina mused, “but I am well on the way to the Pearl sales category. After that I could become the salesperson-of-the-year for Twenty-First Century Golden and perhaps even in the Top Ten for all of Northern Virginia.” Her feelings towards her erstwhile rival grew warmer yet, when she answered her phone and heard a sister vampire on the line. “Tiffany Golden… the Countess Vyrdelek… suggested that I should call you,” the caller began. “She said that you are an undead-American, too.”

Under the circumstances, Crina saw no reason to point out that she was still technically an undead-Romanian and, in any event, hated that stupid, evasive hyphen thing. But, when in America, you did what the Americans did, undead and otherwise. “What sort of home were you looking for?” she asked instead. “A town house, I suppose. And not too far out, I hope, because I work in Washington.” As so many vampires do, Crina thought happily. The government and its contractors cannot discriminate against us in hiring, thanks largely to Rep. Zagorsky again. That means that we want to live near the city, and that means higher home prices and therefore larger commissions for me. No question, afterlife is good. She was only slightly disappointed when the prospective client added, “I live alone, so two bedrooms and one bath are all I need. Plus a finished basement.” “I have a new listing that sounds just right for you,” Crina enthused. “It has a wonderful location, too, in Falls Church, right near McLean. And,” she confided, “If you are living alone, it will be great for your social life, right near a cemetery.” Demonstrating that, like all really great Realtors, she wo uld go that e

xtra mile, she did so literally, by offering to drive her client past the burial ground to show her the distance from the house. It was not as though she were showing her a church, mosque or synagogue, which she could not have done in any case, without suffering a panic attack at the very least and radiation sickness at worst. **** Visions of the national Top Ten awards ceremony were dancing in her head, as she lay in her master bedroom (with adjoining full bath) and snuggled into her warm, reassuring native soil and the one hundred and eighty-count floral print Egyptian cotton sheets beneath it. She could picture herself running up to the stage to accept first prize for sales after her second year in business. It had taken her mentor Sylvia five years to do as well. Her fantasies were so arousing, she found herself stroking herself as she welcomed them. From the Golden level to the Pearl and then the Diamond, she thought, as her hand ran more and more quickly over her lower body and her body writhed in time. Soon her tight blond lower curls went moist with her juices. From the top ten to third place to second to first, for

sales in Northern Virginia. She found herself gasping as she formed the words, even though she had no need to breathe at all. Her gasps turned into strong and steady moaning as she saw her rating climb. From third place to second to first for the nation! As she pictured herself mounting the Hilton Hotel ballroom platform to accept the award, her body exploded into orgasm and then fell back into sensuous sleep. Even before the alarm rang at eight p.m., she was startled awake by her doorbell, shrill and insistent, followed by a fist pounding on the paneled hardwood. If it had been plywood, she thought in alarm, he would have punched straight through it. Pulling on the lace-trimmed white satin negligee that matched her nightgown and stepping into her feathered white mules, she hurried downstairs. Of course, she was careful to look through the spyhole first, because you could never be too careful. Seeing Bobby’s face outside, she opened the door eagerly, before it occurred to her to ask him what he was doing there. She never had the chance, before he pulled her into his arms and kicked the door shut behind him. “I love you,” he snarled, in a harsh voice that was close to a wolf’s growl. “No matter what happens, you’ve got to believe that!” He shook her arms so urgently, she knew his powerful

fingers were leaving dents on the soft white flesh. They would have left bruises, if she had had any working blood vessels to break. Alarmed for a moment, she found herself responding to his urgency. This was no vampire master, willing (if not exactly eager) to add her to his trio of brides. Even less was he a traveler, wary or otherwise, seeking the dark kiss. This was a man who had been with her night after night as a trusted friend and now wanted her as a woman. Well, technically, he was only a man part of the time, but it was the right time. Whether or not she was a woman was questionable too, but she felt every inch a female as her body reached out to him. Not quite ready to say, “I love you, too,” she replied, “And I want you,” as she raised her lips to his. The only thing she regretted, was that he had not given her time to brush her teeth or paint her lips for him. He did not seem to mind, as he pushed her gently backwards to the floral chintz sofa. His jacket had given him a warm leather smell. She could only hope that her vegan client never knew how intoxicating she found that fragrance to be. Again, she had a glimpse of the animal he was by day, when his blue eyes gleamed down at her as his powerful knees pushed aside her soft, willing thighs. Her head was thrown back in rapture, as his firm, full

lips pressed against her throat. This time, she knew that these hard kisses were for their love and pleasure only, not nourishment or power or any of the other motives that vampires usually had. As he thrust himself into her, she heard at last the wolf’s true growl and felt his savagery. Her body responded as it never had before, as she never had imagined that it could…rocking just as urgently beneath his. Her own lower body was even more amazing to her, as it opened and closed just as forcefully, following the rhythm of his thrusting member, pulling him deeper and deeper into her wet depths. Her body rose ever higher to receive them, then fell back ever more violently, as though preparing for the next fierce thrust, coming in harmony with her own. At last he threw his blond head back with a beast’s howl of triumph as she convulsed violently and helpless beneath him, feeling that she herself was half wild beast. She was startled but not surprised when she heard the neighborhood dogs howling in reply. Still, she understood when he fumbled to his feet and told her that he had to go. He would soon be a beast indeed and she would truly be his helpless, silent prey.

He feared that in his passion he would rip her apart, tearing even her heart out and ending her existence, as naturally and inevitably as he had brought her to ecstatic life and unbelievable joy. She could compare it only to the feeling she got from getting the listing for a five million dollar home, and this was even beyond that.

Chapter Four

wo days later, Crina could barely believe that she had ever known such ecstasy. Now was weeping so violently, and her accent had become so pronounced, Tiffany could barely understand her. “You will have to calm down and talk more slowly,” the American girl said. But her caller’s words made no sense, even when she managed to comply. “What do you mean I sent a tester?” the countess demanded. “What was she trying to test?” At last, this term was followed by another one that the former Ms. Golden was much quicker to understand.

“The test for steering, of course,” the vampire wept. Tiffany’s aunt had talked to her often enough about the dangers inherent in steering. Why, Sylvia herself would not have dared to inform her own mother if a house was next door to a synagogue. And for good reason, her niece assured herself, as a lifelong (and deathlong) liberal. How could the Realtor assume that Rachel Golden would not be happier next to a mosque? But this time, a synagogue was not involved, or any other house of worship. Instead, the Realtor had shown a sister vampire a home that was near a cemetery. When she caught the additional words ‘vampire’ and ‘cemetery’, Tiffany’s moral compass made a ninety-degree turn. After all, she now belonged to this particular minority herself. “Why shouldn’t a vampire want to live among other vampires?” she demanded. “I mean, it isn’t a race or religion or marital status or anything like that.” Calmed by this note of sympathy, Crina pointed out with a sniffle that vampires were certainly subject to the new Anti-Discrimination Agency, which had been formed at Rep. Zagorsky’s urging to give the fair housing laws new, well, teeth. Since Rep. Zagorsky had been her own sire…and since he was now the country’s first and only open undead congressman…Tiffany quickly changed the subject.

“I swear to you on my own grave that I did not send any tester,” she said. “Really, I just wish there was something I could do.” Actually, Tiffany did not have a grave. Instead, she had chosen to share George Zagorsky’s to avoid wasting time on a funeral, when they had both been busy turning out (and digging up) the vampire vote, to elect President O’Neill. Still, it was a common oath for vampires, and Crina did not really believe that anyone would take it lightly. This was little consolation to the hapless Realtor. If she had known the Cou ntess Vyrdelek any better, though, Crina would have realized that it probably should have been. When the undead redhead started wishing for something, she soon went on to looking for ways to make her wish come true. Failing to realize this, the Realtor merely made a sort of apology by saying, unnecessarily, “I am really very upset.” Which was a screaming understatement. **** Even filled with her favorite O Negative, the sight of her ‘Twenty-First Century Golden’ mug standing

beside the subpoena papers almost made Crina burst into tears again. She wondered how long she could bear to look at that ceramic symbol of her past success, so aptly symbolized by the glittering gilt letters spelling out the agency name. Gazing at that symbol of her professional paradise lost, she ached with longing for the bustling office that had been her second home, surrounded by the downtown Vienna shops and restaurants that had been her world. She had known that she was truly part of her new community when she realized that its very name now meant the Northern Virginian suburb to her, rather than the Austrian capital. She could not work anywhere else either, she knew, once she had lost her precious license…the document that had cost her so much time and study in preparation for the state exam. And always, she had had Sylvia’s encouragement. Not only had she disgraced herself, but her mentor as well. And the worst thing was, she had known better, because she knew the rules against steering as well as anyone. She had simply waved them aside in her lust to sell a house. It made a vampire’s frenzy for blood and/or sex feel like a passing whim. She knew that as one who was well equipped to make the comparison. But then, Marjorie Cooper also knew the rules. Crina felt her blue eyes flaring red as she thought of her

colleague. “Surprise, surprise,” the former champion had muttered, when their broker had announced Crina Vyrdelek’s name once more as the salespersonof-the-week. She had not needed her mind-reading abilities to tell her how bitter Marjorie really was, but she had never expected her rival to avenge herself this way. Too angry to stop herself even long enough to think, she pulled the receiver off the wall and stabbed the numbers of Marjorie’s home office, her nails clicking angrily on the buttons. She was not surprised to hear the recorded message, but did not expect her former rival to call back as quickly as she did. “Crina, dear,” she said, in tones that practically oozed with sympathy. “Sylvia called a meeting to tell us what happened. I can’t tell you how sorry I am!” Actually, you could tell me very easily, Crina thought. You are not sorry one bit and you called me back to gloat and I was a fool to phone you in the first place. “I can imagine how sorry you are,” she said, hoping she was hiding her own sarcasm. “But, Marjorie, could it be that you mentioned…without meaning to…that I had told a vampire client about a cemetery near the property? Within walking distance, in fact?” “Wh

at?” the other woman actually sounded confused. Then Crina heard a gasp of pure outrage before she rushed on, “Are you asking if I told the ADA that you were steering your vampire clients? I certainly did not! I would not disgrace our agency that way…you have done a good enough job at that yourself!” Before Crina could form an apology, her former colleague had slammed down the phone. **** Former colleague is just what she is, Crina realized, more miserably than ever. I can never again work there or anywhere. Not as a Realtor, at least, and I would die again before I would go back there as an office assistant. Despite herself, she kept coming back to that prospect. She knew enough about the business to handle the administrative details for some other Realtor, and she realized how demanding these could be, including endlessly changing contract clauses. Then she shook her head violently to drive the thought away. Working behind the scenes to help some other Realtor shine in the spotlight…she would rather go back to Romania and show tourists through crumbling cottages, AKA “fixer-uppers” in Realtor-ese. Assuming, that is, that even the Romanian government

would allow her to sell houses there. So, if she wanted to stay in the states, then working for another Realtor was her best chance of doing so. But even if she were willing to do it, would any agency have her, in the kind of disgrace she was in? The only option left was begging for some kind of embassy job from her former master and his new mistress, or whatever you called a master vampire’s wife. She would at least have diplomatic immunity there from the fair housing laws. At that thought, she shook her head even more violently. She would rather be chained in her coffin for a hundred years. Not that she had ever heard of that happening outside of a lurid vampire book she had once glanced at, before throwing it, and its silly stereotypes, onto the floor, but still… Thinking of stereotypes, she was suddenly struck by another one: Romanian prostitutes. And she would be well equipped to give the dark kiss, along with various other kinds. Alternatively, she could actually do the things that Mistress Legree had expected of her, as a governess and vampire combined. But when she had refused to do them, she had left at least one BDSM fancier bitterly disappointed. As that memory struck her, she set down her mug with a clatter and, in almost the same swift motion, reached towards the phone again.

As a good Realtor, she had learned many things about her client, including the employer’s name. With a savage finger, she started punching in the phone number of a Washington legal firm. It was the one that employed her client Gloria. And Gloria was also a paralegal, who was therefore well acquainted with the law. What’s more, Gloria had been furious when she had failed to paddle her. But Gloria had then apparently recovered well enough to give her the townhouse listing. Gloria’s mistress might punish the self-proclaimed slave for her treachery. But from what she knew about the girl, she would not mind at all. As she waited impatiently to be connected, Crina decided that, after completing this phone call, she would go on to make two more…to apologize abjectly to Tiffany and Marjorie both, when the true culprit should have been so obvious all along. “Gloria Borgatta here,” she said. The caller could hear from her clear pronunciation that she was now wearing her ruby tongue pin on her jacket lapel, if anyplace. “Were you so angry because I refused to paddle you? I would gladly do it now, except that you would enjoy it.” “Would you please keep your voice down?” the paralegal whispered. “You are screaming so loud that

someone might hear you even over the phone.” “Then would you please tell me what other reason you had for listing your house with me and telling me it was near a cemetery, because you knew I could sell it to vampires that way? And don’t tell me that you don’t know the law, because you are a paralegal.” For an instant, she heard only heavy breathing into the receiver…not the first time, she felt sure, that this pervert had used the phone that way. Then the sounds turned into gasps of outrage that formed the words, “You bet I know the law. And it says that if I had really done that, I would be guilty of entrapment, which is a much worse crime than yours. And I want to cancel my listing with you.” “You are welcome to do that, and I will not ch arge a penalty. You enjoy being punished so much, I would hate to give you what you want.” This time Crina at least had the luxury of hanging up first, while Gloria fumbled for an angry reply. Even before she had done so, however, she, wondered, in horror, if she really had gone mad. Offering to cancel a listing, which might be the last she ever had? By Realtors’ standards, she certainly had lost her mind. ****

So now she had nothing left to sell but her honor, such as it was. And perhaps she had forfeited even that, back in Romania, where she had tempted an unwary traveler with the dark kiss in order to make her first home sale. All right, so he had been a very wary traveler and a more-than-willing victim…eager, in fact…but that did not make it right. What she was doing now was no worse than what she had done on that fateful evening. Still, she agonized for an entire night before taking the fatal step. Of all the career classes she had taken, how strange it was that the Internet was the only one that could now be of any use. Searching for the proper (or, rather, improper) sites, she kept her fingers firm as she typed the fatal words… Fresh from Rom ania Beauti ful blond vampire AND governess Understands bondage AND discipline AND sadism AND masochism AND domination AND submission AND ménage. Will make all of your wildest dreams come true Romanian and English spoken. Evening hours only. (Dark kiss included)

Personally, she still thought that ménage sounded something like a pudding dessert, but surely her clients would set her straight…if ‘straight’ was the right word. **** The first responses frightened even her, and she was supposed to be the monster. One gentleman wanted her to dress up as Minnie Mouse, which was out of the question. Everyone knew that, if you used their characters for profit, the Disney Corp. would sue you like a shot. Another invited her to join in a ménage-a-trois with his mother-in-law. (So that’s what ménage meant, she realized, assuming that he did not want her to join them in a giant chocolate soufflé). Another wanted her to dress up as Daisy Duck and join the ménage. Some might have said that she, the count and her sister brides had been a ménage-a-cinq themselves. When you added the unwary travelers, that made it a ménage-approaching-infinity. But whatever they did, she assured herself, it was two at a time…consisting of one male and one female. She was not sure if the others even knew what a ménage was. Well, except for the count, perhaps, and Tiffany for sure. The American girl always had modern views.

Just as she was starting to wonder if working at the embassy would be so bad after all…at least if a ménage were involved… she came across a response to her ad that seemed like an answer to prayer. It would have been one anyway, before she became a vampire and prayer no longer seemed appropriate. “I like to do it doggy style,” it read. Considering that she had done it human style with a real were-dog, this did not sound bad at all. She prided herself that her grasp of English was good enough to tell her that “doggy style” had nothing to do with a Goofy costume. Now, if you have been reading romances for any length of time, you must know perfectly well that, when she stared through her peephole at her first client that night, it was Bobby Pearl’s face that she saw. “Go away!” she cried in dismay. “Please, Bobby, this is bad enough as it is!” “Will you please let me inside?” he demanded. “No. Go away! I am so ashamed.” “I understand that you were desperate. Now will you please open the door?” As she was walking away from it instead, she heard him growl in his most alpha tones, “Open the door before everyone in the building hears you!” A moment later, she was staring at his strong, rugged

face. She only did it for a moment, though, before burying her face in her hands. “I never wanted you to see me like this,” she wailed. “I already have,” he pointed out. “And I don’t want anyone else to do it…at least not anyone who is paying for the pleasure.” “What should I do then?” she demanded furiously, fighting back her tears. “Go back to Romania? Or go work for Tiffany Golden in the embassy, when she is the one who might have betrayed me?” “I am sure she did not,” he answered, lowering his own head. “But it had to be one of the three…Tiffany Golden or Marjorie Cooper or Gloria Borgatta. Which do you think it was? Because” she added, her own voice falling bitterly, as she felt her eyes glaring red, “when I find out, I might just remember that I am a vampire and what that can mean to my enemies.” “It was not any one of them, Crina. I was the one who sent the tester and trapped you. I had heard you and Gloria talking about the cemetery near her house and how you could sell it to vampires and I knew I had to stop you. But I can not let anyone else suffer from your revenge.” For a long, long moment she stood silent, stunned by his words, hoping against hope that she had not heard them. Then his stricken face told her that she had

made no mistake…except, she reflected bitterly, to trust him. “But why?” she wailed. “Who was I hurting? The vampire wanted to live near a cemetery and many other people did not.” “No one this one time, perhaps,” he admitted. “But there were so many other occasions, when blind and deaf and other handicapped people were steered, oh so subtly, to certain neighborhoods, so they would not upset the other homeowners. They might lower the property values, you know, by driving away the buyers who did not want to see handicapped people around.” “You could have given me a warning.” “That would not have stopped you. You were so eager to make a sale that nothing else mattered to you.” She sighed and lowered her head, knowing that that was true. Then she snapped it up again as she said, “But you were wrong, too. All of your handicapped people meant more to you than the one you were supposed to care for. So you can get out, now. “And,” knowing this would hur t him more than anything, she went angrily on, “I will go back to looking for someone who will hire me to join a ménage.” But as he was almost out the door, she could not stop

herself from asking, “Does it give you pleasure to hurt me? Is this more of that BS-NBC or B-CNN or whatever they called it?” “BDSM,” he corrected her. “But, no, it is social justice.” “That sounds even more painful.” With a sigh, he answered, “Often it is.”

Chapter Five

obby Pearl missed his former employer even more the next day, when he was in his were-dog form. The man he was guiding almost tripped over the stoop as his sales agent led him to the front door. “Aren’t you coming?” Marjorie Cooper asked impatiently. It was all he could do to withstand the tugging at his harness and the repeated commands to “Come on, Bobby.” He had to snarl in a really determined way before the man got the message and the woman glanced back long enough to see the problem.

Of course, then she was all apolo gies. If it h ad been Crina, none would have been needed. She knew about the needs of vampires, werewolves, witches and all other paranormal minorities. Never would she have taken a blind buyer to a house with a high stoop. And then, like a sudden shaft of moonlight, he was struck by the realization of what one class of paranormal purchasers needed above all. His growl was replaced by a happy, panting whine. While golden retrievers always seem to be smiling, this one really was. **** “Accessibility?” Tiffany exclaimed into the phone, so loudly that Bobby had to hold the receiver away from his ear. “Well, I should say so! And you certainly have every right to tell a client with special requirements if a house can meet his needs. Why, for us this is a matter of life and death. Or un-death, anyway.” “That’s just what I thought,” he replied. She could easily hear that, even in human form, he was close to panting with pleasure. There’s at least one great advantage of being an

ambassadress, Tiffany thought happily. You could pick up the phone and ask for almost anyone, knowing that they would take your call…or at least return it. Of course, even when she had been plain Ms. Tiffany Golden, the press had usually been eager to speak with her, at least when she was organizing her fellow vampires to elect President O’Neill. Reporters had been the first to take up her motto, “I’m undead and I vote.” Now, even if she was no longer a Washington insider, she was at least inside the Romanian Embassy and thus in a position to offer dinner invita tions. Those few reporters who could ignore a good story could still not resist that temptation. This time, she was able to dangle both kinds of bait. Since the story also featured the kind of controversy that could lead to lively debate, her first call went to that master and mistress of the game who were known as the Dueling Duo. Both members assured her that they could have an opening on this very Sunday evening, just as soon as they bumped that pesky Prince of Wales to a later date. ****

A few minutes after Bobby Pearl had made his opening statement into the TV camera, he wanted to smile as widely as he ever did in his golden retriever form. For the first time in more than a year of constant conflict, the co-hosts were agreeing with each other, meaning that not even they had managed to think of an argument against him. They were barely able to save the evening by arguing over the reasons why they agreed. “People have a right to sell their homes any way and to anyone they want,” Buck Patrick said, his beefy face growing even brighter red, from his jutting chin to his receding hairline, at the thought of the way that the government was depriving them of their privilege. “Many people would disagree, and I am among them,” Cassandra Bailey retorted, in her most reasonable tones, her thin face retaining its normal ivory tone. “But we all agree that people with handicaps have a right to live near the resources they need to stay alive. Not that vampires have handicaps, of course…” “…and not that they are alive.” She ignored this interruption from her adversary as she went on, “but they do need to be near their native Earth. If something happens to their home supply, they can only survive by getting to a cemetery and

covering up completely as quickly as they can. “So of course a Realtor has every right to show them houses within walking distance, or flying distance, or whatever it is they do, and even point out why they should live there. It’s like a sick person living near a hospital…not that vampirism is an illness, of course.” “And not that they are living anywhere,” he muttered. Once again, she pretended she had not heard. “But why isn’t the Realtor here to argue for herself?” Buck demanded, taking a whole new path of provocation. “Because Mr. Pearl has devoted his life to helping people with physical limitations,” she answered patiently. “He can’t be suspected of having a selfish motive, as she could.” “Can we suspect him of banging the Realtor?” “I don’t think the question was appropriate,” Cassandra answered coldly, shaking her head until her straight blond hair bounced on the shoulders of her trademark red blazer. Bobby himself made the point even more forcefully, by bounding over to the host’s chair, dragging him out of it and then punching him back inside. Stunned for a moment, Patrick jumped him from behind as he was walking back to his own seat. Bobby bowed his powerful shoulders in an effort to throw him off, but Buck held on as befitted a former

Marine. He was not even deterred by the sound coming from the throat of his guest, which sounded suspiciously like an animal growl, or by the sight of his upper arms starting to burst through his jacket. As the stagehands raced out to pull them apart, Cassandra said, with a sigh, “Cut to commercial.” They had plenty of sponsors nowadays, since the entire viewing audience knew that any debate was likely to end in a fistfight. Or, in this case, a dogfight. This evening had been, as the advertisers all later agreed, well worth the high rates that the cable channel was charging for the program…even if it could not compare with the time that Patrick had tried to punch out the president. “Great show, kids,” the producer assured them, as soon as the cameras had dimmed. He had done the same on that other momentous occasion, which had ended when the Secret Service had wrestled the pundit to the floor. He had been even happier when he learned that the whole story had been spread even further, when eXtasy Books published a spicy and s candalous expose called “Dueling Duo.”

**** The evening was certainly exciting enough for Crina. She had turned on the program merely because Bobby had urged her not to look for any more ménages to join until after she had heard it, and she had been curious to know why. When Bobby himself had proven to be the speaker, she had braced herself for the ordeal of hearing him denounce her again and this time on national TV. Instead, he had once again found a way to protect her.

Chapter Six

is cell phone rang five minutes after the broadcast, and he knew at once who it was. Only his long-time safety habits kept him from talking on it even while he was still on the road. Instead, he pulled over to the nearest legal parking place. “Bobby!” she cried. “You fought that horrible man to defend me.”

“I did even better than that,” he assured her. “I had him and his wife agreeing that you were right and the ADA was wrong. I don’t think they will even hold a hearing after that.” “And Sylvia will be glad to take me back.” “Why, yes, I suppose she will…” Hearing his hesitance, she went on, “But?” “But I have another idea. What if we went into business together, as special Realtors for all buyers with special needs?” As though reading the motto off a billboard, he proclaimed, “’Let Bobby and Crina Care For Your Creature Comforts.’ Unless,” he went on, more slowly, “I am going too far. I don’t even have a license yet.” “Bobby, that is a wonderful idea,” she exclaimed. “You are a wonderful man. And wolf, too.” “Should I come over there so you can show me just how wonderful I am?” he asked, knowing that she could hear that he was grinning over the phone. “Why wait that long?” she demanded. “How would you like some phone sex right in your car?” Without waiting for his answer, she gave several long, gaspin g moans befor e she went on…in her heaviest Romanian accent, suitable for a vampire, a governess or both, “Oh, lover

man, How I would love to feel your great big hard rooster inside my warm wet kitty cat.” “My what? Your what?” he asked, the mood almost broken. “Rooster and kitty cat. Aren’t those American words that mean the male and female organs?” “I think you mean cock and pussy.” “Aren’t they the same thing?” His grin was even more obvious as he replied, “Why don’t I go over there after all, so you can show me what you want.” **** Having dealt often enough with the ADA on behalf of his sight-impaired clients, Bobby Pearl knew how it worked. Its officials would not have dared stand up before the combined onslaught of the Dueling Duo. It would rather have taken on the FBI and CIA, working in harmony, which was slightly less likely to occur. Just as he had predicted, Crina’s broker called the next evening to assure her that the hearing had been postponed indefinitely, in face of the new evidence that she had merely been following the long-standing policy permitting Realtors to show accessible homes to the clients who needed them. She would tell her other agents as much, Sylvia she

assured her. They were all waiting eagerly to welcome their Golden Girl back to her office home. While it was supposed to be a big surprise, their celebration would take the form of a luncheon at the Da Vinci cafe. For a moment, but only a moment, the broker was unable to hide her groan of dismay when her protégé told her that she was about to become a competitor instead. She planned to open her own independent partnership, the Bobby and Crina Pearl Agency . But, as a b roker with ten years of experience, Sylvia Golden was hardly surprised. In her most sporting tone, she assured her former Golden Girl that she wished her every success in her own new agency…where she was sure to shine even more brightly as the Pearl Girl (she did have the best luck with her agency names, the older woman thought briefly). Once they had opened their office, of course, Crina and Bobby would always be welcome to show their clients the Twenty-First Century Golden listings. And Sylvia’s agents would all return the favor. **** Mistress Legree and her slave girl did not join in the

rejoicing. “A vanilla vampire,” the Domme said, shaking her head as she saw Crina’s beaming face on the evening news, for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Who would have expected such a thing?” It was, Gloria realized, as close as her mistress could possibly come to apologizing for the humiliation she had caused her unwary sub, by setting her up in a spanking scene with a governess who was no such thing. And who was such a total vanilla that she would not even know that that term had any meaning outside of Dairy Queen…namely, the opposite of BDSM. “She took advantage of us all, mistress,” the girl murmured. “What, miserable slave?” Mistress Legree answered, jumping up from the table so quickly that she almost knocked over the tofu meat-less-loaf. “You dare to criticize a free person? You’ll get a good spanking for that!” It was nearly enough to make up for the all-butinedible entrée, Gloria reflected happily, shifting into the gloria mode. Her mistress’ words were, to her, an obvious promise to make up for the shame she had suffered…or, rather, failed to suffer…a t the hands o

f the vampire governess, who had proven to be such a disgrace to both professions and a hopeless vanilla besides. And not even the really good Dairy Queen kind, as gloria reflected, but some sort of ice milk vanilla diet bar…or even worse, the kind of tofu vegan substitute that her Domme always served for dessert. On the other hand, if Crina really could sell her townhome for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, then her lifestyle, or lack of it, was her own affair. She could have carnal knowledge of a monogamous male for all Gloria cared. **** Meanwhile, back at the Romanian embassy, the count was in great agitation. “You look upset,” his countess observed, as she perched on the desk beside him. Dropping her voice seductively, she added “Let me cheer you up.” Bending her head, she brushed her red curls slowly across his face. “I don’t even know if you can do it,” he answered, with a faint smile, making him look more like David Boreanaz than ever. “I can certainly try,” said Tiffany, hopping off her perch and climbing beneath the desk.

Afterwards, she climbed back up onto the desk, where she sat smiling up at him. Then she noticed, with dismay, that he was still brooding, despite her strenuous efforts and his more-than-appreciative response. “You don’t look cheered,” she observed. Grimly, he shook his head. “The news is so bad, even you cannot make me forget it. She is coming here.” “Who is she?” Tiffany asked, thinking that she had to be pretty bad indeed, to get the count so agitated that not even her love could distract him. All right, she meant her oral sex, but never mind that now. “The One who created the first vampires,” he answered, and she thought she could hear his voice tremble. “The One who believes that n one of their creations are good eno ugh, or do enough, for her ow n children. The One who blames th em for pursuing worldly careers rather than creating more followers.” Tiffany’s eyes grew wide with terror as his words struck her, evoking the horror that had haunted her in even her mortal form. “You mean…” and she grasped the edge of the desk to

keep from falling. “That’s right.” “Oh, no!” she pleaded desperately. “It can’t be!” “But it is. Somehow, we must summon our powers to confront… “No, don’t say it!” “But I must. The mother-in-law of all vampires!”

Book Two: I’m Undead…and I Vote in Congress

Chapter Seven

rina’s particular (not to say peculiar) mother-in-law problems would wait for another day. A more serious crisis faced her, when she and Bobby went to town hall one fine early evening for their marriage license. “Aren’t you the vampire Realtor lady I saw on TV?” the clerk asked. Beaming proudly that she was indeed, she reached into her bag for her business card, because you never knew who might be in the market for a new home. To her dismay, instead of smiling back and even accepting the card from her, the man shook his balding head. “And this man is not a vampire,” he declared. As her s mile faded ra pidly, her fiancé put a protective arm around her

plump shoulders. “I am a werewolf,” he firmly announced. “Or a were-golden-retriever, anyway, but it’s almost the same thing.” “Then, I’m sorry, but I can’t give you a license,” he told them. “At least not until that Same Species Marriage Bill is voted up or down. And I wouldn’t get your hopes up, because the debate has been going on for a year.” Her blue eyes filled with tears as she pleaded, “There is no law to forbid it now.” To show that the discussion was ended, he handed the application back to her. “But there is no law to permit it, either.” **** “It shouldn’t matter to us,” Bobby assured her, his arm still around her as they went down the stairs. “We can’t have offspring anyway.” “Neither can gay couples,” she reminded him. “But they still want to solemnize their love.” “We could try Massachusetts,” he suggested. She shook her head firmly, making her blond tresses fly around it. “This is my com munity and we will be married here. Someone should do something

about it. What about the Leading-Eye Foundation? After all that the were-dogs like you have done for them, they should speak out for you.” “The foundation always stays out of politics.” “A bunch of Uncle Fidos,” she sniffed. And while he was much better equipped for sniffing, he confined himself to nodding his crew-cut blond head in reluctant agreement. “And don’t forget our clients,” she went on. “Our agency caters to paranormal minorities. We can urge them to get involved.” “They are probably involved already. But I’m afraid that the other side is, too.” **** He was right about that. Their opponents were massing against them, and their efforts were not to be sniffed at. By the time he took his seat in the House of Representative, George Zagorsky (D-Ca) had already been deluged with messages…via telephone, e-mail, ground mail, fax and vampiric telepathy…on every possible side of the Same Species Marriage controversy. Much broader than the old Same Sex Marriage Bill, this new one defined marriage as the union between a

human and a human, or a vampire and a vampire, or a werewolf and a werewolf, of either sex. Both sides had valid arguments, even from his vampiric point of view. On one hand, it seemed like a form of prejudice. On the other, it would take a long first step by giving marriage rights to paranormal minorities, thus recognizing their legal right to exist. They had the right to vote, of course, but that was not necessarily the same thing. This argument made it hard for him to know where to stand. During this first day (or, rather, evening) in Congress, he was, in fact, having trouble standing at all. Passing through the National Statuary Hall in the Capitol Rotunda, he had naturally walked by the tribute to California-which was, as luck would have it, a bronze replica of Father Juniper Serra. And the good father was, naturally, holding up his huge bronze cross. George had almost tossed his plasma on the spot. He still felt vaguely sick to his embalmed stomach when he arrived for his first session on the floor. Not that he had had to travel very far. Showing his usual sensitivity to the needs of the vampire voters who had put him into office, President Felix O’Neill had arranged for George’s coffin to be moved to the Capitol Crypt. With its brown stone columns supporting the arches that held up the white marble Rotunda itself, it was the perfect environment for the

congressman’s resting place-even though, despite its name, it had never housed a coffin before. In the same spirit, George had been given an office suite in the Rayburn Building basement, even further out of the light. If George had to travel to a colleague’s office or a committee hearing room, he could always take the capitol subway train. And since so many congressional sessions lasted until midnight anyway, he could always perform his legislative functions at that time. The vampire voters had shown their power so decisively in the last presidential election, few of his colleagues would have dared object to postponing debate until after dark. Of the few who objected very happily, many were located in the fundamentalist South. There, many voters still shared the opinion of the Speaker of the House Robert E. (“Bobby”) Lee that “folks who are afraid of crosses must have something wrong with them.” Rep. Lee (R-Ga) was, in fact, an Asian-American, but many of his Anglo-Saxon voters had overlooked that fact, in deference to his hallowed name. “The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California,” the Speaker said, as George rose to speak. “Or should I say the gentle vampire?” But here, George had a swift parry ready for him.

“Gemmum is jest fah-n,” he answered, in tones of the purest cornpone serene. “Ahm jest a country boy, so ah love being called a gemmum.” For those who first met George in “I’m Undead-and I Vote,” this may come as a surprise. Or, again, it might not. At that time, he was trying hard to act like a vampire, without realizing that he didn’t have to do so because he was one. To him, that meant imitating Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee and even wimpy Frank Langella, from his oiled-down hair to his really bad Eastern European accent, as befit a former film student. But once the president had given George his (forgive the expression) blessing for a congressional seat, George had realized there was too much at stake (forgive the expression again). If he was going to be a candidate, he obviously had to act like one. This time, instead of classic movies, he studied the TV news. Based on his careful observation, he invested in a three hundred dollar haircut that created the suitable casual, tousled, natural look, complete with peroxide streaking, which suggested he spent most of his time in the sun. Bronze gel provided a healthy tan, since skin cancer was not an issue for him. His carefully rumpled thousand-dollar blue serge suit replaced his formal black Vampwear. Perhaps most telling of all, he transformed his really

bad Bela Lugosi impersonation into a barely less convincing echo of his new role models, Bill Clinton and John Roberts. Being a vampire, he already had the compelling, hypnotic, you’ve-got-my-total-attention gaze that he needed in either role. George was able to explain his new dialect by saying that he had come from old Virginny. He did not bother to add that he had briefly lived in the Washington suburbs of Fairfax County, Va., after originally hailing from New Jersey. Even more fortunately, he was running in the fiftythird District, which was composed largely of Hollywood, where everyone routinely invented and re-invented themselves. A denizen of Detroit, Michigan might, for instance, be reborn as a London socialite or a Dixie debutante. That made them people after is own heart, although hopefully not in an overly literal sense. They were certainly after another organ. All of them assumed that vampire sex was better than any other kind, and if that were a stereotype he was determined to make the most of it. What his penis might have lacked in warmth, it made up for in size, hardness and eagerness, as his partner of the night often told him. Or as his two partners often told him, this being Hollywood. There was only one partner he really wanted, though,

and she seemed out of reach…in the family rooms of the White House. Still, the mere possibility of winning her had given him a personal stake-sorry, personal interest-in the Same Species Marriage Bill. To his relief, this was not the first question that faced him at this, his first session of Congress. On the contrary, this issue could never have caused controversy among the undead voters or any other kind. Who could possibly oppose House Res. 154, providing an increase in the limit for a Veteran’s Administration Home Loan Guarantee. Obviously, his colleagues in Congress shared his feelings. They passed the bill unanimously, in the sure expectation that the Senate would do the same thing. No one, as Rep. Zagorsky realized, would vote against veterans. And some veterans were unquestionably vampires. Based on the informal policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Bite,” many more would soon join them. Thinking of that, he immediately decided what his position on the Same Species Marriage Bill should be. As intelligent young man and/or vampire, he immediately saw how he could tie the two issues together. “Mr. Speaker,” the fresh-vamp congressman said,

rummaging through his briefcase. “I have here a letter from a man who resides in Arlington Cemetery.” With finesse worthy of O’Neill himself, he carefully avoided the controversial term ‘lives’. **** Above him on the rostrum, Speaker Lee slumped visibly, guessing all too accurately what the message contained. He cast about desperately for a way to block the message, until he remembered that a veteran had written it. Therefore it was sacred, even if he did turn out to have fought in 1812. He turned out, however, to have taken part in a much more recent conflict. “This is from PFC Irving Loftig, who fought to free Transylvania from the Nazis,” he said. “Fortunately for him, some of the brave natives had been doing the same, in the one underground army that really was underground. When he was wounded, they made sure that this brave boy would survive to fig ht again. “ What they did not know,” he added, with his voice rising in the indignant tremor he had adopted from Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. “What he did not know, was that, once back home he

would be deprived of the rights of every other citizenincluding the right to marry the lady of his choice.” Some ladies in the visitors’ gallery were dabbing at their eyes now, Speaker Lee noted with dismay. Desperately, but feebly, he responded, “The gentleman’s time is almost expired.” And if there were any justice in the world, as Speaker Lee thought silently, the gentleman would have done the same, about the time that he had been drained of his blood. **** Just as the Speaker had feared, another Democratic gentleman rose to be recognized, only to immediately yield the floor back to the vampire. Who, predictably, went on for another several endless minutes about the poor vampire veteran and his marital woes. George realized, of course, that his speech was a blockbuster mega-hit, as his West Coast constituents would have said. He did not realize just how mega it was, until he returned to his office. All twenty members of his staff were cheering and hugging each other, beneath the wall-mounted TV that was eternally set to the Congressional sessions on CSPAN. The jubilation increased when his personal assistant told him that the president was on the line. He could practically hear O’Neill’s Irish grin as he

offered his heartiest congratulations. It was heady stuff indeed. Even headier, the calls started coming in from the TV talk shows, as thick and fast as they had done when he had launched his campaign-or, rather, when the president had launched it, with his arm around George’s shoulder. At that moment, it seemed that his worst problem was deciding which invitation to accept first: Larry King, Bill O’Reilly, Crossfire, the McLaughlin Group or the Dueling Duo. George had a special reason for accepting their invitation first. The reason was named Cassandra Bailey. From George’s point of view, she was definitely the better half of the team. Combining the angular blond beauty of Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham or Laurie Dhue with the liberal leanings of Margaret Carlson or Eleanor Clift, she would be an ideal hostess for George’s talk-show debut. Somehow, he failed to realize that her partner would make a perfectly horrible host. A few evenings after that, when George recorded their Sunday-morning show, he learned that pride goes before a fall, that you can’t win ‘em all and that the light at the end of the tunnel is usually a freight train. In this case, Buck Patrick was at the throttle. George should have known he was in trouble when the male

half of the Dueling Duo told him, with a nasty grin on his beefy face, that some of his blood brothers would be in the studio audience. Since Buck’s grins usually were pretty nasty, George did not pick up on the warning. Instead, he smiled unsuspectingly out at the studio audience when Buck Patrick asked if any of them had any questions. “Yay-ess, ah have one question,” said the burly fellow who stood in the second row. He had a John Deere cap pulled over a face that was almost as death-pale as George’s own would have been without his makeup. He also boasted a Southern drawl that was thicker, richer and much more authentic than the congressman’s own. “But first, will you identify yourself, sir,” Buck Patrick said, as he bounded into the audience, holding out his microphone before him. “Ah, ahm, Corporal Homer Higgins, Suh, and I am proud to be the President of the Confeddy-rutt Vettyruns of America.” With a sinking heart, George saw the trap. His only consolation was that, glancing at Cassandra, he saw that she shared his growing dismay. At least the duo had not been ganging up on him together. Clutching at his last desperate hope, Rep. Zagorsky asked, “Do you mean, the Sons of the Confederate Veterans of America?”

“No, Suh!” the guest explained, pulling himself as erect as he must have been while following General Pickett into the Union volleys at Gettysburg. “We ah, the undead survivahs of the Lost Cause, and we want to know if you will get us the same benefits as all the other undead vetty-runs.” “That’s a very interesting question,” Buck Patrick all but purred, in tones suggesting a panther who was advancing on an injured aardvark…or, alternatively, a really old-fashioned vampire stalking a human being. “Confederate veterans are certainly veterans, aren’t they, George? And they are certainly Americans: That’s what the whole war was fought over.” “Well, er, yes, they are veterans and Americans, I suppose, yes,” George stammered, desperately wishing that he were home in his coffin. He longed for that even more avidly when he heard a collective gasp of disapproval at his words. It had come from other audience members who obviously did not, to say the least, share Corporal Higgins’ sorrow that the Cause had been Lost. Just obviously, Buck Patrick had set the trap for his guest by inviting both factions. Cassandra, too, had obviously seen the snap springing shut around her guest’s ankle. “We are going to discuss the Same Species Marriage Bill!” she wailed. She raised her voice as she always

did to be heard over her adversary’s roar, while also trying to be heard above the audience’s angry buzz of outrage. “Let’s discuss our brave Confederate un-dead!” cried a dedicated if diminutive Daughter of the Confederacy, who had first cried out her name as Marlene Lynch of New Orleans. She was seemingly as oblivious to the answering boos and jeers as her heroes had been to General’s McDowell’s guns at Bull Run. “Let’s discuss the brave Black men of the Glory Brigade, who died in the sight of God and not so me demon vampire!” a male voice called out resonantly. “Demon vampire?” Buck Patrick demanded. As always, his tone sneered at all decency, goodness and justice and was therefore incredibly popular with the viewers. “Let’s not be politically incorrect, here.” “Let’s go to commercial!” Cassandra wailed. But when her partner gave the signal to do so, it was with the unholy glee of John Malkovich pulling down the curtains to expose Willem Dafoe to the murderous sunlight at the end of Shadow of the Vampire. He was, as he decided miserably, way out of his element as a congress-vamp. As if his enemies had not been bad enough, he still

had to deal with his friends.

Chapter Eight

aving expanded his career, from erotic vampire romance cover model to vampire movie actor, Tim Johnson had initially been a staunch supporter of George Zagorsky. It was good old George, after all, who had brought vampires out of the closet (or the coffin, as it were) thus enabling Tim to benefit from the romance publishers’ desire to hire authentic vampire models as their cover boys. But Tim was a member of another minority as well, and one that was not historically inclined to grant many benefits to Confederate veterans, dead or alive or both. He owed a great deal to good old George, as he was the first to admit. As a leader of the VAM-power movement, which had put President O’Neill in office, George had also helped bring the undead out of the

closet (or the coffin, as it were) and Tim Johnson onto the covers of erotic vampire romance. More recently, he had come into fashion with movie producers as well. As George’s bad luck would have it, Tim was making his movie debut in the role that was the least likely to let him show any quarter to the Lost Cause. Having been sold to the studios as Roots-Meets-KillBill-Meets-the-Last-Samurai, “Hidden Tiger, Crouching Vampire” had something for everyone who loved an action flick. Tim played an undead runaway slave who stows away to China, where he learns the martial arts he needs to win his family’s freedom in a series of tournaments before going back to help his old instructor fight off a warlord slave trader. Clearly, giving any aid and comfort to Confederates would mark him forever as a girly man, to use the words of the incredibly un-girly governor whose career he so much admired. So when a reporter stopped him to ask a question at his idol Will Smith’s latest premiere, Tim unhesitantly answered, “As you all know, I supported George Zagorsky to the hilt, and I am sorry that he has decided to support bigotry instead. The vampire, of any color, should be ready to fight bigotry anywhere.” He illustrated his statement with a kung-fu chop, showing that the vampire should preferably be

fighting with the aid of martial arts, like the ones he would display in his own movie debut. If this was a painful blow to Rep. Zagorsky’s prospects, the next two were positively crippling. Speaker Robert E. Lee decided to attend the dedication of a new elementary school in Georgia, named for the hero who shared his name. It was the perfect place to proclaim, “We are surprised and pleased to find that there are some brave men still among us who fought for the Lost Cause. These Confederate heroes deserve the same benefits as any other American veterans. I am just surprised that any of the president’s liberal supporters disagree.” His cheering audience did not see any inconsistency. Vampires might be monsters, as Speaker Lee had so often proclaimed, but these particular vampires were Confederate heroes, too. And they were the last men in the world to want to marry outside their race or species, so the Same Species Marriage Bill held no terrors for them. But another cut was even more unkind to George: the one inflicted by his former patron. He had more than earned the patronage when had saved the president’s life by literally trying to take a stake for him (since a bullet would not have been much of a problem). The president had, in turn, supported him for office as the first known vampire

congressman, thus paying off a moral debt and pleasing his new constituency at the same time. But as valuable as the vampires were, other voters were still more vital…namely, the ones who still had vital signs to prove it. “It is unfortunate indeed,” President O’Neill sighed, when asked for comment, “that one who has suffered so much from prejudice should be willing to condone bigotry against others. It sounds to me like vampire self-hatred.” Actually, at that point, George was too busy hating the president. Him and a vampire named Nathan Cotton, who had taken pity on a wounded 15-year-old Georgia Militia man and become his Sire, thus sowing the seeds of the 21st Century Confederate Veterans of America. This was yet another manifestation of the natural law that no good deed ever remains unpunished. It was also one reason for George to wish that he had stayed in the closet (or coffin), during the drive for VAMpower. Another, even more pressing reason was the president’s daughter and his hopeless desire for her. Due to the president’s new attitude towards him, it was obviously more hopeless than ever.

When you came right down to it, as George reflected bitterly, no matter how much the president owed to the vampire voters…and no matter how many civil rights he wanted to give them…he did not want his daughter to marry one.

Chapter Nine

pstairs in the family room, the First Daughter was screaming like a banshee. That’s because she was one. With an Irish-American father and a mother who was a real New England witch, that was hardly surprising. It did not even seem unusual to those Washington insiders who had finally realized why Senator Moynihan had looked so much like a leprechaun. He had been one, too. Maeve O’Neill could therefore be heard all the way down to the Red Room, as she shrieked at the TV. No wonder: She was watching a documentary on D-Day. Wailing for fallen warriors was her job, and the ancient tradition did not make an exception for the

televised reruns of battles long ago. If one warrior had one drop of Irish blood, she would howl her head off for him. Her Secret Service detail had long since learned to wear earplugs. As her guest flinched despite himself at the earshattering sound, her mother pressed the Intercom button and said, “Maeve, dear, please turn off the television and come downstairs.” The gunfire and the echoing wails stopped at about the same time. “Our daughter is a banshee,” the Evelyn O’Neill reminded him. Her guest nodded as though she had just said, “Our daughter is going to Vassar next year.” In fact, she was, thus following yet another family tradition. As befit a former Vassar girl, the First Lady had chosen just the right place to receive him. With its red satin walls and sofas beneath the gilded picture frames and chandeliers, the Red Room really did seem like just the right place for a witch, a vampire and a banshee to gather. The vampire was able to do it because the windows were carefully covered with heavy, fully lined crimson brocade draperies to block out the last rays of sun. The limousine curtains had done the same, before the vehicle had driven straight into the garage. Still, even for a vampire, this was a scary setting. Making the whole scene even more menacing, five of

the black cats whom the First Lady had rescued from animal shelters were stalking around the floor and clawing the satin upholstery. These were the only ones on hand at the moment, since so many people were so eager to adopt the First Lady’s four-footed protégés. Her prestige more than made up for the superstitious prejudice against them. But, even for a vampire, they enhanced the general creepiness. The very name ‘Red Room’ set the scene. It reminded him of The Shining, and that really awesome scene where Danny Lloyd kept saying ‘Red Rum’ until he looks in the mirror and sees it backwards, written in blood: ‘murder’. George remembered this horror classic so clearly, it was hard to believe that it had been made twenty-five years earlier, in 1980. That was not a long time for the undead, of course, many of whom had had walk-on parts in the first and still the greatest Dracula movie, starring Bela Lugosi, but still… Even today, he would have shuddered at the memory of Jack Nicholson bursting through the wall, except of course that he was a vampire and thus the one that other people were supposed to shudder at. He was certainly more frightening than the First Banshee, since the scariest thing she could possibly do to an Irish family was refusing to show up at their

deathbeds. He had heard rumors that her father wanted her to wail straight through the last moments of his wealthiest Irish-American contributors. It just went to prove that class always showed, and the president, unlike his womenfolk, simply did not have it. The congressman just wished that he had more of his own, so he would be worthy of the ladies in question. The First Daughter was obviously not a person who should have been peddled to influence peddlers that way. Having obviously inherited her mother’s long, aristocratic face, she had also adopted her high-class hairstyle as well With a tortoise band pulling her shoulder-length tresses straight back from her high forehead, it was almost too simple to be called a hairdo at all. It was natural, casual, apparently uncared-for, and practically guaranteed to leave any male baying at the moon. Her fragrance was so subtle, it seemed her natural aroma, too: as fresh and clean and new-mown grass. But while the First Lady’s hair was pale flaxen, Maeve's tresses showed her Irish ancestry with their red-gold hue. They framed an equally Irish milky complexion, marked only by a devastating sprinkle of freckles. Maeve’s blue eyes were red from weeping, but that was an occupational hazard, of course. They were both

real Grace Kelly types, and he wondered that the president did not see it clearly enough to refrain from selling them. By now, however, he was all too aware that President Felix O’Neill would…as his fellow Irishman Brendan Behan had put it…sell out his mother for a vote and put up his hands and thank God he had a mother to sell. So he’d have no problem selling out his daughter for campaign contributions. He had certainly sold out George fast enough. Well, vampires did not even take death lying down (as they were so fond of telling each other). And a vampire who was also a United States Representative would not lie down for anyone, the president included. From what he’d heard, the First Lady felt the same way. She had put up with her husband getting it on with his interred intern, as all Washington called Tiffany Golden, until he had made the mistake of embarrassing her at least at a Romanian Embassy reception. Since the former intern was by then the Romanian ambassadress, it had been especially tactless. But the First Lady had gotten even by showing her true colors, which proved to be pure Halloween orange and black. He could hardly blame Mrs. O’Neill for having accepted the situation so long. George himself had

endured it, even though he had been Tiffany’s sire and should therefore have been her Master. Every version of the legend agreed on that point, from that original Dracula to Love at First Bite to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Instead, Tiffany Golden had been to Felix O’Neill what Mercedes McCambridge had been to Broderick Crawford in All the King’s Men. Despite himself, George had had to admire her for that. Now, that had been one awesome movie. Mrs. O’Neill might also have gone on looking the other way, until the crucial evening at the Romanian Embassy. There, her husband had whispered to Tiffany that his own wife was not exciting. Having used her unnatural mental powers to overhear him, the First Lady had proven him wrong by employing those same powers to hurl the antique Queen Anne chairs through the air. Remembering this, he had hoped that she might use those same abilities once again to help him…by throwing the President of the Confederate War Veterans through the air, for instance. As things were going, it was about the only hope he had. You could call it creature-to-creature courtesy or something. Not that either witches or vampires were creatures, of course, but they still had to look out for each other.

Besides, this way she’d be looking out for the president, too. The Confederate War Veterans were no friends of his, even if they fondly remembered the Irish anti-draft riots in New York. At least she’d agreed to see him. What’s more, she’d called her daughter to join them, showing how welcome he was. Granted, someone else might have suspected that she was playing matchmaker for a daughter who might be a beautiful debutante but was also a screaming banshee. A witch might have been acceptable among even the finest families, many of whom had a few broomsticks stuck in their own family trees, but a banshee was definitely ethnic. Looking at the two ladies together, George mentally shook his head at his suspicions. Any male on Earth or under it would leap at the chance to marry Maeve O’Neill…and if he happened to be a werewolf, he would leap even further. That would have given the congress-vamp a very personal interest in the Same Species Marriage Bill, if he had thought that it was the only thing standing between them. But the obstacles went far beyond his vampire status. Even as George Zagorsky from New Jersey, he would have been miles beneath Miss O’Neill of Massachusetts. When his hostesses seated themselves on the red silk

sofa, he respectfully chose an upholstered armchair on the opposite side of the coffee table. They must not think he was trying to sit too close. From that respectful distance, he could not help noticing that they had crossed their ankles, not their legs, like the real ladies they were. Still, he could glimpse enough of legs to see that they were muscular, slim and tanned beneath their white tennis skirts. They play tennis every day, as he remembered reading, with something close to awe. Grace Kelly could have portrayed either one of them, or nowadays Gena Rowlands as the mother and Gwyneth Paltrow as the beautiful young girl. In a scene where she had just been weeping violently, of course. “Thank you for coming to see us,” the mother said, graciously. “Thank you for having me,” he answered quickly, lowering his own brown eyes to avoid staring too intently into her startling green ones. For a moment, they reminded him eerily of a cat’s, but, hey, he was supposed to be the eerie one. For now, he had dropped all of his efforts to sound like a Southern gemmum. From the little he had seen of really classy people, the thing they despised most of all was any effort to make anything seem like something else. “I don’t want to waste your time,” he said, while

wishing desperately that he had known just the right kind of small talk to do just that. “So I’ll come right out and just ask you for a favor.” That’s just the way Jimmy Stewart would have done it, he convinced himself. Gena and Gwyneth both waited attentively, with a thin smile. “You know that the Confederate War Veterans are against us,” he said. “They are putting us in an impossible position by asking for veterans’ benefits. I was hoping you could…” Desperately, he waited for her to finish the sentence before he had to do it. Once again, he was grateful for the good manners she showed when she did. “If I could cast a spell to stop them?” she asked, in the same courteous tone. As he nodded eagerly, she sighed and went on, “I am afraid I can’t do that.” “Because a Wiccan cannot curse anyone?” “I am not a Wiccan,” she replied, sitting up even straighter as resentment crept into her tone. “Wicca is a religion and we are Episcopalians.” “I am sorry,” he answered, stricken. “No need to be,” she assured him. “I could curse them if I chose. But there would be a real scandal, because they would figure out who had done it. Your people are all so intelligent.” For a moment, he wondered resentfully if that was a stereotype. Then he shrugged mentally: If so, it was a

flattering one. He felt even more encouraged when she went on, “But you are so smart, I am sure you will think of something.” Her words left him feeling that he would indeed. “And now, would you like tea?” she asked. “Tea would be wonderful,” he replied, knowing that, for a lady like this one, tea was something you ate, not just drank. He was not even surprised when a maid carried it to the coffee table on the Clinton settings of the White House China. Once again, he admired the gilded rim around the translucent white plates and a gilt executive mansion in the center. None of your tea bags, either. With reverence close to awe, he saw her pouring the boiling water from the silver clawfoot pot over the leaves in the China teapot. A few moments earlier he might have swiftly said that he never drank…tea, that is…but now he realized that this was no place for silly movie quotes. Even better, the roast beef on the finger sandwiches was blood rare, just the way he liked it. Or any other entree, for that matter. A lady like that thought of everything. Princess Diana herself could not have been any more gracious. The black rescue cats swirled around her ankles as they sniffed the cream, pressing their round, furry heads against her. Leaning down to pet them, she sat erect long enough to pour the cream into the gilt-edged

Clinton saucers and put them on the floor. Dared he dream that someday Maeve O’Neill…as Maeve O’Neill-Zagorsky…would be sitting on his sofa, pouring tea that way for his own guest? He answered himself with a silent sigh. Despite all the things that had happened to him in his incredible life and afterlife, that really did seem an impossible dream. *** The First Lady was like the late Crown Princess in more ways than one. Every man in the world wanted to sleep with her, except for her husband. Her being a witch had not really changed that, because she simply refused to act like one. At least, she declined to do so in the ways that mattered to him. She was glad to sleep up here in the Lincoln Bedroom, where she could always ask advice from Dolley Madison, Mary Todd Lincoln and the rest of the usual gang. He supposed that if he had really wanted to tie her to the elaborately carved rosewood headboard, as he kept hinting he did, she would have allowed that, too. But she would have made it clear that she was closing her eyes and thinking of the Democratic Party. When it came to really witchy sex, as he had always imagined it…well then, she might as well have been Abigail Adams. He had learned that quickly enough,

the first time he had broached the subject while lounging beside her, the night she had shown him her powers. “Imagine you being a witch,” he had said, shaking his glossy, curly black hair. “I don’t mean the kind they called Hillary, but a real one. And I suppose you know other witches in Massachusetts, too.” His blue eyes had glowed like a warlock’s as he had gone on, “You might even have been at their sex orgies, with a naked woman tied to an altar…” His voice had trailed off, as he saw her pulling back and glaring at him, while Mary Todd stared down with even chillier disapproval from her picture frame, her lips pursed as firmly as ever. “I would only want to go there to get their votes, of course,” he added lamely. “I know that Massachusetts is supposed to be safe for us, but you never can be sure. Besides, we all say that anything is acceptable between two consenting adults. Or four. Or six. Or thirteen.” “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to,” she said, “but witches do not have sex orgies and certainly not in Massachusetts. I can’t answer for California. Even the witch hunters only accused us of listening to Satanic sermons. They had the decency not to talk about orgies.” See one New England Puritan and you’ve seen them

all, he thought, no matter whom they worship. He looked up at Andrew Jackson for comfort, thinking that a man who had dared to marry a divorced woman in his day would surely understand. Old Hickory glared down from over his lantern jaw, even more coldly than Mary To dd Lincoln had done. At least Ebony did not judge him. Hearing her mewing and clawing at the door, he jumped up and opened it for her. Since she zoomed past the Secret Service men…rather than immediately clawing at the door to be let back out again…he should have immediately realized that something was amiss. Instead, he was concentrating on untying the first lady’s white floral satin negligee and lifting the matching nightgown to her waist. As he lowered his head to her flat white belly and started a march of kisses leading straight south, she squirmed beneath him in response. And he felt fairly sure that she was not thinking about the New Deal. This was just as good as any wild witch orgies, he assured himself. He didn’t really need to see a naked woman tied to an altar. Not really. ****

His resentment grew as he realized that none of his women were going along with his program in any way whatsoever. It was one thing for his wife to refuse to join in any wild witch orgies, which was, after all, a personal matter. But his daughter was betraying him politically, and that was harder to overlook. Not, of course, that she was acting defiant, much less screaming at him. And a good thing, too, he remembered. The one time she had raised her voice (over his decision to support a parental notification bill for willing vampire victims under age sixteen), she had shattered the Oval Office windows. Instead, she was being as coldly reasonable as her mother and proving that she was just as immune to his Irish charm. He had summoned her to the Oval Office once again, hoping that the surroundings would impress her as she stood beside the massive desk beneath the American and Presidential flags. “But the man is dying, Maeve,” he told her, fixing her with his most appealing gaze, just as though she had been a wavering senator. “You will be comforting his family. Isn’t that a good thing to do?” “You know I have comforted many families, father,” she reminded him. “I fly all over the country for the Veterans of International Conflicts. And believe me,

conditions at those veterans’ hospitals are enough to make anyone wail. “But this man had no military record at all. I checked it out the first time you asked me, because I really wanted to help. He kept getting deferments all through Viet Nam. Jim Finnegan doesn’t rate even a whimper, let alone an all out banshee wail.” “Because of those deferments, he was able to found Finnegan Electronics and earn the money that he donated to me,” Felix O’Neill answered, half rising from his chair as his blue eyes burned with barelysuppressed rage. “We want his widow to go on doing the same. Damnit, don’t you care abou t the things I am trying to d o…like improving the VA hospitals?” “I care about them very much, father. But I can’t go in my official capacity and wail for a man who was never near a battlefield in his life. It would simply not be ethical. Of course, I offer my condolences as a private citizen.” “His widow will not want your condolences,” he answered, through his perfectly white, straight, gritted teeth. “She wants to hear a banshee howl at her husband’s bedside. Remember, she grew up in the Old Country. It is very important to her.” She remained stubbornly silent, her lips pressed

together. Struck by a sudden inspiration, he went on, “Don’t business battles count?” She didn’t even bother to answer that one. Obviously, acquiring your rival’s company in a hostile takeover did not give you any claim on a banshee.

Chapter Ten

f the president thought that his own women were giving him problems, it was only because he had not met Marlene Lynch. She lived in a one hundred and fifty-year-old New Orleans mansion that boasted a two-story porch with white pillars, an overgrown front garden and a family cemetery in the back. Enough said? I mean, we all know from our reading by now that New Orleans is to witches, vampires and zombies what Washington is to government employees and lobbyists. They are all over the place. Since Marlene was both a witch and a lobbyist, she

divided her time between both locales. During her Washington visits, she rented an Arlington apartment, because a mansion of any kind in that area would have been beyond even her means. Now she was waiting for the black cat who trotted to her door, having sent a telepathic message that she was on the way. Ever the gracious Southern hostess, Marlene had a saucer of cream waiting when her familiar arrived. While Ebony lapped up her treat, her mistress waited patiently. “That trip certainly made me thirsty,” Ebony thought. “Take your time, take your time,” Marlene answered silently. “You know we appreciate your efforts.” When the saucer was empty, the cat raised her head to gaze into the bright green eyes that almost matched her own. They were much more startling in the woman’s little pink-and-white heart-shaped face, with its tiny snub nose and rosebud mouth. Mild blue orbs would have seemed much more at home. Reading her familiar’s wishes again, Marlene sank into a rocking chair that she herself had decorated with a needlepoint bouquet. Ebony jumped into her narrow lap, closed her eyes and started purring as the slim pink hand stroked her head. “Did O’Neill mention the Confederate Veterans tonight?” the lady asked. “He did even bet

ter,” the cat mentally mewed. “He told his wife what he wanted from her that she refused to give him. If the witches do it instead, he will not be able to refuse them anything.” “And that is?” “Well, it isn’t really for a lady to hear…” “But you know I have to hear it anyway,” Marlene answered, with a reluctant silent sigh, as she leaned forward eagerly. Her hand stopped in mid-stroke as she heard. “Well, I do declare, that man is shameful!” she thought indignantly. “And no real witches would think of doing such a thing. So we’ll just have to locate the kind of women who would. It’s all for the cause, isn’t it?” And all for the cause, she stood and let Ebony fall gracefully from her lap. The cat quickly resumed her place when her mistress sat down before her computer. You could, as they knew, find anything or anyone on the Internet. **** Evelyn O’Neill would have expected it from Dolley Madison or even Rachel Jackson, but Mary Todd Lincoln’s opinion came as a surprise. “If you don’t give him what he wants, then someone

else will,” Mary warned grimly, glaring down from her picture frame. “Do you know what it is he wants?” her successor demanded, staring up indignantly. “I heard it as clearly as you did, Evelyn. I’m just dead, not deaf. And I know he doesn’t want anything gooda man seldom does. You can ask Eleanor Roosevelt about that.” But the mere thought of even mentioning such a thing to the revered First Lady of the World was enough to make Evelyn O’Neill realize how really repulsive it was. Her husband’s affair with that vampire had been bad enough, but it was at least human…or maybe not human, but normal at least. His idea of witchy sex was beyond the pale. “But Felix is such a prude about other things,” his wife said. “He doesn’t want Maeve having anything to do with that nice young congressman, just because he’s a vampire.” “Well, there are many men who would feel that way,” Mary answered delicately. “It’s that double standard. They might have an affair with a vampire, but they would not want their daughters to marry one. Or bury one, either.” “But she’s a banshee,” Evelyn pointed out. “There a

re men who would not even want anything to do with her. And anyway,” she added, with a sigh, “it might not even be legal. That’s why it’s so important to keep them from passing the Same Species Marriage Bill.” “And he should give veterans’ benefits to the Confederate vampires,” Mary said. “Those poor boys died for a cause they believed in. Or rather they didn’t die, but you know what I mean. I refused to step on their flag, so you should not step on their pensions.” For both political and moral reasons-as the great-great granddaughter of Union officers who really had died for their cause-Evelyn did not agree. Neither would she argue with a guest, especially a sister First Lady. “Oh, well,” Evelyn replied tactfully. “A president has problems in any age.” “And we should help him face them.” This time, the reply was firm. “But not that way.” **** Nor did she get any more support from her friend Mimsy Plantagenet Foha. As you can probably tell from her maiden name, she was from a very old and distinguished family indeed. It was so upper class, in fact, that she was a dedicated liberal, on the premise that, no matter how much money the government took away, she would still

have plenty left. After learning that her daughter Ingrid, the animal activist, had been nipped by a seven-pound wereMaltese thus becoming one herself, Mimsy had decided to go her one better. By suffering the bite of a were-golden-retriever, she had become a true yellowdog-Democrat. During the full moon, anyway. That could have been a problem, as she told her old school friend, the First Lady, over tea in the Green Room. Learning of her new condition, her husband had wanted to do it doggie style. Literally. “And did you let him?” Evelyn Rand O’Neill asked, turning almost the same shade as Mrs. Kennedy’s watered-silk sea-green wall. “Well, not entirely,” Mimsy answered, gazing down modestly into her gold-rimmed cup. “That would have been inter-species sex. But I did agree to lick him all over in my canine form.” Like the true lady that she was, the First Lady managed to hide her grimace of revulsion. “Even that is not like being bound to a Satanic stone altar,” she replied. “Not even the Satanists really do that. I mean, what if the Republicans got wind of that? Can you imagine Satangate?” This time, she shuddered openly at the thought. “But you yourself are a witch,” the were-purebred answered, in tones of barely-hidden reproach. “What

would the opposition say about that?” “It’s no worse than what they said about Eleanor and Hillary,” her hostess pointed out reasonably. “And it’s still better than sex orgies.” Her guest sighed. At that point, she would have agreed completely with the president. If you had seen one New England Puritan, no matter whom she worshipped, you had seen them all. “But it is getting late,” the First Lady said, rising, obviously feeling that the conversation had gone too far. “Shall I call the limousine again.” “No, that’s all right,” Mimsy assured her. “The moon will be out soon. Then I can walk home.” “Not alone, though,” her hostess insisted. “You could wind up in the shelter that way, Hecate forbid. No, Maeve will walk you. She is going out for track, you know.” Even as she spok e, the sun wa s setting. As the moon started to rise, Evelyn tactfully pretended not to notice that her old friend was turning into a large dog. To her relief, she noted that Mimsy looked even blonder, more graceful and more elegant than before. “Maeve, dear,” she called upstairs. “Will you get the leash?”

The president had no objection, when his wife told him that they would be dining alone that night. The Fohas were such staunch, rich supporters, Mimsy could have shifted into a flesh-eating zombie for all he cared, especially if she ate him in the erotic sense of the word. His daughter would still be safe with her, especially since, as a banshee, Maeve would be very effective at screaming for help. He had not counted on Maeve turning to her fourfooted companion for advice. Or on the were-purebred being expressive enough to provide it, even without being able to say a word. **** “That Congressman Zagorsky seems like a very nice young man,” the girl said in a casual tone as they strolled towards the Plantagenet mansion in Great Falls-Mrs. Plantagenet on her four paws and Miss O’Neill in her Nikes. “Woof,” Mimsy answered, in a tone of unmistakable agreement. Glancing down, Maeve saw even more approval in her great, clear brown eyes. “I mean, he is a vampire, but I am a banshee, and we must not be prejudiced.” “Arf,” the were-dog said, expressing firm support. “But you know how fathers are,” Maeve sighed. “He

doesn’t even care that George is a congressman , or even that George saved his life, or even that he himself is pretty sure to veto the Same Species Marriage Bill. He just does not want his own daughter to marry one.” “Sniff!” the dog snuffled, showing what she thought of such an attitude. Her own daughter Ingrid had married an alpha werewolf, although she realized that that was not the same. That had not been an interspecies marriage, since Ingrid was a were-Maltese herself. A vampire and banshee posed a much clearer problem. Then she whined, in a lofty way that clearly meant, “I am married to a full-time human myself.” “You are a Plantagenet,” the girl pointed out, somewhat resentfully. “That means you would be good enough for anyone, even if you had married a flesh-eating zombie. No offense meant,” she quickly answered, hearing the resentful growl. “None taken,” Mimsy replied, through an even more expressive sniff. **** “President O’Neill and Congressman Zagorsky both

support your goals, Mistress Legree,” her selfappointed slave girl pointed out timidly, when the talk turned to animal welfare, as it always did in her dominatrix’s home dungeon. Gloria knew she was not supposed to express her own opinions, without being sure that her mistress shared them, but she could still not resist putting in a good word for the party when the time seemed right. Gloria had volunteered ardently for both candidates. Tim Johnson had even asked her out for dinner once, when the famed male model was appearing at a Democratic rally. He had made a special appeal to the undead community, since he was the one vampire romance cover model who really was one. Before that dinner, Gloria had assumed that all vampires were also Dominants, with a capital D, since she had still known very little about either minority group. Therefore, over the (very) rare filet mignon, she had cautiously asked him if he liked to see his victims dangling from the ceiling in chains before he drained their blood. Even more tactfully, he had answered that he himself would not go that route, at least until the election was over, because it might reflect badly on the candidate. If she had taken the hint, Gloria realized, she might have saved herself from an incredibly embarrassing experience later on, after she had embraced the

submissive lifestyle and the vampire Realtor had indignantly refused to paddle her publicly. But even if Tim had let her down by not providing a clear enough warning, she still felt loyal to her Democratic candidates. It seemed only right to put in a good word for them now. This time she did not jump when the flogger fell with a resounding thud. Gloria had long since realized that that cruel implement would not strike anything but furniture during the group gatherings and would only be used consensually at other times. “I doubt that any politicians will do a thing to help the animals,” the Mistress snarled. “It would take a werewolf in Congress to do that. “But since you mentioned the president, I have gotten an interesting message from his supporters in New Orleans,” Gloria said timidly. “It seems he wants to try real witch sex and his wife won’t give it to him, so they would like us to try. Then he really would be in our debt.” “But we are not witches,” a cowboy from New Jersey said. The sudden glare of her cold blue eyes reminded him to quickly add, “M’am.” “No witch would ever dream of doing what he is asking for,” the Domme declared. “And certainly not

while she was on duty, so to speak. “But,” she decided, “if he ever does get witch sex, or his idea of it, he would want to thank the people who provided it.” She showed her excitement by striking her flogger against standing brass lamp. “Besides,” she said, in a more conversational tone, “as this Ms. Lynch described it, it would really be kinky.” And that, from this mistress of the cruelty-free fake-fur flogger, was the highest tribute. **** It was an even greater tribute to the Finnegans’ financial power and influence that the president took Mary Margaret’s call the moment his secretary announced it to him. This was about ten seconds after it came through. Not that he was reluctant to do it. It kept him from having to wonder about vetoing that curse-of-God Same Species Marriage Bill. He was sure to forfeit some voters either way…although hopefully not as many as Kerry had lost over the Same Sex thing. Although, he mused, if he let it go through, it would at least stop his daughter from marrying that vampire. He could probably find something to use against him, since it was a president’s job to know where the bodies were buried. In George Zagorsky’s case, though,

everyone else knew that the bodies were not likely to stay that way. He himself had had a particularly memorable affair with an undead political activist…the young lady he still remembered fondly as his interred intern…but that was different, of course. Rank had its privileges. Mary Margaret Finnegan interrupted his thoughts. “And is this the president himself I’m speaking to?” she asked, in an Irish brogue that had grown ever thicker during her thirty years away from Dublin. She had learned that most Americans found that dialect delightful, no matter how they felt about the accents of other lands. In another decade, he thought irritably, no one in Ireland would be able to understand her at all at all at all. “Sure, and who else would it be, me darlin’?” he asked, as though channeling his great-great-greatgreat grandfather, who had fought beside Bonnie Prince Charlie in Lally’s Irish Brigade and had, in fact, recently been the hero of a historical romance called ‘Hard Man’, published by eXtasy Books. “So it is after bein’ that great man himself,” she said. “Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.” If she is quoting James Joyce, he realized with some alarm, we will be here for a long time. That “yes” list can go on for pages. I am glad our people have such a way with words, he told himself-my own famous

ancestor proved it, with his famous (if largely fictitious) Journal of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s revolt. But do we have to use so many of them? Luckily, she stopped after one sentence’s worth. Even more fortunately, he had no need to interrupt her to find out what she wanted. She got around to it soon enough and he could almost see her blue eyes flashing and her grey curls shaking angrily as she did. “And himself after having a daughter who is a genuine banshee,” she went on. “And her ready, able and willing, as we say, to go howl at every bedside of every man who ever car ried a rifle on parade, but who will not come and wail for my poor dear husband, and he bein’ one of those who bought the election and now with one foot in the grave.” “Well, I would not say…” he began, then quickly corrected himself. “Well, now, me’ darlin’, sure and I would not be after sayin’ that he bought the election with it.” “Could you have won without his donations, which were more than generous…sorry, which were as welcome as a spring day in County Cork to all and sundry? And you up against all those fine people, as rich as the kings of Tara.”

“Sure, and aren’t I after knowing what I owe your husband?” he replied patiently. “And won’t I be sure that she will be after repayin’ it?” “She had better!” the woman answered grimly. The president found himself nodding in agreement. Secretly, though, he feared that Maeve was about as likely to do that as her mother was to…well…take part in a witches’ orgy. **** For their dramatically different reasons, Jennie Jenkins and Marlene Lynch had no such scruples where orgies were concerned. When Jennie answered Marlene’s call on the Internet, the dominatrix and the witch had opposite goals in mind. The first wanted to protect the president; the second to blackmail him. They agreed on one thing, though: he wanted to take part in an orgy of witch’s sex, and no real witch would have dreamed of providing it to him, least of all his elegant spouse. She could provide the apparatus, Ms. Lynch assured her would-be confederate (who had no way of knowing how literally the lady used that term). The family graveyard boasted several find mausoleums, and the coffin lid could be pressed into service as the

sacrificial altar. Ms. Jenkins need ed only bring her friends for a night they would all remember…and the president would, too. Yes, indeed, she told herself, after hanging up the pink Princess phone. It will be a night to remember for the president…like the Titanic. At the thought, she tried to laugh in an evil, sneering way…”Nya ha ha ha HA!”…but soon realized that her pink little rosebud mouth was not meant to form a sneer. So she picked up the phone again and called her Confederate who really WAS one, with a very big capital C. Since the sun was not close to setting, she had to leave a message, but she made up for that by laying on the pure Louisiana sugar cane. “Homer, sugar,” she told him, “Ah have found a lady who will do exactly what we want her to. And when she does it, Robert E. Lee is as good as in the White House.” In her most giddy, girlish tones, recalling her days as Miss Sugar Cane Festival, she added, by way of a compromise, “So nya ha ha, you-all.”

Chapter Eleven

ith Mardi Gras rapidly approaching, it was easy enough to lure the president to New Orleans. Officially, Ms. Lynch said it would be an ideal time to mingle with vampires, werewolves and other paranormal interest groups. Unofficially, they hinted at equally paranormal sexual pleasures, masked by the music and revelry. Accordingly, he had mixed and mingled with the crowd…or come as close as he could to mingling, with the Secret Service surrounding him. He even made a speech before the parade began, saying how happy he was to be here with so many true friends, including those who had been welcome here even before his own administration had embraced them. That word ‘embraced’ had been deliberately chosen. Some of the vampires in the crowd-both real and wannabee-had enthusiastically applauded. They already knew how he willingly he had embraced his interred intern. When the parade began, it was easy enough for him to slip away to the old Lynch place. The music still reached him dimly as he walked into the overgrown family burial ground, having sent the Secret Service

away for obvious reasons. With eagerness that overcame his natural caution, he approached the founder’s mausoleum, having seen the light emerging through the cracks around the door. Coming closer, he heard the screaming, which could neither be muffled by the heavy entrance nor drowned by the distant revelry. For a moment, it reminded him of his daughter’s howling, in her banshee role. That was completely different, he assured himself. Maeve’s wails were strictly professional. The wailing victim was still struggling against the two men who held her, although, to O’Neill’s professionally practiced eye, her efforts were not very convincing. For one thing, she kept swinging her dark hair back and forth, for the maximum effect. Also, she seemed to be turning her body so as to allow the dominatrix to pull off her transparent white gown without tearing the lace trimming. The blonde in black leather stood glaring down at her over folded arms. For the victim’s sake, he was glad to see the batteryoperated heater in the corner. Even in Louisiana, February was no time to be lying around naked. With his politician’s memory for faces, he also thought he had seen her before, in an official’s office. It did not, however, seem quite the moment to mention it. Once she had been stripped bare, the men hoisted her,

still screaming, onto the lid of the coffin. They held down her arms and legs, respectively, as she writhed. At that, he shook his head dubiously. Witch sex was one thing, but rape was another, and that seemed to be the only word for the proceedings. Seeing his hesitance, she glanced up and whispered, “This is an honor, Mr. President.” Thus reassured, he nodded solemnly when the dominatrix bade him to “stand in the place of our Dark Lord and accept our sacrifice on this unholy night.” Actually, it sounded much more like Satanism than witchcraft to him, and goodness knows his First Lady had spent enough time lecturing about the difference. Still, he was in no condition to quibble, as he realized when he felt the First Penis straining against his blue serge pants. There were all sorts of denominations within the Christian, Jewish and other faiths, as he realized, since goodness knew he had spent enough time trying to win them all over. So he had to assume there were various brands of witches, too, and not all had evolved directly from New England prudes. After removing his jacket and tie, he started to unbutton his shirt but then thought better of it. It didn’t seen dignified, somehow, for the president to be standing naked in front of a coven of witches. And then there was always the chance that someone would

interrupt him, which would be embarrassing enough even if he were fully clothed. The marble coffin was so high off the ground, it was all he could do to climb onto the sacrifice. She waited patiently until her tormenters had again grasped her limbs and were holding her in place beneath him. With his hands on either side of h er face, he k issed her lips before his fingers slid down her sides to her thighs. Normally he would have expected her to return the favor, but now it was even more exciting to feel her lying helplessly beneath him. As she strained up towards him he pressed down her shoulders, holding her still. Normally, too, he would have run his tongue across her nipples to heighten her desire. Now he plunged into her, hard and fast, and heard her shrieking with delight in reply. He looked down to see that his fluid had spread over her slim white thighs and onto the marble beneath. Although he could not see it as clearly, her harsh breathing and staring eyes told him that she had poured out her own juices just as lavishly. Fortunately for his presidential pride, he had no way of knowing that the orgasm was only part of her pleasure. A greater part came from having her entire

group see her triumph…thus wiping out the disgrace they had seen, when Crina had refused to paddle her. **** Under the circumstances, it might have seemed completely unreasonable for O’Neill to be so outraged when he returned home to find his daughter making out with a vampire in the Red Room. “Making out” really was the proper word for it. He was certainly not giving her the dark kiss. But they had shared plenty of the other kind of kisses, he saw, when he glanced into the room, during a rather guilty search for his wife. To be more specific, his daughter’s white linen blouse was open and her boyfriend was lavishing light kisses (or whatever the opposite of dark kisses may be) on the swelling area pushed up by her bra. They were so engaged in th e activity, they did not even notice him open and quickly shut the door. All guilt gone, he stamped up to their private chamber, where his wife was just starting to climb into bed. “Do you know what I caught our daughter doing?” he demanded, as his angry fingers tore off his red silk tie. “Making out with Representative Zagorsky?”

“Letting that vampire kiss her bosom, yes! And you know what that can lead to.” “He is a United States Congressman,” she answered reasonably. “And he did save your life, remember. And he does support you completely. And I don’t hear her screaming about it.” Tactfully, she refrained from adding that if their daughter had been screaming, they would certainly have noticed it. “I have nothing against vampires,” he answered. “I know that they voted me into office, in fact. But… but…” “You wouldn’t want one to bury your daughter.” Since this was so obviously true, he declined to answer, but stamped silently into his dressing room. **** But he soon had worse things to worry about. Like the photos that arrived the next day by special courier, in an envelope bearing the Confederate War Veterans’ letterhead. As Felix O’Neill knew perfectly well, his most prominent ancestor was a ruthless fanatic, who had cheerfully risked his own life several times to save Bonnie Prince Charlie’s. Captain O’Neill also became an accomplished liar to promote his noble cause, which only raised him in his descendant’s esteem. He had

read that in ‘Rebel Rogue’ and saw no reason to doubt it, based on his own character traits. While President O’Neill was just as fanatically dedicated, he directed all of his devotion to his own career. Thus, when faced with a complete disaster, his first thought was how to turn it to his own personal advantage, in the absence of a Bonnie Prince to serve. His daughter would have to be sacrificed…and he had a feeling she would be an even more willing offering than Gloria Borgatta herself. After less than a moment’s hesitation, he called George Zagorsky’s office. He had found the solution to all of their problems, he assured the young congres sman enthusia stically. George would support veterans’ benefits for the Confederate vampires and the president would publicly veto the Same Species Marriage Act. It was a win-win situation all around. “It certainly sounds that way, Mr. President,” George responded slowly. Hearing the caution in his tone, O’Neill realized that he was not an utter innocent, after all. The president was, after all, about to sell his daughter for a congressional vote, in the unfortunate event of an impeachment hearing. George must have sensed as much.

“Now I want you to think this over carefully,” the president said, knowing that he was going to do it anyway. “I certainly will, Mr. President. If there is anything else I can do for you...” In the very act of hanging up the receiver, O’Neill saw yet another opportunity and immediately grasped it. “There is one thing,” he said. “I know my daughter is a friend of yours, and if you could ask her to do one little thing that would be a great help to our party.” **** “I still think it looks whore-y,” Maeve’s mother told her, shaking her head in disapproval above her folded arms. “It’s by Jessica McCormack,” her daughter pointed out. “She’s famous for her prom gowns.” “That one looks like it came out of an old Rita Hayworth movie. It’s skin-tight and covered with sequins from your bosom to your knees, then it bursts out into ruffles. I think it looks cheap.” “Look, it’s green,” her daughter responded, turning away from the full-length mirror. There she had, indeed, been admiring her resemblance to the famous old Gilda poster, from the dance dress to the orange lipstick and the red-blond hair dipping down over one

eye. But she saw no sense in saying so. Instead, she pointed out, once again, “A banshee wears a green gown. That is all the rules have to say. I feel that if I have to wail for a total dra ft dodger, I should at least get a nice dress out of it. “Besides, the only other one I saw at the Pentagon City Mall was an emerald satin bridesmaid’s dress. I am not going anyplace wearing that, least of all to a deathbed, where that could be the last thing some poor man sees on Earth. This one at least is a nice light sea green and it’s in style, too.” “You could wear a green sweater set with pearls. That’s what I always choose for public occasions. And I have brought that look back into fashion, if I must say so myself.” “I am going out to wail for a fallen warrior,” her daughter retorted. “Don’t you think I should dress up for that?” “Well, I suppose,” her mother sighed. “But remember, you have to wear a grey shawl over it. The rules say that, too.” Taking the long pashima scarf from the dressing table, she arranged it over her daughter’s shoulders, in a way that was obviously intended to conceal the lowcut bodice and the ample bosom swelling over it.

Maeve naturally pulled it down again. **** Grey pashima shawl or no, she might never have been admitted to the hospital if she had not been the First Daughter…and if, even more to the point, Mary Margaret Finnegan had not left the strictest instructions that she was to be escorted to her husband’s private room, at any time of the day or night, at least if the hospital wanted any more contributions from the Finnegan Foundation. The nursing sister on duty obviously did not approve. This was clear from her pressed lips and indignant sniff. Racing on her high green satin heels to keep up with the sister’s sensible nursing shoes, Maeve felt forced to apologize. “I know that this dress is not really quite right for this place,” she said. “But Mr. Finnegan’s wife wanted me to wear something that would cheer him up.” “What you wear is your own business,” the nurse retorted. “The problem is that you are a banshee. This is a Catholic hospital, and you are a pagan spirit.” “I’m part of our cultural heritage,” Maeve answered, in a rather defensive tone. “Besides, it’s an opportunity for public service. The sisters at St. Scholastica said we should always look for that.”

Unable to find an answer, the nursing nun simply sniffed again. Mrs. Finnegan more than made up for the sister’s coldness with her own warm welcome. “Me darlin’ girl!” she exclaimed, jumping up to throw her arms around Maeve’s shoulders, with such obvious affection that the Secret Service did not dream of interfering. “It will mean the world and all to himself that you have come here for him.” Secretly, Maeve doubted that. Glancing at the bed, she saw that himself…James Finnegan…was either in a coma or close to it. His skin was a waxy white that she had, on her professional rounds, seen often enough before. It meant that she had come there none to soon. She took a deep breath from her diaphragm, to spare her vocal cords, just as her father’s voice coach had taught her to do. “Ochone, ochone, ochone,” she said experimentally. “Testing one-two-three-four.” Then she filled her lungs even more deeply and cried, in tones that shattered the windows as they rent the air, “Ochone! Ochone! Ochone!” Just in case her patient did not speak Gaelic, she translated helpfully, “Woe! Woe! Woe!” “Woe, woe, woe!” the soon-to-be widow echoed helpfully. “Ochone! Ochone! Ochone!” the banshee wailed again.

At that, Jim Finnegan’s eyes fluttered open feebly. “What is that girl howling about?” he whispered. “And why is she dressed like Rita Hayworth?” “I’m a banshee,” Maeve explained. “Your wife wanted me to come here and wail for you.” “Oh, she did, did she?” he demanded, pulling himself up by his bed rails. “Well, she isn’t going to be a rich widow just yet, so you can go back to the White House and tell your father that she is not yet the one to get his contributions from.” “You can leave my father out of this!” she cried in more mortal tones, her han ds flying to her hips. In her righteous daughterly anger, she forgot that she had made just that accusation many times herself and even more bitterly. Changing course completely, she went on, “There are men who really were warriors, and they deserve much more from me than you do. I should be at a veterans’ hospital helping them right now instead of wasting my time with a rich old man who doesn’t even appreciate it.” His skin went from waxy to pink as he searched for an answer. He was spared the effort when the disapproving nurse raced in again. “What is all this racket in here?” she demanded. “Are

you trying to kill my patient?” “She seems to have brought him back to life,” Mrs. Finnegan said in awe. “It’s a miracle, so it is!” But that miracle was short-lived. As soon as Maeve stopped shouting, he sank back onto the pillows. Even though a bevy of other nurses soon raced in to try to revive him, her own professional experience…even more than the steady buzzing of the monitor…told the First Banshee that they were too late. **** “Am I killing them?” she asked, in stricken tones. “Do they die because they have heard the banshee’s wail?” “Nonsense,” her father answered briskly. “His widow has promised to double his last donation.” “But he did not die until I got there,” she cried. He interrupted her quickly, since he did not feel like replacing the Oval Office’s full-length windows once again. But her next words were even more distressing to him than the heartiest howl would have been. “I can’t do it any more,” she said. Hearing that, he remembered all of his other IrishAmerican contributors, not to mention the veterans’ vote. Not all of them believed in banshees, of course, but they were glad to have one at their old buddies’ bedsides. It did lend a certain prestige.

“Would you like me to call the Irish ambassador?” he asked, trying to sound calm and co ncerned. “I am sure that she wil l tell you that the banshees proclaim a death, they do not cause it. “Or perhaps you’d prefer a folklore professor at Dublin U? I’m sure he could find you a more experienced banshee to talk with, as a sort of mentor. I could pick up a phone and call them right now.” “They don’t know,” she said, with a sniffle. “Like you said, they know the folklore. They don’t know what really happens. They weren’t there.” “But these people are,” he said gently. He did pick up the phone this time, long enough to tell an aide, “Can you bring me the letters from veterans’ hospitals, asking for a banshee to wail for them? Some of them don’t have anyone else to even stand by their beds.” “I know all about those letters. Most of them come to me.” Without his knowing it, his tone started sliding towards his most beguiling Irish brogue. “And can you resist them and refuse to grant their one last plea?” Shaking her head and sniffling, she agreed that she could not. “Not when it matters so much to them,” she said, with a sigh.

Chapter Twelve

ut what else can matter more to us?” Tiffany demanded, pointing at the TV dramatically-which was, as he realized, about the only way she ever did anything. “We are still suffering so much discrimination,” she proclaimed. “Look at poor Crina, who cannot marry her sweetheart just because he is a werewolf. We really must speak out.” Her husband remained silent. He was not sure that he himself approved of vampires marrying werewolves… especially when the vampire in question was one of his own former four brides, which did give him a sort of paternal interest in her. And it was not his business, at any rate, to meddle in American domestic policy. He sa w no reason t o say so, though, especially at a moment when he felt a growing urge to make his one-and-only current wife

stop talking and do something else to him. He interrupted her by picking her up from her armchair, lifting her high into the air through sheer mind power, and hurling her onto the bed. She landed with her filmy white negligee hiked up around her waist. Then he stood up from the seat beside hers and jumped on top of her the old-fashioned way, using his leg muscles. To his great satisfaction, he saw that she was practically trembling in desire, all political issues forgotten. “Look, Ma, no hands!” he exclaimed, using a popular if particularly senseless American expression. To illustrate his words, he peeled the glittering spaghetti straps of her black nightgown down from her shoulders, using pure-or rather, impure mental power. “Wanna bet?” she replied with a laugh. With her very physical fingers, she opened his purple satin lounging robe and pressed her lips against his chest. Swiftly but steadily, her kisses formed a path straight down. **** What mattered most to the president was keeping his key allies, including the Secretary of Defe nse. When he

heard that the secretary’s father was dying, having served in World War II…well, it seemed to him that his daughter’s duty was clear. Speaker Lee and those other warmongering Republicans were trying hard to win over the secretary, as he reminded her, and she didn’t want that to happen, did she? “Now you don’t have to bother looking for his military records,” he told her cautiously. “He managed to stay in Norfolk through the entire war, which itself was no mean accomplishment. But it would mean a lot to the secretary if you would do it, and that would be a great help to us for all the things we are trying to do.” “That means making things better in the veterans’ hospitals, doesn’t it?” she asked hopefully. “Of course it does,” he assured her. “We all want to do that.” Even though, as he added silently, no one had yet figured out where the funding would come from to do it with. In any event, he assured himself, her very presence would make the veterans feel better without costing the government a dime. Clearly, it was a win-win situation all around. **** Thomas McCoy, Sr., was not in any veterans’ hospital, no sireee bob. He had a private room almost as lavish

as Jim Finnegan’s had been. It was filled with a Pentagon’s worth of floral arrangements, most of them bearing cards from office workers in that very place. Since the building houses twenty-three thousand employees, you can imagine that the room held enough blossoms to fill a good-sized greenhouse. Thomas, Sr. was still strong enough to sit up in bed when the girl approached his side. His faded, watery eyes even lit up when he saw her. “That the banshee?” he asked his son, as though anyone else were likely to show up at his deathbed in a sea-green prom gown with a grey pashima shawl. “Yes, Father,” the secretary answered, tears forming behind his horn-rimmed glasses. “The banshee has come to wail for you.” “It’s because of that fucking brawl in Norfolk,” he stated smugly. “The guys from the USS Albuquerque were insulting our fucking ship, so we had to fight them. And it must have been some fucking battle, too.” “Father!” the secretary objected. “I am not insulting the fucking Albuquerque.” “That’s not what I was talking about, father. I meant your language. You can’t say ‘fuck’ in front of a banshee. Let alone the president’s daughter.” “If she’s a banshee,” the old man answered reasonably, “then she’s heard a lot worse. She’s stood

by dying men in the fucking IRA, right, Miss O’Neill?” “Not really. I mean, I only practice here at home. For the American military.” Thinking about that for a moment, she added, “Or our allies, in a military emergency. And maybe even prisoners of war.” Realizing that she might have gone too far in setting professional policy…since she was, after all, the president’s daughter, whose words might very well reach the right-wing media…she hastily went on, “But I am not sure about that prisoner of war thing, and of course I only here for you.” It had been an unfortunate choice of words. “That sounds fucking great to me, toots,” he replied. Grasping her hand, he pulled her towards him, so close that she could smell the medicine still on his breath. It obviously included a fair percentage of alcohol. “Hey!” she cried, as she wondered wildly if anyone had ever sexually harassed a banshee before. But her patient had obviously decided that, if this was her night to wail, she was not the only one who would do it. Before his horrified offspring and/or the Secret Service could pull her away, McCoy, Sr. had planted a wet smelly kiss on her cheek. “Please forgive him,” the Defense Secretar y begged the

First Daughter. “His mind must be wandering.” “It’s my fucking hands that want to wander.” To illustrate his words, he grasped her bosom with his cold, wrinkled hand, pulling down her shawl. The Secret Service raced forward to pull the covering up again. “Ok, that’s it!” she shouted, reminding them, once again, that a banshee was still an Irishwoman, after all. “I’ll keen at your fecking bedside because I promised my father I would, but that’s it! Ochone! OCHONE! OCH-FECKING-ONE!” Throwing the shawl back over her shoulder, she flounced out of the room, leaving the thoroughly humiliated Secretary of Defense stammering apologies after her. With the guards hurrying to keep up, on her way towards the exit she stopped in the waiting room. There, she had seen a stretcher carrying a teen gang member from Southeast Washington, victim of a revenge drive-by shooting. Feeling completely out of place in her prom gown, she approached it crying “Ochone, ochone!” Banshee did not make value judgments. The warriors only had to be brave to qualify, and to have an Irish ancestor somewhere. ****

Unfortunately, newspapers columnists and TV commentators made value judgments all the time, whether they knew anything about the topic or not. Photographers had been following the ambulance, if not actually chasing it, ever since it had started racing to the shooting scene. So the ER photo appeared on the front page of the Washington Times and Post, showing the First Banshee wailing for some nameless teen-aged thug. “Is this the honor we pay to our military veterans?” the next-day’s Post editorial demanded. “Is this the hope we hold out to disadvantaged teens…that the banshee might wail for them?” As an Irish-American, Buck Patrick was especially indignant, which he amply demonstrated on the following Sunday’s “Dueling Duo.” “So next time will she be wailing for a Colombian drug lord if he has an Irish ancestor?” he demanded. “Who will even want a banshee to wail for him after that?” All Cassandra Bailey could do was assure him feebly, “But you are a Marine veteran, Buck. You don’t have to worry about the banshee wailing for you.” “What makes you think I want it?” he demanded, his beefy face turning its customary red. “I don’t need sloppy seconds after some gang-banger.”

He was not, despite all of the earlier indications, speaking ill of the dead. To everyone’s surprise, the gang-banger in question had started to recover after the surprise visit. He had since been upgraded from extremely critical to stable condition and was enjoying all the media attention in a private room. “My grandma told me that her own grandpa came from Dublin,” the youth explained, during one of his interviews. “That must be why that Irish lady came to comfort me. And,” he added with a modest grin, “she did it because I was really brave. Maybe I will join the army or something. They could use guys like me.”

Chapter Thirteen

ut my leading contributor was not good enough for her,” the president muttered, angrily flicking off the TV. “Neithe r was the fat her of the Secretary of Defense. I had to practically beg

her to go to their deathbeds. I certainly have no idea why she howled beside that gang-banger, which will not do us any good at all.” Lying beside him in her white lace gown and negligee, the First Lady thought that she did know why her daughter had done it, because she herself would have acted the same way. Maeve saw her banshee wailing as a sacred obligation, not a way of repaying political debts, like a White House dinner invitation. Instead of saying so, she reminded him that their daughter had, indeed, gone to keen for the dying McCoy, Sr. and would do the same for other major supporters…just as long as he kept his promise to veto the Same Species Marriage Bill. Then she smiled, having realized long since how the issues were all tied together. As they usually were in Washington. Soon, with any luck at all, her daughter and Congressman Zago rsky would be tied together, too. Metaphorically, of course…she still did not think that all this BDSM stuff was quite the thing for nice people. Or vampires. Or banshees. Let alone the First Family. ****

The president, in turn, still did not think that nice banshees should marry vampires. “But you need the vampires more than ever,” she told him, as she lay beside him in the Lincoln Bed. “After your last little difficulty, you really do need all the support you can get. And I’m afraid that Maeve has been developing some image problems of her own.” He pretended not to understand that his own little difficulty consisted of having served as the guest of honor for a BDSM orgy during Mardi Gras, while Maeve’s image problem was that she had been caught embracing (if only professionally, to be sure) a wounded gang-banger in full view of the press. “Banger” meaning “shooter” in this case, he hastily assured himself, although that was bad enough. “And if the congressman thinks that you think that he is not good enough to marry your daughter…” He assured her that he got the point.

Chapter Fourteen

eorge Zagorsky got it too, when the First Lady invited him to the White House again, for d inner in the family rooms this time. During the soup course, the president mentioned, even more casually, that he could not wait to veto the Same Species Marriage Bill. “This is one way we can really fight species discrimination,” he said. George assured him in the same offhand tone that he was all for fighting discrimination in any way he could. “And our daughter is organizing the banshee volunteers,” Evelyn put in proudly. “Perhaps you could go to a rally with her, to really encourage them.” “We could start making plans this evening,” the First Banshee murmured, staring down at her rare prime rib. It was not quite as rare as George’s portion, naturally. Every couple had to make this kind of adjustment, the president realized, just as he and Evelyn had done. “I’d love to do that,” their guest exclaimed, hardly able to believe what he had heard. If the president was sending him and his daughter out together for public appearances, he was one step away from announcing the engagement in the Rose Garden.

“So let’s you and I go have our dessert somewhere else and let the youngsters d iscuss their plans,” Evelyn suggested. **** As they closed the door behind them, they pretended not to hear the unmistakable sounds of kissing… although, as the president assured himself, it was not the dark kind. Inspired by the romantic atmosphere…along with the need to avoid other disasters like the deplorable Mardi Gras affair…the First Lady had some dark ideas of her own. Her long fingers were quick to remove her sweater set, unhook her bra and unclasp her pearls, so she could carry out her plans. The president realized what those ideas were when he saw an open pair of handcuffs lying on the marbletopped round table beside the Lincoln bed. Lying on the bedspread, she glanced across at the steel implements and then looked up at him with an unmistakable air of invitation. Kneeling above her, he fastened the first cuff around her slim wrist. He was rewarded by the growing excitement he saw lighting her green eyes. Then he

was struck by the added thrill of realizing that no other president and First Lady had ever used the famous carved rosewood headboard this way before. Of course, he could not be too sure about the girl friends. **** No question, he realized, it was definitely a new day… or a new dusk, anyway. As Crina walked radiantly down the Romanian Embassy’s wrought-iron staircase in her wedding gown. Her groom waited proudly for her. Her hair had been piled on top of her head, with such care that it seemed to have fallen naturally that way. The styling was a gift from Nadia, a beautician who had been one of her three sister brides for Count Victor Vyrdelek. In the same spirit, Simona would provide the organ music for the reception where Ylenia would dance, as befit their new roles as accompanist and instructor for a Vamper-cize program. All three of these former sister brides walked before Crina, as their mutual former master waited to give her away. In place of their clinging white vampire gowns, they wore lavender bridesmaid’s costumes, since everyone knew that only the bride was supposed to wear white at a really formal affair.

The Countess Vyrdelek was dressed in a dee p er purple, as matron of honor. The president himself had fond memories of seeing her wearing a lot less. Lending his own considerable prestige to the occasion, President O’Neill stood beside his the First Witch… who now doubled as the First Submissive from time to time. Their daughter, the First Banshee, stood close to her escort, Congressman Zagorsky, who had been the countess’ original vampire master. By now, her father did not object to her choice of mates. Better a vampire than a wounded gang-banger, who deserved a banshee’s services because he happened to have had an Irish great-grandmother somewhere. So he had Romanian vampires and a redneck werewolf and an Irish banshee and a New England socialite witch… His lips moved slightly as he tried to list all the species, their nationalities and their incredibly intertwined relationships, then shrugged and gave it up. They would all benefit from his recent televised veto of the Same Species Marriage Bill. Just as long as he could count on them to support his re-election campaign. And then, there were always all those Dommes and

subs, too. He could not forget the erotic minorities, could he?

About the Author

uring her ten years with Northern Virginia weekly newspapers, Jackie Rose often wrote about real estate, which brought her into constant contact with Realtors. She had previously been staff writer/editor for a Hollywood fan magazine, where she interviewed movie and TV stars. Recently, while addressing the

Girl Scouts, she was asked if movie stars were exciting. “No,” she promptly replied, “movie stars are boring… Realtors are exciting.” Vampires are, too, she realized, before writing her vampire spoof, ‘I’m Undead and I Vote’. More than a year after publication, it was still on the Fictionwise best-seller list for Humor. The sequel, ‘I’m a Vampire and I Count’, features Count Victor Vyrdelek and his four consorts, including Crina the budding Realtor. When both relatives and reviewers urged the author to write more about those batty vampire brides, the first result was ‘I’m a Vampire…For Real’. Crina’s clients include a ditzy Domme with a fullyfurnished dungeon to sell, which can also be used as a finished basement (complete with attached kitchen). Oh, and in case you were wondering, apparently the real BDSM lifestylers often do bring covered dishes to their dungeon doings, including casseroles, salads, fried chicken and sub sandwiches. The author heard that from a real sub.