Meena wished she had a mini-Butterfinger for sustenance. Or to smash into Shoshona’s flat-ironed hair.

Flat-ironing! Who even bothered anymore?

Certainly not Meena, who had hacked off most of her dark hair at Leisha’s command-Leisha’s “gift” was that she could look at anyone and immediately tell them exactly the most flattering way they ought to be wearing their hair-and who had enough problems making it to work on time without having to worry about flat-ironing, even when she wasn’t busy trying to save young girls on the subway from certain death by white slavery.

“We’ll look like total fools,” Meena said.

“I don’t think so,” Shoshona said coolly. “Lust is obviously doing something right. It’s one of the few soaps right now that hasn’t been canceled or been forced to move to L.A. to shoot to save money. It’s actually going up in the ratings. And like you said, if we’re going to survive, we need to pull in a younger demographic. Kids don’t care about soaps. It’s all about reality shows to them.”

“And what’s so real,” Meena demanded, “about vampires?”

“Oh, I assure you, they’re real,” Shoshona said with a catlike smile. “You’ve read about those girls they keep finding, drained of all their blood, in parks all over New York City, haven’t you?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Meena said sourly. “They weren’t drained of all their blood. They were just strangled.”

“Um, excuse me,” Shoshona said. “But I have an inside source who says all three of those girls were bitten everywhere and drained of every drop of their blood. There’s a real-life vampire here in Manhattan, and he’s feeding on innocent girls.”

Meena rolled her eyes. Okay. It was true some girls had turned up dead lately in a few city parks.

But drained of their blood? Shoshona was taking vampire fever-which, yes, gripped the country, there was no denying that; it was obvious enough that even Consumer Dynamics Inc. was aware of it, and they were so oblivious to trends that they still thought having a MySpace page was cutting-edge-too far.