He shook his head. “This is compliments of the gentleman in the corner.”

I swiveled around on the stool to look where he indicated. Other than two slutty-looking vamps shaking their groove thing on the dance floor, nobody was there.

“Who did you say sent this?” I asked the bartender.

“He must have left. Tall guy. Good-looking in a dark and miserable sort of way.”

“Sounds exactly like Sarah’s type,” George observed, then poked me in the shoulder. “I need to dance. Let’s go dance. I love this song.”

“Not in the mood.”

“I’ll go.” Amy slipped off the stool and teetered precariously on her four-inch platform heels. She gave me a pointed look. “After all, somebody should have some fun tonight.”

Well, that was a bit rude. Accurate, but rude.

I watched the two of them depart to shimmy to Madonna and Justin singing about saving the world in four minutes. I absently twisted the gold chain I wore until it began to cut off the circulation to my index finger.

The chain was ugly. It looked cheap and heavy and didn’t go with any of my wardrobe.

I’d never wear it if I had any say in the matter.

I didn’t have any say.

Thanks to my nightwalker curse, the chain was the only thing keeping me from biting necks and killing people for kicks. Nightwalkers had existed a few hundred years ago, their vicious nature caused by a rare strain of the virus that turned humans into vamps.

They were the reason for all the untrue myths about vampires being totally evil. They were the reason that hunters exist in the first place.

Nightwalkers were wiped off the face of the planet by those hunters to protect unassuming humans—and other vampires.

Which meant that, currently, I was the only vamp in the world with nightwalker tendencies—an uncontrollable dark thirst that spread over me, a need to feed on humans or other vamps as if they were an all-Sarah-can-eat buffet. I also couldn’t go out during the day or the sunlight would fry me. There was no sunscreen on earth that could keep me from turning into a crispy critter if I wasn’t wearing the chain.