"Oh yeah," Tommy said. "That means I can't go back to work at the Safeway either?"

He wasn't stupid, she knew he wasn't stupid, so why was he so slow to see the obvious? "No, I don't think that would be a good idea," Jody said. "Since you're going to pass out cold at sunrise, just the way I do."

"Yeah, that'd be embarrassing," Tommy said.

"Especially when sunlight hits you and you burst into flames."

"Yeah, there's got to be company policy against that."

Jody screamed in frustration.

"Jeez, kidding," Tommy said, cringing.

She sighed, realizing that he'd been goofing on her. "Get dressed, cat breath, we don't want to run out of dark. We're going to need some help."

Out in the great room, the vampire Elijah Ben Sapir was trying to figure out exactly what was going on around him. He knew he had been constrained—bound inside a vessel, and whatever held him was immovable. He'd even turned to mist, which relieved his anxiety somewhat—there was an ethereal mind-set that accompanied the form, it took concentration to not let yourself just float off in a daze—but the bronze shell was airtight. He could hear them talking, but their comments told him little except that his fledgling had betrayed him. He smiled to himself. What a foolishly human mistake to let hope triumph over reason. He should have known better.

It would be days before the hunger was on him again, and even then, without any movement, he could last indefinitely without blood. He could live a very, very long time constrained like this, he realized—it was his sanity that would suffer. He decided to stay in mist form—drift as in a dream at night, sleep like the dead during the day. This way, he would wait, and when the time came, and it would come (if nothing else, living for eight hundred years had taught him patience), he would make his move.