“Another broken heart?” Wester tsked. “That must be the fourth this year.”

“Aye.” Tears welled in Yebba’s eyes. “Vampires weren’t made for love.”

“What happened this time?” Wester asked slyly.

“Did you bite her?”

“That only happened once,” Yebba scowled. “And it was an accident.”

“It has happened to us all,” Larten said, propping himself on an elbow.

“I don’t remember you biting any of your lady friends,” Wester frowned.

“No, but there was one time…” He coughed and blushed. “Never mind.”

“Tel us,” Wester hooted. “Come on, Quicksilver, you can’t leave Yebba to bare his soul alone.”

“Well, do you recall a night a couple of years ago when I didn’t return to our inn?”

“That happens at least once a month,” Wester said.

“This was different,” Larten snapped. “I’d been out with a lady and drank more than was good for me. I felt hungry on the way home, so I popped into a room to feed. But I made too much noise and woke the woman up. She screamed bloody murder and I tumbled out of her room without silencing her.”

“Why didn’t you breathe on her and knock her out?” Wester asked.

Larten shrugged. “I was drunk. I forgot about my vampiric breath. Before I knew it, a mob had formed and I was chased out of town. I was almost trapped in the open and burned alive.”

When Wester and Yebba had stopped laughing, Yebba said, “Why didn’t you flit? They couldn’t have troubled you once you hit top speed and vanished from sight.”

Larten’s blush deepened and Wester had to answer for him. “He can’t flit when he’s drunk — he loses his sense of coordination and can’t run that fast.”

The pair fell apart with laughter. Larten sniffed angrily, but his lips were twitching at the corners.

Eventually he burst out laughing too. When their fit had passed, Wester trudged down to order food and ale, then the three of them waited for the sun to set, so that they could again seek excitement in the inns, taverns and gaming halls of the humans they had once been.