He looked like he'd just seen the Ghost of You Better Shut Your Mouth.

Hey, our hair's the same color," I said, eying us side by side in the mirror. "Sure is, girlfriend." Eric grinned at me.

I could tell Hugo was convinced that he would get to walk back up these stairs: after all, he was a civilized person. These were all civilized people. Hugo really couldn't imagine that anything irreparable could happen to him, because he was a middle-class white American with a college education, as were all the people on the stairs with us. I had no such conviction. I was not a wholly civilized person.

If this was The Lord of the Rings and I had a smart British voice like Cate Blanchett, I could tell you the background of the events of that fall in a really suspenseful way. And you’d be straining to hear the rest.

Look, how come he showed up now? When you have other fairies in the woods? And does that sound crazy when you say it out loud, or what?

We followed the bondage Bobbsey Twins across the crowded dance floor. Those leather shorts were an adventure from behind, let me tell you. And the pictures of Elvis decorating the walls were an education, too. It wasn’t often you ran into a bondage/Elvis/ whorehouse-themed vampire club.

Of course I am grateful, and I'm sure you are, as you put it, a special vintage," Bill said politely, "But I have my own wine cellar.