The drive to and from San Quentin had taken all day.

It was late when I arrived back at Roxi's apartment in Hollywood. She curled her naked body around me, resting her hand on my bare chest and her cheek on my shoulder. Her tan leg slid over my thighs, sending a shiver through me. I automatically curled my arm around her.

These days I didn't have much interest in sex. But Roxi did. Enough for both of us. And even though she was only half asleep, I knew that she was giving me an opening. I patted her hip like I would a puppy and some of her electrified energy dissipated. A moment later she was snoring lightly.

Edward had gone on to describe some of the more gruesome details of his murder. Or attempted murder, as he put it.

His first stab didn't kill her. In fact, seventy-two stabs later and she was still kicking, still fighting, until most of her blood finally drained down into the bed sheets. The silver plating had done enough to incapacitate her, but not enough to kill her. Edward was certain that had he tried to stab her with anything other than a silver knife, she would have killed him.

But she had lost enough blood to appear dead, enough to satisfy a medical examiner.

"But that's not why you're here, is it, Spinoza?" he asked, as I saw a guard coming toward us. "You're here because she's gone missing."

"How do you know?"

"Call it a hunch. Be careful, Spinoza. Here be monsters."

And that's when the guard arrived and took him away. He went willing, but he kept his eyes on me until he was finally led out the heavy door.

I lay in bed with my hands behind my head.

I've been staying more and more at Roxi's apartment. We've been dating now for about three months and, surprisingly, things were going well. Somehow, someway she put up with all my melancholy, shyness, and sometimes impotency. It's a challenge to make love when your heart is shattered.

But Roxi was showing me something, albeit slowly and sometimes painfully. She was showing me how to love again, and for that I was eternally grateful.

Edward had told me something else, something he had overheard his wife say one night when she was talking to a group of her weird friends...friends, he suspected, that may or may not have been entirely human.

He had overheard his wife mention that another woman, another mother of two, had been attacked in Orange County, no doubt by the same vampire. Edward had vowed to hunt down this mother in Orange County, as well.

As I lay in bed, with Roxi curled up next to me, I briefly considered why a vampire would purposely turn two mothers into vampires. I decided rather quickly that I had no clue, but I made a mental note to keep an eye out for this mother of two in Orange County, whoever she was.

Times like these, I thought, are why people drink.

I rolled over and rested my hand on Roxi's naked hip, smiled, and finally drifted off to sleep.