Christian had to briefly stop watching the screen in order to roll his eyes.

"As you can see," Bradley said, dimming the smile expertly from dazzling to bashful, "I've been working out."

Christie frowned. "Do you always work out covered in glitter?"

"Actually," Christian said, "it pains me to admit this. But he really does."

Christie's nose almost twitched as it turned toward him, like a hound on a scent.

"Chris," she said.

"Christian," said Christian.

"Chris, darling," Christie said firmly. "How do you feel about this?"

Christian blinked. "Well, he does get a lot of glitter in the carpets, but in the end I guess it's his business."

On the screen, Faye's face was perfectly serene. In the darkness of the tour bus as they watched the interview, Faye's snort rang out like a gunshot. Christian flinched.

"I meant about the tour," the interviewer said patiently.

"Oh, well," said Christian. "I am obviously excited to meet the fans and thrilled about this opportunity-"

"Where do they put your coffin?" Christie inquired brightly. "Do they store it in the luggage hold?"

Bradley's shining blond head turned. "In the luggage hold?" he demanded. "Like an animal? No way."

He leaned over and hooked an arm around Christian's neck. Christian leaned away.

"Chris is one of the band," Bradley announced. "His coffin rides in the tour bus with us. Anyway, you know, he's cooped up in the coffin all day long, he needs to be amused. I play knock-knock jokes on the coffin lid for him. We have a blast together."

Now that Bradley had moved to snag Christian, Josh's face was clear, thin and pale behind his wire glasses. It expressed exactly how thrilled he wasn't about having a coffin in the tour bus with him.

Just as clear was Christian's murmur of "Put me in the luggage hold. I beg you."

"One of the stops is in Birmingham, near the area where you grew up," Christie continued. "The word is that you haven't been back there for almost two years, since your mother threw you out of your home."

Christian's mouth tightened. "My mother didn't throw me out."

Christian's mother had not thrown him out. But they had all been uneasy around him after the change, and his fifteen-year-old brother Rory had stopped hero-worshipping him and become afraid of him instead. He'd had nightmares every night Christian stayed in the house, and Mum had said, well, you're eighteen, after all . . .

Eighteen forever. Rory was the one with the future.

Christian had left. They hadn't thrown him out, it hadn't been like that, but he'd had to leave, and he'd liked playing guitar in his garage band, and there had been auditions for a boy band.

He had never thought it would spiral out of control like this, but as soon as he had signed the contracts, Faye had been in control. He'd been a very new vampire, not sure who or what he was.

Faye had been sure, and had shaped them all according to her vision. Now, with success, her vision had expanded, become as huge and glittering as one of the onscreen projections of their concerts. It was hard to know what lay behind that vision.

But that wasn't this interviewer's business, and things were better now with his family. Rory owned the band's CD, and the new single. They were proud of him, Mum said when she called him. She'd started calling him more and more often after their first single had hit the charts. Everything was fixed between them, and he'd see them soon.

"Really?" asked Christie, sweet as candied arsenic. "I understood that after you, ahem, transitioned into an alternative state-is that the term you prefer?"

"I prefer 'became a vampire.'"

"Well, since you . . . did that, I understood that your brother was afraid to have you in the house, and your mother threw you out?"

"I said she didn't throw me out!" Christian shouted.

There was a blur of movement on the television screen, away from Bradley and toward Christie. Then all movement ceased.

It took Christian a second to realize this was because Faye had pressed pause.

She flicked the light on.

"Well, one could call that a very successful interview. If one also wanted to call the voyage of the Titanic a lovely pleasure cruise. Can anyone tell me what Christian did wrong?"

Pez put up his hand. "Can I go to the bathroom?"

"Thank you for that valuable contribution," Faye told him. "And no, you may not. Just because I feel like being unkind. Anybody else? Josh."

"He menaced that poor woman with his vampire powers," Josh said in a low voice.

"Exactly," Faye said. "Exactly! He moved too fast and loomed over her, and she was scared and stumbled back, and he did it all on camera! Can you all tell me what he looked like?"

"A vampire," Christian remarked drily.

"Exactly!" Faye said again. "That's exactly my point."

If Christian had still been human, he would've bitten his lip, but he'd learned the hard way that that was extremely painful as a vampire.

"Faye, I am a vampire."

"That's absolutely no excuse," Faye said sharply.

Christian stared.

"You see, Christian, being a vampire in the context of a boy band is a lot like knocking boots."

"What?"

Bradley, who had been lounging across three seats at once, leaned over and whispered helpfully, "She means making love, Chris."

Christian transferred his horrified stare to Bradley.

"You guys are a boy band," Faye said. "Your job is to make girls think about sex, dream about sex. Your clothes and attitudes are meant to suggest sex. Under no circumstances are you to be caught actually having sex with one of these deeply under-age fans. If possible, I would like no indication to appear that you ever really have sex at all."

"By caught, do you mean there should be no visual evidence?" Bradley inquired. "Like photos or say, hypothetically speaking, videos released online involving whipped cream?"

Faye looked appalled.

"Whoops," said Bradley. "Oh well."

Faye visibly made the decision to ignore this. "Or the way Pez, who is doing an excellent job portraying the perfect stoner drummer, is not permitted to take real drugs. And he very seldom actually does so!"

They all turned and looked at Pez, sleepy-eyed under his crown of dreadlocks. He gave them all a double thumbs-up.

"I really don't think resorting to snorting baking powder is helping him," Christian said eventually.

Faye ignored that too. "And vampirism is like sex."

"How?" Christian demanded. "How is it like . . . that . . . at all?"

"Little hints of vampirism are very alluring," Faye said. "Subtle touches. But we don't want them thinking of real vampirism, any more than we want them thinking of real sex. That stuff is scary. What we need is for the danger to seem perfectly safe."

"That's impossible," Christian told her flatly.

Faye gave him a brilliant smile. "That's showbiz."

She pressed play again, so that on the screen Christian was looming, the reporter was shrinking back, and Bradley was interposing himself between them, talking lightly and easily, speaking lines that Faye had approved.

In the brightly lit tour bus, Faye uncrossed her legs and rose from her perch on the table, and began giving instructions.

Christian wasn't sure which he found most depressing, Faye's list of commands or Bradley's earnest platitudes on the screen.

"This tour is going to be a journey. Journeys are all about discovery: we'll learn things about each other, about the fans. About ourselves." Bradley flashed his safely dangerous grin for the ladies. "We'll be bonding closer than ever as a band. And who knows who we'll meet along the way. . . ."

"You do realize what this interview means," Faye said. "It means that I want the rest of the tour to be perfect. See to it, boys. Don't let me down."

Their first tour stop was in Liverpool, which was always an intimidating venue for any band, as the shadow of the Beatles hung over the city. But it went off pretty well: the acoustics of the hall were good, and there was standing room only, nine hundred people chanting their names and snatches of their songs.

Sometimes Bradley just sang while Christian took lead guitar, but mostly Christian and Bradley ended up taking lead guitar and bass while Josh and Pez backed them up on the keyboard and the drums.

Bradley was always at the forefront, but he was a pleasure to follow. Onstage it wasn't annoying that he was their golden leader: onstage it worked, and onstage Josh wasn't afraid to be with Christian. They all played very differently, but somehow when they were performing, it ended up in harmony. Somehow they were able to sweep everybody else along with them.

These were the only times Christian had ever felt like he belonged to something, like he belonged to some people, since he had become a vampire.

They came off the stage with most of their makeup sweated off, except for Christian, as vampires didn't sweat, and beaming, except for Christian, as Faye had forbidden him to look anything but vampirically brooding when there might be cameras around.

But he was possibly smiling a bit, face turned toward the inside of the high collar of his deeply embarrassing cape, as Bradley swept them all into their dressing room.

"How about that, then, boys?" Bradley asked. "The Beatles have nothing on us. Well, none of the Beatles were vampires, were they?"

He ruffled Christian's hair. Christian was in a good enough mood to let him.

"There were some rumors about John Lennon," he said.

He recounted the whole thing to his mum on the phone that night, and she seemed really impressed. She thanked him again for the front-row tickets for the show in Birmingham. He told her again how much he was looking forward to seeing her.

Christian hung up the phone and drew the lid of his coffin shut, and was content for a brief moment in the dark.

Then the lid of his coffin was pulled away with a wrench, leaving him blinking at his white hotel-room ceiling.

Until his ceiling was obscured by the face of a woman, leaning over his coffin with her black hair hanging into his eyes and her fangs glittering. Before he could speak, before he could even move, her cold hand was fastened at his throat.

"Hello, Chris," the vampire whispered.

Christian had never met a girl vampire before.

She was so quiet. There was no heartbeat, no breath or crackle of living cells. Christian found he did not want to meet her eyes and see how far from human he looked to everyone around him.

She said her name was Lucille.

She'd let him rise from his coffin. Now she was perched gracefully on a sofa in Christian's hotel suite and she'd refused his nervous offer of a glass of blood.

"Sometimes I enjoy a chilled glass of white wine, with a dash of blood warm from the wrist," Lucille remarked. "I call it the true rose. Have you ever tried it?"

"Uh," Christian said. "No."

"I highly recommend it."

She was one of the vampires he'd read about, the ones who drank from human beings.

"So, Chris," Lucille said. "Are you going to share information with me willingly?"

She did not describe how she might persuade him if he was reluctant. She did not have to.

He could almost manage to look at her now, stealing glances and every time coming up with a new way in which she did not look human. Even the position in which she leaned back against the sofa, the precise arch of her spine, did not look right, as if she had forgotten entirely the limits her body used to have and the way her body used to work.

"Let's not play games, Chris," Lucille said softly. "What nest do you belong to?"

"Uh," Christian said. "Nest?"

"The other vampires you are associated with," Lucille explained. "Your eternal family." The expression on Christian's face must have remained pretty blank. Lucille's lip curled. "Who sent you here? What's your agenda?"

"I really don't understand."

"Come now, Christian," Lucille said, her voice more like an actual jungle cat purring than a noise an attractive woman should be able to make. "I'm entirely in sympathy with you. Making vampires more popular, making them part of the mainstream. Starting this whole revolution in how vampires are seen. It's quite brilliant. My nest is interested in forming an alliance with the vampires behind this scheme. So tell me, who made you?"

Christian looked away from her. "I was attacked," he said quietly. "They never caught the man who turned me. He never even meant to turn me. I cut him when I was trying to fight him off and swallowed the blood."

"Oh," said Lucille, her voice as hushed as if she were in a library.

Christian glanced back at her. She was looking at him as if she was seeing a human being for the first time.

No, wait; of course she wasn't: she was looking at him as if he was a person. And to her, the real people were vampires.

"Not a lot of vampires come into this alone, I take it," said Christian.