I went outside again. Nothing had changed. Oh, Sebestyen had got to the end of the alley and was coming back the other way, but nothing that mattered. Way off in the distance, I heard a pistol shot. There are parts of town where people figure a noise like that is a firecracker. I knew better.

  Rob got there first. The Buick stopped at the mouth of the alley. Then we had to figure out how to get Sebestyen into it. He was a machine with only one setting: sweep. Turning him around was easy enough. Moving toward the car was the same as moving away from it for him. Getting the broom away and bending him enough so he’d fit into the back seat …. If we hadn’t had Dora’s strength on our side, we never could’ve done it.

  She and I had planned that, if we needed me to, I’d wait and guide Izzy to her apartment after she and Rob went there with her half brother. But the adventures we had making him go inside the Buick meant we were all still there when the Ford pulled up.

  I hopped into the Ford’s front seat as Rob drove away. “Follow that car!” I exclaimed. I always wanted to say that. It made me feel like a detective!

  Berkowitz’s grin said he knew he was playing a game. “You got it, Mister,” he answered, and away we went.

  Rob nabbed a parking space right in front of Dora’s building. In Vampire Village, that’s harder to do at night than it is during the daytime. Izzy and I found one down the block. We went back to help extract Sebestyen from the Buick’s back seat.

  That might have been even more fun than shoving him in there. As far as he was concerned, he was still sweeping the alley. We banged his head on the door frame two or three times before we finally managed to get it out instead. Not that he noticed.

  Hauling him up the stairs was one more delight. His zombie shuffle was made for flat ground, and he kept trying to push the broom he wasn’t holding any more. Along the hall. Into Dora’s apartment. Sebestyen “swept” till he fetched up against a wall. His feet kept moving then, but the rest of him didn’t.

  “What can you do for him?” Dora asked Rob.

  He was already rummaging in his carpetbag for the asson. As he pulled out the dried calabash rattle, he glanced my way. “You’ll backstop me again?”

  “Sure.” I nodded. “Should be more straightforward this time. No ancient Assyrian interference.”

  “Yeah. Or we hope not, anyway.” Rob gave his attention back to Dora. “I think I can bring him back to what he was before he became a zombie. From some of the things you’ve told me, I’m not sure that’s doing him a favor, but I will if it’s what you want.”

  “Do it,” Dora said. Rob Grau looked as if he wanted to snap to attention. She had the voice of command, you bet.

  Out came the little bongos. Rob handed them to me. He started to shake the calabash at Rudolf Sebestyen. As I had in the construction-site tent, I followed along as best I could. From the corner of my eye, I saw Izzy Berkowitz watching us like a hawk. This wasn’t the kind of wizardry a blood-bank doctor ran across every day.

  Rob chanted in Kreyòl. At the construction site, Jerry Gallagher had called it: almost French but not quite. This was the part that worried me. Rob was summoning Sebestyen’s soul back from Over There to Over Here. But did vampires have souls? They gave up something to become what they were. Don’t ask me. I’m not a sorcerer or a theologian.

  Grau didn’t seem to have any doubts. I had to hope he knew what he was doing. Working for O’Flannery and Muldoon, he certainly had experience with zombies. I hoped it would carry over to zombies who were also vampires.

  And it did, or I suppose it did. You know how, when you’re fishing, sometimes you can feel a trout nibbling at your bait even before it takes the hook? This was like that—more like that than anything else I can think of, I mean. Rob had made a cast, and something was on the other end of the line.

  “Come back! Come back!” he called, as he had before. No, I still don’t know what language he used. All I know is, I understood it.

  So did Sebestyen’s soul, if that was what it was. It accepted the summons, though I don’t think it was thrilled. Back toward the mundane, material world it came. Rob reeled it in, if you like.

  Or he did at first. Then it tried its best to get away. When Rob went after Frank Jethroe’s soul, something Over There wanted to keep it from coming back and rejoining his body. This was different. Rudolf Sebestyen’s soul did all it could on its own to stay Over There. It didn’t care what happened to the undead carcass it had left behind. It was happier far, far away from anything connected to this world.

  I don’t know if Rob ever went fishing off the Santa Monica pier. He was a white man; he could do that without any trouble if he wanted. He sure played Sebestyen’s soul as if it were a fish on a line that might be too light. He’d let it run away a little, then reel it in more than it had fled. One step back, two steps forward.

  Fish get tired after a while. So did the soul. I was only backup, but I could feel that. Pretty soon, Rob would get it into the net and the game would be over. Pretty soon, pretty soon …

  Then he did it. I felt a psychic pop!—I don’t suppose I really heard it—as the soul went back into Rudolf Sebestyen’s poor zombified body and found it had no choice but to take up residence there again. The inside of Dora’s apartment came into sharper focus for me as I also returned fully to the material world. I’m sure it was the same for Rob, too.

  Sebestyen abruptly stopped trying to sweep up trash that wasn’t there with a push broom he wasn’t holding. His face didn’t look dead any more. It looked … foxy is the first word that jumps to mind. He had the kind of expression that made me want to put my hand on my wallet so I wouldn’t get my pocket picked, the kind of expression that made me wonder whether putting my hand on my wallet would do me any good.

  He looked around. He recognized Dora right away, and Dr. Berkowitz a moment later. He said something in Magyar. Dora answered in the same language. Sebestyen said something else, something furious. The fylfot boys’ machine guns spat bullets so fast, the individual rounds blended into a noise like ripping canvas. That was how Rudolf Sebestyen sounded just then.

  Rob and Izzy and I all looked at Dora. I’d wondered whether Berkowitz knew any Hungarian, but he didn’t. Dora looked … as troubled as a vampire’s ever likely to. “He … would have preferred being left as he was,” she said.

  “You stinking, stupid, meddling sons of bitches,” Sebestyen added. His accent was thicker than hers, but none of us had any trouble understanding what he meant.

  ​XVIII

  “Do you know you’ve been working under the sun, not just at night?” Izzy Berkowitz asked him. “How did you do that? Did it have something to do with the drug you took before you became a zombie?”

  “The vepratoga?” Nobody’d told Sebestyen not to name it. “I don’t know, and I don’t care, either. It made me go away, and now you bastards have brought me back. I’ll have to go and look for more of it.”

  “But if it can make vampires exist more safely in daylight—” Izzy persisted.

  Rudolf Sebestyen fell back into Magyar. I think it was only noise to Dr. Berkowitz, but I recognized it because Dora’d aimed it my way. It was the Hungarian endearment that meant A horse’s cock up your arse. In English, Sebestyen went on, “What difference does that make?”

  “It could change the way your folk go on. Along with blood banks, it could turn you into people pretty much like everybody else,” Berkowitz answered.

  He was earnest. He meant well. I’ve heard earnest white people who mean well say pretty much the same thing about what advances in civil rights will do for Negroes. The nicest thing I can tell you about ’em is, they’re optimists. Some things may get better, but ain’t gonna be no pie in the sky by and by.

  But what bothered me wasn’t what bothered Rudolf Sebestyen. He looked at Berkowitz as if he wanted to tear his throat out. He said something else in Magyar, something that made Dora lift one eyebrow a quarter of an inch. In English, he went on, “You understand nothing. You are an idiot studying to be a moron and failing the examination. Why would I wish to make forever twice as long?”

  “You’re right. I don’t understand.” Izzy was a doctor. He’d given his life to making people last as long as they could.

  That wasn’t what Sebestyen meant, though. “There is no ending, fool. Unless I go into the sun or have a stake driven through my heart, there is no ending. I go on and on and on. It is too much. It is too long. Now you tell me even the sun may not finish me? I hate you for that. When I was a zombie, at least I didn’t know it was going on, or care. You—every damned one of you—you stole that from me.”

  “We do not all feel this way,” Dora said softly.

  “I’m not the only one who does. Nowhere close,” her half brother answered, and she didn’t try to tell him he was wrong.

  I looked at my watch. I was surprised to see it was getting on toward five; Rob and I’d spent longer bringing Sebestyen’s soul back from Over There than I’d figured. I said, “If you can’t stand staying here, the sun’ll come up before too long.”

  The look on Dora’s face …. That wasn’t something you said to vampires, not if you had manners, any more than you called black people a particular name. But it didn’t faze Rudolf Sebestyen, not a bit. “What do you think I’m waiting for?” he said.

  “You shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t do anything you can’t undo.” Izzy went right on talking sense to somebody who didn’t want to hear it.

  Quietly still, much more to herself than to anyone else, Dora said, “I fear I may have made a terrible mistake. It was my obligation, but still it was a mistake.” Rob and I’d already figured that out.

  “Foster sister, you don’t begin to understand the mistake you made,” Sebestyen snarled.

  Outside, the sky began to get light. I’m sure both vampires noticed long before I could. Dora wanted to go on with her undead existence. Rudolf … didn’t. If becoming a zombie looks better to you than staying what you were, what you were has to seem the worst thing in the world for you, regardless of whether you’re alive or undead.

  Dora got into her coffin ten or fifteen minutes earlier than she needed to. The thump of the lid coming down had a dreadfully final sound. I think she was saying she didn’t want anything to do with the world in general and her half brother in particular for a while. When she came out again after sunset, she could be pretty sure Rudolf Sebestyen wouldn’t be in her apartment any more, anyhow.

  In fact, he wasn’t there for more than five minutes after she retreated. “Let the sun end me, then!” he shouted, and stormed toward the door. If that was what he wanted, he wouldn’t have long to wait.

  “You can’t!” Izzy jumped in his way. Berkowitz was a doctor from the soles of his feet all the way up to his curly red hair. Saving life came first for him, nothing else even close. He didn’t ask himself whether what Sebestyen had was life.

  He didn’t ask himself whether vampires were stronger than live people, either. Sebestyen gave him a forearm shiv that sent him flying into the wall—almost flying through the wall. Then Dora’s half brother was out the door and running for the stairway.

  He could have flown, but he didn’t. I could have gone after him, but I didn’t. Neither did Rob Grau. We were both more worried about Berkowitz, who was down on one knee. “You all right, man?” I asked—not one of the smartest questions I ever came out with.

  Izzy gave me a shaky grin. “Did you get the license number of that truck?” he wheezed. Then he took stock of himself. “I … think so. No knives when I breathe in or out, so he probably didn’t break any ribs.” He made it to his feet. “What’s he doing?”

  Rob went over to the window and looked down. “Standing in the middle of the street, waiting for the sunrise. Won’t be long now.”

  You could stand in the middle of the street in front of Dora’s apartment building and wait for the sun to come up without worrying about cars. Not as if a whole lot of vampires were driving off to work then. Berkowitz said, “We should still stop him.”

  “How, exactly? How approximately, even?” I said. He gave me a dirty look, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t try to go downstairs after Rudolf Sebestyen, either, which was good, because I wouldn’t’ve let him. Instead, he mooched over to the window to see what happened next.

  I looked down at Sebestyen with horrified fascination. I’d never actually watched a vampire get struck by the sun, but I’d seen enough movies to have an idea what it’s like. I’m sure you have, too. I happen to know they use magnesium strips and thermite for the trick photography. Hot, really hot, and dangerous to get close to.

  As Rob had said, Sebestyen stood in the middle of the street. He faced east, and he’d thrown his arms out wide. He looked as if he were on a cross, which, considering that vampires react to crucifixes and holy names almost as well as they do to sunrise, probably wasn’t what he had in mind.

  He waited. We waited. For a little while, there could be room for doubt. Had the sun come up, or hadn’t it? Another few minutes, though, and doubt vanished with the night. It was daytime, no ifs, ands, or buts.

  And Rudolf Sebestyen stood there still. He threw his head back and let out the most bloodcurdling shriek of despair I ever heard. The sun wouldn’t set him free. Whether he wanted to be or not, he was stuck in this sorry old world.

  He didn’t come back up to the apartment after he failed to finish himself. I don’t know where he went. Right then, I didn’t much care.

  Rob, yawning, went home. “I’m gonna call in sick,” he said, which struck me as a sensible attitude.

  Izzy, yawning, went up to County General. “I pulled all-nighters plenty of times when I was an intern and a resident,” he said, which struck me as insane. I couldn’t talk him out of it, though.

  Me? Yawning, I went to bed. The sun was up. By then, I didn’t care. If I was sleepy, I slept. If I wasn’t, I did things. Since I was …

  I woke up just past three thirty in the afternoon. I fixed myself coffee and something out of a can. I’d tell you what, only I can’t remember. I cleaned up and put on some clothes. I’d go to the office later, if I went at all. If I didn’t, Old Man Mose could take care of himself for a night.

  Dora’s coffin opened. I heard weight shift as she sat up. “Hi, babe,” I said. She’d given up telling me to stop. I held out a hand to help her stand. She needed that the way she needed an extra head, you understand, but my mother raised me to be polite no matter what.

  And Dora took that hand as if it were no less than her due. She asked, “What happened after I went away?”

  So I told her. I finished, “Five gets you ten we’ll have more trouble from him sooner or later. He’s not the kind who can do anything without making trouble, is he?”

  “I fear he is not. That he went into the White Fire …. That he went into the White Fire and did not perish ….” She shook her head.

  “Would you like to be able to do that?” I asked.

  “Not the way he did it,” she answered at once. “Some prices are too high to pay.” She hesitated. “If I were aware all the time, I might also come to feel as he does. The pause when I must stop …. It is not the same as sleep, not from what I remember of sleep. But it does more or less the same thing.”

  “It didn’t seem to for your half brother.”

  “Existence became too much for him. That happens with us—not always, not even often, but it does. I have been lucky enough to avoid it so far. I keep finding ways to amuse myself. They have not palled yet.” When she smiled at me, her lips pulled back enough to let me see the tips of her fangs. They’re not much longer than live people’s eyeteeth, but they’re a lot sharper.

  “I’m glad to help keep you interested in things,” I said.

  “For a while.” She looked at me as if I were a foolish child. “For a little while.”

  I knew all about being afraid I’d die. If a year slogging up the Italian boot taught me anything, it taught me that. But suppose Dora and I stayed together the rest of my life—call it another forty years. She’d watch me get old and shuffle off this mortal coil. How many other live lovers had she watched get old and die, or die before they could get old? How many more would come after me? After a while, how much trouble would she have, remembering just which one I was?

  And how much would she change while all those years rolled by? No more than she’d changed in all the years since the vampire who made her and Rudolf Sebestyen what they were did that to them.

  Yeah, I knew all about being afraid I’d die. But, till I heard Sebestyen shriek when the sun hit him and nothing else happened, I’d never imagined being afraid I wouldn’t die, couldn’t die.

  “Well, however big a skunk your half brother is, he taught me something this morning,” I said.

  “And what is that?” she asked, though the way she asked it made me guess she was half a dozen jumps ahead of me. I explained anyway. She nodded—at least I wasn’t being foolish any more—and said, “Yes, it is a problem with my folk; no denying that. As I told you before, it does not afflict all of us. I have met someone who grew up speaking Latin. He says he was in Rome when Brutus killed Caesar. I do not know he was telling the truth, but I have no reason to doubt him. As far as I know, he still exists today.”

  “That’s amazing! Has he ever talked to live historians?” I said. Vampires mostly don’t, but every once in a while somebody will. A lot of books get rewritten when that happens.

  “Not so far as I know,” Dora said indifferently. She didn’t care about history. Why should she? She was history. I started to say something else, but she held up a slim, elegant hand—she hadn’t finished. “I have met someone who grew up speaking a tongue so old, living men have no name for it. She believes she is older than the Pyramids. I have no reason to doubt her, either. I think she still exists, too.”