The lines for all the rides were long, and I didn’t dare stop moving long enough for him to get close; I knew how he could manipulate me at that range, and I didn’t want to give him the chance. There was only one attraction that didn’t have a line, and I ran for it; I passed two tickets to the attendant and disappeared inside.

  After the relative darkness outside, the shock of the House of Mirrors was blinding. I stumbled into one of the mirrors and realized that, naturally, the “minors” weren’t glass—they wouldn’t last long if they were, clumsiness and vandalism would see to that—but that the smooth metal felt good against my burning skin. I felt my way cautiously to the center of the maze, then slid down to a sitting position. The mirrors were positioned to give me a good long warning if anybody came after me, which was abjectly comforting. I stretched my legs out and tried to breathe steadily, but it wasn’t easy even after my heartbeat slowed.

  It had definitely been a stupid idea, following a vampire. Jesus, what had I thought I could do? Die. Just die, and that’s what I was going to do unless I thought of a way out of this.

  “It’s okay,” I told myself aloud. The words seemed deafeningly loud against the mirrors, weirdly accompanied by the bass rumble of conflicting rock ’n roll from the rides on either side. There wasn’t any other sound. Evidently the House of Mirrors didn’t much appeal to fairgoers tonight.

  Was that a footstep? No. The wind rustled discarded cups, that was all, nobody was coming, I’d see them if they tried—

  Adam Radburn didn’t cast a reflection.

  The memory hit me with dizzying, nauseating certainty, and I scrambled up to my feet. The mirrors suddenly seemed like the reflective walls of the morgue, not a defense; I plunged further into the maze, but I ended up in a long straight corridor with no exits and only a flat reflection of myself at the end.

  As I stared at my surprised, flushed, sweating image, I knew with a frisson of fear along my back that Adam was behind me. There was no reflection in the mirror I faced, but he was there, all right. I turned and looked at him.

  Adam leaned casually against one wall of the cul-de-sac, hands in his pockets and eyes camouflaged behind his glasses. He looked at me without anger or triumph.

  “Not the greatest choice, Michael, but I guess you weren’t thinking too clearly. Relax. You must remember what happened in the morgue when you tried to fight me.”

  I didn’t say anything. Adam shrugged and sighed.

  “I’ve always wondered what would happen if someone I’d scrubbed suffered a head injury—I suspect it brings back the true memories, doesn’t it? I noticed the bump when you talked to me in the waiting room. Well, that’s something worth knowing, not that I can do anything about it now. I don’t think another alteration of your memory would hold now, with as much as you know. I’d have to remove the past three days, and that would be a little obvious.” Adam smiled slightly, not at me, just at everything. “Besides which, it’s exhausting work trying to hang onto you, Michael. You’re very strong. I don’t really feel like exerting myself that much.” “Why don’t you just get your buddies to cut my throat, then? Just because they missed once doesn’t mean I’ll get lucky again” I blurted. It wasn’t courage. It was stupidity, and useless rage. Adam’s smile vanished, and the tiniest line formed between his eyebrows as he cocked his head and looked directly at me.

  “My buddies?” he repeated slowly.

  “The ones in the park. The ones chasing me.”

  Adam tapped the surface of the mirror next to him with one shortnailed finger. It was odd to see no reflection echoing him.

  Adam finally answered me in a voice that seemed more contemplative than defensive. I don’t send humans to do my work for me. No percentage in it. They fail too often, and besides, my nature is one thing I prefer to keep strictly quiet, so there’s no reason for me to have ‘associates,’ is there?”

  “You told me in the morgue—”

  “Yes. I told you that you might be attacked in the park, and killed. I considered doing just that” Adam was plainly troubled. “But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I let you out of the morgue, and that was the end of it.”

  “Why didn’t you kill me then, in the morgue?” I demanded shakily. His eyes flashed up to meet mine, then slid away.

  “What do you expect me to say, my friend?” Adam asked. He was staring at the point where his finger touched the mirror. As he spoke, a reflection began forming, first of his finger, then of the rest of his body. It was dim and distant, and it didn’t exist in any of the other mirrors. Adam released it with a sigh, and it faded. “Do you really think I like killing that much? Think what you want, Michael. You will anyway.”

  “No. I want to know, Adam, you owe me that!”

  “Do I?” His eyebrows rose, but he still refused to look at me. “Yeah, I could have killed you, but I didn’t, and all I asked for was your silence. Nothing but your silence. But tonight you chased me, you spied on me, for all I know, you may turn into one of those persistent, pesky, obsessive vampire killers. I think the balance of debt is pretty heavily in my favor, don’t you?”

  “That all depends on why you held back,” I countered doggedly. “If you did it just to—to—”

  “Feed?” Adam interrupted a little sharply. “No. As you probably saw tonight, I have very little difficulty in finding that, and I don’t kill often. When we’re young in this life, that’s all we know to do, but it isn’t really necessary. I don’t want your blood, Michael. And I don’t even really want your death. I—I remembered that you had always been my friend, even though we both operated under false assumptions. So I did you a favor, one friend to another.”

  He looked up at me over the top of his glasses, and there was a sudden flash of expression that was startlingly human. Pain.

  “I have been your friend, Michael. But if you continue this stupidity, you’ll force me to kill you, and I don’t want to do that. Please. I’m asking you, for both our sakes, to forget what you’ve seen and go on with your life.”

  I could feel the cold metal under my shoulder blades as I pressed against it, knew that there was no defense for me here at all. Nothing to use against him, if I chose to fight, except my hands and feet. Fat lot of good that would do; it would be like slapping a dog with a T-bone.

  “I don’t think I can ignore this,” I whispered truthfully. “You’re not supposed to exist, Adam. Do you think I can just shrug and forget about that?”

  “I don’t think you have much choice,” he pointed out, and took a step toward me. “There’s Maggie to think about, too. I’ve always liked her a lot, and I’d really hate to have her in the middle of this.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I whispered. Adam raised his eyes again, and this time they were harsh and unforgiving.

  “War, Michael. It’s what you’re starting. Think about it.”

  I looked at him and thought about a lot of things, about Maggie, about the terror in the park, about Adam’s deliberate care with his victim in the alleyway.

  And, again, about Maggie. I couldn’t protect Maggie from Adam, and I knew it. That frightened me more than the prospect of losing my life. He’d known it would, the bastard—the practical, intelligent bastard.

  I reached out and took his hand. It was cold and strong. I knew as his fingers closed over mine that I’d never be able to pull free of him, short of losing a few fingers, but there wasn’t anything menacing about his strength, not just now.

  “Okay. I won’t say anything about you, and you keep Maggie out of it. Fair enough?”

  “And you stop following me. You’re putting a serious cramp in my life,” he added with a upward tilt to his eyebrows. There was a smile lurking around the corners of his lips.

  “Yes. I’ll stop following you.” What a concession, considering how miserably I’d failed at the task so for.

  “Excellent.” Adam’s fingers released mine. “Take care, Mike.”

  He turned and began walking toward the cul-de-sac exit, but then stopped and looked back. He looked, in that moment, entirely the Adam Radburn I’d made my friend years ago, and he touched his right hand to his forehead in salute.

  “Thanks. For saving me from a difficult choice.” As he opened his mouth to say something more, he suddenly froze and raised one hand in a cautioning gesture.

  Somebody was blundering through the maze, laughing and cursing.

  From the sound of them, it was a good thing that the mirrors weren’t glass.

  “Adam,” I said softly. He shook his head and came toward me.

  “Let them pass. They’re drunk and looking for a fight.”

  Under that cool mask I could feel his readiness to move. There was something he sensed, or scented, or knew, somehow, that I didn’t. The maze cul-de-sac wasn’t big enough for the two of us to stand next to each other, so I let him stand in front as the noise came nearer.

  “—fuck, man, this ain’t no fuckin’ fun, can’t even break them—”

  “Shut up, Cal,” somebody advised wearily.

  “Fuck you, you wanna make me? Come on, you pussy. Let’s get out of here and pick up some girls, take ’em on the tunnel o’love ride, right? Don’t even need tickets for that, just a couple of beers and the car—”

  “Man, you’re obnoxious when you’re drunk, Cal. I’m sick of this shit. Let’s go cruise the queer parks and see ’em run.”

  “How many of them?” I asked Adam. He held up four fingers. “Great. They’re going to see you haven’t got a reflection, you know.”

  “No, they won’t,” Adam replied. All around me, Adam’s reflection shimmered into existence next to mine, sharp and perfectly defined. He made a sound that was not quite a sigh. “Can’t hold it for long, though. It hurts.”

  Somebody passed the end of the cul-de-sac and stumbled on, a big rawboned kid in blue jeans and a black leather jacket. He was followed by a shorter guy, older but dressed the same. That one looked down the cul-de-sac and stopped, legs spread, arms crossed. His dark eyes glittered feverishly in the bright reflected lights.

  “Looky, looky,” he cooed, and reached out to drag the big kid back.

  Two others crowded around him, wasted-looking men who were too old to be kids and too young to be adults. Their faces were vacant and feral.

  “Here we were gonna go all the way to queer row to find a couple of goddamn faggots, and they’re standin’ here listenin’ to us the whole time. You faggots been kissin’ in here? Holdin’ hands?”

  Adam didn’t say anything. I wondered what his expression was like, because three out of four of the punks shifted uneasily. Not the center one, though. His grinned as if Adam had given him an unexpected present.

  “Your boyfriend there, he don’t look so good. Maybe we ought to give him a hand. Or maybe you already gave him a hand, huh?” He pumped his fist up and down and waggled his eyebrows. Adam didn’t move, so the short one took a step forward. “Or did you suck him off, queerboy? You want to suck my dick?”

  “No” Adam said amiably. “All we want to do is get by. That okay?”

  He’d reached some kind of decision. I couldn’t see how he did it, but suddenly Adam seemed frail and nervous, his gestures elongated and effeminate. It struck me that he hadn’t seemed this way in the gay bar, but then in the gay bar nobody expected him to. The punks all laughed and nudged each other in anticipatory excitement. The shortest one made a grand bowing gesture, but he didn’t move back; Adam took a step forward and squeezed by him. As I moved to follow, the short one put out an arm and cut me off. Adam turned, brown eyes mild and alarmed and entirely false as he assessed the situation. The big kid, more than a little drunk, grabbed Adam’s arms and held them up painfully high behind his back.

  “Not you, queerboy,” one of the other punks, the blond one, sneered, and shoved me back into the cul-de-sac. When I regained my balance and took a step forward, he pulled out a knife and flicked it open with a practiced snick. I reconsidered. “You stay ri-i-ight there. First we’re gonna do your friend, and then well do you, so don’t you go nowhere.”

  Adam still wasn’t moving, though I’d seen his eyes move to focus on the knife with unnerving clarity before they blinked and shifted fearfully back to the two men facing him. The shorter one reached out and grabbed at Adam’s crotch.

  “Please don’t do that,” Adam whispered. The red was back in his eyes, subtle but definite. “I’ll do what you want, just let my friend go. We can go somewhere—”

  That was evidently the wrong thing to say, because all of a sudden Shorty bared his teeth and flushed an ugly, enraged color. He released Adam’s crotch and grabbed his throat. Adam shut his eyes.

  “I ain’t no fuckin’ queer, you faggot, so you shut the fuck up. I’m gonna cut your dick off, and then you won’t be gettin’ all those pretty boys anymore, will you?”

  Adam’s eyes opened slowly, and they’d changed to the color of drying blood. Shorty, drunk or stoned or crazy as he was, didn’t even notice. He pulled out a knife that matched the one still aimed at me and moved it to point at Adam’s throat.

  Adam smiled, a slow, cold expression that made Shorty blink and frown in confusion.

  “Break his arm,” Shorty snapped at his big friend. Adam raised his eyebrows, all effeminacy gone and replaced with a menace that I could feel where I stood.

  “Okay,” Adam agreed blandly, and dragged his pinned arms downward as if the grip on them was tissue paper. Spinning, he slammed the heel of his hand against the kid’s forearm. The snap was brutally loud in the sudden quiet. The kid fell to his knees, gasping in shock, face the color of oatmeal. Shorty stared at him, then at Adam, and remembered the knife in his hand.

  He lunged at Adam so quickly that I didn’t even-see him move, and Adam didn’t even try to avoid the blade. Shorty sank it in hard up to the handle, a nasty gut wound. Adam reached down and carefully pried Shorty’s fingers off the handle, then pulled the knife back out and broke the blade in two with his fingers. There was no wound, no blood. As Shorty backed up to run, Adam grabbed his neck in one hand and lifted him off his feet.

  Adam’s reflection vanished from all the mirrors as his eyes went completely crimson. Shorty tried to scream, but couldn’t.

  It seemed like a good time to move, while the remaining two had their disbelieving eyes fixed on Adam and their fearless leader. I reached out to grab my captor’s knife hand, but he whipped his head around and cut blindly as soon as he sensed my movement.

  “Michael!” Adam shouted as he saw the knife move. I jumped back, but the edge caught my outstretched hand across the palm. There wasn’t any pain, only a brief cold tingle, but without taking my eyes off my enemy I saw red spattering the floor as it dripped. Adam swore softly and dropped Shorty, where he lay across his broken-armed friend with his head at an unnatural angle. Before Adam could cross the space, though, my opponent lunged again, and my shoulders hit the back mirror of the cul-de-sac.

  The knife point paused after just scratching my chest, suspended by Adam’s hand around the blade. He had reached over the kid’s shoulder to grab the knife, and now he pulled upward and behind him. The kid, unwilling to release the knife, followed it in an uncontrolled arc that ended against the facing maze wall with a final sounding snap.

  Adam stood there, facing me, and I realized that he was looking down at my hand. The blood on my hand.

  Like a sleepwalker, he slowly reached down and took my hand in his. I couldn’t fight him, partly because of the drugging effect of his close presence, partly because I’d just seen the result of fighting him in this state. He bent his head, and I felt his lips touch my slashed palm.

  “Adam,” I whispered, shaking. He didn’t move. I could fed him swallowing, draining me of my life and my will, and it took every ounce of strength I possessed to try to pull my hand away. He held onto it without an effort, but he froze and stopped drinking. “Adam. No.”

  A shudder went through his body, and I felt the steel strength of his fingers slowly relax. I pulled my hand free and clenched my fingers over the slash. He looked up at me, and I looked into his eyes and saw a genuine emotion there.

  Anguish.

  There was a red smear of blood on his lips, but he lifted a trembling hand and wiped it away.

  “I didn’t mean …” His voice faded, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Michael. I’m sorry. You should get someone to look at that, make sure no muscles were cut.”

  I couldn’t speak. Behind him I saw the one kid still standing, staring, and as Adam realized what I was looking at, he turned, too. The kid’s face went absolutely ashen. He turned and ran, stumbling over bodies and slipping in a pool of vomit beside his broken-armed friend. That one was still drooling on his black FUCK YOU I’M FROM TEXAS shirt, but he slithered up the wall and ran, too. That left two kids lying there, very still. Very dead.

  The air was thick with the smell of cotton candy, vomit, and feces.

  Adam turned back to me, and his eyes were wild. I took a step back from what I saw. Adam saw it and slowly straightened.

  “Come on,” he said. “If they don’t get the cops, somebody else will.”

  “Get away from me!” I yelled, and tried to push him away. It was like pushing a boulder.

  “Keep your promise,” he said flatly, and turned and walked away. He stepped over the bodies as if they weren’t even there. I listened for his footsteps, but there weren’t any I could hear.

  I ran out in a blind panic and vomited as soon as I reached the cool outside air. Fairgoers shifted courses to avoid me as I retched over the railing. Nobody asked me if I was okay. After all, I was in Dallas.

  “Let me get you out of here,” Adam said at my elbow. I spun in a blind panic, ready to hit him to force him away from me, but before I completed the move he was out of range down the ramp. “The two who got away will describe you, Michael, we’ve got to go. Come with me.”

  “Go to hell” I whispered, and felt the world ripple around me again, either from shock or blood loss or simply rage. “You killed two of them, Adam. Doesn’t that even matter to you?”