Smoke and Mirrors

He did look well, Benham thought. Glowing with health. He seemed taller as well. A very attractive young man, decided the doctor. “So, uh, no more of those feelings?”

“Feelings?”

“Those feelings you were telling me about. That your body didn’t belong to you anymore.”

Simon waved a hand, gently, fanning his face. The cold weather had broken, and London was stewing in a sudden heat-wave; it didn’t feel like England anymore.

Simon seemed amused.

“All of this body belongs to me, Doctor. I’m certain of that.”

Simon Powers (90/00666.L SINGLE. MALE.) grinned like the world belonged to him as well.

The doctor watched him as he walked out of the surgery. He looked stronger now, less fragile.

The next patient on Jeremy Benham’s appointment card was a twenty-two-year-old boy. Benham was going to have to tell him he was HIV positive. I hate this job, he thought. I need a holiday.

He walked down the corridor to call the boy in and pushed past Simon Powers, talking animatedly to a pretty young Australian nurse. “It must be a lovely place,” he was telling her. “I want to see it. I want to go everywhere. I want to meet everyone.” He was resting a hand on her arm, and she was making no move to free herself from it.

Dr. Benham stopped beside them. He touched Simon on the shoulder. “Young man,” he said. “Don’t let me see you back here.”

Simon Powers grinned. “You won’t see me here again, Doctor,” he said. “Not as such, anyway. I’ve packed in my job. I’m going around the world.” They shook hands. Powers’s hand was warm and comfortable and dry.

Benham walked away, but could not avoid hearing Simon Powers, still talking to the nurse.

“It’s going to be so great,” he was saying to her. Benham wondered if he was talking about sex or world travel, or possibly, in some way, both.

“I’m going to have such fun,” said Simon. “I’m loving it already.”

VAMPIRE SESTINA

I wait here at the boundaries of dream,

all shadow-wrapped. The dark air tastes of night,

so cold and crisp, and I wait for my love.

The moon has bleached the color from her stone.

She’ll come, and then we’ll stalk this pretty world

alive to darkness and the tang of blood.

It is a lonely game, the quest for blood,

but still, a body’s got the right to dream

and I’d not give it up for all the world.

The moon has leeched the darkness from the night.

I stand in shadows, staring at her stone:

Undead, my lover. . . O, undead my love?

I dreamt you while I slept today and love

meant more to me than life—meant more than blood.

The sunlight sought me, deep beneath my stone,

more dead than any corpse but still a-dream

until I woke as vapor into night

and sunset forced me out into the world.

For many centuries I’ve walked the world

dispensing something that resembled love—

a stolen kiss, then back into the night

contented by the life and by the blood.

And come the morning I was just a dream,

cold body chilling underneath a stone.

I said I would not hurt you. Am I stone

to leave you prey to time and to the world?

I offered you a truth beyond your dreams

while all you had to offer was your love.

I told you not to worry and that blood

tastes sweeter on the wing and late at night.

Sometimes my lovers rise to walk the night . . .

Sometimes they lie, cold corpse beneath a stone,

and never know the joys of bed and blood,

of walking through the shadows of the world;

instead they rot to maggots. O my love

they whispered you had risen, in my dream.

I’ve waited by your stone for half the night

but you won’t leave your dream to hunt for blood.

Good night, my love. I offered you the world.

MOUSE

They had a number of devices that would kill the mouse fast, others that would kill it more slowly. There were a dozen variants on the traditional mousetrap, the one Regan tended to think of as a Tom and Jerry trap: a metal spring trap that would slam down at a touch, breaking the mouse’s back; there were other gadgets on the shelves—ones that suffocated the mouse, others that electrocuted it, or even drowned it, each safe in its multicolored cardboard package.

“These weren’t quite what I was looking for,” said Regan.

“Well, that’s all we got in the way of traps,” said the woman, who wore a large plastic name tag that said her name was BECKY and that she LOVES WORKING FOR YOU AT MACREA’S ANIMAL FEED AND SPECIALTY STORE. “Now, over here—”

She pointed to a stand-alone display of HUN-GREE-CAT MOUSE POISON sachets. A little rubber mouse lay on the top of the display, his legs in the air.

Regan experienced a sudden memory flash, unbidden: Gwen, extending an elegant pink hand, her fingers curled upward. “What’s that?” she said. It was the week before he had left for America.