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Tina chattered happily as we drove the last few miles back into town, but I tuned her out I was busy wondering whether I was est mistake of my life Probably Well, so far, anyway--after all, I was still young

3

WE WERE ABOUT THE TENTH CAR IN LINE AT THE TREMONT Street checkpoint, waiting to enter Deadtown, the roughly rectangular, several-block-long area that was home, by law, to all of Boston’s paranormals

They’d opened the express lane for vampires, so it had to be nearly sunrise As we sat there, customers stumbled out of the bars in the no-man’s-land between Deadtown and human-controlled Boston, a stretch everyone called the New Cos here had stood vacant for a couple of years; when bars began to open in the dusty storefronts, the owners s up The er the thrill for the nored aze to a short, curvy wohts She stood in the doorway of our usual hangout, a bar called Creature Co a man I’d never seen before "Yeah, that’s Juliet"

"Call her over She can get us through the express lane"

Juliet wrapped one leg behind the guy’s knees as he threw back his head "Does she look like she wants to be interrupted? Anyway, the Jag only has two seats"

"She can share with me We’ll fit"

"I don’t think so Watch And don’t blink"

Juliet released the huainst the wall, one hand pressed to his throat Juliet herself si her conquest with heavy-lidded eyes The next second, she was gone

"Hey," said Tina "Where’d she go?"

"Home She’s there by now"

"Really? How?"

"Va in line, not even the express lane" You’d think a six-hundred-fifty-year-old vampire would’ve developed patience, but not Juliet

"Can’t she get in trouble for skipping the line?"

"Trouble?" I laughed "Juliet’s been poisoned, burned at the stake, thrown off cliffs, and dumped in the ocean to drown Trouble doesn’t faze her"

"God, I wish I were a vampire They’re, like, so otta be undead Check out that hot guy she ith"