The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

It didn't take long to figure it out. After months of single motherhood and freshman physics classes, she was craving adult conversation. But it was more than that. Amy was lonely. Having a child had made her more rather than less aware of how much she ached for a partner. She wanted us to be friends, not just friendly acquaintances; she wanted us to be lovers.

I couldn't do that. I couldn't have been close to someone who looked like that anyway, and my own circumstances made it completely unthinkable. What I had to do to survive was bad enough when love wasn't involved. Which was why, for me, love was never involved.

It was possible that I'd already got what I needed from her long handclasp, and I considered pleading sudden illness and making my escape. But I reminded myself of the alarming memory lapses, the decreased ability to concentrate, all the unmistakable symptoms of intellectual decline. I had to take care of myself. I had to take advantage of opportunities as they presented themselves.

Amy took my hand again as we strolled the few blocks to her house. My embarrassment at being seen holding hands with a fat person was outweighed — but only just — by the infusion of energy tingling through my palm and up my wrist. I longed to kiss her, my tongue a siphon in her mouth, although the image repulsed me. I longed to take her head in my hands.

Phoebe was asleep. We were both displeased, Amy because now the child likely wouldn't sleep through the night. After the babysitter left, Amy invited me to make myself comfortable in the living-room while she went to check on her daughter, but happily agreed when I asked if I could come with her. We went into the little girl's room hand in hand, like proud parents who couldn't quite believe their good fortune.

I'd read that the brain development of a child in the first two years of life is so dramatic that if we could keep up that pace for the rest of our lives we'd all be mental giants. I gazed at beautiful little Phoebe in her crib. I reached to stroke her hair.

"Don't!" Amy's whisper was explosive, and she caught my hand. For a moment I thought she'd somehow divined that her child was in terrible danger from me. But she just squeezed my hand affectionately and murmured close to my ear, "Don't wake her. She'll be up all night." I nodded, and we tiptoed out of the child's room together.

Despite intense arousal — part horror, part need and gratitude that it would be met, part a disturbing kind of joy — I could not bring myself to respond to Amy's goodnight kiss. I allowed it, though, another moral compromise. Her mouth lingered softly on mine. I all but sank into the billows of her body. I maintained the physical contact as long as I could stand it, absorbing so much from her that I was weak and trembling by the time I pulled away. She smiled tremulously at me and murmured, "Call me." As I left I heard Phoebe cry out for her.

I hadn't seen her since then, and now I never would. When I emerged from the steam room and had settled myself on to the massage table with my face in the terry-covered cradle and my open-pored naked body ready for Vonda's manipulations, I asked, "Where's her daughter?" I'd hoped never to have to ask this question, but it had probably been inevitable. "Phoebe," I added, gratified that I had not forgotten her name. "Where's Phoebe?"

"She's with me."

Her thumbs and then her elbow found that deep tender spot under my left shoulder blade, and she bore down. Through the exquisite pain I hoped I wasn't inadvertently taking anything from her through this kind of contact; I needed my personal trainer and massage therapist to be strong and focused. As the muscle started to loosen and warmth seeped into the pressure point, I gasped, "Are you raising her?"

"I'm her godmother and guardian. It's in Amy's will."

The massage wasn't as good as usual; Vonda's mind was obviously somewhere else, and so was mine. My various aches and pains — Iliac crest, glutes, lower back, feet — seemed to have multiplied and amplified and become more resistant since the last time. I kept thinking about Amy, and Kit and Denise. I kept thinking about Phoebe, whose primal will to survive must be fierce.

"Okay," she told me after a while, without, I thought, much interest. "Flip over on your back."

I didn't draw the sheet up over my beautiful breasts. She gave no sign of noticing. Her fingers shook slightly from the pressure she was putting under the back edge of my skull, stiffened fingers relieving tension in my head and neck as if they were holes drilled into the bone, but it was the weight of my own head that generated the response rather than any direct intention on her part. She let go too soon.

"There you go, Madyson."

I lay on the table for a few minutes after her hands left me, noting with resentment and panic that my body felt neither relaxed nor supple. I was paying her good money. She owed me more than this.