And if there was a third option he would have been that too. Fucked, probably. That had been the intention when he walked into the bar on Market Street with its sticky floors and mirrors that lied about everyone. Get high. Get drunk. Get fucked. Or fuck someone. The order had not mattered.

Now he was sunk into a leather chair that cost more than his last car, in an apartment perched high above San Francisco like it had nothing to do with the city below. Glass everywhere. Steel. Clean lines. The sort of place that did not forgive clumsiness. His head was buzzing, his jaw aching from all the coke earlier, his hands faintly trembling as he adjusted the tape recorder on the table between them.

A vampiress. Jesus Christ. He still could not quite get his brain around that part.

She sat opposite him, long and still, as if stillness was a skill she had practiced. Her skin caught the low lamplight and gave it back pale and smooth, not glowing, just wrong enough to make his stomach turn if he looked too long. When she had shown him her fangs earlier, leaned in close and smiled like she was letting him in on a private joke, something in him had cracked open. Since then he had been drinking and smoking not for pleasure but to keep his fear from crawling up his throat.

Now the rum was doing its job. Three glasses in. Maybe four. Plus whatever neon cocktails he had demolished before. His thoughts felt loose, euphoric, unmoored. The terror had blurred at the edges, replaced by that dangerous sense that nothing could touch him tonight.

She was talking. Still talking. Centuries poured out of her mouth like she had been waiting forever for someone reckless enough to listen. Her voice was calm, almost bored, like all of it had happened to someone else.

Daniel laughed at something she said, a sharp bark of sound that surprised even him. He scrubbed a hand over his face, smearing sweat and maybe ink from earlier notes, and leaned forward in the chair.

"And then what?" he asked, grinning too wide, eyes too bright. The recorder whirred softly, faithfully, like it believed in this insanity more than he did.