Thanks for reading about the hijinks of Nessie, the Boringest Stripper!

I prepared with exceptional care for my Thursday evening shift. Why shouldn't I be a little excited? Oh, partly it was the adrenaline rush that always came with a hunt: I felt it every time, with the wolves. But there was something more. I was excited to see Amoun, handsome, elegant, undoubtedly capable. And I fully intended to excite him as well.

I wore dainty, pale-pink organza panties with pin-tucks across the ass, and a sheer brazier with seamed cups and pintucks down the front. Over the panties went an insubstantial, lacy garter that held up white silk stockings. Over the stockings, a pair of high-heeled gold kid pumps. Over my underwear I wore an elaborately draped, floor-length gown made of a crinkly white linen trimmed with gold embroidery in the Greek key motif. Atalanta had been a princess, practically a goddess. No clear heels or glow-in-the-dark bikinis for her.

I had selected the music for my floor routine very carefully. It was a throbbing, drum-driven Turkish dance song. Not particularly like the usual fare of pop and rock, but not out of place in a strip-club, either. Few of the girls did proper stripteases for their sets. Most of them came out already in their vibrantly-colored Lycra underwear and six-inch heels, with perhaps a bit of fishnet to complete the look; it took them only a few moves to get completely naked, and the rest of their sets consisted of gyrating and spreading their legs. But then, this was a real job for them: they wanted to extract money from their clients, and most of the clientele responded to fishnet. I wasn't here to make money. I was here to attract a soulless, blood-sucking monster and arouse his every appetite before murdering him ruthlessly.

I smelled him from backstage. I knew he would be looking for me: according to the girls, he rarely came around more than once a month. Twice in three nights was unheard of.

"You made an impression on him, didn't you?" Monaco asked me. She was smiling, but probably not well-pleased at the influence I had over her favorite high-rolling client. "He couldn't keep his hands off you. He never touches the rest of us, just sits there and talks. What's your secret?"

"Oh," I said breezily, "He thinks I smell good. I think he's kind of weird, though. Like, what is the deal with his accent? He talks like a butler."

"You talk like a butler." Monaco flounced away. I didn't have time to worry about this. If she was pissed, she was pissed. She couldn't know how much danger she was in.

I heard the opening strains of my song and walked balletically to the center of the stage. I kept my posture perfect and erect, then, as the music swelled, I began to move my hips. Slowly, slowly: too slowly for the guys at the tip rail, whose attentions started to wander. But from the corner of my eye I saw Amoun, in his dark corner, with his unblinking eyes trained on me. I began to revolve on the spot, my hips undulating in time to the music, and as I turned, I unwrapped my complicated gown. Faster and faster, the long swath of fabric fell away to puddle at my feet: the dress shortened, then the shoulders fell away, and finally the whole thing lay in a heap. Out of my restraints, I moved more freely. The music really picked up now, and I leapt to the top of the pole and clung to it with my thighs and feet, then arched my back until I was hanging upside down. I gripped the midsection of the pole in my hands and did a slow, agonizing flip backward, releasing my legs and finally landing with my feet on the ground. With that, the music ended. The whole thing had taken no more than five minutes, and at the end of my dance I was still wearing more underwear than most girls started with. A few dollar bills were scattered on the stage, but practically no one was watching me anymore.

Just Amoun, his eyes glittering ominously at me from his corner.

I vacated the stage and noted with satisfaction that Queen Bitch was out next. Her song, a fast one with a heavy bassline, pulled the men to the front of the stage again. No one was interested in the girl with the slow routine, and Queen Bitch would benefit from the clients' renewed interest in the proceedings. And I could be free to talk to Amoun.

I freshened up, straightened the seams in my stockings. I stood in front of the mirror backstage and listened to the sounds of merriment happening on the other side of the door.

"You can do this," I told my reflection. "You have to do this. Do it right. You won't get a second chance."

Amoun was waiting for me. He had a glass of whiskey that sat untouched by his elbow. His half-Windsor knot was perfect; no strand of black hair was out of place. I glided languorously to his corner and stood straight in front of him, my hands at my sides.

"Your performance was enchanting, my dear," he said smoothly.

"Thank you. I don't suppose it was to popular taste, but it is good to know one's hard work is appreciated."

"It suited you. I thought I was seeing Galatea, brought to life."

"You do like Greek mythology, don't you, Amoun?"

"Ordinarily no, but you have rather a way of bringing it to mind." His eyes drifted to my breasts, which were plainly displayed through my insubstantial undergarments.

"I think you like me," I said.

"I confess to a certain amount of curiosity. Your manner is not what I've come to expect in such places as these. Not that I would dream of denigrating these fair demoiselles-" he gestured to the other girls who wandered and flirted and made polyester love to the customers "-but I would willingly hear your story."

"Oh, you wouldn't find my story at all interesting," I laughed. "Perfectly mundane."

"I am sure your life is as mundane as mine."

"In that case, what do you say to a trade? You tell me something, I'll tell you something." Amoun showed his pleasure at my suggestion with a hundred-dollar bill. I sat beside him and faced him expectantly.

"I suppose I must start," he said laughingly.

"If you don't mind."

"I was born long ago. Your turn."

"So frugal! You have none of the art of storytelling at all, darling. How long ago? Where?"

"You wouldn't believe me."

"Then lie." Amoun laughed heartily at this.

"Very well. I was born in the late nineties in Cairo."

"Indeed? You look far too mature to be a child of the Nineties."

"I meant the seventeen-nineties."

I threw my head back and laughed lustily. Amoun eyed my throat with unconcealed fascination. "Very well. I suppose I asked for that." So he was fairly old, obviously old enough to know how to survive. Younger than Carlisle, but two hundred years of experience were an imposing thought compared to my thirteen. Unless he really had lied, but I thought that unlikely. Some vampires really got off on making open reference to their extraordinary secret, knowing full well that no one would ever believe the truth. I heard my parents do it all the time around humans.

"Your turn, Galatea."

"Oh, all right." I smoothed his hair gently back from his temples. Quickly he caught my wrist in his hand and held it to his lips. "But you already know my story. You've told it to me yourself. Raised by wolves, duped by my father, seduced by a golden apple of Aphrodite." I tried to match his flowery manner of speaking. Frankly I found it irritating but he responded well. If he'd been human I would be hearing all the blood rushing to his penis right about now.

"You are outside of my experience, and that is saying something, as I have met a great many beautiful women in my time. I cannot believe you are quite human, Galatea."

"No?" I prompted. "Then what am I?"

"A sylph," he said after some thought. "A pisky. A priestess of Isis. Nothing so miserably prosaic as human."

"No," I agreed, and leaned in so close that my lips brushed his ear. "But then," I breathed, "Who here is?" He was utterly frozen, forgetting all the business of pretend humanity. "This is the demimonde, Amoun. You won't find humans here. We are statues brought to life."

"I want to see you away from this place," he said finally. "Can this be done?"

'What did you have in mind?"

"I have a little pied-à-terre near Deadman's Bay."

"I didn't think anyone lived down there."

"They really don't. I keep a rather small establishment there for relief from the pressures of the city."

"I see. I am strongly advised by my manager against seeing clients outside of the club. She seems to think it could be dangerous. Do I have anything to fear from you, Amoun?"

"Perhaps. You will have to judge for yourself."

I stood swiftly. "That is not the way to gain a girl's confidence. I have to think about it."

"How long does one need to make such a decision? I believe you know very well what there is between us." There was no use in denying it, and so I didn't; although perhaps he knew even less than I what might happen. I suspected that Amoun, while attracted and confused by my scent, and intrigued by my oblique hints that I knew what he was, had not yet concluded that I was a half-human, half-vampire-although I must never underestimate him. Perhaps he was simply playing his hand more closely than I was.

I must keep him from knowing my strength. Therein lay my only chance-to take him unaware. I had already given away too much by my overly athletic performance on the stage tonight; few people knew just how much strength and control might be needed to support one's entire weight through one's legs on a slim pole like that, but Amoun could be trusted to guess. It had been a calculated risk, however: I wanted him to be so obsessed with me, with my uniqueness, that he lost interest in feeding on an ordinary human.

"Yes, I think I will probably say yes in the end," I said with that tinkling laugh I had picked up from Alice. "But you'll have to let me finish my shift tonight. I can't afford to cut out early."

"I will provide more for you than you can ever dream of earning here," he said. His eyes were darker than they had been last time I saw him-only natural, but alarming as well. I wanted him to think he could take his time with me, which he was unlikely to do if he was particularly hungry.

"I have no way of knowing if you mean that." I slid out of his grasp and backstage. I was feeling shaken: this was moving so fast. Something would be tonight. Sex, possibly. A death, almost certainly. But whose? I was determined it should be his, and he was no doubt equally determined to enjoy the taste of my strange blood.

The insistent buzzing of my phone shook me out of my thoughts. I saw that I had missed seven calls, all from Jacob. An eighth call was demanding attention.

"Hello." Amazing, really, how unruffled my voice could be, but Jacob would never be fooled.

"What the hell are you doing, Ness?" As always, straight to the point.

"What do you mean?"

"Where are you? I feel all wrong. Something's going on over there, I can tell, I've been feeling it all night. What the hell are you getting up to?"

"Where are you?"

"Layover in Halifax, flight leaves in twenty minutes. I swear to god, you had better not be missing any fluids when I get to you or-"

"I have to go now, Jake."

"Ness, wait, where-"

"Deadman's Bay. Find it on a map and then run there, it'll be fastest. I don't know where-you'll have to find me."

"Deadman's Bay? Seriously?"

"Amoun has a sense of humor."

"So the leech has a name."

"I'm going to do this, Jake. He's killed at least half a dozen girls here, probably way more."

"Can't you wait for me to-"

"Just get here fast, Jake. I love you so."

"Ness, you don't have to rush into this. Just-my flight is boarding, it's a really short flight, we can do this together."

"I can't wait to see you Jake." My heart was pounding hard from the mix of fear and exhilaration. "I love you more than anything and anyone. At the end of this, you'd better..." I thought about all the things I wanted from him and bit my tongue.

"What? Better what? Why can't you just wait?"

"I love you." I pressed 'End' and breathed as deeply as my trembling ribcage would allow. He was right. Why was I doing this alone? Jacob would be here soon, probably within two hours. I could wait for him to find me, and we could do it together. Hell, I wasn't even all that confident that I would be able to get it done without Jacob's help. He might show up to find me still fighting Amoun, maybe losing, maybe dead.

I was just being reckless. But I thought about Jacob's pretty black eyes, eyes that saw me and loved me and accepted me but didn't desire me, and I thought that maybe caution was overrated anyway.

I splashed water on my face, touched up my makeup, and clocked out. Then I peeled off my shoes, my silk stockings, my see-through bra and panties. I replaced them with an unassuming set of white underwear, a vintage floral shirt dress and a simple pair of sandals. I packed my purse, said good night to Queen Bitch, and went out to meet my killer.

"So this is what the nymph wears when she is alone," he greeted me.

"But I'm not alone. You're here."

"Of course. Not alone-but not on the clock either," he amended.

I stood on tippy-toes to kiss his cheek-and to give him a strong whiff of my adrenaline-spiked, flushed skin. "Where are we going and how are we getting there?" I asked.

Amun conducted me to a very shiny, very fast sports car. I had never known a nomad to own a car. But I had never really thought Amoun was a nomad.

"I hope you enjoy speed," he said.

"You have no idea," I responded, and he accelerated shamelessly.

I spent the whole ride pressed up against him: my scent in his nostrils, my hand in his lap.

His house was small and obviously served just one purpose. The only rooms that looked like they had ever been used were the living room and the bedroom. The living room contained an expensively-stocked bar. Amoun poured me a strong drink and I downed it without hesitation, which caused the corners of his lips to turn up in a satisfied smile. I didn't mention that with my metabolism it was difficult to get me properly drunk. I smiled back at him warmly and slammed the glass back on the table.

Amoun placed his arms around me like a steel cage. I pretended he was Jonathan, and that I needed to restrain myself. I pretended to be human. I pretended to be weak.

He stooped to sniff at the nape of my neck.

"Divine," he said softly. "You truly are a goddess. Will you let me treat you as one?"

"Okay," I said, making a visible effort to focus on his face. I thought he might have put something in my drink, but I wasn't sure. I'd had a guy roofie me once when I had wandered into the wrong party in college: he had regretted it much more than I did. All I got was a very slightly tingly sensation in my extremities that had no effect whatsoever on my reflexes. He got fourteen stitches and a testical-retrieval operation. Crude and predictable, perhaps, but nevertheless a memorable warning against further attempts at date-rape.

"Hey," I said blurrily, "You're not-do you have protection?"

"Yes, of course," he said soothingly, as he led me to the couch and lay me down oh-so-gently. He began to unbutton my dress while my mind raced. How was I going to do this? I had to get him before he got me, and I didn't know how far he usually went with his victims before he lost control and bit them. I knew some vampires had sex with humans-if my uptight father could bring himself to do it there was a good chance someone like Amoun made it a habit.

I wasn't afraid of his venom; Carlisle and I had conducted some tests years ago to find out whether vampire venom did anything to me, and although I didn't possess any of my own it couldn't seem to make any headway in my system. But one taste of my rather unusual blood would be enough to put Amoun on his guard.

He seemed to be working up to it now. He was easing my panties down over my knees, positioning himself between them, inhaling deeply.

"What a marvel you are," he said, "What a wonder." Gently he lifted my legs and draped them over his own shoulders, then kissed a trail down the inside of my thigh toward my crotch.

"Oh, Amoun," I cried out, "You're so cold!" It wasn't bothersome, really, not to me. But to a human it would be, and I had to play the part. His kisses felt nice: measured, delicate, teasing. Just the sort of thing I would like if they didn't come from a demonic hell-spawn I would be killing momentarily.

"I have poor circulation," he said. "Does it bother you, sweet one?"

"No, it's 'kay," I said, settling down into the couch cushions. I began to insinuate my hands into his hair, mussing it and tugging it gently, and then my hands strayed toward his neck as his lips drifted toward my slit. I pressed my legs firmly against his shoulders, squeezing in time to his kisses and trying to gain leverage without arousing his suspicion.

"Oh, Amoun, oh my god, that's-this is so amazing, you're..." His lips closed around my inner labia and his tongue broke through to lap at my cunt. My voice grew higher in pitch and I stroked his neck and jaw frantically.

"Oh god, Amoun-remember when you said, like, I wasn't, like, a human?" I panted and huffed my way laboriously through the words, like I was struggling to remain coherent.

"Mm hmm," hummed Amoun without looking up. I felt his lips part a tiny bit, the infinitesimal scrape of one shard-edged tooth.

"You were right," I said in my normal voice, and yanked hard on his skull while pressing my legs down against his shoulders. His head came away with a graphic crunching scrape, and the look on his face as I brought it up to mine was pure loveliness.

Jacob exploded through the door ten minutes after that, his red fur bristling and a furious snarl rippling through his lips. He jumped straight for me and I sidestepped and pushed, so that he rolled away from me instead.

"Phase, goddammit!" I hollered at him. "Phase your dumb ass NOW!" I grabbed the heaviest object I could find and hurled it at his head. It turned out to be a crystal wine decanter, which smashed gloriously against his face. A low woofwas surprised out of him and he shook his head, spraying wine and blood everywhere.

Jacob crouched there a moment longer, sweeping the room with his eyes, then finally he shrunk in on himself and resumed his human form. I could have laughed that this was the first time I had ever seen Jacob fully nude. I could have laughed, but I didn't, because if I laughed I would cry.

"Where is it? Where is it?" Jacob demanded. I pointed behind him. Jacob turned, his junk swinging in silhouette, to face the fireplace, where the remains of a ribcage were just becoming too charred to recognize.

"I saved the head," I said. "I thought you'd want to see it before it went on the pyre."

Jacob strode to the hearth, where I had laid the head. It grimaced and showed its teeth at us. The fury in Amoun's face was so perfectly formed that I almost recoiled.

"Shame on you," I said to the head. "Shame on you."

"What the hell happened here?" Jacob asked. I hesitated. It should have been at least somewhat obvious: I was still in my underwear, and Jacob had clearly felt something significant, even if he didn't know what it meant. The link between us wasn't explicit, but it was strong.

"How much do you love me?" I asked Jacob nervously.

"Lots," he said automatically, then, a little more cautiously, "Why?" I reached out, placed two fingers against his hard-muscled sternum, and showed him the memory of Amoun's face at my groin, his head splitting away from his body in my hands.

Jacob leapt back as if I'd cut him. He stared at me with his mouth slightly parted. I could read nothing in his black eyes. The fire jumped and fell, jumped and fell, and I divined sinister omens in every shadow that prowled across his face.

Oh god, he was going to kill me. I had crossed a line. What on earth had possessed me to tell him?

Just as I was about to turn tail and run, that smile, that clarion smile, that Jacob smile swept across his face. Against that smile what shadow stood a chance?

"Oh, Jake!" I half-sobbed, and stumbled forward, tripping into Jacob's massive arms. I felt my feet leave the floor.

"You just killed your first leech. I can't fucking believe this. You are such a badass son of a fuck, I can't even, oh my god. Oh my god, Ness! Leah's going to go apeshit! Dude, can I tell her right away?"

"No!" I shouted, louder than I meant to. "She may possibly kill me for...the way in which I disarmed this particular mosquito. I mean, doesn't that...does that bother you?"

Jacob pulled back. He suddenly noticed he was naked and grabbed frantically for something to cover his junk. I sighed as the remains of my dress were wrapped around Jacob's waist. I'd never been so jealous of an article of clothing.

"It's a little late for that now, Jake. I figured out long ago that you've got a penis."

"Well, just...pretend you didn't see that."

"Honestly, I'm astonished I never saw it before today. How on earth have you been hiding that thing?" Jacob burst into surprised chuckles.

"Where there's a will, there's a way," he said. "So, about this leech... Does it bother you?"

"I don't know. Jake, I was...legitimately attracted to this one. I always planned on getting him in bed...well, couch." Jacob snorted. "I didn't know how else I was going to get his head off." Jacob waggled his eyebrows cheekily and I punched him in the nipple.

"Ow!"

"I'm serious! I mean, I always knew I was going to waste him, I just...I didn't exactly mind having to seduce him. Is that terrible?"

"Ness," Jacob said very seriously, "I have spent a long time learning the hard way that I don't get to make that choice for other people."

"You're talking about Bella," I said, and some resentment must have leaked into my voice because Jacob winced.

"Yeah, I am," he said. "I'm sorry, but it's true. I despised Edward for so long, and I was hating him for all the wrong reasons. I hated him because he got to have her and I couldn't, and I was pissed because she wanted him and not me." I hated hearing Jacob talk like this; he almost never brought it up, because it had long since ceased to be relevant. But I had to admit to a certain morbid fascination.

"But I think I've matured since then. Now I just hate him for being a self-satisfied, uninteresting, pansy-assed prick. He's like a character in a book, if you took away the character."

I had to smile. He knew Edward too well.

"You know, I used to be a real dick. I think about some of the things I said...things I did...I was confused and blundering and I'm pretty sure my testosterone levels would have been fatal in anyone else. I'm really ashamed of some of the shit I pulled back then."

"You're not a dick, Jake."

"Yeah, not anymore, but only by force of will. I swore to myself when I met you that I would never give you a reason to hate me or fear me or be ashamed of me."

"I could never hate you," I said-truthfully enough.

"What, because the imprint won't allow it? I don't want you to be forced to love me. I want to be worthy of you." The thought that Jacob might ever doubt his own worth had never even crossed my mind. He was one of the most confident people I'd ever known, and as far as I was concerned he was right to be so: I'dcertainly never met his equal. "Where was I going with this?" he added, having trailed off into silence at the same time I did.

"You forgive me for being attracted to a leech."

"Balls, Nessie, what's to forgive? You're half-vampire yourself; they don't smell like funerals to you the way they do to us. I don't care who you're attracted to-" all right, that hurt a little "-all I care about is that you saw a problem and you solved it. He was killing people, and he won't kill anyone ever again. And that's because of you."

"Are you just being so nice about this because of the imprint?"

Jacob shrugged. "Actually, the imprint sort of made me crazy. I didn't know you were getting busy with a bloodsucker, but I knew something was happening and whatever it was made me want to break something big. I think...if it were up to the imprint, I would not be okay with this."

"So why are you?"

Jacob huffed all the air of of his lungs and scratched the back of his head. "Well, Ness, imprint or no imprint, I'm still me. You're still you. The imprint doesn't want me to accept that you just got head from a leech? Imprint can go fuck itself."

"Aw, Jake!" I climbed up his body and clung to him like a monkey, my head tucked under his chin.

"You do know what this means, though, don't you?" he said at last. I shook my head. "I'm going to have to ask for my Star Wars tapes back."

Riffling through Amoun's suit pockets I found a talisman. It was a small scarab brooch of what looked like lapis set in beaten gold. I held it up to the light.

"Check out the spoils," I said. "He was Egyptian, I think," I said. "Anyway, he looked like it, and with his name...although he could have been faking it."

"Nice," said Jacob, holding it delicately between two enormous fingers. "Ancient Egyptian?"

"Psh. Hardly. Turn it over."

"Christies?"

"Amoun, you pretentious tit," I said to the head on the hearth. It snarled at me.

"I heard the ancient Egyptians had jackal shapeshifters," Jacob said. "Hey, is that true?" He nudged the head with his toe and Amoun snapped his teeth at it. "Oh well," he said, kicking the head into the fire. "He would only have lied anyway."