Charity Claire was hungry. And she was so cold.

She stumbled through the dark, bumping into milling vampires, each of whom muttered a polite “Excuse me.”

She ripped open the refrigerator, the cold light glaring into her eyes. Half of a Safeway chicken and some lasagna. None of that appealed to her. She craved something warm, something hot and red and pulsing –

She craved blood! Cringing, she felt her teeth with her tongue and found sharp pointed fangs.

And there was Tommy, thumb in his blood-smeared mouth, with big solemn eyes. “I sowwy, Aunt Chatty.”

Charity awoke with a dreadful start, her heart pounding. She reached over and pulled the chain of her simple brown-shaded bedside lamp. Then she remembered that someone was with her and felt guilty. She’d been a considerate bed partner whenever she had a lover: she never stole covers, she lay still for hours in the dark rather than risk waking her lover up.

She wished the grandmotherly vampire would come in and stroke her hair and, by magic, have a cup of hot cocoa with a little cinnamon and five miniature marshmallows.

She slowly turned and looked at the vampire who lay in bed beside her.

In the two days since they had taken Tommy to Anadel State Park, vampire Peter had become more and more human. Peter was a handsome man, in a quiet, non-romantic kind of way. He looked a little like a pudgy Barack Obama, but his hair hadn’t begun to gray yet. She had opened her heart to him about Tommy when they got home that evening, how she was avoiding trying to find his family. Sitting across the table from her as she drank her tea, he’d said, “’Spose you should try, but cher, you got to believe most likely everybody he knows is dead. Everyone that matters.” And she’d known he was thinking about Jean. His wife.

As he outlined steps she might take to find Tommy’s family, she realized the home magic was affecting him in a special way. He had been a husband and to him being at home meant being a husband.

Charity became achingly aware of how sweet it would be to sit across the table from a husband, her husband, both with mugs of tea in their hands and late-night cookies or popcorn, talking about their children.

That night, night before last now, when came time for bed, it would have been so natural to invite him in. But she didn’t and he, with his sad distant eyes, didn’t ask. The grandmother brushed her hair and tucked her in and Charity had tossed half the night. Finally, quietly and scarcely daring to breathe, she put down a hand and found herself slippery as a warm bath. She quickly brought herself to a frenzied, desperate orgasm.

And then this last night, the grandmother had simply led Peter in to her, put his hand in hers, kissed their cheeks and left them alone together.

Charity’s shy heart had hammered in her chest and her throat went dry. His hand was warm from sunlight. If she let her fingertips stroke his skin, he’d surely respond.

But she wasn’t ready! So many confusing thoughts: no lover in two years, would she fall apart and shut down? But she was also trembling and almost blind with desire. And Charity, a lifelong liberal, was agonizingly aware that she had no black friends (well, really she had no friends); Peter seemed more strange because he was black than because he was a vampire, and she hated that about herself.

Her quivering hand looked worm-white holding his beautiful dark chocolate one with its pink, kissable palm and fingertips. She couldn’t look up into his face.

But he was home and he was a husband. His hand lifted, stroked her face affectionately. He kissed her on the cheek and murmured, “Night, darling.” Then he started undressing, while a panicked Charity watched his body emerge. She still wore her soft white cotton nightgown and the last time she had seen a naked man had been, had been…

The Welcome Wagon stepped out of his jeans, which smelled of artificial cherry scented laundry soap. Then he took off his BVDs and out it sprang, hard and red and ringed with a light rash that made Charity’s stomach turn. Still smiling that superior grin, he pointed at his erect, obscene penis. When she didn’t move, he chided, “Come on, don’t make me call them in. Come on.” Then a confused nightmare of the linoleum of her kitchen floor hard and knobby against her knees and his forceful hand on the back of her neck and the smooth, cheesy taste of that tube filling her mouth…

She’d hoped the night with Jesse and Walter had put the memory to rest. She’d seen them both naked. But if Peter reached for her now or got naked and erect, she was sure she’d vomit.

Peter reached the undershirt and skivvies stage, looked around, confused, searching for something, then shook his head and climbed under the covers still partly dressed. He usually wore pajamas, Charity realized, and when he hadn’t found them to change into, he’d stopped undressing. Charity could calm her hammering heart but she still felt like her head was floating on a storm of buzzing dust.

“You gonna sit up and read a while?” a man’s voice asked sleepily. He thinks he’s with his wife. Do I look like her? Was she white? Or is he in a half trance?

“No, I’m…” She swallowed, tried again. “No, I’m ready for bed.”

“Mmmhmm.” His voice held sleepy pleasure.

Before she could think about it anymore, she turned out her bedside lamp from Ikea and lifted the covers to lie facing away from him, shaking, ready for either passion or terror to win.

Gentle arms wrapped around her and pulled her against him. Her body nearly went wire stiff but somehow she understood that he was just snuggling. One arm draped over her waist and his hand rested against her belly, the other arm under her neck brought his left hand to her chest but he didn’t try to feel her breasts or do anything except let her rest against him. He was just a man, a man in his thirties who had been happily married and for whom being at home meant being a husband. Now he snuggled affectionately against his wife.

Charity found she liked his smell, different from the man she’d dated in college and the man she’d thought she might marry when she was 25. He made no move to start anything sexual; he seemed to be asleep, breathing gently against the back of her neck.

Charity found passion winning. But now she didn’t dare to move.

She lay for a long time staring into the dark, watching the little streak on her wall change from red to green to yellow and red again from the traffic signal outside. At last she drifted into confused, lusty, exciting dreams which seemed pregnant with portent.

And then the dream about little Tommy and she gasped awake!

If she had looked at Peter’s face, she would have seen confusion and she would have seen a hungry vampire emerging from the fog of whatever made him an animal again. She would have seen his mouthful of fangs open slowly.