Some days, it doesn’t pay to get out of bed…
When a bloke attacks his girlfriend outside Lyn’s apartment at midday, Lyn can’t save the twist without burning to death, herself. Lyn Burgess is a vampire, one of the rare few with the shadeshall, a rare illness that spawned the myth that sunlight burns all vampires to ashes.
A cop friend of Lyn’s (her cousin, several generations removed—not that she’s told him) confesses that they can’t figure out where the murderer went afterwards. Lyn lets her cousin bribe her into tracking the murderer—but little do they know that the murder was only the lure…
(A novelette of about 17k words)
NOTE: This story is also available in a bundle that includes the short stories "Hello, Kitty" and "For Want of Cruelty".