“Hey.” Lucas frowned, worried. “You upset about something?”

“Raquel.”

“I swear to God, if I ever get my hands on her—”

“You won’t do anything,” I said. Then I bit my lip so I wouldn’t cry. Let Raquel think what she wanted about me; I loved her, and despite everything, that couldn’t change.

So, everything seemed pretty fabulous—until the next day. That was our first day at work. I’d never had any kind of job before, not even babysitting; Mom and Dad said children noticed things that older people missed, and vampires were better off spending as little time around them as possible.

This meant that I had no idea that work sucks.

“Table eight doesn’t have their sodas yet!” yelled Reggie, my so-called supervisor at Hamburger Rodeo, who was only about four years older than me. He had the same mean glint in his eyes that a lot of Evernight-type vampires did, but he didn’t have the power to back it up. Just a laminated name tag that said MANAGER. “What’s the problem, Bianca?”

“I’m getting them!” A root beer, a cola, and what? I pulled my notepad out of my apron; both the pad and the apron were already stained with French dressing. After an hour-long training session in the morning, which was apparently not nearly enough preparation time, I’d been thrown into the lunch crowd. Quickly I scooped ice into the plastic glasses and worked the fountain machine. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Table eight got their drinks, but they didn’t look too happy about it. They wanted to know where their Bacon Buckaroos were. I really hoped those were the bacon burgers. Everything on the menu had a stupid cowboy name, which went with the “theme,” like the posters of old Westerns on the wall and the gingham shirt and bolo tie I had to wear.

I ran back to the kitchen. “I need Bacon Buckaroos for Eight!” I cried.

“Sorry,” said another, older waiter, as he walked out with a tray of the burgers for his own table. “You snooze, you lose.”

“But—”

“Bianca!” Reggie yelled. “Table twelve doesn’t have silverware yet. Silverware! That goes out with the menus, remember?”

“Okay, okay.”

I went back and forth, back and forth, over and over. My feet ached, and I could feel the grease sinking into my skin. Reggie kept yelling at me, and customers kept scowling, because I didn’t get them their really awful food fast enough. It was like hell, if hell served cheese fries.

Excuse me. “Cheesy Wranglers.” That was what we had to call the cheese fries.

As the lunch rush began to die down, I hurried to the salad bar to do my “side work,” which meant this whole other job we each had to do in addition to waiting tables. Mine, for today, was making sure the salad bar was fully stocked. I grimaced as I saw that nearly everything was running low: salad dressings, croutons, tomatoes, etc. This would take me almost ten minutes to fix.

“This is not a good first day,” Reggie muttered into my ear, like I needed that news flash. Ignoring him, I hurried back to the kitchen to chop some tomatoes.

I grabbed the first tomato, picked up the knife, and quickly started chopping—too quickly. “Ow,” I whined as I shook my cut finger.

“Don’t bleed on the food!” said another waitress. She led me to the sink and started running cold water on my hand. “That’s a health code violation.”

“I’m no good at this,” I said.

“Everybody’s first day blows,” she said kindly. “Once you’ve been doing this a couple years, like me, you’ll have it down pat.”

The thought of spending two years at Hamburger Rodeo made me dizzy. I had to think of something else to do with my life.

Then I realized, that wasn’t what was making me dizzy. I felt bad. Really bad.

“I think I’m going to faint,” I said.

“Don’t be silly. The cut’s not that deep.”

“It’s not the cut.”

“Bianca, are you—”

Everything went black for what seemed like only a second, as if I’d simply blinked my eyes. But when I opened them again, I was lying on the rubber mat on the floor. My back hurt, and I realized that was because I’d fallen down hard.

“Are you okay?” the waitress said. She held a dish towel to my cut hand. Several of the other waiters and cooks were circled around, all tables forgotten in light of the drama.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re not going to throw up, are you?” Reggie demanded. When I shook my head, he said, “Have you sustained a workplace injury that requires us to fill out paperwork?”

I sighed. “I just need to go home.”

Reggie’s lips pressed into a line, but I guess he figured I might sue if he fired me for being sick. He let me leave.

The dizziness stayed with me as I waited at the bus stop, and throughout the long ride home. My pitiful few singles in tips were crammed in my pocket. If I hadn’t felt so awful, I would’ve been depressed about having to return to Hamburger Rodeo tomorrow.

Instead, I just tried to hold on—and not to think.

I tried not to think that I’d felt the same way the day Lucas and I were clearing out the destroyed Black Cross tunnel, and on a couple of days since.

Or that, lately, my appetite for blood—which had been growing sharper and sharper from the day I’d first bitten Lucas—had suddenly almost vanished.