Where the hell did Kris come from? Sehun wondered.

‘Sorry. Uh, the line for the head downstairs is almost out the front door,’ he said quickly. ‘It was piss on the rosebushes or come up here.’

‘And the rosebushes, they have thorns,’ Chanyeol added, lowering his camera. ‘Not safe. My future wife may want children.’

Kris raised one eyebrow, and Sehun suddenly felt like a five-year-old. Make that a five-year-old with a bright purple tongue being all ‘Grape popsicles! What grape popsicles? I haven’t seen any grape popsicles!’

‘There are four bathrooms down there,’ Kris said, one corner of his mouth lifting in amusement. ‘Come on. I’ll give you the tour. I think you’ll especially enjoy the one off my dad’s office. The toilet has a heated seat.’ He turned and headed for the stairs.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard Kris make a joke before,’ Chanyeol said under his breath as he and Sehun followed Kris downstairs.

‘Down that hallway. Third door on the left,’ Kris said when they reached the first floor.

‘Thanks,’ Sehun answered.

Kris turned and loped back upstairs.

‘He sounded downright cheerful. And he was grinning!’ Chanyeol exclaimed. ‘Now I really want to know what’s going on with the vampires. I know it’s his birthday, but come on. What could be happening up there to put Kris in such a great mood?’

‘Vampire bingo?’ Sehun suggested.

‘Don’t be an ,’ Chanyeol said. ‘Seriously, what do you think they’re all doing right now? They can’t be having some private feeding session. They need humans for that.’

Sehun nodded thoughtfully.

‘Do you think they’re planning something?’ Chanyeol went on. ‘Something that made Kris so happy that he actually smiled?’

Sehun wished Chanyeol would drop the topic. Whatever they were doing, he figured it was their business – as in, not Chanyeol’s. ‘Vampire square dancing!’ he said firmly.

‘Definitely a complete ,’ Chanyeol retorted.

‘Wanna go check out the bowling alley? Get some footage?’ Sehun started down the hallway. ‘Because, really, can you name one truly great film that does not include a bowling scene?’

‘The Bicycle Thief,’ Chanyeol answered, falling into step beside him.

‘I said truly great’ Sehun protested. He led the way into the basement: five bowling lanes with electronic scoring, vintage video games, two pool tables, jukebox with accompanying disco ball and strobe lights, and Tikki bar. Not your regular rec room. In fact, not your non-multi-billionaire rec room.

But even with all the toys, without the vampires – meaning without the most popular of the popular – there was something missing from the party. Some kind of… shimmer. Or maybe it was just lack of Yuri that was making the party feel flat to Sehun.

Which meant his whole life was going to be feeling flat from now on, he reflected, because Sehun got the impression that Yuri didn’t plan on being around him much ever again.

In the middle of his second bowling match, Sehun caught sight of Yuri just as he released the ball. So the vampires had returned. Sehun forced his attention to the pins and watched his ball take out all but two: a seven-ten slipt. Nasty.

‘Goal posts!’ Chen yelled. ‘That’s a shot for you, my friend.’ He handed Sehun a shot glass of tequila.

Nasty, but not without benefits, Sehun thought. He downed the shot. The sensation was not unlike staring into Yuri’s eyes: a long burst of fire from mouth to gut.

Yuri looked away, wrapping her arms around Luhan, and Sehun felt cold in spite of the tequila. Seeing Yuri all over Luhan the pleasure out of everything.

Sehun didn’t want to be there anymore. He worked it out carefully in his head: one beer when they’d first arrived, and now one shot – he was OK to drive. He wondered where Baekhyun was. He hadn’t seen the guy in hours.

‘You took your shot. Now take your shot,’ Chen told him.

Sehun grabbed the closest bowling ball, sent it down the lane without aiming, and managed to knock down one of the remaining pins. He decided to name it Luhan. Even though Luhan was a decent guy and had done nothing to deserve being slammed to the ground by a bowling ball – except be lucky enough to have Yuri as his girlfriend.

‘Take over for me,’ Sehun called out to Changmin, the big footballer who was lounging around on one of the benches.

‘You’ve got some catching up to do.’ Chen tossed Changmin the blue Cabo Wabo bottle as Sehun made his way over to the stairs. He took them three at a time and followed the sound of whoops and whistles through the house and out onto the back patio. Baekhyun usually managed to locate – if not create – the epicentre of a party. It seemed like the place to search. Maybe he’d find Chanyeol too. He wandered off after the first game of bowling ended.

No Baekhyun on the patio. Although Sehun thought his friend would have liked to be there if he could see Hyoyeon right that second. She was shaking her money-maker down the top of the adobe wall below her, arms up. Wanting to be the one who caught her if she fell.

Eunhyuk stood at the edge of the crowd, arms crossed over his chest, watching Hyoyeon and her entourage, dark eyes narrowed. Did those guys realize an armful of Hyoyeon almost certainly came with a gutful of her boyfriend’s fists? Sehun wondered.

He made his way deeper into the backyard and over to the pool. What Michigan boy wouldn’t want to be hanging in an outdoor pool in November? Especially when Tiffany was floating on a lounge chair in the center, her long, golden-brown hair trailing in the water.

As Sehun watched, Tiffany used her fingertips to slowly paddle down to the shallow end of the pool and over to Tao, one of the divers on the swim team. She reached up, looped her hands around his neck and pulled his head down for a kiss. The lounge chair rocked, but didn’t capsize, and Tao stretched out on top of Tiffany.

Sehun knew that Tiffany had begun to feed on Tao. And the poor guy was oblivious. To anything but the pleasure. Sehun shook his head and continued his search for Baekhyun.

He hurried back into the house to check the kitchen. At most parties Sehun went to, there was a solid party within-a-party in the kitchen. Probably because people went in looking for beer, or whatever, and just stayed.

Yep. There was indeed a sub-party in the kitchen, which included Chanyeol, eating a slice of white pizza and trying to explain why reincarnation was complete bull.

It was the kind of convo that you could only have really effectively while blotto. There was still no Baekhyun.

‘Sehun, back me up here,’ Chanyeol called, waving him toward the group. ‘A whole buttload of people would have to be walking around soulless for reincarnation to be possible, correct? Because if there are a finite number of souls that keep coming back, and no new ones, there aren’t enough souls to go around, because of population growth.’

‘Have you seen Baekhyun?’ Sehun asked, ignoring the question.

‘But, no,’ a girl with bangs and an intense expression said. ‘All the souls available aren’t inhabiting bodies all the time. The number of people on earth thousands of years ago tells you nothing about the total number of souls. There’s no correlation.’

‘Baekhyun?’ Sehun said again.

‘Haven’t seen him since before we went upstairs,’ Chanyeol answered. He broke away from the group and crossed over to Sehun. ‘But you know what I have seen?’ he lowered his voice. ‘A lot of our special friends circling around Kris.’

‘You see that every day at school,’ Sehun pointed out. Kris was pretty much the top of the DeVere High food chain.

‘It’s more than the usual Kris-adoration. And it’s more than him being birthday boy,’ Chanyeol said, taking a bite of his pizza. ‘And he’s still smiling. And the smiles are somehow vampire-related, because whatever is making him smile, they all know about it.’

‘Huh,’ Sehun said, not wanting to encourage Chanyeol.

‘Yeah. Big huh.’ Chanyeol tossed his pizza crust in the trash. ‘And even though I know the vampires have funded a massive percentage of our Malibu goodness, it kind of freaks me out to think of them behind closed doors, making plans. I mean, shouldn’t our kind have a delegation?’

Sehun shrugged. ‘If they’re planning their annual croquet tournament, no. If they’re coming up with, uh-’ He glanced around to make sure no one was listening, ‘some kind of meal plan, yeah. But remember, Kris and company totally handles Suho.’

‘Yeah. They stepped up,’ Chanyeol agreed. ‘I guess I should-’

‘Chanyeol, did you consider the animal and insect population in your theory?’ a junior in desperate need of a growth spurt, called.

‘Insects? So every mosquito has a soul, is that what you’re telling me?’ Chanyeol asked, returning to the debate.

‘I’m going to keep looking for Baekhyun,’ Sehun muttered. He grabbed a Hanson’s kiwi and strawberry soda on his way out. The first time he’d encountered it, it had sounded kind of repulsive. But now he was getting addicted.

He took a swig as he headed for the family room. Sometime during the party, it had become make-out central. He did a Baekhyun scan. Didn’t see him. Sehun turned away. But then, through the sliding doors leading to one of the house’s many decks, he thought he saw a flash of dark blue sweatshirt, like the one Baekhyun had been wearing around his waist.

Sehun hurried across the room, careful not to step on the couple stretched out in front of the fire. He was still getting used to the fact that Malibu, sixty-five degrees was considered fireplace weather.

He opened the door and saw Baekhyun leaning against the deck’s wooden railing, staring down at the ocean.

‘There you are,’ Sehun said. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

Baekhyun whipped around. ‘Oh, hey.’

Sehun shook his head. ‘You haven’t even been here a week, and you’re going native.’

‘What?’ Baekhyun asked.

‘You’ve got your hoodie zipped up to your neck like it’s freezing,’ Sehun said.

‘Ocean makes it cold out here,’ Baekhyun answered, his hands jammed into the front pockets.

‘What are you doing out here by yourself anyway? I was looking for you in the party hot spots. You know, the Baekhyun zones.’

‘I wasn’t out here by myself until a few minutes ago,’ Baekhyun said. He turned toward the ocean, then immediately turned back to face Sehun. ‘You know what I mean? Huh? Huh? Huh, huh, huh?’

Sehun laughed. ‘So who was she?’

‘It wasn’t a name kind of situation,’ Baekhyun replied.

‘Well, what’d she looked like?’ Sehun asked. Did she have anything unusual about her? He added silently. Like fangs?

‘What? You’re not getting any, so you need to live through me? Is that it?

Sehun decided that it didn’t seem like Baekhyun had been fed on. He was talking fast, and his eyes were darting back and forth. After Sulli had on him at Hyoyeon’s party, Sehun remembered that he had hardly been able to move. He’d felt drunk and floaty, and, to be all California surfer about it, mellow. Baekhyun definitely didn’t have mellow on.

But had there even been a girl out here with him? Sehun wondered darkly. Or had Baekhyun been hanging out with his friend Ritalin? Was that why he was all twitchy?

‘You ready to get out of here?’ Baekhyun asked.

‘Sure.’ Sehun had thought he might have to pry Baekhyun out of the party with a crowbar. His friend was a stay-‘til-the-last-beer-then-go-get-more kind of guy. He was glad he didn’t have to persuade Baekhyun to leave. But it did put some more checks in the Baekhyun weirdness column. ‘Let’s go tell Chanyeol we’re heading out.’

Sehun led the way back to the kitchen. The reincarnation talked had switched over to – with Chanyeol in the group, what else? – movies.

‘We’re thinking about taking off,’ Sehun told him.

‘You’re not staying for the screening? We’re talking Tarantino here. Are you feverish?’ Chanyeol asked.

‘Nah. Just like to leave the party at the peak,’ Sehun told him. It didn’t really make sense, but whatever. ‘See you at school.’

‘See you,’ Chanyeol said.

As they got close to the front door, Sehun spotted Yuri and Luhan lingering in the hallway, standing close together. His heart suddenly felt as if it had tripled weight. ‘See you guys later,’ Sehun forced himself to say.

‘You’re leavin’?’ Luhan asked. ‘Mistake. The party second wind is about to hit. I can feel it.’

Yuri didn’t even say a word. She didn’t even look at Sehun as he slapped hands with Luhan and made his way out the door.

Baekhyun hurried toward the Bug, his hands still shoved in his pockets. Sehun followed him. He glanced back once, and saw Yuri kissing Luhan again, her hands sliding up under his shirt.

She could drink every drop of blood in my body if she kissed me like that to do it, Sehun thought. And I’d die happy…