100 Yellow Doors

8:17 p.m.

When he awoke, Julien was shivering.

He came violently to his senses, the world a wash of cold: cold within and cold without. His head lolled back against the toilet seat, his elbow sandwiched between the toilet and the tub. He tried to stand, only to nearly slip when his feet skirted across something slick on the floor. Julien looked down with a grimace; it was blood—that girl's, he thought—mixed with his own saliva. He felt like an unraveled, half-assed version of himself.

He also looked like an unraveled, half-assed version of himself.

As he stood before the mirror, prodding at the discolored skin beneath his bloodshot eyes and trying in vain to fix his lank, sweaty hair, he realized it was still there. After everything, even after everything, he was still so hungry.

Julien strode out of the bathroom, caught off guard by the darkness pressing against his bedroom windows. How long had he been asleep? What had he missed? Was Iman back yet? Was she looking for him?

He reached in his pocket, only to find it empty. He didn't have time for look for his phone; his stomach was tearing itself apart.

Julien jogged down the stairs, jumping over a napping Ringo curled on the bottom step, and threw open the front door. He walked, steps fast, head low. He was barely a block from the townhouse when he smacked right into something frigid and fleshy.

Julien staggered to keep from falling over, squinting at the figure in front of him.

"Fritz?" said Julien, at the same time that Fritz said, "Jules?"

Julien didn't like the look on the other vampire's face: the ends of his mouth tilted downward, something in his black eyes inexplicably sad. Julien didn't like it, mostly because it resembled something like pity.

Fritz gave Julien a brief once-over, then sighed and took him by the sleeve. "We should talk."

Julien dug in his heels. "I don't need to—"

"Julien."

Fritz's hand was a vice around Julien's arm. Julien couldn't have moved, even if he wanted to, even if the quiet understanding in Fritz's eyes hadn't paralyzed him.

Julien exhaled; only then did Fritz let him go. "Where are we going?"

Fritz clicked his teeth, considering. As he gestured for Julien to follow him, the gold rings on his fingers glinted in the moonlight. "You'll see."

They were in a parking lot.

When Julien had agreed to get in Fritz's car (or was dragged into it, more like it), this was not where he had thought the man would take him. He kept waiting, waiting for something spectacular to loom out of the dark, for some massive stadium lights to flick on and show Julien just what he was missing. Yet there was nothing, just an unassuming skyscraper and this empty rectangle of concrete and the engine slowly dying beneath them.

Fritz shoved his keys in the inside pocket of his denim jacket. Julien couldn't remember the last time he had seen his friend in a denim jacket—in denim anything, really. Denim, Fritz had told him once, was the TV dinner of fashion. Easily accessible, no skill requirement, the definition of the phrase giving up.

Just what had Fritz given up on, Julien wondered?

In the dark, Fritz's eyes were luminous, like staring at a cloudy night sky with only the insinuation of stars. "You look like shit."

Julien should have been expecting this. He was not. "Hello to you, too."

"I leave you for a week and I come back to find you looking like a badly reanimated skeleton," Fritz continued with a heavy sigh. He reclined the driver's seat back, kicking his long legs up on the dash. Moonlight blanched his skin: white porcelain against abysmal black hair. He was the most vampire-y vampire Julien had ever lain eyes on, and he'd seen Sera pretty regularly, lately. "Jules, Jules, Jules. You are becoming the bane of my existence."