Two days before spring, sitting at my desk, trying to find an ending to my latest short story (the truth was too outrageous to be plausible), I had my last conversation with Stanley.

"Maisie, I’m afraid I’m going to have to break our plans for the weekend," he said over the phone. "I’m leaving town."

"Vampire convention?" I asked.

His laugh was forced.

"No," he said. "I killed someone last night."

My brain froze. An image of Stanley, my friend Stanley, with blood spattering his glasses and soaking his favorite Hawaiian shirt, the green one with the parrots, came to mind and scared all my words away.

"I like to get away after I do something like that. Help needy people. Soothe my conscience.

Redeem myself."

I managed a coherent though.

"But how? Why? I thought you had a blood bank deal," I said.

Stanley chuckled and it was so bitter.

"I’m not perfect, Maisie. I have my faults. I may be undead, but in the end, I’m still human."

I wrote down everything Stanley had ever told me, every bit, even that last, sad phone call. But I never used any of it. I put it all away. It was just too painful. I was too involved.

People still ask me if they can tell me something. My gift still works, still pays the bills, but my response has changed.

Now when they ask, I tell them sure as long as they don’t want to tell me they’re a vampire.

There was room for only one in my life.