The next day, I sat with him in the living room and talked to him about the process involved in doing surgery on a vampire. It was creepy. I wasn’t even good at cutting up meat.

“And there’s no anesthetic?” I had asked for the third time.

“No. Drugs don’t work on vampires, but don’t worry, I will hold still for you.”

“It’ll hurt, won’t it?”

“Of course, it will.”

Then I asked another question that had been nagging at me. “Why were you shot in the head those other times?”

He touched a scar behind his temple. “This one was a tragedy. It happened years and years ago, long before London. I knew a woman who wanted me to make her a vampire. I refused. I told her I was going to leave her. Her plan was to kill me by shooting me in the head and then commit suicide because she couldn’t bear to live without me.”

“Did she kill herself?”

“No. As a matter of fact, I would have completely drained her if I had been in phase four, but I was only in phase three and completely disinterested in her as a potential mate. I unloaded her clip into the air and then shot myself in the head with the last bullet.”

I gasped. “Weren’t you afraid?”

“My self-destruction knew no bounds when I had already damned myself by killing my brother’s murderer. I actually didn’t start to feel like living until I was faced with real death—vampire death. That’s different.”

I cleared my throat. “So, what happened to that girl?”

“I don’t know. I was unconscious. When I woke up, she was gone. The rest of the bullets in my head are from business deals gone bad.”

“What kind of business deals? Don’t you deal in art?”

He laughed. “It pays some of the bills. Mostly it’s a cover. I need money. I need so much more money. I haven’t even finished paying for half the things here.”

“So, if I let you die, someone will be here eventually to collect on your debts?”

He smiled. “Yes, eventually someone might come here if you're thinking of killing me and waiting for them. It would be a mistake. Those guys are too much for you to handle.”

I started to squirm. “And if I refuse to do the surgery at all?”

“My condition may worsen and I might forget I wanted to keep blood out of the picture. Don’t be afraid of doing the surgery,” he said, putting his hand on my knee. “It’s completely possible. I’ve done it on myself any number of times when I’ve been shot in places I can see—my stomach, my thigh, my arm. I just can’t see the back of my head.” He pulled up his sleeve and showed me a bullet mark on his forearm.

This was a terrible mess.

***

Freeze the area, dig out the bullet, cauterize the wound, and bandage it. It sounded simple enough.

Who was I kidding? It wasn’t simple. It was horrible.

I piled up all the ice I could fit in an old laundry tub, covered it with a plastic sheet, and put it at the head of the bed. Then I clipped the magnifying lamp Schroder used for painting details to the headboard.

“I’m backing out of this if it turns out I can’t do it,” I warned him.

He smiled slowly—mostly to reassure me—and put his head on the plastic. “You can do it.”

“Sure I can,” I said loathingly.

Then I set a timer for an hour. He and I had decided that an hour with the ice would be enough to numb him out. If he wasn’t frozen by then, he thought he’d never be, so we might as well get on with it.

When the buzzer rang, I got started.

I began with the bullet Dudley had put in his head. I picked up a pair of tweezers and pulled out the staples that were keeping the wound closed. When I pulled the folds of skin away, I saw how deep the bullet went and how hard it would be to remove. I took one of the long skinny tools with a little bit of a hook on the end of it and hooked it on the lip of the bullet. It slid right out.

This was amazing!

Then I took a sparkler and lit it with a lighter. Using the end of it for a couple of seconds, I burned the wound, and the little stream of blood that had been dribbling from the hole stopped. I shoved the sparkler under the plastic and put it out in the ice water. I sewed the wound shut with a star pattern and snipped the thread. Then I got a square bandage and taped it to his head for good measure.

I hadn’t believed him, but this actually was easy.

Then I started on the next one. The next one was a little harder to get out, but it did come out.

On the third one, Schroder started talking—mumbling to himself the way he had in the car—except this time he made sense to me. “The Scissor Man would have killed me.”

At first, I hesitated. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to talk. I needed to concentrate, but maybe I could have an unguarded conversation with him. “Why would he have done that?” I asked.

It didn’t work. He didn’t answer me.

After that, he lay totally still—even after I had removed all the bullets and finished up. I moved the bowl of ice and laid his head down on a pillow so he could rest the remainder of the night.

As for me—I was amazed. I couldn’t believe such a thing was possible. I had been able to do surgery successfully on a vampire.

***

Schroder slept for five days.  He breathed, so I knew he wasn’t dead.

On the evening of the fifth night, he rose and came down to the living room. I was ready to get down to business with him. I’d played by his rules. Now he could give me what I wanted.

“How do you feel?” I asked as he hobbled down the stairs. He looked much better—kind of like a cancer victim instead of like a bloodsucker.

“Different. My mind is clearer,” he said, and his voice sounded somehow looser than before. It was almost as if he had had something lodged in his throat and now it was gone. “Thank you,” he said peacefully.

“So, if surgery on a vampire is so simple, why didn’t you get it done before?”

He lowered himself carefully onto a seat on the couch. “You know, the first time I shot myself, things weren’t much different when I woke up. I didn’t think it made such a big difference. I knew I had a problem by the third one, but I didn’t have anyone I could trust to do it for me. You can’t underestimate how much someone will pay for vampire blood. Your best friend might sell you out. I’ve heard of plenty of cases where it has happened. Marshall is good at catching vampires who like to turn on their friends. He’s been doing it for years.”

“That’s why you used him?”

“All I was saying was I’d trust him to do an errand for me, not that I’d trust him to handle my surgery. He probably wouldn’t sell my blood, but he’d probably drain me anyway just to have one fewer vampire crowding the world.” Then Schroder leaned forward and looked into my face meaningfully. “Have I convinced you?”

I drew my breath in. This was when I found out if he was really saner without additional metal addling his brain. “Let’s see,” I began, attacking the situation with my own spin. “You wanted to convince me I was better off without London in my life? You know, whether or not I want her as my roommate does not mean that I want her drained by an unspeakably large coven of humans. I want her safe whether she lives with me or not. I love her, and as better proof that you love me—you should have offered to undo what you did to her by sending Garth to be her new mate. Even now, you should be helping me find her.”

“Find her?” Schroder repeated. “She was with those goons back in the city. Pierce has probably got her in protective custody for the time being—at least until he can educate her on the dangers of mating.”

“That’s what you think? Garth double-crossed you and ran off with her before you were supposed to meet in your shed that night.”

“What?”

“Do you have any idea where he could have taken her? I couldn’t find out anything about that sack of crap to give me a lead. Where does he live? Where does he hang out? Where did you find him? Where did you point London out to him? Details!”

Schroder looked shocked. “You’re not thinking about you and me, are you?”

“Of course not. Have you read me wrong all these years? I was trying to protect her. You steal her away to sell her blood and you expect me to fall into your arms? All you have proven by what has happened on this island is that you don’t want revenge on me and I don’t want revenge on you.  I want you to fix what you’ve done. I want you to help me find London and I want her safety assured.”

“Nobody can do that, even if I hadn’t interfered. She’s a vampire.”

I breathed, heavy with patience. “If you really want to prove to me that you care about me—take me off this damn island and give me a lead.”

He peered at me. This wasn’t what he wanted.