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There are sicknesses that walk in darkness; and there are exterminating angels, that fly
wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature; whom we
cannot see, but we feel their force, and sink under their sword.
—Jeremy Taylor, “A Funeral Sermon”
“Just coffee, please.”
The waitress raised her penciled eyebrows. “You don’t want anything to eat?” she asked.
Her accent was thick, her attitude disappointed.
Simon Lewis couldn’t blame her; she’d probably been hoping for a better tip than the one
she was going to get on a single cup of coffee. But it wasn’t his fault vampires didn’t eat.
Sometimes, in restaurants, he ordered food anyway, just to preserve the appearance of
normalcy, but late Tuesday night, when Veselka was almost empty of other customers, it
didn’t seem worth the bother. “Just the coffee.”
With a shrug the waitress took his laminated menu and went to put his order in. Simon sat
back against the hard plastic diner chair and looked around. Veselka, a diner on the
corner of Ninth Street and Second Avenue, was one of his favorite places on the Lower
East Side—an old neighborhood eatery papered with black-and-white murals, where they
let you sit all day as long as you ordered coffee at half-hour intervals. They also served
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