"Stay back, woman," he warned me. His voice sounded like his throat was sore, raspy and raw.

"What are you doing out here?"

"Who are you?"

"You known darn good and well who I am. What's up with you? Why are you out here without your car?" Eric drove a sleek Corvette, which was simply Eric.

"You know me? Who am I?"

Well, that knocked me for a loop. He sure didn't sound like he was joking. I said cautiously, "Of course I know you, Eric. Unless you have an identical twin. You don't, right?"

"I don't know." His arms dropped, his fangs seemed to be retracting, and he straightened from his crouch, so I felt there'd been a definite improvement in the atmosphere of our encounter.

"You don't know if you have a brother?" I was pretty much at sea.

"No. I don't know. Eric is my name?" In the glare of my headlights, he looked just plain pitiful.

"Wow." I couldn't think of anything more helpful to say. "Eric Northman is the name you go by these days. Why are you out here?"

"I don't know that, either."

I was sensing a theme here. "For real? You don't remember anything?" I tried to get past being sure that at any second he'd grin down at me and explain everything and laugh, embroiling me in some trouble that would end in me . . . getting beaten up.

"For real." He took a step closer, and his bare white chest made me shiver with sympathetic goose bumps. I also realized (now that I wasn't terrified) how forlorn he looked. It was an expression I'd never seen on the confident Eric's face before, and it made me feel unaccountably sad.

"You know you're a vampire, right?"

"Yes." He seemed surprised that I asked. "And you are not."

"No, I'm real human, and I have to know you won't hurt me. Though you could have by now. But believe me, even if you don't remember it, we're sort of friends."