Kryss is a city with many unusual trades. But the most unusual of them all is plied at the end of a tired, worn street in a tiny house that is hemmed in between two larger houses that lean precariously toward it. The sign hanging over the door is small and solemn, saying simply “Hawke and Johnson, C.N.M.” without even a picture to proclaim the trade. In a city filled with flamboyant merchants of every stripe, and business...

“Are you one of the fortunate kind, alone but not lonely?” Jessie tapped her thumb on her knee in time to the music as she drove through the night. The window was open and a hot prairie breeze blew her hair into tangles, but her mind was already on the town ahead. The hunt and the feasting. She had let the hunger grow too strong again. She knew that others of her kind grew to hate the dark or found the solitary existence...