I groaned and mumbled something rather unintelligent at the door. I was expecting my mom to pop her head to ask about ordering pizza or something when instead I saw the blonde and pinked head of Joanna. I blinked and sat up quickly, scaring Mabel off the bed. I watched the cat slink passed Jo as she stepped in and closed the door behind her. She smiled at me, in that sort of pitying way and knew mom had filled her in. I sighed and rubbed a hand through my hair, growling at myself when my fingers got a bit tangled in the waves.

Joanna laughed and plopped down next to me on my bed, making herself at home. No surprise there. She was dressed in jean shorts and a Blondie tank top. She also had a plate of mint chocolate chip cookies. My favorite. Did I mention she was an excellent baker? "How's my favorite neighbor?" She asks while I reach for a cookie realizing how hungry I was. I glance the tiny digital clock on my nightstand. It's already 10:15 in the evening.

"I've been better, Jo," I say before taking a generous bite of the cookie. "The cookies help, though, thank you." The last bit slightly muffled as I chew.

She bumps her shoulder against mine as a way of saying, "You're welcome" while taking a cookie too. She places the plate on her lap and we both stare off into space or maybe just the wall in front of us. "You're mother told me what happened, but I heard some tenants talking about it downstairs," I can feel her glance at me and then she continues. "You want to talk about it, Collie?"

I think for a long minute, finishing up my first cookie. I pick up another one before I say anything on the matter. "I do and I don't," I look at her and wonder if I should tell her the whole truth or not, about Felix being there and my suspicions. She is my best friend though and I should be able to trust her with anything. She's probably the only person who will understand if not exactly believe me. She is looking at me very closely, waiting on bated breath for whatever I might say and I finally decide to be truthful. Besides I need someone to vent to, to help me work through all this freaky stuff. So I take a deep breath and tell her everything that happened at Mike's. About Felix and the robbers and what the man might have done to them. I even tell her about what he might have done to me and back track to the day before when I passed out in the hall waking up in his apartment. She takes it all in without saying anything until she feels I'm done.

"Huh," was the first thing she said while I take a big bite of her cookie and staring at the Albert Einstein poster on my door. "Well, he must be a vampire," she says so matter-of-factly that I can't help staring at her with a dumbfounded expression. I mean I know she's rather open-minded and a little odd but she sounds so confidant about it.

"No way!" I say without really thinking about it.

She laughs a bit and shrugs, "Hey, you were thinking it first, Colin, don't deny it."

"Yeah, but I wasn't that serious about it. I mean vampires aren't for real…are they?" I chewed on my lip and fiddled with a half eaten cookie.

"Don't look at me, I know as much as you do, probably less, but the facts are mounting up," she ponders for a minute before getting a very sinister grin on her face. I did not like the look of it at all. "Perhaps I should go talk to this, Felix, was it? That is seriously not the name I would have thought," she finishes her cookie and pulls her cell from her pocket. I take it from her as leverage.

"No! Don't!" I say moving away from her as best I can while she attempts to get her phone back. "If you do that and he finds out that you know me and I, I mean, we know about him he's going to come after us and…" I trail off not wanting to say it out loud. She snatches her phone from my hand finally but I let her, really.

"Colin, why would he go out of his way to save you and then turn around and kill you? Besides, I'll just won't mention you, alright? I'll go over on false pretenses of needing sugar or something and strike up a conversation, easy as Pecan pie." She says all this while checking her text messages and then smiles all sweetly at me.

"Is pecan pie even easy?" I mumbled mostly to myself before giving in. "Fine, but be careful, okay?" I look down at the plate and realize the two of us have eaten all the cookies.

"Don't worry, buddy boy, I will," she grins and then gives me a sly glance. "So, you saw him without his shirt, huh? Pretty sexy?" I glare at her and she starts to laugh rather loudly while wiggling her eyebrows and for a while after we talk about stupid things and joke around before she finally leaves to go get some much-needed beauty sleep. Her words, not mine.