Kevin had wasted three hundred years being beautiful for the wrong people. Tonight he meant to fix that. He stood in the great hall of his crumbling manor and studied the map spread across the cracked stone floor. Somewhere in the haunted forest walked one mortal whose blood granted a vampire true immortality. Drink from that person, and Kevin would never fear the dawn again. Drink from anyone else, and he stayed as fragile as any other dead thing. That was the problem. He didn't know which mortal it was. Charm was his only weapon, and it worked once per victim. A vampire could seduce a human, feed, and learn the truth only by tasting. Guess wrong, and the prey died or fled, and the charm was spent. Kevin had spent his charm carelessly for centuries. He would not do it again. He needed a way to test the blood without seducing anyone. So he turned to the old craft his maker had taught him. In the corner grew a strange arrangement of flowers. Their blooms opened into tiny skulls. Their trees had branches like bone fingers. The plant reacted to living blood. Feed it a drop from a true immortal, and it would flower crimson. Feed it common blood, and it would rot. Kevin had one sample. A traveler had cut his hand on the manor gate last week. Kevin had saved the blood on a cloth. Now he pressed the cloth against the pale roots. He waited. The skull blooms trembled. Then they turned gray and collapsed into dust. "Wrong one," Kevin said. He almost smiled. A clean answer, at last. He had a tool now, not a guess. But the test had a cost. Feeding the plant killed part of it each time. Half the blooms had already withered. He could run the test only a few more times before the plant died for good. So he could no longer chase every pretty face in the forest. He needed to narrow the hunt himself, then confirm with the plant. He needed the mortals to come to him. Kevin knew how to draw them. He cut a fresh bundle of red roses from the manor's overgrown garden. He let his own blood drip down the petals until they glistened dark. Mortals could not resist a gift of impossible beauty. The bouquet would lure the curious ones close, the ones who wandered the forest chasing wonder. Among them might walk the one he sought. He carried the dripping roses to the broken front door and set them on the step, where the moonlight touched them. Then the roses moved. Not from wind. Something dragged itself out of the tree line, stiff and gray, drawn by the smell of blood. It moaned once and reached for the flowers with rotting hands. Kevin froze. He had wanted to bait mortals. Instead he had baited the dead. And the dead did not seduce. They only spread.