“Really,” Ruthven had said when the question of his nature had first (awkwardly) arisen, early in their acquaintance, “the easiest thing is to think of me as a large well-dressed mosquito, only with more developed social graces and without the disease-vector aspect. Actually the leech is probably a more accurate simile, but the mosquito tends to offer less objectionable aesthetic connotations. It doesn’t hurt; the bite wounds heal almost immediately, with only a little itching; people have no memory of the experience. I don’t take more from any single individual than they’d give in a Red Cross
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