Nick looked incredulously at Natalie as she plonked the big plant on the table.

"It's Christmas," she said stubbornly. "It's the human thing to do."

"Well, it can't stay *there*!"

But she simply shifted the antique centrepiece to the top of the piano, and then spent a good minute carefully positioning her gift. "Just remember to water it," she admonished him. "Isn't it lovely?"

"I suppose," came the unenthusiastic reply.

"Oh, come on," she chided. "As soon as I saw it I thought of you."

"Well, at least it's my favourite colour," he said, with a wicked little smile. "Red."

The disadvantage of winter in Canada is the temperature. Not that Feliks Twist was personally troubled by the cold: it would have to get very much icier than southern Ontario before the anti-freeze in his vampire blood was unable to cope. No his problem was floral.

Or, more accurately, bracteal. Poinsettias cannot bear so much as a touch of frost. Still, by now he had more than a century's experience in the potting shed. Out of the light-controlled room, he wheeled the plant he had cherished for years, now coaxed into cladding itself in brilliant scarlet

A veritable poinsettia *tree*.