Guilty Pleasures begins with vampire, Willie McCoy in Anita’s office at Animator’s Inc. Willie is a vampire that Anita knew as a person before he was turned. He tells Anita that his boss, whom he won’t name, would like to hire her to investigate a series of vampire murders in ‘the District’. Anita, who has already made statements to the police, asks him to leave, ignoring his offers of large sums of money, and eventual threats.

Later, Anita is coerced into attending a bachelorette party for her friend Catherine. She meets Catherine and another friend, Monica and it turns out they are going to a club called Guilty Pleasures, a male strip club, owned, operated and staffed by vampires. Monica is a frequent visitor, it turns out. Here, Anita runs into Jean-Claude, the manager of the club, and a vampire. He tries to entice Anita into enjoying the show, but though Anita is attracted to him, she buffers his attempted flirtations. The first stripper that they do sit and watch is a vampire junkie named Phillip, who is covered in vampire bites. The second is a vampire named Aubrey, who feeds from Phillip and then kisses Monica. Aubrey reaches for Anita, but she jerks away. It is evident that her abilities as an animator give her some resistant to vampire mind tricks. Anita receives a page and leaves Catherine and Monica at the club, promising to come back to pick them up later.

Anita goes to a crime scene at Hillcrest Cemetery, where, upon examination of the victim’s body, she determines the cause of death to be a ghoul attack. Sergeant Rudolf Storr comes on the scene and questions Anita about her suspicions, telling her that the victim was the groundskeeper. Anita also points out that the ghouls had to have come from somewhere else, and explains that they should have run from the man, not attacked him. Dolph seems satisfied with her report and lets her go.

Anita returns to Guilty Pleasures after midnight, where she runs into Jean-Claude again. He takes her to her friends, where she finds Catherine on stage with Aubrey, who has her under mind control. Anita gets her friend off the stage, but Aubrey turns his attention to her and takes her resistance to his powers as a challenge that results in a fight and Aubrey going ‘wild’ on Anita. She nearly kills him and Jean-Claude pulls them apart. Anita refuses to give up her knife until Jean-Claude promises that she will leave safely and swears he’ll protect her. They play the fight off as if it were staged and Jean-Claude shows both his and Anita’s cross-shaped scars, allowing the audience to believe that she is a vampire as well.

Anita goes backstage with Jean-Claude and Aubrey to discover that Aubrey has fully ‘rolled’ Catherine, and that if Anita wants her free, she must agree to work on the vampire murder cases for the Master of St. Louis, Nikolaos, who is expecting the vampires to bring Anita before her, unharmed. Anita also discovers that Monica was a lure to get Anita and her friend within the grasp of Nikolaos and so she tells Monica that if any harm comes to Catherine, she will cut out Monica’s heart, burn the ashes and scatter them in the river.

Anita, Aubrey and Jean-Claude walk to see Nikolaos, and it begins to rain. Jean-Claude convinces Anita that they must pretend to be lovers on a walk. They hold hands, and when a police car goes by, he kisses her. Anita finds out that Jean-Claude was not allowed to feed that night, and his need for blood washes over her when they embrace. After that, there is a forced distance between them and Anita decides that Jean-Claude must not trust himself around her.

Jean-Claude and Aubrey lead Anita to a female vampire that claims to be the Master of the City, only Anita doesn't buy it because she can sense the level of the vampires power and knows she is not powerful enough to be the Master of Jean-Claude and Aubrey. Her name is Theresa, not Nikolaos. The situation quickly deteriorates and Aubrey attacks Anita, knocking her unconscious. Anita wakes up in a dungeon to learn that Jean-Claude has saved her life by sharing some of his life force with her, the first step to making her a human servant. In doing so, she has become almost completely immune to a vampire's gaze and to Jean-Claude's powers.

Anita is left in the dungeon to await her meeting with Nikolaos and in the meantime, attacked by wererats and fights them off. She is injured and nearly raped when she is saved by the rat king, and then the vampires come to retrieve her and she is taken before Nikolaos. The Master of St. Louis turns out to be a very old and powerful vamp in the body of an adolescent girl. Anita does quite a bit of backtalking which causes Nikolaos to lose her temper and she is able to control Anita by pressing on her mind.

They discuss the murders and the fact that someone or something is killing the most powerful vampires in the city. Zachary, another animator in the employment of Nikolaos, brings forth a zombie. The zombie had been a witness to one of the vampire murders but had killed himself to escape torture. They question him, but Zachary is too cruel and the zombie's mind is broken. Nikolaos sends both Anita and Zachary away angrily.

As they are leaving, Nikolaos looses her powers and Jean-Claude yells for Anita to run. She and Zachary run up the stairs,loud noises, the stench of rotting flesh and a wind of power following at their heels. They stop up the stairs and Anita hears Jean-Claude's voice and sees his eyes floating to her in magical blue flames, and then they keep running. They run into Nikolaos' human servant, Winter, who leads them out.

Ch. 14: Runs into Valentine, learns they were under The Circus of the Damned.
Ch. 15: Arrives home to find Edward waiting for her. He wants to know the daytime resting place of The Master of the City.
Ch. 16: Dream about Jean-Claude, visit from Ronnie, who offers to help.
Ch. 17/18: Goes to work, young boy considering the CoEL, Phillip comes and asks her to lunch.
Ch. 19: Lunch with Phillip, strangely picking the wrong food, but more hungry than usual. She learns Nikolaos puts vamps in cross-wrapped coffins as punishment, and agrees to let Phillip help her deal with a human who knew one of the dead vamps.
Ch. 20: They go to talk to Rebecca Miles and get the first real clue to the murders - the victim Rebecca knew was killed the night of a 'Freak Party'.
Ch. 21: Anita drives Phillip back to Guilty Pleasures and he agrees to take her to a Freak Party that night to investigate.
Ch. 22: Anita goes to Dead Dave's - a bar owned by an ex-cop vampire. She's served by Luther and asks about Phillip, who she learns was attacked by the same vampire (Valentine) that gave her her scars and attacked her the night she burned down the house with Edward. Phillip was very young when this happened. Ronnie calls her while she's there and tells Anita about an organization called HAV (Humans Against Vampires) having a 'Death Squad' that might be responsible for the murders. It's not concrete enough, though, and Anita decides to continue her investigation.
Ch. 23: Anita returns to her apartment to get dressed for the party and finds a note from Edward that she has 24 hours to give up the location of Nikolaos' daytime resting place.
Ch. 24: Anita picks Phillip up at GP and they drive to the freak party. He flirts with her and tries to put the moves on her, but she stops him by mentioning Valentine, and then assures him that he's safe. He informs her that they will be playing lovers at the party.
Ch. 25/26: Anita meets the freaks, and uses her sharp tongue to keep them at bay. She sees Edward there, with a woman and figures out that this is how he gets information on vamps. Edward's date starts coming on to Phillip, but he denies her and takes her into the bathroom, where they are spied on by a party-goer and Phillip kisses her, and then bites her neck to put on a good show.
Ch. 27: Anita goes outside for some air and stumbles onto a group of vampires, including Theresa, who are about to kill Zachary because he can't raise a zombie for them. Anita steps in and agrees to be his focus for the ritual. She helps him, then learns his secret - Zachary is dead, and his Gris-gris keeps him alive. The ritual goes wrong and Anita has to give her own blood to raise the zombie. When she gets the chance, she leaves the zombie to the vampires and runs.
Ch. 28: Nikolaos shows up and wants to drink Anita's blood in exchange for not torturing the zombie. Phillip comes to help Anita, but she assures him she's alright, she's negotiated with Nik. The Freak Party gets broken up by members of the CoEL, and Anita makes a getaway with Phillip and Willie.
Ch. 29/30: Anita drops Phillip and Willie off, and returns to her apartment, where Edward has left a message that 'the clock is ticking'. She dreams that night of Jean-Claude eating blackberries and he tells her that they have to strike first or Nikolaos will kill them both.

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