"What have we got here?" he drawled.

"I'm Vinnie. This is Dolores. Now get lost."

The stranger looked at Dolores quizzically. "Why is this piece of meat talking?"

"You're a Photuris male," said Dolores in awe. "At last! Where have you been all my life?"

"I'm a rarity, babe, the only one in these parts. You and the suppertime here sure are making a big, bright ruckus. I never flew by this little nettle patch before, but you're hard to miss tonight. When do we eat?"

"Did you flash on your way here?" said Vinnie. "It would have been more polite to flash."

"Why would I bother? I know where she is." He turned to Dolores. "Would you kill him now, please? I'm hungry."

"Wait a minute," said Vinnie. "What flashing system do you use?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's a professional interest. She's a mimic, right? She mimics how a Photinus flashes. Are you a mimic too?"

"I can mimic fourteen different genres of flashing," said the stranger.

"Okay, fine, yeah, I get that, very impressive. You're great at pastiche. But I'm asking you: how do you yourself flash, as a Photuris? What do you bring to the table, creatively speaking?"

"Well," said the stranger, "with an incident like this one, I don't need to flash at all. I can just watch her mimicking you. Then we eat you, and we reproduce, and everything's hunky-dory."

Vinnie turned to Dolores. "You know what? This creep can't flash for himself. He's got nothing authentic to say!"

"Is that true?" said Dolores.

With a groan of disbelief, the stranger lit up. "Okay, fine, be that way! You want a guy to flash at you, no problem, I can ripple through all kinds of patterns. You name it, I can do it. Whatever the market demands."

"That's not his point," said Dolores. "His point was, you can't communicate with me as a man of my own species should communicate with a woman."

"But we're carnivores! We exploit the flashing system in order to eat people who flash."