Help me identify this vampire novel from the 80's

I read this book in late 1988 or early 1989 and I drank a lot at the time, so some of the details are unclear. It wasn’t a great book, something you’d expect to find in an airport giftshop.

It’s about a young woman who gradually becomes a vampire. By gradually, I mean over a year or so. I don’t recall her getting bitten by anyone. Early during her transformation she dreams about the vampire who created her, but the dreams are more impressions and feelings than actual images.
Near the middle of the story she works nights at a call center, and when one of the customers on the phone starts hitting on her she tells him that she doesn’t like Italian men because they stink like garlic. I believe they fired her for that.
Later in the story she starts hiding in the basement of a family’s house, she kidnaps their child and dances under a streetlight, thinking that she is invisible. The police call in a tracker, he’s quite the outdoorsman/cowboy type to help find her.
She is captured and sentenced to a mental hospital, where she hides in the dark and refuses to eat.
Every year on her birthday the staff gives her a birthday cake, but she refuses to eat it.

Is my synopsis ringing any bells for anyone?

I’m sure someone here’s read this, so they can easily confirm. I’m going to guess Sunglasses after Dark by Nancy Collins.
Here’s a synopsis.
Here’s another, with a nice chronology, so maybe if this isn’t the one, you can work through the others and see if one of them is correct.
Here’s a picture of the original cover, that should really help, I remember the cover, even though I didn’t read the book.