“I miss you, too.” In a way I was telling the truth: I missed the boy he’d been before Kathleen’s death. “Maybe you can come and visit us sometime.”
“Maybe.” But the way he spoke made it seem a remote prospect. “Ari, I need to ask you something. Kathleen said some things about you. She told me that I should be careful around you, that you weren’t —” He stopped talking.
“She told you that I’m not normal?” I said. “Well, that’s true.”
“She said — stupid stuff. She was into that weird role-playing and witchcraft, and who knows what else. But she acted sometimes as if it were real. She said you were a vampire.”
In my mind, the word glowed like embers.
“And I know that’s ridiculous, but I still have to ask if you know anything about how she died. Do you know anything?”
“All I know is what I read, and what you told me,” I said. “I had nothing to do with her death, Michael. I wish I’d been there that night — sometimes I think I might have been able to save her. But I got sick, and you drove me home, and the next thing I knew, your father called mine to see if she was with me.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“No apologies needed.”
I asked him if there were any leads in the case. He said that the police were questioning stable hands.
Once I’d sorted through what I knew about my father, and what my mother had told me, some facts emerged as possible means of tracking him down. I wrote them in my journal.
First, every January my father went to Baltimore. Going to Baltimore next January might be of use. But January was months away, and I wasn’t inclined to be patient.
Second, my father was devoted to his research. To conduct the business of Seradrone, and to stay alive, he needed a steady supply of blood. That meant inquiries should be made to the Green Cross service, and perhaps to funeral parlors. But where?
Third, he relied upon his helpers: Dennis McGrath and Mary Ellis Root. Find them, and a trail might lead to my father.
Fourth, contact his tailor.
Those were the immediately obvious avenues to finding him. Of course, he might have done something unexpected — run away to India, or begun a new life as a teacher or writer. But I didn’t think so. As my mother had said, most vampires are creatures of habit.
That night after dinner, Mãe, Dashay, Harris, and I sat outside in the moon garden that lay on the house’s northern side. (Joey had been sent to bed by Dashay; the moon excited him, and he made too much noise.) Mãe had planted an array of white flowers — angel’s trumpets, moonflowers, flowering tobacco, and gardenias — in a circular plot, and we sat on two facing benches made of weathered teak, watching the flowers seem to glow as the sky darkened. A half moon hung low in the June sky, and the heavy perfume of the tobacco plants made me sleepy. Around us, mosquitoes droned, but never even brushed our skin. Their noise reminded me of high-pitched string instruments. I know it’s not a pleasant sound for humans, who fear their bite.
I told the others about my plan to find my father. The Recovery Plan, I called it. They listened without commenting.
“I plan to begin making calls tomorrow,” I said. “I feel well enough, and my head is clear again.”
“That’s good,” Dashay said. Next to me, Harris made a sound of agreement.
Mãe said, “And what if you do find him, Ariella? What then?”
I didn’t have an answer. Her face was half in shadow, and Dashay sat beyond her, nearly invisible. I tried to imagine my father sitting on the bench next to my mother, taking in the night air, admiring the lanternlike glow of the flowers, and I failed. I couldn’t picture him with us.
The child in me wondered, What if he doesn’t like monkeys?
Nobody spoke. Then the quiet was shattered by a sound: “Wha-wha-wha!”
I was the only one who jumped. Harris actually reached over and patted my hand.
The noise repeated, and this time it was answered by another sound: “Who-whoo.”
The exchanges went on for nearly a minute. I couldn’t tell where they were coming from. Then, they faded away, until all we heard was the drone of mosquitoes again.
“Owls?” I whispered, and the others nodded.
“Barred owls,” Dashay said.
Suddenly I thought of my father’s lullaby. Across from me, my mother’s eyes flashed in the moonlight. She began to sing, to the melody he’d sung to me: “Jacaré tutu / Jacaré mandu / tutu vai embora / Não leva méia filhinha / Murucututu.” Her voice was dark silver — as haunting as his, but sharper, sadder — and it shimmered in the moonlight. When she stopped, there was silence. Even the mosquitoes were quiet, for a moment.
Then I heard my voice. “What do the words mean?”
She said, “A parent is asking for her child’s protection. She asks the alligator and the other beasts of the night to go away, to leave the child alone. Murucututu is the owl, the mother of sleep.”
“How do you know it?”
“Your father,” she said. “He sang it to you, before you were born.”
Next morning I decided to press on, regardless of the consequences.