For a second I considered telling them the truth: vampires don’t perspire, and our normal body temperature is lower than that of humans. Instead I said, “You know the old saying: ‘Cold hands, warm heart.’”
“My uncle says that.” Mysty was easily distracted. She went back to scratching her arm. Jesse simply smiled, oblivious. But there was something wary in Autumn’s face, in the set of her mouth and jaw. She turned around again without saying anything. Once again, I found that I couldn’t read her thoughts.
“Stop scratching,” I said to Mysty. “You’re making it bleed.” The streak of blood across her arm made me nervous. I forced my eyes to look away.
“You can let me out here,” I said when the car reached our front gate. “Thanks.”
Mysty said, “Ari?”
I’d already opened the car door.
“Can I call you?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. I stepped out of the car. “Autumn has the number.”
They were watching me, and I didn’t want them to see the code I used to unlock the gate. I sent Jesse the thought Go now, and a second later he drove away. The last thing I saw was Mysty’s face in the back window, her mouth framing the words Thank you.
The house looked less like a ruin now. The workers weren’t there—some sort of holiday was being observed. Labor Day, I think. Mãe and Dashay were finishing a late lunch in the kitchen, and I helped myself to salad.
I sat down. Both of them stared at me. “You’re smoking?” Mãe asked.
No, I told them. My friends were the smokers. The smell of their cigarettes lingered in my clothes and hair.
Mãe said, “Friends? Those troublemakers we saw at Flo’s?”
“Don’t be a snob,” Dashay said to her. “Who else is she going to be hanging out with?”
“Are there any other ones around?” I asked. “My age, I mean. I’m the only one my age at Flo’s.”
“I thought you knew the facts of life,” Mãe said.
“I do,” I said, feeling confused. “Dennis taught me.”
“That explains a lot.”
She and I had mixed memories of Dennis. He’d been my father’s assistant and our close friend. He’d taught me how to swim and ride a bicycle, as well. But he was mortal, and sometimes he made mistakes. The last time I’d seen him, he’d asked me to make him a vampire—a request that shocked me.
“Dennis is no expert.” My mother cleared a space on the table, carrying plates to the sink, and returned with a notebook, a ruler, and a pen. She ruled in the lines for a chart, then began to fill it in. I watched, fascinated.
“You never saw Sara do the chart thing before?” Dashay made a face. “She’s always making little maps and such.”
“I need my information to be organized,” Mãe said, still writing.
By nature, her mind wasn’t organized—it enjoyed flitting around too much.
“Next thing she’ll be making PowerPoint presentations at breakfast,” Dashay said. “And that will be the day I move out.”
Mãe’s chart looked like this:
I didn’t want to appear ungrateful, but I already knew most of the information. Well, I hadn’t known when the sects had begun or in which parts of the world they were popular, but I’d heard about most of the general preferences.
Mãe heard that thought. “Okay, Ms. Know-it-all. What do most sects have in common?”
I reread the chart, but it didn’t help.
“Come on, Ariella, this is basic stuff. What do most vampires have in common?”
“We have special diets?” I said.
“Yes. What else?”
“We need to be careful about sunlight and fire.” I felt more confident now.
“True. And?”
Dashay was trying not to laugh.
I looked back at the chart. “Um, some of us are celibate. I think.”
“Yes.” Mãe was relieved that the conversation was finally going somewhere. “Sanguinists in particular favor celibacy. Why?”
“Because they think it’s wrong to have sex with mortals?” It was a guess.
“Their tradition says sex is wrong, period,” Dashay said, glancing at my mother to make sure it was all right to butt in.
Mãe said, “Trust you to come in right at this point,” but her voice was amused.
“Remember, the first Sanguinists were priests,” Dashay said. “Maybe that should be listed on this pretty pretty chart.”
My mother ignored her. “Even after they left the church, they favored celibacy. Of course, there were exceptions.”
“Yes, but the girl doesn’t need to know about all of that.” Dashay turned to me. “What you need to think about is this: What do all of these sects have in common besides what you said?”
I reached across the table for a bowl of mixed berries. I felt thoroughly confused.
“They don’t want vampires to breed!” Dashay reached out and brushed Grace, the cat, off the table. “They each have their reasons. Sanguinists think the world is overpopulated, Nebulists think it’s nasty to have sex, and the Colonists want the humans to breed because it means more food. But vampires having children? None of them think it’s the right thing to do.”
“Why not?” I felt insulted, somehow.
Mãe was watching me closely. “If a vampire and a mortal have a child, that child is likely to have health problems,” she said.
Dashay said, “That’s only a part of it. These sects, they think the vampire blood is pure, and the world belongs to those pure folks.”
A “half-breed” myself, I made an effort not to take any of this personally. “What about vampires breeding with vampires?”
Dashay shook her head. “Can’t happen.”
“Well, that’s what the lore tells us.” Mãe’s jaw clenched, a sign that she felt worried or sad. “Who knows? There’s been no research to speak of. All we have to go on are gossip, myths and folk tales, Internet chat rooms. Most vampires are like Victorians—they prefer not to talk about sex. Anyway, now you know why there aren’t other teenagers like you in Homosassa. You’re a rare breed, Ariella.”
I felt—here’s that word again—dizzy. The conversation hadn’t convinced me of anything. “Let me see if I understand,” I said. “I shouldn’t ever have a child. Is that what you’re telling me? Because if I fall for a vampire, having children can’t happen, and if I fall for a mortal, the child might have health problems.”
I wanted to ask questions. How severe were the possible health problems? Was I likely to be sick? I looked down at the well-intentioned chart, and I wished I’d never changed the subject.
Then Dashay picked up a pencil. Mãe winced, but didn’t stop her. Dashay added another sect at the bottom of the chart: US. In the ORIGIN column, she wrote WHO KNOWS, and under LOCATION, she wrote SASSA. And for CHARACTERISTICS, she put a large question mark.
“We are not part of any sect,” she said. “And what we do, whatever characterizes us—that remains to be seen.”
I reached over and nudged Grace off the table again, thinking hard. For my father, being a vampire seemed such a complicated business, bound up in duties and ethics and obligations of all sorts. For my mother and Dashay, it wasn’t such a big deal. And for me?
Something else the sects have in common: they all keep their distance from humans. Even the Sanguinists, who believe in peaceful coexistence, don’t mingle much with mortals.
“I have a question,” I said. “Why don’t we tell people what we are? Why do we go to Flo’s and not to Murray’s? Why aren’t we out in the open?”
“Because exposure can be dangerous.” My mother spoke slowly, patiently, but she was surprised by the naïveté of my question.
“Some vamps are out of the box,” Dashay said. “Mostly in the entertainment business. You can be a rock star or an actor and say you’re a vamp, and the mortals think, ‘Yeah, right.’ They don’t feel threatened by that, for some reason.”
“Because they think it’s a pose. And they tell themselves that there’s no such thing as vampirism.” Mãe pushed her hair back from her forehead.
I remembered the line from Dracula (we call the 1931 version simply “The Movie”): “The strength of the vampire is that people will not believe in him.”
“If they don’t believe, then where’s the harm in calling yourself a vampire?”
Dashay shook her head at me, as if I were being deliberately obtuse. “Because we have been known to bite.”
“We try not to.” My mother’s voice tried to soothe me. “But the Nebulists have no qualms about biting. They seem to get away with it, by and large—if incidents come to light, mortals are usually blamed. The Colonists prefer to kill in batches—they say it’s more efficient, even claim it’s more humane.”
“Has my father ever bitten anyone?” I’d wanted to know that for years.