Everyone else can get eaten.
About two hundred years later, I finish the worksheet, and my mom hands Daphne a chunk of cash for putting up with me all evening. Stuffing the money in her purse, my tutor tosses her blond hair with a gracious smile. “Thank you, Mrs. Pfeiffer.”
“Call me Monica, please,” my mother says for what must be the millionth time. I’m pretty sure Daphne is in a sorority, and she’ll have to be held at knifepoint before she addresses my mother by her first name. Delivering a pile driver to my self-esteem, Mom continues, “We’re the ones who should thank you. So far this year, Auggie’s managed to hold on to a C average in a math class, which … You know, for your next miracle, can I request that water-into-wine thing?”
“Hey!” I’m mildly affronted. “I’m standing right here, remember?”
“I know, sweetie, and you’re doing it so well.” Mom messes up my hair—because why not get everybody in on the act?—and I scowl at her.
“Auggie’s shown a lot of improvement in the past six months,” Daphne says diplomatically, as if I had anywhere to go but up after the grades I received last year. “I think he’s going to get the hang of this.”
“Auggie, why don’t you walk Daphne out to her car?” my dad suggests as he enters the kitchen behind Mom, going for the cabinet where he keeps his trusty popcorn bowl.
“That’s totally not necessary.” Daphne waves the offer away. “My parents used to be vampire hunters, and I’m trained in combat techniques. Honestly, Auggie is safer inside.”
“Statistically, vampires are far more likely to approach women walking alone,” my dad counters, determined for me to be a gentleman, whether I like it or not. “Besides,” he continues, gesturing out the kitchen windows, “there have been a few … unsettling incidents on this block recently, and Monica and I would feel better if you didn’t go by yourself.”
The “unsettling incidents” he’s talking about include handprints found on the outside of second-story windows, strange noises at night, golden lights burning in the darkness, and the occasional animal corpse turning up, drained of blood. In the absence of a convenient human, vampires will snack on whatever is handy.
“Does Auggie get to make any decisions here?” I ask, annoyed. “Or are you going to snap a leash around my neck and drag me outside like an animal?”
“Don’t be so dramatic, August,” my mother says in the manner of someone who is not being sent outside where there are actual monsters.
At the same time, Daphne insists, “I’ll be fine!”
Then, after a moment, my dad puts in, “We do still have that leash left over from when Scout was alive.”
Needless to say, I end up walking Daphne to her car. At the risk of repeating myself, Fulton Heights is a boring town where nothing ever happens—save the occasional death by vampiric exsanguination—so it’s not as if she had to fight for a parking spot. Her secondhand Saab is right at the foot of our walk. It’s early March, snow still lingering on the ground, and a cold wind rips the breath from our mouths in shreds of white steam.
“It was very sweet of you to make sure I didn’t die in the ten seconds it took us to get here, Auggie,” Daphne says when we reach her vehicle. My parents have turned on the exterior lights and are watching through the front windows—as if they’d be able to do anything but wave goodbye if we got attacked right now. Wistfully, my tutor adds, “Sometimes I wish you were straight. And about four years older. And better at algebra.”
“Two of those things will never happen,” I declare emphatically, “and me getting older is about fifty-fifty.”
“Well, I guess it is better for me if you stay bad at math.” Daphne gives me a hug. She actually smells really nice, and just for a moment I also kind of wish I were straight; but then I remember what Boyd Crandall looked like when he got dared to make a snow angel in his boxer briefs at school on Monday, and I change my mind. She pulls back and points a stern finger at me. “Keep studying those flashcards until you’ve got your equations memorized, okay? And if you have any questions about your homework, send me an email.”
“How about I just send you the homework, and—” I stop, mid-swindle, when a strange sensation prickles up the back of my neck, like a breath puffed across my skin. Gooseflesh spreads between my shoulders, and I whirl around, convinced something is behind me. The yard is empty, though, without so much as footprints in the snow—human or otherwise.
“Auggie?” Daphne steps closer, peering over my shoulder. “What is it? Did you hear something?”
And then we both hear something, and our heads snap up as a gentle skittering noise comes from the neighbor’s roof, a shower of displaced snow drifting down from the eaves. It could be anything—a house cat or a raccoon, or maybe a weather balloon caught on a downdraft of swamp gas—but either way, it’s my signal to get the hell back inside.
“So I’ll see you next week,” Daphne says briskly, darting around to the driver’s side of her car.
“Drive safe,” I chirp in response, and then I’m hurrying up the walk before she’s even pulled away from the curb. Halfway to the porch, however, I catch something with my foot and kick it almost onto the front steps. A rabbit, its fur so white it blended in seamlessly with the snow, rolls a few times before flopping loosely onto its back. It’s dead, and two deep, bloodless puncture wounds in its neck are all I need to know what killed it. There was a vampire in our front yard tonight.
I sprint the rest of the way to the door, and my heart doesn’t stop pounding for another ten minutes once I’m safely locked inside, a crucifix clutched in my white-knuckled fist. Vampires can’t enter a privately owned building without an invitation, so I should be safe … but I’m not taking any chances.
It isn’t until I’m brushing my teeth that the most disturbing fact of all hits me, and my throat goes dry: It’s below freezing outside—but the rabbit’s body was still limp. Whatever dropped it on our front walk must’ve just left before I stumbled over it … barely fifteen feet from the windows where I’d been sitting and doing my homework.
Chilled all the way to my bone marrow, I climb into bed, but it’s hours before my eyes finally slide shut.
2
“Auggie, you look like crap.” Adriana Verdugo has been my best friend since we were both in second grade, but not because I appreciate her honesty. It’s between classes at Fulton Heights High, and I have just finished almost certainly failing that algebra quiz.
“I didn’t sleep very well.” Even after I finally drifted off, all I dreamed about all night was death, one hideous demise after another. Firing squads, decapitation, hanging, burning … I would jerk awake just before the final moment, panting and sweating, my heart beating so hard it hurt. Each time, I’d stare at the window, convinced a bloodthirsty monster waited on the other side of the shade. “There was a vampire in our yard last night.”
Adriana shudders, leaning up against the locker next to me. “When will the city actually do something? It’s not like it would cost them much to just burn some of those empty buildings down, right?” Hands on her hips, she states, “I still think we should figure out who to pitch my holy water sprinkler system idea to, because it’s brilliant. There are already pipes running everywhere—all they have to do is put in some sprinkler heads and get a priest to mumble a prayer or two at the public works building—”