Dashay seemed momentarily puzzled, but she kept talking. “Then I ran into Cecil in town, and I invited him back to help trim the tree. He’s all alone for the holidays.”

So she called him Cecil. My mother and I were furious, but we knew better than to show it.

“Would you care for a drink?” Mãe asked Burton.

“Sure,” he said. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, which didn’t fit him as well as his usual suit. “I’ll have what you’re having.”

Mãe smiled, but didn’t say anything. I followed her out to the kitchen. She took a bottle of pomegranate juice out of the refrigerator and diluted it until it was the color of Picardo.

“Why don’t you hypnotize him?” I said. “I want to talk to my father.”

“We don’t do things like that.” She gave me a chiding look, and I knew that later I’d be hearing more about the ethics of hypnosis. “Besides, your father left.”

“He’s gone?”

“Didn’t you notice?” She garnished the drink with a sprig of mint. “When he leaves a room, the air changes.”

We went back to the living room, and I saw that she was right: the air had lost its shimmer.

Agent Burton—Cecil—stayed for only two hours, but for Mãe and me those hours dragged. We strung popcorn and cranberries and hung them on the tree. Burton and Dashay talked about music and dancing, and even demonstrated a few steps.

Mãe and I didn’t try hard to hide how glum we felt, and finally Dashay said, “What’s up with you two?”

My mother said, “Ariella had a bad experience today.” She turned to me. “Tell them about the man in the van.”

Burton listened to my story with real interest, this time. “Why didn’t you call me?” he said.

“We’d barely arrived when you came in with the tree.” Mãe’s eyes were cold.

He asked me to describe the van again and again, and he jotted some notes on a pad. Then he said to Dashay, “Sorry to be talking shop.”

“Are you kidding?” she said. “Go out there and find that creep.”

When Burton finally left, Dashay said, “Isn’t he cute? I think he’s cute.”

Mãe picked up his empty glass and carried it into the kitchen without a word.

“What is wrong with you?” Dashay trailed after her.

“Don’t you remember the house rules?” Mãe set the glass on the counter with unusual force, and that’s when I realized how angry she was. “We never bring anyone here without first checking with each other.”

“I know, but he was all alone, and it’s the holiday season.” Dashay folded her arms. “Where’s your Yule spirit?”

“Raphael was here.” Mãe looked as if she wanted to break something. “When you two came waltzing in, he disappeared.”

“He was here?” Dashay flung out her arms. “How was I supposed to know?”

I left them quarreling in the kitchen and walked out of the house, down to the dock. The indigo air was sweet and cool against my skin, and a mockingbird in a mangrove tree sang a bittersweet melody—a song that only bachelor birds sing at night. I sat on the dock and looked up at the stars, trying to find Orion, but the stars weren’t visible. Venus hung low in the sky, beautiful and remote.

I remembered Jesse’s words: “Do you ever look up at the sky at night and wonder who’s looking back at you?” Tonight I felt too insignificant for anyone to bother watching. What if we’re puppets? I thought. What if we’re only figments of some warped imagination?

I sat there until it was dark, waiting, but the stars never appeared, and my father did not come back.

TWO

In Loco Parentis

Chapter Ten

Two weeks later I sat in my mother’s truck, en route to college. Hillhouse had called in December, letting me know that I’d been accepted and that I could begin in January, if I liked.

Did I like?

My mother and Dashay had taken me to Orlando—first, to see a doctor (one of us), who tested my ears and hearing. He found no sign of accompanying hearing loss. He said my vertigo might have been caused by labyrinthitis: an inflammation of the inner ear canal, which usually goes away on its own. Then we went to a mall to shop for school clothes—jeans and T-shirts, now neatly packed into a trunk that rode behind us—and on to lunch, where they’d tried to get me excited about my “new beginning.”

Now Mãe went so far as to quote something she’d read about leaving home being like giving birth to yourself.

“That sounds disgusting,” I said.

As she drove, she told me about her experience of leaving home. “I always knew I wanted to go to Hillhouse,” she said. “It’s where the coolest kids from high school went.”

I’ve been told I have a vivid imagination, but it wasn’t easy to visualize my mother as a high school student caring about the “coolest kids.” “Did your parents want you to go there?”

“My parents died when I was fourteen.” She said it without emotion. “My sister and I went to live with cousins.”

Losing one’s parents at fourteen was impossible for me to imagine. I’d been brooding for weeks about my father disappearing, but to imagine him dead, never coming back—that was impossible.

“My mother died of cancer.” Mãe turned the truck onto Interstate 75. “And my father had a heart attack soon after that.”

“Were they old?” I asked.

“In their thirties,” my mother said. “Not old. That’s one reason I wanted to become a vampire—to never suffer as they did.”

The landscape rushed past us. I sat back in the seat, thinking.

“Don’t worry, Ari.” My mother patted my arm. “Your father will come back.”

“But where is he? Why haven’t we heard from him?”

She said, “I don’t know for certain. But I have a hunch: he’s gone after your shadow man.”

We stopped for lunch—shrimp and grits in a small-town café in Georgia’s Low Country, where silver and pale green marsh grass swayed along the roadside and the air smelled sweet, like dried hay. Back in the truck, my mother handed me a small laminated card. On it was a photo of me, my name, and the day and month of my birth. But the birth year listed made me seven years older.

“I had it made on the black market in Miami,” she said.

I stared down at the photo of me, allegedly aged twenty-one. “I never heard of any black market.”

“Don’t look so shocked. How do you suppose we get driver’s licenses and passports?” She rolled down the cab window. “Didn’t your father ever mention Vunderworld? Vampire Underworld. It’s an important part of our support network.”

“Why do I need a fake ID?”

She put the key into the ignition, but didn’t start the engine. “You’ll find that most of your friends have it, in order to get into bars and clubs. There’s no reason for them to know that you’re only fourteen. The college administrators know your real age. They think you’re a prodigy.”

My college education would be premised on lies, I thought.

“Without a few lies, you’d never be able to fit in.” Mãe kept her eyes on the dashboard. “You’re only fourteen, Ari. Do you want them to treat you like a baby?”

I hadn’t thought about it. Could I ever fit in? “What happens when I get older?” I said. “When I don’t age, but everyone around me does?”

She started the car. “Some vampires have plastic surgery to mimic the effects of aging. That way, they can live in a community of mortals for many years without anyone knowing.”

“They have surgery to look older?” It struck me as comical. Each time we’d driven through Florida, I’d noticed roadside billboards advertising procedures to make people look young. One read, NOT EVEN YOUR HAIRDRESSER WILL KNOW FOR SURE.

“The best surgeons, the ones in Miami, make the changes subtle,” Mãe said. “They can even mimic the way a human looks if she’s had minor plastic surgery or facial injections.” We were driving down a rural road, the afternoon sun turning the marsh grass faintly golden. “Of course, it only works for a time—the span of a human life. Then we have to relocate, take on a new identity, and start again, the way your father did.

“There’s one more thing we should talk about.” Mãe slid her eyes from the road to me. “Sex.”

“I know all about it,” I said quickly.

My mother adjusted the truck’s rearview mirror. “You know the facts of life. But do you know how they work for vampires?”

By the time the truck turned onto the Hillhouse campus, I knew all about vampire sex—at least in theory—and, for the first time in my life, I thought my mother was a prude.

Because our senses are so acute, vampires tend to experience the world with much greater intensity than humans. My mother said the same principle held true for sex.

“That’s one reason the Sanguinists and the Nebulists advocate celibacy,” she said. “Sex between two humans can be passionate, but sex between two vampires might be so powerful as to be all-consuming, even violent.”

“Might be?” In spite of my reluctance to discuss sex with my mother, I did want to know more. “But isn’t always?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Her voice sounded guarded. “Since I became a vampire, I’ve been celibate.”

My mother has been celibate for fourteen years? “Not even a fling?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

The thought shocked me. Then I realized that my father probably had abstained from sex for just as long—but for some reason, that didn’t bother me so much.

“Mãe, this is an awkward subject,” I said. “But I don’t plan on never having sex, if that’s what you’re trying to get at.”

“I want you to be careful.” She looked away, and I wondered what she was feeling. “To weigh the possible consequences. If you decide to do anything, you’ll need to take precautions.”

“I know about birth control,” I said.

“More than that.” She turned toward me again. “Dashay has told me a little about how it was for her and Bennett—how her hormones seemed to surge out of her control, at times. You may have to handle feelings you’ve never felt before. And Ari, don’t do anything until you know you’re ready.”

How will I know? I wondered. But I didn’t ask my mother that. Much to my surprise, I felt sorry for her.