

VU

VAMPIRE UNIVERSITY

Book One in the Vampire University Series

VJ Erickson

Copyright © 2013 by VJ Erickson  
Smashwords Edition

All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER ONE

The taxi pulled up behind a row of cars and vans backed up so far from the freshmen dorms at VanCamp University that the usually bustling city traffic had come to a complete standstill. Crowds of family members and supporters spilled out into the street, and children darted between their legs. Among them their soon-to-be college students milled about, pretending not to be terrified.

"Here is fine," Taylor said and opened the door.

"Are you sure, Miss? If we wait just a minute, we can pull up closer."

"No, thank you," she said.

The sooner she got out, the sooner she could blend in. Sitting by herself in the backseat of a taxi, it was obvious that she had arrived alone, but once in the middle of a crowd she would be invisible. No longer the lone girl in a cab, she would be indistinguishable from the other students who had parents, siblings, and friends all waiting for them nearby.

Taylor quickly counted out the fare, while stealing glances to her side to see if anyone was watching. She fidgeted anxiously while the driver removed her two suitcases from the trunk. When the driver offered to help carry her things to the door, she quickly refused.

"No, thank you. It's not far. Have a nice day."

The driver shrugged and hopped back into the car, leaving Taylor standing alone on the curb. She strapped one bag over her shoulder, clutched the other in her hand, and began to walk briskly in the direction of the parade of mom-mobiles and city taxis, trying to blend into the crowd.

She came to the end of the procession of cars and stopped, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and read:

Summers Hall # 304

Looking up, Taylor saw the name of her dormitory in shiny black letters that stood in contrast to the dirty grey stonework of the seemingly ancient building they labeled. Summers Hall was noticeably less impressive than the New England architecture that covered the brochures for VU. Taylor saw nothing like it anywhere on the street where she stood. Instead of stately columns, aged stone, and brick, the building in front of her was constructed from dull gray rectangles of indeterminate material. Aged metal beams criss-crossed the facade like faded ribbons wrapping a worn package. The building was windowless except for the top two floors, which seemed to be at least ten floors above the third floor where her room assignment would be located.

She didn't mind that these dorms revealed the university's trick. They lured students with the promise of a beautiful campus full of historic urban character and then pulled back the curtain to reveal that they would instead spend their student lives in cinderblock silos. This might disappoint other students, but Taylor found it reassuring. The cheery world of distinguished privilege depicted on the brochures was not one Taylor was familiar with. This world in front of her, with its gray windowless walls, was one she knew well.

Taylor gathered her possessions and her courage and turned resolutely to face the imposing structure. She marched towards the building with as much confidence as she could fake.

Inside the front lobby, the chaos outside was condensed and amplified and younger siblings that were once running free, ducking in and out of crowds, were now trying to recreate the reckless outdoor scene in a ten-foot waiting area. Scattered amongst the confusion were quiet teenagers, looking around nervously. Seeing her new neighbors looking as alone as she felt, despite their crowds of supporters, Taylor's fears calmed a little. She had imagined that she would be the only one alone and scared, but reading the faces of those around her she imagined that they might have felt as alone and scared as she did.

She stopped in front of a metal sign pointing to the elevators and caught her reflection. Dots of perspiration had formed along her hairline that she carefully dabbed with the end of her sleeve. She tried to imagine that she looked like a college student, that her dark-framed glasses were the height of hipster fashion, and that her plain brown ponytail was cute and not just lazy. She told herself that she was an adult confidently inhabiting her world and not the freckle-faced child she felt like.

Feeling unsure of herself, she pulled the ponytail out, letting her hair fall to her shoulders. After a quick glance in each direction, she discretely tucked her glasses into her purse. Her reflection turned fuzzy, but she convinced herself that these changes had transformed her from ugly-duckling teenager into the swan-like adult that always emerged in these scenes in movies. Simply take off the glasses and voila: makeover complete! Now, she tried to tell herself, she looked the part.

She ducked into the elevator ahead of the crowds and pressed herself against the back corner. In filed parents and their children, their features blurring as they entered into her field of far-sighted vision. Taylor stared at her feet.

At the third floor, she squeezed through the crowded elevator, apologized to the little girl she practically knocked over, and stepped towards her new home.

She had spoken to her new roommate on the phone. What she knew of her new dorm-mate could be summed up in a handful of words: Hannah Cohen, freshman, undeclared. Hannah seemed friendly and spoke with ease and confidence. This had made Taylor a little nervous on the phone, as Hannah talked so easily to a perfect stranger that Taylor was sure that her new roommate must be well-liked and popular. While she was liked well-enough, Taylor was certainly never popular, and she worried about being the uncool roommate by virtue of comparative proximity. There goes Hannah's dorky roommate, everyone would say in pitying whispers.

Taylor squinted to make out the door numbers. Was that 304 or 309? This was silly, she decided. Her Hollywood makeover would have to wait. Her new surroundings were nerve-wracking enough without being able to see them properly. Taylor reconsidered the glasses, quickly retrieved them from her purse, and put them on. She inserted her key into the door, but it was unlocked. As soon as the first sliver of light peeked through the crack of the door, she heard Hannah's voice exclaim excitedly, "Taylor!"

The door swung open from the other side, and every one of Taylor's fears faded away in that moment. A girl, grinning from ear to ear, stood inside with her hand outstretched.

"I'm Hannah. It's so great to meet you!" she said, forcing her hand a few inches from Taylor's side.

Taylor felt herself relax, and she returned the handshake.

"I'm Taylor. Pleased to meet you too."

Given Hannah's confident demeanor on the phone, Taylor had tried to construct an image of her in her mind using all the popular pretty-girl TV stereotypes she could assemble: tall, skinny, and fresh off the set of a CW show. Instead, the girl standing before her was nothing like what she had imagined.

Hannah was small—at least a foot shorter than Taylor—and she was dressed like no popular teenager Taylor had ever seen before. She wore bright red khaki pants that were high-waisted, pleated in the front, and tucked into a pair of matching red flats. Her crisp white blouse was covered by a sweater vest in the same bright red as her pants. Her hair was short, straight, dark, and meticulously groomed–almost businesslike. If forced into a comparison, Hannah would definitely be the dorky roommate. What a relief, thought Taylor.

Taylor took a moment to look around the room. It too was tiny. But unlike Hannah, it was completely devoid of character. Against one cinderblock wall, two nondescript mattresses were arranged in a row just barely off the floor. Between those, a tiny refrigerator sat on the carpet. On the opposite side of the room, particle board shelving and drawers covered the entire wall except for two spots with standalone desks. Just as the nondescript gray buildings calmed her fears, the unpretentious accommodations reassured Taylor. They were modest, simple, ordinary–like her.

"Oh here, let me get that for you!" Hannah said while pulling Taylor's bag from her shoulder, not even pretending to hear her polite protesting. "Is your family coming up?"

"No," Taylor said softly.

If Hannah noticed any awkwardness, she didn't let on.

"Well then, you probably could use a hand with the rest of your stuff. I'll come with you!"

"This is it," Taylor said, her voice even quieter.

Hannah paused for a moment, and the smile vanished so briefly that Taylor wondered if she had imagined it.

"Well, you're all set then! My parents couldn't come either. They're stationed overseas, so they just loaded me up on a plane and sent me on my way."

"Oh..."

Hannah paused again. This time the smile was clearly gone. Taylor could see that Hannah was contemplating Taylor. She seemed to be wondering what Taylor's story was and wondering if she was allowed to ask.

Taylor knew if she didn't say it now, then it would only get harder. She set her bag against a chair and sat on the edge of one of the mattresses, letting out a sigh that was far louder than she intended. Taylor cleared her throat and prepared to tell her story.

"My parents passed away when I was young," she began.

"Oh... I'm... I'm sorry." Hannah stammered.

Any traces of her earlier confidence vanished quickly.

"Oh no, it's okay," Taylor reassured her. "I mean... you know, I'm used to it now."

"Oh, well that's good! I mean..."

Hannah's eyes lowered.

"I mean..." she continued, "I don't mean 'good'. I'm sorry, it's just..."

"No really, it's fine," Taylor said, attempting a smile.

Taylor had meant to explain further, but even a lifetime later she felt it difficult to talk about, and it was not often she was given the opportunity to try. Everyone assumed that her uncle was her father. They shared the same last name, after all. And a single father, or at least what people assumed was a single father, inspired many gossipy whispers but few direct questions. Besides, she remembered nothing of what happened and didn't really care to. She felt fortunate that she was too young to remember the details of the fire that took her parents' lives. Her brother was old enough to remember, but he refused to talk about it, and she learned early in her life to stop asking.

To Taylor's surprise, Hannah lunged towards her with arms outstretched and dropped down onto the bed beside her, embracing her in a side hug while burying her face against Taylor's shoulder. Hannah looked back up, and the uncertainty on her face had vanished, replaced again with the broadly-grinning confident pixie Taylor had first met.

"Well, if there's anything I can do for you, you just let me know!" said Hannah. "We're roommates now, so we've got to look out for each other!"

Taylor was surprised that she wasn't pressed for further information, but she supposed that it was obvious that the topic was an uncomfortable one for her, and she was grateful that she did not have to explain herself further.

The rest of the afternoon passed as if the previous conversation had never happened. For now, any lingering discomfort was dispelled by her new roommate. It seemed there was no danger of awkward silence whenever Hannah was in the room. Despite having unintentionally revived painful past memories, Hannah did not appear deterred from peppering Taylor with questions, but she carefully avoided any questions of home life that might lead to uncomfortable answers. So instead of parents, high schools, and hometowns, their conversation turned ahead to things like laundry, dining plans, and room decor.

It was just as Taylor was beginning to really relax that there was a loud knock on the dorm-room door, and a female voice shouted through it, "Meet for dinner downstairs in one hour!"

A few seconds later, they could hear her repeating the message at the next door.

"They have scheduled dinners here?" Taylor asked.

"Just this week," Hannah replied. "Everything is scheduled out this week. Didn't you get the orientation schedule from the RA in the lobby?"

"I guess I didn't see her."

"It's all optional, but I want to do everything. When are we going to get a chance again to meet this many new people all at once? With activities designed for meeting people! Here. Look," Hannah said, thrusting the week's schedule into Taylor's hands.

A week full of constantly meeting new people sounded exhausting to Taylor, but the schedule seemed harmless enough with plenty of emphasis on games and free food. Taylor found the first item on the schedule.

6:00 Dinner with Family – Meet @ 5:30 in front of Summers Hall.

Beneath that:

Students without visiting family meet in Harris Hall lobby.

"You're going to dinner tonight, right?" Hannah asked.

"To the dinner with family?"

"No, not that one. The one meeting over at Harris Hall. It's right across the street. For the outcasts like us!"

She said this as if "outcast" was a title to be proud of.

Taylor's first impulse was to say no, but she didn't want to disappoint her new roommate. Besides, the only excuse she could think of was that she didn't feel like going, and she suspected that Hannah would make short work of that argument.

Still, Taylor was somewhat surprised to find herself sitting with Hannah in the lobby of Harris Hall waiting for dinner. A college student sat behind a reception desk, ignoring them as he tapped away on his cellphone. The crowds that had filled the lobby before were now congregating on the sidewalk outside. There were a handful of other people in the room, and Hannah dutifully introduced herself to each one with the same assertive enthusiasm that she had first greeted Taylor with.

Once Hannah had met everyone in the room, she began introducing people to each other.

"Kyle, this is Amber. Her hometown's just an hour away from yours. Maybe you know each other somehow!"

"Sarah, this is Andy. You're both English majors. Maybe you could study together?"

Taylor was enthralled by the way Hannah worked the room. There was something deeply silly about Hannah's appearance—in head-to-toe red like some sort of Christmas elf—but no one seemed to look down on or make fun of her. Hannah approached every interaction like she was in charge, and no one she talked to seemed to mind. Most of them appeared to be relieved with Hannah bestowing upon them the gift of not having to introduce themselves first.

Taylor turned her attention away from Hannah towards the elevator door as it opened and closed, with a seemingly endless stream of students and their families spilling out towards the street. Lost in thought, Taylor was startled back to attention by a firm hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I just was going to see if this seat was taken."

Taylor made a mumbling noise that sounded something like permission to sit, and a boy about her age did not hesitate to interpret it as exactly that. He was cute enough, in a boyish way. He would be handsome if his ears didn't poke out a little too much or if his dirty blond hair had ever in his life seen a comb. He looked like the type of boy who needs another year or two to grow into his face, but still passes for a grownup when you throw a suit on him.

"So, you're a freshman?" he asked.

"Any day now, yes," Taylor replied.

"Me too. Name's Eric."

"Nice to meet you, Eric."

"So polite!"

Eric looked at Taylor expectantly.

"And your name is...?" he asked.

"Oh, right. Sorry! I'm Taylor. It's been a long day."

"Well, Taylor-it's-been-a-long-day, it is a pleasure to meet you too. So, is there free beer at this thing?"

"I don't think they allow beer in the dorms," Taylor said matter-of-factly.

He laughed.

"They don't allow a lot of things in the dorms," he said with a wink.

His face may have some growing up to do, but his eyes were perfection–the purest blue she had ever seen. She had never seen eyes so captivating.

Eric confidently returned her stare and continued smiling.

"Want to get out of here, then? Go where there are a few less... rules?"

As he said this, Taylor thought she saw a shadow flicker across his eyes. She turned behind her to see what was casting the reflection, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Taylor looked nervously to the side. While she was flattered that she had so quickly landed the attention of a boy, she did not drink beer and was not interested in breaking rules on her first day here. Alcohol and rebellion drew more attention than Taylor was interested in.

"What about dinner?" she asked.

Eric seemed genuinely taken aback at the question.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Dinner? Is that not why you're here?"

"Oh, well yeah, obviously. I was just surprised that you'd rather hang out with the RAs, that's all. Think about it. Don't you want to go check out the campus?"

He looked at her eagerly, as if the answer was obvious, and she just needed to arrive at it. Taylor saw the shadow dance across his pupils again, but another quick glance behind her revealed nothing new.

"I think I'm gonna pass. I told my roommate I'd come to this thing with her. I don't want to leave her hanging."

Eric pouted in response.

"How can I say no to a face like that?" said Taylor.

He smiled confidently.

"But seriously, no," she said.

His smile dipped slightly.

"But, what about... I mean..." he said.

"Don't get told 'no' often?"

"Actually..." Eric began, but before he could finish, a hand reached from behind, grabbed him by his upper arm, forcefully pulled him up out of his seat, and spun him around.

"Hey Joe," Eric said to the figure that had yanked him from his seat. "So glad you could make it."

The boy facing Eric looked like a taller, darker, and slightly more handsome version of Eric. If a few more years would allow Eric to grow into an adult, this Joe had already beat him to it and traded the dirty blond mop for a more kempt dark brown version.

"Taylor, this is my brother, Joseph," Eric said over his shoulder.

Joseph did not remove his gaze from Eric or otherwise acknowledge Taylor. He looked pissed.

"Uh... Hi, Joseph?" she said.

Joseph did not respond and instead hissed something in Eric's face that she couldn't make out. He then began leading Eric by the arm towards the door. Eric turned to look at Taylor with a grin on his face and shrugged his shoulders. He held his thumb and pinkie up to his face in the shape of a phone and mouthed the words "call me" before disappearing out the front door.

Taylor was going to respond that she didn't have his number, but he was already gone.
CHAPTER TWO

"What was that about?" asked Hannah, who had finished making a round of the room.

"What, those guys? I don't know. I couldn't hear them, but that guy Joseph was pissed about something," Taylor said, looking out through the lobby windows to see if she could see them outside.

"That's boys for you. First day on campus and they're already picking fights with each other."

"Well, they are brothers," Taylor said, turning back to Hannah.

"Oh yeah, I know. Twins, actually."

"Really? I wouldn't have guessed. So you've met them already? I didn't see you talk to them when they came in."

"I ran into them this morning and introduced myself. I don't know if you've noticed this about me yet, but I'm not shy."

"No, definitely not. You're going to have to teach me how you do it."

"You just do it," Hannah said with a shrug.

"Oh, well that explains what I was doing wrong this whole time."

"Pretty much! Don't worry; just stick with me. I've got you covered!"

Taylor had never thought of herself as shy, but she could see how that would be the case when compared to Hannah. Taylor always assumed she was as confident as the next teenager, which was to say "not very", so she could appreciate having someone as confident as Hannah on her side.

"Well thanks," Taylor replied.

Just then, the door to the lobby opened, and in walked a pair of teenagers about their age, possibly slightly older. One was carrying a stack of pizza boxes stacked so high that all you could see were his legs. The other was carrying her purse.

Without waiting for attention, the female addressed the room.

"I'm Addison, the RA for Summers Hall third floor," she said. "My friends call me Addie. You will call me Addison."

Taylor and Hannah flashed each other an "is she serious?" look.

"This," she said, gesturing to the boy besides her, "is your dinner."

With that, Addison turned and stepped out through the front door, not making eye contact with anyone as she left the building.

The boy was still standing there with his arms full. Half a face peaked out from behind the stack of pizza boxes.

"Hi! You can call me Tom," he said in a breezy contrast to Addison's brusque demeanor. "I'm the resident adviser for Harris third floor."

Everyone just stared at him.

"So, uh, can I get a hand, maybe?" he asked.

"I've got you, bud," came a voice from the front of the room as Eric appeared behind Tom, grabbing half the stack. He brought them over to a small table in the corner and set them down with an exaggerated flourish.

"Hey, thanks man. I..." Tom began, but stopped suddenly as Joseph reached out from behind him and grabbed the rest of the boxes out of his arms.

Joseph did not look at Tom or anyone else in the room. He kept his gaze fixed on Eric as he followed behind. Joseph set the boxes down next to the others and then proceeded to the opposite end of the room. He leaned against the corner and glared silently at seemingly no one in particular.

Eric, on the other hand, walked straight for Taylor and Hannah and sat down between them.

"Okay, guys. If you need anything, I'll be upstairs," Tom announced. "And I do mean 'guys'. Ladies, if you need anything, well... good luck with Addison!"

"Yeah, I think we might need it. That Addison sounds rough," Taylor said, leaning behind Eric to talk to Hannah.

Eric leaned back to block their view.

"Don't worry, I'll protect you," said Eric.

Hannah leaned forward around Eric and said, "I think we can handle her."

"Oh I have no doubt. You two don't look like the types who let anyone tell them what to do," he said.

"Exactly," Hannah said, her tone and expression flat.

She then turned to Taylor and brightened up again.

"Wanna go grab a slice?" she asked Taylor.

Before Taylor could respond, Eric leapt out of his seat and declared, "Allow me!" and marched off towards the food.

"You don't like him," Taylor said under her breath.

Hannah shrugged and said nothing.

"He seems nice enough," Taylor offered.

Hannah still did not respond. Taylor wasn't even sure that Hannah was listening to her. She was staring off in the direction of Eric but didn't seem to be looking at him. She appeared to be lost in thought.

When Eric returned, Hannah jolted back to attention, and her easy smile returned.

"Thanks Eric," she said cheerfully.

Hannah took a bite of her pizza and then immediately began to assault him with questions, giving him only a moment to get out an answer.

"Where are you from?"

"What are you studying?"

"What do your parents do?"

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"What's your favorite color?"

Hannah's change in demeanor was so sudden that Taylor wondered if she had imagined any awkwardness before. Taylor only caught a few of the answers. He was undeclared, his favorite color was green, and his parents were vacuum salesmen or veterinarians. Taylor didn't catch which. Something with a "V". Maybe. Instead of giving her full attention to Eric, she was distracted by the figure of Joseph brooding in the corner. He seemed to be fixated on Eric, but at the same time tried to mask it by appearing disinterested in everything.

Taylor wondered why the boys were fighting. Joseph didn't seem even vaguely interested in her, so she assumed that she wasn't the object of their dispute. For lack of a better explanation, she chalked it up to sibling rivalry.

She stopped looking at Joseph for a moment and turned back to Hannah and Eric. They were both staring at her expectantly.

"Well, Taylor? What's your major?" Eric asked.

"Oh sorry," she replied. "Biology."

"Hey, me too!" he said eagerly. "I'm pre-med!"

"I thought you just told Hannah you were undeclared."

"Well yeah, I wouldn't want you to think I was a science nerd the first time you met me, would I?"

"Or maybe you just made that up right now?" Hannah offered.

Eric ignored her.

"Give me your phone," he said, holding his hand out to Taylor.

Taylor didn't budge.

"What for?" she asked.

"So I can give you my number, silly. Now hand it over."

Taylor handed the phone over to Eric. Hannah did not take her eyes off the phone as he entered his number, flipped the phone around, raised an eyebrow and the opposing corner of his mouth in a smirk/smile, and then took a picture.

"There you go," he said, handing the phone back. "No need to be so cautious. Your phone is safe and sound!"

"Thanks. That was a close one," Taylor joked.

Just then, the door slammed behind them. Taylor turned to see an older man standing just a few feet from the door. He had dark hair, shoulder length and unkempt, and a comically thick mustache. Taylor guessed from his sports coat and tie that he was a professor.

He stood quietly for a moment, arms crossed tightly across his chest as he scanned the room with a sour expression. The room fell to a hush in his presence. Even Eric, for once, was quiet.

"Good evening, boys and girls," he finally spoke, his voice dry and impatient sounding. "It is my unfortunate responsibility to welcome you to our esteemed campus. Though since you little orphan Annies are clearly the motley crew of the freshman class, I can't be bothered to pretend to care that you are here. I can't imagine that any of you are here on anything but government assistance anyway."

"Now wait a second," Eric began to interrupt.

"MANNERS!" the man shouted while knocking over a chair. The unexpected outburst caught everyone off guard, and Eric seemed too surprised to continue.

"So congratulations on being a drain to society," the old man continued. "Perhaps we can do something about that here, but I'm not optimistic. Do avail yourself of the freshman orientation activities. I'm sure that while these activities are an onerous drain on our university's resources, you will find them quite... tolerable."

The room was completely silent.

"And do partake of the free food. No need to put off for tomorrow what can begin today, someone of some importance said at some point, I'm sure. So best get started on the freshman fifteen right away, ladies. At least then you can achieve something while you are here. Good day."

With that, he left as abruptly as he had arrived. The room remained quiet for a moment, as if everyone was anticipating that he could barge in again at any moment, but slowly conversation began to resume around the room, though considerably more muted in enthusiasm.

"So, who was that?" Taylor asked.

"Don't know," said Hannah.

"And what is the freshman fifteen?"

"It's the fifteen pounds of weight everyone gains freshman year," said Eric.

"Well, that's rude," replied Taylor. "I hope whoever he is, he's not someone we have to see again."

"I'll say," said Eric. "Well, big day tomorrow, so I'm going to turn in. It was nice talking to you both."

"Yeah, you too," said Taylor.

Hannah didn't say a word, but Eric didn't seem to be paying attention to her anyway. He gave an exaggerated wave goodbye and then stepped outside. Taylor hadn't noticed Joseph move, but he was right behind his brother as they left.

"So really, you don't like him," Taylor said once the door closed behind them.

"What's to like?" replied Hannah.

"Well, I don't know yet."

"Me neither. You ready to head up?" Hannah said, standing.

"So ready. I could use some sleep."

"Yeah me too."
CHAPTER THREE

Taylor woke up to a pitch-black room. For a brief moment, she couldn't remember where she was or why the surroundings seemed so foreign. Then she remembered her new home, her new roommate, and the new people she had met yesterday.

Recalling Eric, Taylor pulled out her cellphone. The light burned her eyes, so she held it back and squinted. No messages. She opened up her contact list and pulled up his name. Just Eric, no last name. She considered sending him a text, but it was 5:45 AM. She cut off the phone and stared up at the ceiling, the lingering light from the cellphone still dancing across her vision.

She tried to fall asleep again, but the unfamiliarity of the surroundings combined with all of the new things she had experienced in the last 24 hours kept her mind active. After attempting to sleep for what she was convinced was at least an hour, she looked at her phone again. 5:52. Not even ten minutes had passed.

At 5:58, she gave up trying to sleep and shoved her phone into the pockets of her pajama bottom pants, grabbed the tank top she had tossed next to the bed, managed to orient it correctly after a few moments of fumbling in the dark, and then stepped gingerly onto the carpet. She inched along, slowly dragging her feet until she found a pair of tennis shoes and slid them on.

She stepped out of the room, careful to close the door quietly behind her. Though she was not violating any rules that she was aware of, she still had a feeling that she shouldn't be caught walking around this early. Taylor reminded herself that this was her home. Besides, she told herself, 6:00 AM wasn't going to seem quite as early when classes started and everyone didn't have the luxury of sleeping in.

She proceeded to the end of the hall and pushed through the exit doors to an open air stairwell. She stepped up to the railing of the third-floor landing and looked out over campus. The view from the landing was mostly alleyway and brick, but she could make out the tops of a few buildings, and she gazed at them trying to imagine what classes would be like in those buildings.

Taylor was so absorbed in her thoughts of the future that when she felt a hand tap on her shoulder she lost her balance for a moment and nearly fell. The hand lingered on her shoulder and steadied her. She turned around to see Joseph, dressed as he was yesterday, standing on the landing with her.

Taylor had not heard him climb the stairs and this made her even more uneasy about being approached alone in the dark.

"How did you get up here?" Taylor asked, backing up to the edge of the rail as far as she could go.

Joseph looked down to the ground below and then back up to Taylor.

"I walked," he said.

"Then why didn't I hear you?"

"I walked quietly," he replied, without any indication that he was anything but serious.

"Okay... Well, I gotta head in," Taylor said, turning towards the door.

"Wait," Joseph said and stepped between her and the door.

His demeanor was nonthreatening, but the suddenness and unusual circumstances of the meeting kept Taylor on edge.

Taylor made note of her position relative to the stairs and moved slightly closer to them in case she needed to escape.

"Okay..." Taylor responded hesitantly.

"I just wanted to talk to you," Joseph said, not moving from his spot by the door.

"Well here we are. What do you want?"

She tried to control her voice so that she sounded relaxed, as if this was routine for her, like she was commonly surprised into conversations with stealthy young men on third-story fire escapes. The effect, she decided, was probably not entirely convincing.

"To talk. I just said that," Joseph replied, sounding annoyed.

The hint of a belligerent tone in his voice made Taylor even more nervous. She scanned for another way out of this confrontation, but there were only the door behind Joseph and the stairs leading down below her.

"Look, I'm not going to hurt you," he said.

Taylor's eyes widened, and Joseph seemed to realize that this was probably not the right thing to say.

"Hurt me?" she said. "I didn't realize that was on the table."

Joseph's expression softened.

"It's not. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply anything. You just... you look terrified. I didn't mean to do that. I guess I'm not used to people responding to me this way."

"Well how do girls normally respond when you sneak up on them in the dark?" Taylor asked.

"Depends on the girl," he said without a hint of humor.

"Okay, I've really got to go now. Hannah is probably wondering about me," Taylor said, inching closer to the stairs.

Joseph looked disappointed.

"Okay," he said, looking down at his feet. "I just thought this would go differently."

"This?"

"Yeah, look, I just wanted to warn you about Eric."

The mention of Eric caused Taylor to momentarily forget her escape plan.

"Oh yeah?" she asked, trying to sound indifferent. "What about him?"

"He's dangerous. Just stay away."

"Dangerous how? Is he in a gang or something?"

"Something like that. Just take my word for it, okay? You don't want to get involved with him."

Taylor looked away from Joseph over her shoulder towards Harris Hall.

"What does that even mean? What is something like being in a gang?" she asked, again focusing her attention on a way to get away from him.

Joseph didn't respond.

Taylor turned back towards him, but he was no longer there. She looked all around her, over the edge of the stairwell, and into the hallway. There was no sight or sound of him anywhere.

Shaken, Taylor hurried inside and back towards her room. She could see from the strip of light at the bottom of the door that Hannah was awake.

"Oh. Hi there," Hannah said cheerfully as Taylor opened the door.

"Hey."

"So you're a morning person, huh?" Hannah asked.

"Not really. I guess I just don't sleep well in new places."

"Well, that just means that we can make the morning tour!"

Hannah paused a moment for a reaction but Taylor was quiet.

"You still haven't looked at the schedule yet, have you?" Hannah continued. "There's two campus tours today: one at 9:00 and one at 2:00. We've got plenty of time to catch the first one!"

Taylor wondered if neither was an option, but didn't feel like arguing.

"We can do 9:00," Taylor agreed.

"Great! I'm going to go take a shower! Need anything?"

"From the shower?"

Hannah laughed.

"Fair enough! If you need anything from the shower, you're on your own. See you in a minute," Hannah said and then left to get ready.

When Hannah returned from the shower fifteen minutes later, she was already fully dressed with her hair done and her make-up in place. She wore a crisp white blouse with a sweater over it, this time bright blue, and traded her khaki slacks for a blue and green plaid pleated skirt. The outfit already looked like a grade school uniform, and Hannah contributed to this by wearing knee-high white stockings. Whereas her outfit the prior day had made her look older, this had the opposite effect.

When Taylor and Hannah left the dormitory to meet for the campus tour they were greeted at the door by Addison who was carrying a clipboard and wearing a scowl. Unfazed by Addison's prickly demeanor, Hannah walked directly up to Addison and smiled warmly.

"Hi, I'm Hannah Cohen," she said, hand outstretched.

Addison did not look up from her clipboard.

"Room number?"

"304," Hannah answered.

Addison silently made a mark on her clipboard and then lifted her head and looked past Hannah to Taylor.

"Next," she said.

Hannah, beginning to realize that Addison had no intention of returning her handshake, slowly lowered her hand.

"Same," Taylor replied softly.

"Do you have a name, Same?" Addison asked with a smirk.

"Oh, sorry. Taylor Bain."

Addison made another mark on her clipboard and then moved on to the next student without another word.

As soon as they were out of Addison's earshot, Hannah leaned over to Taylor and whispered, "Well, she's pleasant, isn't she?"

Taylor shrugged.

"I guess you can be that way when you're leggy and blonde," Hannah continued. "Good thing we're not like that!"

"I dunno. I could deal with being leggy and blonde."

"Too bad. Guess you'll have to settle for being leggy and brunette!"

"Well, you got brunette right."

"Well, he doesn't seem to mind looking at you," Hannah replied, pointing behind her.

Taylor turned and saw that Hannah was pointing at Eric, about ten yards behind them. Their eyes met immediately, and he waved enthusiastically at her. Taylor quickly turned back to look at Hannah.

"He's coming over here, isn't he?" asked Taylor.

"Yup."

"How's my hair?"

"Your hair? Fine. Still brunette."

"Funny. I was worried about that," Taylor said, pushing a few strands behind her ears.

"What are you worried about?" Eric asked, as he approached the two.

"We were worried," Hannah said, stepping in front of Taylor, "that you would not be in our tour group."

Hannah said this in a tone that suggested the opposite.

Eric responded as if he had not noticed her apparent disdain.

"Aw, that's sweet. Worry no more, ladies."

Eric's obliviousness amused Taylor as much as it seemed to irritate Hannah. Taylor liked Hannah for being friendly, outgoing, and easy to talk to, but Taylor was worried about this apparently antagonistic attitude towards male attention and what it might mean for future relationships. She hoped that Hannah wasn't this way with all boys.

Taylor wanted to ask where Joseph was, not because she wanted to see him, but for precisely the opposite reason. Joseph appeared from Harris Hall's lobby entrance and walked straight towards them before she had time to ask, however. He did not make eye contact with Taylor, and she made no attempt to do so either. Meanwhile, Hannah was glaring at both of them.

"Good morning," Joseph said to no one in particular.

No one answered.

Joseph came to stand right next to Eric, and nobody spoke for a moment. It was clear that the two were related when they stood side by side, but only when you compared faces. Their demeanor, dress, expressions, and even body language were all practically opposite of each other. Eric was casually dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, used his hands expressively, and smiled. Joseph wore a thin crimson sweater and dark long pants, had his hands shoved in his pockets, and did not, so far as Taylor could tell, know how to smile.

Eric looked like he was about to break the silence when Addison broke it for them.

"All right boys and girls, pack 'em up, and move 'em out," Addison yelled.

"This should be fun," Eric said cheerfully and turned towards Addison, leaving Hannah and Taylor to stand with Joseph.

"Yeah, c'mon Taylor!" Hannah said, grabbing Taylor's hand and leading her eagerly away from Joseph towards the crowd.

Taylor was grateful to be pulled away without having to speak to him. After a few minutes, Taylor looked back to where they were standing, and Joseph was still where they left him, staring directly at her. Taylor felt a shiver crawl down her spine. She leaned towards Hannah.

"Does that guy Joseph creep you out?" Taylor whispered.

Hannah answered without hesitation.

"Yeah, totally. I'm steering clear."

"Yeah, me too, I think," said Taylor.

As they joined the rest of the group, Addison yelled behind them towards Joseph, "You too, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Brooding!"

Joseph looked up, scowled, and turned to walk back towards the dorms.
CHAPTER FOUR

"Well then," Addison announced to the group, "everyone else who doesn't have more important brooding to attend to, follow me."

The group shuffled in silence behind Addison along the city street that led towards the main part of campus. It was the end of August, and midday temperatures promised to be warm, but the early morning air was crisp and cool.

As soon as the dorms disappeared from view, Eric rejoined Taylor and Hannah, grinning with his familiar confidence. Hannah pretended not to notice him.

"Miss me?" he asked and looked eagerly at Taylor.

"Terribly," Taylor responded, jokingly.

"Yes, terribly," Hannah parroted, less jokingly.

Addison could be heard in the background giving a terse description of their first stop.

"This is the administrative building," she said. "You do your administrative stuff here. Any questions?"

Eric shot his hand up. Addison looked at Eric's hand and then turned away.

"Great. Next stop, the fine arts building," Addison announced and started walking.

Eric was not deterred, however, and hurried after her, shouting for attention.

"Excuse me! Excuse me! I have a question!"

Addison turned sharply and stared at him.

"Yes?" she said, impatient.

"If it's called VanCamp University, where are the vans for the camping?" he blurted out.

Addison looked at him for a second, rolled her eyes, and then turned around to keep walking. Taylor hurriedly covered her mouth to stifle a giggle.

As they approached the fine arts building, Taylor couldn't help comparing it to her old high school, a modest two-story brick building that could have fit inside any of these city buildings with room to spare.

Addison stopped in front of the building and turned to face the group.

"This," she indicated with a half-hearted wave behind her, "is the Lenape Center for Fine Arts. I trust you can figure out what it is for."

Eric's hand shot up again. Addison looked directly at him, narrowed her eyes, and said, "No questions."

Eric didn't seem to mind, though. He just kept on grinning. Hannah, on the other hand, looked completely embarrassed to be in his vicinity.

"C'mon," Hannah whispered to Taylor. "We should keep some distance from him. We don't want Addison associating him with us."

Taylor wasn't worried about Addison blaming her for Eric's behavior, but she wasn't really attached to him either. She shrugged and followed Hannah's lead to the other edge of the small crowd.

As soon as they started moving again, however, he was right back at their side.

The group came up to what Addison pointed out was the library. Taylor recognized this building from the brochure. It was decidedly more visually impressive than their dormitory, with stately columns and ornate stone details. Addison didn't ask for questions at this stop, but Eric wasn't paying attention regardless. Instead, he turned his attention to Taylor.

"What are you doing later?" he whispered to her.

Addison immediately picked up on this, however, and interrupted them before Taylor could respond.

"If you would like to turn this into couples' hour, the dorms are back that way."

"We're not..." Taylor began to protest, but Addison interrupted her.

"I'm sorry. It must have sounded like I asked a question. Let me rephrase. If you two are here just to disrupt, then you are welcome to leave."

Eric walked right up to Addison. He hadn't stopped smiling, and Taylor noted how indifferent he was towards authority. Even if Addison was just a resident advisor, Taylor had always been accustomed to simply deferring to those in charge.

"Hey, I have a question," he said, standing inches from her face.

Addison did not acknowledge him. She turned her back as if she hadn't heard him.

"I'm serious. It's a real question," he insisted.

Addison took a step away from him.

"Last one, I promise," he persisted.

Addison pivoted sharply on her heel to face Eric again.

"WHAT?" she asked.

"Yeah, the administrative building... Is that where we can leave feedback on our RAs? Because there's this RA in the girl's dorm, and man, let me tell you, is she in the wrong line of work. Is that where I'd go to file a complaint?"

"No," she said flatly.

"Oh? Then tell me, where would one go to get an RA fired?"

"Resident Affairs in the Redmund building," she responded immediately and then paused as if she wasn't sure why she just said that. "I mean, you go back to Harris Hall and mind your own business. I'm sure the ladies here don't need your help."

"Of course not," he replied with a wry expression. "You're doing a great job already."

Addison continued to glare back at him and did not respond. Eric returned to Taylor and Hannah with a self-satisfied grin.

Hannah wasn't having it, however.

"Wait a second. You are not going to piss her off and then immediately come to be seen associating with us. We do not want your problems," Hannah said, placing her hands on her hips and inching closer to Eric's face.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about her," he replied.

Hannah furrowed her brow.

"Right," Taylor chimed in, hoping to loosen the mood. "It's not like she has any control over our grades."

"No, we just have to live with her, that's all." said Hannah.

"There there, Hannah, I'll take care of you," Eric said and teasingly poked at her side.

Hannah froze at his touch, and Taylor almost tripped over her. When Taylor regained her balance, Hannah was standing a few inches from Eric, her arms folded across her chest. Eric leaned back a little and scratched his head sheepishly.

"Hey, sorry. No touching. Got it."

Still not saying a word, Hannah walked off ahead leaving Taylor and Eric standing there. Taylor started forward to catch up to her, but Eric stopped her with his hand on her shoulder. Her body tensed.

"Okay, no touching here either. Got it," he said, releasing his hand. "Look, I'm not sure what I said to your friend, but I'm not trying to make waves here."

"Oh Hannah, she's not... I mean, we just met yesterday," said Taylor.

In the background, she could hear Addison explaining meal plans and diner cards. So far, Taylor had not seen Addison explaining anything to anyone and this sudden attention to her duties after Eric's thinly-veiled threat amused Taylor.

"I see," he said. "You wanna ditch this tour then and go check out campus ourselves?"

Taylor paused for a moment, and Eric looked at her eagerly. Off to the side, Hannah was chattering away with someone she had probably just met.

"I can't leave my roommate. We came together," said Taylor.

"Well then, what are you doing afterwards?"

"I dunno. Hannah has been kind of leading me around this whole time. I don't even know what's scheduled this afternoon."

"Just another tour," he said. "We're free for the afternoon."

"Okay. After lunch, we can go check out campus."

"Sweet."

Taylor tried to hide her smile as they continued on the tour. Addison continued to tersely explain the details of campus life, but Taylor wasn't listening anymore. Instead she looked forward to the afternoon.

The last stop on the tour was the largest building on campus and what appeared to be the newest as well, the Redmund Student Life Center.

After introducing herself to everyone on the tour, Hannah was back at Taylor's side. Eric, meanwhile, had been floating through the crowd looking for opportunities to make a nuisance of himself and irritate Addison at every stop. Joseph, whom Taylor hadn't even noticed had rejoined the tour until now, stood aloof from the crowd and occupied himself by making strained faces at Eric's antics.

"Okay kids," Addison said, looking directly at Eric. "Tour's over. Lunch is inside."

The pace of the group had begun to lag, but the announcement of food reinvigorated them, and they walked more quickly as they followed her inside the Redmund building.

Taylor had never seen a building this spacious on the inside. With three-story vaulted ceilings, walls lined with shops full of university-themed gifts, and every side dotted with coffee shops and concessionaires, it looked more like an upscale boutique shopping mall than a school building.

Addison led them to a corner of the building and directed them inside a small room set up with folding tables and chairs. In the corner, pizza boxes were stacked on a table next to several bottles of store-brand soda.

"Oh good," said Eric. "I haven't had pizza in forever."

"Yeah, it's been hours," said Taylor.

Eric flashed Taylor a grin while Hannah scowled. Addison ignored them both.

"The rest of the afternoon's yours," Addison announced and then promptly exited the room.

"Want me to grab you some?" Hannah asked Taylor.

"Yeah sure," she replied and went to go sit at one of the tables.

Eric immediately pulled up a seat across from her.

"Not hungry?" Taylor asked.

"Not for pizza, no," he answered.

Taylor was about to complain about the pizza herself when Joseph sat down beside her without a word. The brothers' eyes met for a moment and everyone was quiet.

Hannah broke the silence when she sat down on the other side of Taylor and slid a paper plate with a flaccid slice of lukewarm pizza in front of her. Hannah grabbed her own slice and started munching away.

"You're not eating?" Hannah asked, looking in the direction of the brothers.

"Not pizza," Joseph replied.

"They're pizza snobs," said Taylor.

"I bet they are," said Hannah.

Hannah then proceeded to chew her pizza without taking her eyes off Eric. Meanwhile, Joseph stared only at his brother, who seemed happily oblivious to the attention of anybody but Taylor. Taylor found Eric's self-confident indifference appealing, but his cluelessness, feigned or otherwise, made the situation even more uncomfortable.

"So," Eric said, resting his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands while leaning forward eagerly. "Tell me all about yourself!"

"What is this, an interview?" Joseph interjected.

"Either that or a staring contest," Eric quipped and then turned immediately back to Taylor.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"We moved a lot growing up, so I wouldn't say I'm from anywhere," said Taylor.

"Ah, so military brat?" guessed Eric.

"No, we just moved around a lot."

"Your dad was a contractor then?"

"No, he..." Taylor began, but was cut off by Hannah.

"I don't think she wants to talk about her father," she said.

"Hey, hey," Eric said, holding up both hands in mock surrender. "I'm just asking. What would you like to talk about, Taylor?"

Hannah was right, Taylor didn't want to talk about her late father, but she felt perfectly capable of handling innocent questions about him without Hannah's assistance.

Taylor was beginning to feel that everyone at the table was focused solely on her. Hannah seemed to regard every interaction with these boys as a test of roommate loyalty, Joseph seemed to have a personal interest in ensuring that Eric did not hit it off with Taylor, and Eric was clearly interested in defying both of them. Though Taylor did begin to wonder if Eric's interest in her wasn't more about pissing off his brother than anything to do with her.

Taylor resolved then that her interests came first, and though she wanted to stay friendly with Hannah and she didn't want to divide siblings, she was beginning to feel that everyone in this conversation had an agenda for her that did not at all take into consideration her feelings. She decided that what she desired most at the moment was space. It was only her second day on campus, and everyone already had expectations of her.

"You know what?" Taylor said. "I think I could use some fresh air."

She stood and all three of her lunch companions stood up with her.

"Which is code for 'me time'," she said with a sigh.

Eric and Joseph sat back down, but Hannah didn't move.

Taylor walked towards the door, and she could hear Hannah following behind.

"Hannah," Taylor said, turning to address her.

"I'm coming with you."

"Look Hannah, I appreciate it, but I haven't had a moment to myself since I got here. I'll be fine, I promise."

Hannah appeared poised to protest, but Taylor did not wait to hear it. She pushed open the door and disappeared into the commons.
CHAPTER FIVE

Taylor walked briskly away from the Redmund building, heading in the opposite direction of the dorms. Given Hannah's apparent need to be with her at all times and Joseph's ability to pop up seemingly out of thin air, Taylor was more than a little paranoid that one of them would be following her.

It was only when Taylor could no longer see the Student Life Center behind her that she slowed her pace. She realized that she didn't know where she was going, and she was nowhere near the path that they had followed on the tour. She didn't know precisely where she was, so it was unlikely that anyone else did either. Finally alone, she felt the weight of the expectations of strangers evaporate.

She looked around to see if anything looked familiar. In front of her were grey buildings much like her dorms, only shorter and even more drab and depressing, if that were possible. A sign in front indicated that these were the East Side Dormitories. Taylor had only the vaguest sense of where her own dorms were in relationship to where she was standing, but she knew that they were located on the west side of campus. She had managed to cross the entire campus, and now that she stopped to think about it, she realized that her legs were sore.

Taylor found a bench at the edge of the sidewalk and plopped down gracelessly. She thought about how this new life still felt very much unlike real life. This campus world did not exist to her two days ago, and now it was her entire universe. The buildings lacked the familiarity that reassured her that they were there yesterday and would be there tomorrow. Taylor would have accepted her new home without reservation, but she knew firsthand that homes could vanish when you were not expecting.

Taylor reminded herself not to dwell on the past and instead turned her thoughts to the events of the day. She understood where Hannah was coming from, but the brothers were a mystery to Taylor. Especially Joseph, whose intentions she could not decipher. She didn't believe that Eric was dangerous and would assume some sort of sibling jealousy, but she was absolutely certain that Joseph did not like her, and she couldn't imagine what he would be jealous of.

Looking at her phone, Taylor saw that an hour had passed since she had left the group, and she remembered that she had told Eric that she would hang out with him that afternoon. Though she was feeling stifled by all three of them before, it wasn't really Eric's fault. He had been nothing but nice, and even though some of his ideas weren't up Taylor's alley, she didn't feel pressured by him like she did by Joseph and Hannah when they were all together.

It wouldn't be fair to stand him up just because Joseph and Hannah didn't approve, so Taylor got up to try to find her way back to her dorm. She wasn't really sure where she was going, but she could see the top of the Redmund building. Short of asking a stranger for directions, she decided that keeping the Redmund Center ahead of her as she walked was her best bet. Eventually, she decided, she was bound to recognize something.

A few minutes after getting up, her phone beeped in her pocket. She pulled it out and saw that there were four missed calls: one from Hannah and three from Eric. No voicemails. She couldn't decide whether three calls from Eric was excessive or flattering, but she did agree to spend time with him after lunch, and here she was. She pressed OK, and another window popped up with a text from Eric.

you OK?

A perfectly nice and pressure-free text, thought Taylor, and she was suddenly embarrassed that she had left so abruptly. She wanted a break from the attention, not more of it, and she realized that her sudden exit probably did not help her cause. If there was a situation brewing, she needed to defuse it. Still, she wasn't sure if she was ready to jump back into the limelight either. She typed a response.

oh yeah, im fine. sorry... not feeling well

Taylor hit SEND and looked at the message. It was kind of pathetic-sounding. She sent a follow up.

must be the pizza ;-)

The reply came almost instantly.

where ru?

Taylor looked around, still not quite sure where she was besides somewhere on campus. She could still see the Redmund building, so she assumed that she was going in the right direction. She looked around for some indication of where she was besides the top of the Redmund building in the distance, but everything was unfamiliar to her. Since it was the only building she recognized, she continued on after sending a reply to Eric.

getting some rest. can we hang out later?

This time there was no immediate response, so Taylor continued walking in the direction of the Student Life building.

His reply came a few minutes later.

2nite?

Taylor thought about it for a moment. Even though she had just resolved to not stand him up, she found that resolve almost immediately wavering. It might have been in part due to the constant warnings about Eric, but if she were honest with herself, it had as much to do with being nervous about hanging out with a cute guy. She decided on a compromise that would give her room to overcome her nerves without giving in to Joseph and Hannah.

how about tomorrow?

Eric's reply came immediately this time.

k. will call u

Taylor began to type out something about missing him or seeing him later or looking forward to tomorrow but couldn't settle on how to sound flirty but not obsessive. She settled with hard-to-get and sent nothing.

Looking up, she realized that she was approaching the dorms. She had been so distracted by the texts and thoughts of Eric that she didn't notice at first that she had found her way back almost by accident. Glad to be back in more familiar territory, she slipped her phone into her pocket and approached Summers Hall.

When she arrived outside her room, she could hear Hannah talking inside. Taylor couldn't hear any other voices, so she assumed Hannah was on the phone. Taylor was about to push on the door handle when she heard Hannah say her name. Taylor hesitated for a moment.

Then she heard Hannah say, "I don't know why she just won't listen. I just met her."

The phrase "just won't listen" stood out to Taylor. Taylor wondered if Hannah was talking about her. She looked around her to see if anyone was in the hall. Satisfied that she was alone, Taylor leaned in to listen through the door. The voice was fading in and out as if Hannah was pacing back and forth. Taylor couldn't make out every word.

"Yes, I know... it... right... well why don't you?"

Taylor couldn't tell what was being said, she wasn't certain it was even about her, and she was starting to feel self-conscious listening through the door. She was about to stop eavesdropping and enter the room when Hannah raised her voice.

"I don't care. You need to keep your brother away from my roommate, or I will do it myself!"

Taylor was stunned to hear this. It was pretty clear that Hannah was not particularly enamored of Eric, but she didn't realize it was this serious, and she certainly wasn't aware that Hannah somehow saw herself as responsible for controlling who Taylor was allowed to hang out with.

Taylor debated whether or not to enter the room. She was upset, but she didn't want a confrontation. She had been avoiding confrontations all day, though. If she left now, she'd still have to come back at some point.

"Are you locked out?" came a loud voice behind her.

Taylor jumped. It was Addison.

"Just looking for my key," Taylor said and then shuffled around in her pocket for a moment before holding a key up to Addison's face.

"Oh, here it is!" Taylor said, trying to appear nonchalant.

Addison just grunted at her and walked away.

Taylor nervously inserted the key into the door, but it swung open without her touch. Hannah was standing on the other side looking concerned. She must have heard Addison, thought Taylor. Taylor pushed past her without a word and flung herself face first onto her bed. For several minutes, neither said anything until Hannah broke the silence.

"So..."

Taylor waited for her to continue, but Hannah didn't say anything further. Instead, Hannah looked around the room, apparently carefully counting the cracks in the painted cinderblock walls. After several more minutes of this, Taylor decided to get to the point.

"So who were you talking to?" Taylor asked.

Hannah regarded her for a moment and then answered, "Joseph."

"About?"

"Look Taylor, I know what it sounds like and I'm really, really sorry. Please believe that I'm on your side here," Hannah pleaded.

"And my side is not pro-Eric, I take it?"

Hannah looked down at her feet. "I know, it's none of my business. I just get a really bad feeling about him. Like, sick to my stomach bad."

Taylor made an exaggerated display of rolling her eyes.

"Well, apparently you and Joseph are on the same page then. You must both think I'm helpless."

"Well..." Hannah began.

"And," Taylor interjected, "you are so convinced that I am incapable of choosing my friends that you have to step in to choose them for me?"

"No, it's not that..."

"AND," Taylor interrupted again, raising her voice slightly, "you are not just content to choose my friends, you then feel justified to go behind my back and sabotage any friendships that don't meet the high standards of your stomach. Is that right?"

"I'm sorry." Hannah sounded defeated.

Taylor was primed for an argument, but Hannah's simple apology took the wind out of her sails. Still, Taylor was determined to be righteously indignant, even if only for the principle of it, and she wasn't ready to concede. After knowing Taylor for only 24 hours, Hannah had inserted herself into Taylor's relationships behind her back, and Taylor felt justified in being upset. A nagging voice urged her to consider Hannah's good intentions, but at the moment that tiny voice could not make itself heard over her anger.

"I'm sorry, but that's not enough. I've just met you, I'm supposed to live with you, and I already can't trust you," said Taylor.

"I know. I understand if you're upset."

"If?"

"I know you're upset, and you are justified. Can I make it up to you?"

Taylor paused for a moment. Could she? Taylor wondered.

"I don't know," said Taylor. "Can we just take a break? I need to get this knife out of my back and calm down."

Hannah grimaced at the word "knife".

Seriously, Taylor thought to herself. Calm down. She had been more anxious in the past 24 hours than she could recall ever being. Perhaps she was taking everything too seriously, she thought. Perhaps well-intentioned friends deserved some benefit of the doubt.

"Okay," said Hannah. "Thanks for at least considering it. Do you want me to give you some space?"

"You can stay," Taylor said, still angry, but with the edge gone from her voice.

Hannah considered Taylor for a moment.

"I'll go," Hannah said and then silently left the room.

Hannah had only been gone for a few minutes when Taylor heard a knock on the door. The dorm room doors did not have peepholes, so Taylor was surprised to find Joseph standing on the other side. From the look on Joseph's face, it was clear that he wasn't expecting Taylor either.

"Is Hannah here?" Joseph asked, peering over Taylor's shoulder to look into the room behind her. In contrast to his normal coolly-aloof exterior, Joseph appeared visibly distressed.

"She just left."

"What happened?" His eyes were scanning the room behind Taylor.

"I caught her talking to you about me and Eric, and she left. If that's what you're asking."

"So he wasn't here?"

"Eric? No. You should try your place."

"Where did she go? Was she looking for him?" Joseph's voice raised in concern.

Taylor felt a tinge of sympathy for Eric. As overbearing as she felt Joseph was towards her, at least she didn't have to worry about him going door to door to track her down. Being related to Joseph must be unbearable, she thought.

"I don't know where she went," Taylor answered.

"But was she going to find Eric?"

"I don't know where she went, or why. Given the conversation you two were having, it wouldn't surprise me."

Joseph appeared to think for a moment and then said, "Let me in."

"No." Joseph ignored her and pushed past her into the room. "HEY! I said, no!"

"Oh, did you?" Joseph looked genuinely surprised. "You say that a lot."

"You ask for it a lot."

Taylor stared directly at Joseph and made it clear from her expression that he was not welcome. Joseph seemed unaware of her hostility and made no motions towards leaving, so Taylor stood in the doorway. She had resolved to keep an escape route available whenever she was around him.

"So, you heard our conversation then?" he asked.

"I did."

Joseph appeared to be waiting for her to elaborate, but she just kept returning his stare.

"What did you hear?" he asked, breaking the silence.

"I heard most of it, and what I didn't hear, Hannah filled in the rest," Taylor lied.

"Oh." Joseph stared down at his feet. "No wonder you don't want me in here."

Taylor didn't want Joseph in her room because he was creepy, overbearing, and possibly a stalker. She wondered why he thought that she didn't want him there.

"I get it. I'll go then," Joseph said and moved towards the door.

Since Joseph believed that she knew more than she did, Taylor was determined to use this to press for more information.

"Hold on," Taylor said, moving to block his access to the hallway. "I think after that conversation you owe me an explanation."

Taylor crossed her arms and tried to look impassable. Joseph regarded her with a quizzical look but did not attempt to leave.

"Well, what did Hannah tell you?" he asked.

Taylor had hoped that he would just start talking. All she knew was that he and Hannah both felt strongly that Eric was not good for her, but she really didn't know anything beyond that. Still, she was determined to press for more.

"Well, she explained why Eric was so dangerous..."

Joseph let out a sigh.

"But I'm going to be honest," she continued. "You seem more dangerous than he is."

"We're all dangerous. It's really a question of intentions. Eric doesn't care about anything but what he can get away with. So he's dangerous."

This sounded to Taylor like generic "boys are trouble" talk. She assumed that there must be something more. Perhaps a criminal past? Trouble in school?

"So what does he think he can get away with?" she asked.

"With you? I'm not sure. Usually vampires can be very persuasive, but you don't seem to be affected by us."

Taylor wasn't sure how to respond to this. She had no idea what he meant by vampires. Was that a goth fad? A cult thing? She was about to ask but reminded herself that she was supposed to already know all this since Hannah had supposedly told her everything.

"And why do you think that is?" Taylor asked.

Joseph shrugged. "I don't know. This is a first for us. Usually people just listen."

As Joseph said "just listen," Taylor was reminded of the phone conversation she had overheard between Joseph and Hannah. All that Taylor could gather from Joseph was that he saw himself and Eric as a part of some secret clique that referred to themselves as vampires who were enamored of their own persuasive abilities. It all sounded creepy, out of touch with reality, and not at all square with her image of Eric. Or Hannah, for that matter, who apparently was connected in some way to the brothers, or at least to Joseph.

As Taylor tried to reconcile this with her perception of Eric, she realized that she was engaging Joseph on his own terms and falling in line with his Eric-free agenda for her. Still, she resolved to be cautious about approaching Eric. If there was any potential danger, then she should be prepared. As any single young women would, she told herself. Though all the evidence so far suggested that it was Joseph who should be avoided, not Eric.

"So why can't I just keep not listening?" she asked.

"That only works if he takes 'no' for an answer."

"So you're saying he would force himself on me?"

"I'd prefer it if you didn't tempt him."

This statement sounded like victim-blaming to her. As though if Eric acted on his desire for her, then it would be her fault for being too desirable. She was convinced now more than ever that if she was going to take sides here, she was going to side with Eric. Joseph was already creepy. Now he was sounding sexist.

"I'll try to control my feminine charms," she said.

"Being female is only half your problem."

"And the other half?"

"Being alive," he said without an indication of what that was supposed to mean.

Taylor decided that she didn't want to know what that meant. Whatever Joseph was thinking, she was pretty sure she did not see things the same way.

"Well, there's nothing that can be done about either half," she said. "So while your concern is well-noted, I think I will just have to muddle through."

Joseph just looked at her for a moment.

"You don't take this seriously," he said. He wasn't asking; this was a statement.

"I take this very seriously, which is why I would like you to leave now."

"Fine. You don't know where Hannah went?" he asked again, pausing in the doorway beside her.

"Nope," she replied and slammed the door behind him as he left.
CHAPTER SIX

Taylor tried to process what Joseph had told her, and the conclusion she kept coming to was that Joseph was untrustworthy. For some reason, Hannah seemed more inclined to trust Joseph over Eric, but every encounter Taylor had with them just convinced her that Eric was the normal one in the family.

Though she bristled at the idea of Joseph and Hannah dictating to her whom she hung out with, it would certainly alleviate all of the pressure if she just let Eric go. He was just some cute guy who showed interest, but she wasn't entirely convinced that he was worth all this trouble.

Still, Joseph's remarks stuck in her mind. Though she hated the idea of Joseph breathing down her neck, she hated the idea of him getting his way even more. Suddenly feeling resolute, she pulled out her cellphone and looked up Eric's phone number. The image of him mugging for the camera made her smile. It was so much more pleasant than Joseph's perpetually dire expression.

She opened up the message window and typed:

still up for tonight? feeling better

The response came immediately.

meet you in lobby @ 6.30?

Taylor looked at the clock. It was 5:30.

ok

An hour wasn't much time to get ready, but the lack of extra time would give her less room to reconsider her date. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was fine, her make-up was fine, and her clothes were also fine. Fine was not going to cut it; she would need to change everything. She grabbed her bathroom kit and rushed down the hall.

Once she was back and dressed, she stood in the mirror again and appraised her appearance. She had carefully selected her wardrobe to look nice, but not too fussy. This was an impromptu date, so she didn't want to look like she had been planning her wardrobe all day. She also didn't want to look like she was phoning it in.

She traded her comfy jeans for her cute jeans and her t-shirt for a black fitted shirt with a lacy collar. She rarely wore jewelry, but accessorized today with a faux white gold chain and pendant with matching dangly earrings.

She was fairly pleased with the results. She could wear this outfit to a club or restaurant, but it could also be worn to a movie theater or bowling alley. There were touches of glam, but the jeans kept it down to earth. She wished that she could lose the glasses, but for now they would have to do. She wasn't going to sacrifice being able to see her date for the sake of appearances.

She grabbed her purse and was preparing to leave when Hannah stepped into the room.

Hannah took one look at her and asked, "Going out?"

"Yep. Don't wait up!" Taylor said, trying to sound breezy and carefree while she kept moving towards the door.

"Taylor, please..." Hannah began, but Taylor interrupted her.

"I know. I understand. I'll be careful. We'll stay in well-lit public places, and I promise I'll call if I need anything, okay?"

"Okay..." Hannah said softly, staring down at the floor.

Hannah did not make an effort to stop Taylor as she left.

Eric was already waiting for her in the lobby. For all the time she spent thinking about the proper combination of wardrobe choices to present the perfect impression, Eric was not similarly burdened. He acknowledged this was a date by switching out his shorts for jeans, and that was about it. He was still wearing a t-shirt, and his hair was still a slight mess, but this just made him appear boyishly cute.

Taylor wished there were corners to be cut for girls that made them look more attractive, but alas it seemed that only boys were able to improve their appearance by ignoring it.

"You look nice," he said, as she approached him.

Taylor congratulated herself on an hour well spent.

"So do you," Taylor said.

"Yeah. I put on long pants!"

He said this while tugging at the hem of his jeans as if to prove that they did in fact go all the way down.

"I'm impressed," she said.

"You ready?"

"For?"

"It's a surprise," he said with a mischievous grin. "Come on!"

With that, he turned sharply and started walking down the path away from the dorms and around the corner. He didn't appear to be waiting for her, so she hurried along after him.

The sidewalk led to a high brick wall that ran the length between two taller buildings. There was a high-arched gate in the center of the wall, and as they walked through, they found themselves in an urban park lined with tall trees. In the center was a small pond that was hidden from view from the street by the wall and trees. A cement slab bench sat on the far side of the pond.

"C'mon!" Eric said while leading her towards the bench.

As they approached, Taylor noticed a grocery bag tucked just out of view. Eric practically skipped to the bench. He reached behind it, grabbed the bag, and placed it on the bench with a flourish. He reached into the bag and pulled out two paper-wrapped subs and held them out to Taylor.

"Ham or turkey?" he asked.

"I'll take turkey."

Taylor was impressed with the gesture. Given his typical frat boy appearance, Taylor was expecting an uninspired dinner and a movie. She appreciated this surprise picnic and was a little embarrassed that she had felt nervous for a moment walking into a secluded park alone with him.

She also reminded herself that they were close enough to the dorms that someone would hear her screams and then chastised herself for even thinking such a thought. Eric consistently disproved Hannah's apparent distrust of him, and Taylor felt that she needed to start giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Eric sat down and patted on the seat beside him in invitation to Taylor. She sat down next to him without hesitation. He pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to her.

"I had no idea what you like, so I tried to keep it basic. So basically you get bread and water. Prison food!" he said, clearly proud of it.

"Eat a lot of prison food?" asked Taylor.

"Only if you count all the pizza here."

Relax, Taylor told herself. Whatever his deal was, he was not a criminal.

Eric took an enormous bite out of his sub, leaving strands of shredded lettuce hanging out of the corner of his mouth. He slurped up the lettuce like spaghetti.

Everything Eric did had a boyish quality to it, Taylor thought. From the way he ate to his always askew hair, he had an almost innocent lack of self-awareness that Taylor appreciated. She found Joseph and Hannah's warnings even less convincing the more time she spent with him.

"So, only one more day of fun before classes start, right?" Taylor asked.

"You mean one more day of Addison until the fun starts, right?"

"I could do with less of her, yeah, but I'm not looking forward to homework."

"Eh, homework," Eric said, waving his hand dismissively.

"I think you're going to need to do a little homework if you're a science major."

"Good thing you're taking the same classes then, huh? We could be study buddies!"

"We could," she said. "I wouldn't have pegged you as the science-y type. Why did you pick that?"

"I want to be a doctor. I like to help people. How about you? Why biology?"

"I'm kind of a big nerd for figuring out how everything fits together. You know, plants, animals, people. Evolution especially. It's all just really fascinating to me," she said.

Eric laughed at this.

"I didn't expect you to be the nerdy type," he said.

"Well I guess we both have a few surprises up our sleeves."

Eric nodded in agreement.

"Indeed," he said with a grin.

***

Joseph returned from his visit to Taylor and Hannah's dorm to find Hannah standing in front of his room waiting for him. Her arms were folded across her chest and she was tapping her foot restlessly.

"Do you know where our roommates are?" she asked before he could acknowledge her.

"Hello," he said, ignoring the question. "Care to come in?"

He opened the door for Hannah, and she stomped past him without a word. He shut the door behind them. Neither of them made any pretense of getting comfortable.

"So?" Hannah asked.

"Eric said he was going down to the bookstore."

"And why on earth do you think Eric would go to a bookstore?"

"Good point. Where's yours?"

"She was dressed up to meet Eric. Unless there's a dress code at the bookstore, I'm guessing that's not where they went."

Joseph's face darkened.

"Obviously not. I thought you warned her about him," he said.

"I did, but obviously she didn't listen."

"But she said you told her he was a vampire. That didn't faze her?"

"She said WHAT?"

Joseph immediately realized his mistake.

"Well, I guess I told her that he was a vampire, actually," Joseph admitted sheepishly.

"You WHAT?" Hannah exclaimed, even louder.

"Well, I mean, she took it totally fine."

"She probably didn't believe you. Would you believe you?" Hannah asked, jabbing her index finger at his chest.

"Yes...?"

"No you wouldn't. And now you've gone and made it worse."

"How is that? If she doesn't believe me, she's not any more or less equipped to deal with him than she was before, right?"

Hannah rolled her eyes but didn't argue.

"Besides," he continued, "she seems to be immune to his... charms, in any case. Which is why, of course, he's so obsessed with her. If she wasn't already the exception to that rule, we wouldn't be in this situation."

"Right. Blame the victim."

"I'm not blaming anyone," Joseph insisted. "I'm just saying that this is uncharted territory here."

"Well, I'm going to go ahead and blame the two of you. If you two would just follow the rules and not eat where you sleep, then we wouldn't be having this conversation either."

"Don't you 'you two' me," Joseph said with a hint of anger in his voice. "I know the rules and, if you haven't noticed, have spent the past two days trying to get him to follow them. I am not his sire. I'm already doing my fair share."

"Well apparently it isn't enough because now he's off who-knows-where working on his seduction technique."

"Look, why is this a problem?" Joseph asked. "I know the rules, but he's not going to kill her. He doesn't do that. And he won't get caught. He doesn't do that either."

"Those are the famous last words of every vampire who has accidentally killed a victim."

"Well, there's always a risk."

"Which is why you don't EAT WHERE YOU SLEEP," she said, exasperated. "Look, you bend all the rules you want, but you're not doing it on my roommate. I'm just NOT HAVING IT."

"What are we going to do, then?"

"What can we do? They could be anywhere in this stupid city. Do you know where he might have taken her?"

"No clue," he said. "Look, he won't hurt her. He's not that kind of guy."

"You'd better hope you're right about that. I will be pissed off if anything happens to her. And you do not want to see me pissed off. Trust me."

"So you're not pissed off now?"

"Hon, you haven't seen the half of it."

"Got it. Well then, I'm going to go see if I can find him."

"You do that."

***

Taylor took a few bites from her sub and set it down. It tasted fine, but she always found herself too distracted to eat much on first dates. Besides, Eric didn't seem to be particularly interested in his food either. He took one bite out of his sandwich and set the rest down untouched.

They talked about their time on campus so far, but they avoided the topics of Joseph and Hannah. Eric seemed to find humor in everything, even Addison. When Taylor asked him if he was really going to try to get Addison in trouble, he insisted that he was just "goofing" with her. "Goofing" struck Taylor as an accurate way of describing Eric's outlook generally.

She didn't want to put Eric on the spot or get involved in family affairs, but he was easy to talk to and fun to be with, so Taylor was beginning to feel that maybe it was okay to be a little intrusive. Certainly his brother felt no qualms about getting in her business. Turnabout, she reasoned, was fair play.

Feeling emboldened, she asked, perhaps more bluntly than she intended, "So why doesn't Joseph like me?"

"Who says Joseph doesn't like you?" he replied.

"Joseph, mostly."

"I doubt he said that. Joseph likes everybody. He's weird that way."

"I'll give you weird, but if he likes everyone, he's got a funny way of showing it."

Eric chuckled at this.

"Well, he likes everyone but me, but that's a given, right?" he said.

"Why is that a given?"

"We're brothers. We love each other, but we don't like each other."

Taylor thought about her own brother and wasn't sure she agreed with the sentiment. She liked and loved her brother. Still, Taylor was beginning to feel confident that Joseph's unusual behavior really was just sibling rivalry. She was not the problem, or at least not her specifically. She could be anyone, and Joseph would still be overbearing because maybe that's just the relationship that Eric and Joseph had.

"But enough about him," said Eric. "Every time I try to pay attention to you, somehow he becomes the center of attention."

"Sorry..." Taylor began, but Eric cut her off.

"Don't apologize," he said. "I just want you to be the center of attention for a change."

Taylor didn't think that would make for much of a change; she already felt like all eyes were on her since the moment she arrived on campus. Still, she was flattered. She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks, and she pretended to turn to look at something off in the distance to hide her blushing.

Eric reached over and softly hooked his index finger under her chin, guiding her back to face him. His touch was surprisingly gentle, and Taylor immediately forgot any sense of self-consciousness. Those sky-blue eyes were mesmerizing, and the light dancing across the surface of the pond reflected in them.

"You're very pretty, you know that?" said Eric.

"Pretty average," Taylor replied, inviting him to argue with her.

"No," he said firmly, "pretty pretty."

"Okay, pretty pretty then."

They were both silent for a moment, and then Eric began to lightly trace the back of his fingernail from the tip of her chin to the underside. Taylor shivered as his finger reached the top of her neck.

"It's a beautiful evening," he said softly.

"Mmm hmm," was all Taylor could muster.

Eric continued to trace his finger down her neck, and Taylor could feel warm tingles bursting from every pore of her body. He reached her collar bone and stopped to look into her eyes. Self-conscious, she turned her head slightly to the side, but did not look away from him.

After lingering a moment, he began to trace his finger down further. Taylor reached up and placed her hand on his to stop him. She told herself it was just because they were out in the open, but regardless, she was not ready for his tender touch to turn more intimate.

Eric looked disappointed, but only for a brief second. He took her hand in his and moved it to her knee where his hand lingered as well, gently placed on top of hers.

"Would you like to go somewhere more private?" he asked her.

Taylor considered agreeing for a moment, but her doubts over the past couple of days crept up in her mind. Besides her assurance to Hannah that she would stay out in the open with Eric, she wasn't sure she was ready for where he seemed to want to take this.

"But it's so nice out, isn't it?" she said, dodging the question.

Eric held her hand with both of his hands and looked earnestly into her eyes.

"C'mon, I just want to talk," he said softly.

Taylor regarded this statement with suspicion. Clearly he wanted more, and she wasn't sure that she was ready for that, having only met him yesterday.

"We were talking," she said, feeling herself become a little defensive.

Eric kept staring directly into her eyes. Taylor noticed the same dark shadows pass across his eyes that she had seen when she first met him. She did not turn to look to see what was casting the reflection this time, however.

"I just mean that it would be nice to get more comfortable," he said.

"Like... more intimate, you mean?" she asked.

"If you like," he replied with a devious smile.

"I don't like. Not on the first date."

His forehead furrowed, and he tightened his grip on her hands.

"I mean it." he said, his face growing dark. "We should go somewhere else."

As he said this, his voice had an edge to it, one of frustration, nearly anger.

"And I mean it," Taylor replied, matching his tone. "Not on the first date."

She pulled her hands from out of his grip. The shadows in his eyes were racing. She wondered what could be causing this reflection, but was afraid to turn away from him.

He raised his voice again. This time, it was nearly a yell.

"You WILL come with me!" he demanded.

"I WILL not!" she replied with the same force.

Eric just sat there looking furious, his hands shaking. Suddenly any affection Taylor had for him vanished. Joseph and Hannah were right, she decided. This boy was trouble, and she wanted very much to get away from him.

She stood and walked a few paces towards the dorms and then stopped to look back at him. She was about to say something—good-bye, good riddance, she wasn't sure what—but he wasn't looking at her. Instead he had his head down and was muttering to himself angrily. Taylor decided against interrupting and kept walking.

Eric made no effort to follow.
CHAPTER SEVEN

Taylor pushed open the door, and Hannah immediately stood up and came to meet her. Taylor suspected that she probably appeared visibly upset to Hannah, but she didn't have the strength to hide it. She felt sheepish admitting that Hannah was right.

"Are you okay?" Hannah asked as she began to inspect Taylor's face and neck.

Taylor drew her hand to her face self-consciously, and Hannah grabbed her hand and inspected that as well. Then she flipped Taylor's hand over and inspected her arm. Satisfied, she grabbed the other and did the same. Taylor didn't know what to make of this.

"Did he hurt you?" Hannah asked.

"No," Taylor said, pulling her hand away self-consciously. "He didn't touch me."

Hannah regarded her suspiciously.

"What did he do?" she asked.

"He got really creepy on me so I left him."

Hannah walked over to her bed and sat down on the edge. She massaged her temples and did not look at Taylor.

"How is it that you knew about him? Am I just a terrible judge of character?" Taylor asked.

"Look," said Hannah, "this isn't working this way. I need to be honest with you."

"Honest?"

Taylor had been suspicious of Hannah's intentions, but she had not imagined that she was being lied to.

"There's something you need to know about Eric and Joseph," Hannah began. "They're both dangerous, but not for the reason you think."

Hannah paused for a moment to consider her next words.

"The thing is... they're... they're vampires."

Taylor rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, Joseph said that," said Taylor. "But I don't know what that means. Is it, like, a religious thing?"

"No, it means exactly what you don't think it does. They're vampires. Actual vampires."

"What, like 'I want to suck your blood' vampires?"

"Exactly like that."

Taylor wasn't sure how to respond to this. Whatever Joseph thought he was, apparently Hannah believed him. She had felt safe when she saw Hannah, but now she was beginning to feel uncomfortable around her as well.

"Of course you don't believe me," said Hannah. "Look, did you notice anything weird about his teeth?"

"His teeth? No. He had perfectly nice teeth."

Hannah frowned.

"His eyes? How about his eyes? Anything unusual?"

"No?"

Taylor told herself that she was just seeing reflections when she caught glimpses of shadows in Eric's eyes and felt a little crazy for indulging any ideas otherwise.

"You don't sound sure about that," said Hannah.

"Look Hannah. It's not that I don't believe you. It's just, well... Okay, fine. I don't believe you. How would you even know any of that?"

Hannah looked down at her hands for a moment and then back up at Taylor.

"Because I'm a vampire too," she replied.

Taylor took a step back nervously and knocked over her chair in the process. It landed with a heavy thud.

"I... I... don't know what to think," said Taylor.

She was beginning to believe Hannah, but it seemed absurd to admit aloud.

Seeing Taylor's fear, Hannah tried to comfort her.

"I'm not dangerous though. I'm here to help you... protect you," said Hannah.

Taylor took another step back.

"So you're a friendly... vampire?" Taylor asked, feeling self-conscious about the word.

"Most of us are. But that doesn't mean we're not dangerous."

"So you're dangerous?"

"Me? Of course not! I can see why that's not convincing, but I promise you I'm on your side."

Before Taylor could respond, however, the door burst open. Addison stood in the doorway looking annoyed.

"What is going on in here?" she demanded, looking at the chair toppled over on the ground.

Hannah looked visibly annoyed with Addison as well.

"Nothing that wouldn't require you to knock first," said Hannah.

"I heard a crash. I took liberties," Addison replied.

Taylor looked at Addison and then back at Hannah. Taylor wondered if Addison was a vampire too. Then Taylor realized that she was debating whether or not someone was a vampire when, only a moment ago, she didn't even believe in them in the first place. She pushed the question from her mind. Of course Addison wasn't a vampire. There was no such thing.

"Well everything is fi..." Hannah began but stopped mid-sentence.

Taylor turned to follow Hannah's eyes to the doorway and saw Eric standing there behind Addison.

"Can I help you?" Addison said, turning to look at him, but her confidence faded when she saw the expression on his face.

Eric ignored her for a moment and looked at Hannah and then Taylor. His mouth turned into a twisted half smile, and he responded without turning away from Taylor.

"Yes, actually. I think you could be very helpful," he said.

As he said this, he suddenly reached over and grabbed Addison forcefully towards him, one of his arms around her and the other behind her back. She let out a gasp.

"What is that? Is that... a knife?" Addison asked with a whimper.

Eric's face broke out into a full smile. Taylor could see his fangs clearly now.

"It is," he replied and turned Addison forcefully to the side so that Taylor and Hannah could see the blade pressed against her back.

"I was going to use it a little differently, but I never pass on an opportunity," he said and then pulled it around to her neck, holding the edge of the blade against it.

"So here's what we're going to do... I'm not going to hurt her as long as everyone does what I say. You," he said, gesturing in the direction of Taylor with the tip of his knife, "are going to follow me."

Taylor felt the warmth drain from her body and a shiver travel up her spine.

"And you," he said, gesturing towards Hannah, "are going to stay here. And if either of you gets any ideas of your own here, then Addison dies."

Addison made a tiny squealing noise, and Eric pressed the knife against her neck. A single tear trailed down her cheek. Eric leaned over and pressed the tip of his tongue against the base of her cheek and slowly drew it up the side of her face, catching the tear along the way. He gave Taylor a satisfied look and then turned with Addison, his knife still pressed to her neck. He took a step through the door and then looked back at Taylor.

"Well? Are you coming?" he asked.

Taylor looked at Hannah, hoping for some kind of guidance.

"I don't think you have a choice," said Hannah.

"That's right you don't. C'mon," Eric demanded.

Taylor hesitated a second and then gave in. She turned to follow behind Eric and Addison, leaving the door behind her open.

Hannah waited a minute and then tentatively stepped towards the door and peered out. There was no sign of them. She pulled out her cellphone and dialed. Joseph picked up on the other end after a single ring.

"Hello?" he said.

"Where are you?"

"Hold on."

"I can't hold on, we don't have ti... oh."

Hannah paused as she saw Joseph appear through the elevator door. She ran towards him, grabbed his wrist, and dragged him back into the elevator.

"Did you see him?" Hannah asked, before Joseph had time to speak.

"What? No, I came back here thinking they may have made it back to the dorms."

He paused for a moment, and his face darkened.

"Something's wrong, isn't it?"

Hannah nodded gravely.

"And he's got Addison. He took her hostage," she said.

"Wait, what? Hostage? How?"

"With a knife."

"A knife? A real knife or a glamour?" he asked.

Hannah looked at him impatiently.

"Do you really think I would let him take a hostage with a fake knife? What do you take me for? Human?"

The elevator door opened, and Hannah rushed straight through the lobby to the sidewalk outside. Joseph was just a step behind. She looked around desperately for signs of them, but couldn't see anything. She turned to face Joseph.

"Where would he take her?" she asked.

"I really don't know."

"THINK!" Hannah screamed at him.

"Look, we just got here. I have no idea where he would go."

"Well, you're super helpful aren't you?"

"Well you screaming at me doesn't..." he began, but was cut off by Hannah shoving her hand in his face.

"Wait..."

She paused and sniffed the air.

"You smell that?" she asked.

Joseph sniffed the air as well.

"Blood," he said.

Hannah's eyes widened, and she took off in the direction of the scent, with Joseph racing to keep up.

She stopped at the intersection at the end of the block and knelt down. Joseph knelt down beside her. There were a few droplets of blood on the ground. Hannah dabbed a drop with her finger and held it up to her nose.

"It's just Addison," she said, relieved.

"Just Addison?" Joseph asked. "So we're only worried about Taylor here?"

"You can worry about whomever you like. I have to protect Taylor."

With that, she stood up and kept moving in the same direction. Joseph followed close at her side.

"Why Taylor and not Addison? I thought you two just met?"

"We did," she replied. "I feel protective of my roommate, okay?"

Joseph didn't respond, instead following her wordlessly down the street.
CHAPTER EIGHT

Taylor recognized where Eric was leading her. He was taking her back to the pond where she had left him earlier. Her heart sank. The pond was completely hidden by a thick wall of trees. No one would see them there.

She felt a glimmer of hope when she saw another student walking towards them on the sidewalk, however. Her mind raced with ways to get help from this other girl. Eric would probably decide to cross the street to avoid her. Perhaps she could get some sort of distress signal across before he did.

To her surprise, Eric did not change course. He whispered something into Addison's ear as they continued to walk straight towards the girl, with the knife still pressed against Addison's throat. Addison gave a muffled response that Taylor could not make out, and Eric pressed the point of the knife into her skin, just barely piercing it. She whimpered but did not say a word.

As they continued to approach the girl, it became clear to Taylor that the girl hadn't noticed them. Taylor was sure that the knife would draw attention, but the girl continued to walk towards them and then right past them, never looking at them much less stopping. Somehow Eric must have been preventing the girl from noticing them.

They continued their awkward procession, all three of them silent, until they reached the park that they had been at earlier. Taylor saw the leftovers from their picnic. The brown bag and half-eaten subs were still on the bench where they had left them. The sun was beginning to set, and the pond was darkened by the grey reflections of the trees around them.

Eric stopped at the edge of the pond and pointed his knife towards Taylor and then towards the bench. Taylor obediently sat down on the edge. He let go of Addison.

"Don't even think about moving," he warned her.

He walked towards Taylor without looking at Addison, but Addison did not appear to have any intentions of moving. She stood rigidly in place as if she was afraid that any movement at all would incite his anger. Tears were streaming down her face, but she remained quiet.

Eric sat down next to Taylor and gently placed the tip of the blade on her arm and traced it to her elbow, not pressing hard enough to leave a mark. Taylor shuddered.

"Now look how complicated all this has gotten," he said, with a playful, almost sing-songy voice.

"All I really wanted," he continued, pressing the side of his face against her neck, "was a taste."

Taylor tried to shift away from his touch, but he pulled her closer with his free hand.

He leaned into her ear and whispered, "You should have just said yes. I always get what I want."

He then leaned back and spoke loudly enough so that Addison could hear as well.

"So what you're going to do, Taylor, is just sit there. You are going to let me do what I want, and if you don't," he gestured towards Addison as he said this, "I'm going to kill her."

Addison began to tremble. Taylor sat as still as she could, her mind racing. She tried to think of some way to escape, but Eric was armed with a knife, and she had no idea what a vampire was capable of. She tried to tell herself that whatever it was he had planned, they were going to survive it. If he had wanted to kill them, she reasoned, he would have already done so. Looking at his face, though, she wasn't so sure. He seemed to be enjoying this.

"You see? It's so much easier when you listen," he said as he leaned closer to her.

He reached towards Taylor with the knife, and she flinched as he pointed the blade at her chest. He lingered there and then drew the blade slowly up to her neck and then slashed it across with a quick swipe. For a moment she felt nothing and then a sharp pain. She instinctively reached to cover her neck, but he grabbed her hand and held it to the bench.

"Remember what I said? You do what I say or she dies," he said.

Taylor tried to keep herself still. She looked down and saw a single drop of blood hit the top of her shirt. It must not be too deep, she thought, trying to reassure herself.

"Don't worry. This won't kill you," he said, seeing her concern. "At least, the knife won't."

Taylor could feel tears starting to well up in her eyes, but she determinedly blinked them out. She reminded herself that the reason that they were in this situation was that he couldn't control her in the first place.

Suddenly, she heard Joseph's voice in the distance and felt a wave of relief. Eric heard him too and backed away from Taylor, looking frantically in the direction of the voice. He moved slowly towards Addison, clutching the knife in his hand. The sound was followed by footsteps approaching at a rapid pace. Joseph was running towards them.

Taylor inched slowly along the bench towards the end opposite Eric, carefully watching to see if he noticed. His attention was turned to Joseph, however. She stood slowly and backed up a few steps just as Joseph, with Hannah behind him, emerged from the line of trees. They rushed to the edge of the pond and then stopped.

Eric grabbed Addison in his arms and pressed the knife against her neck again.

"I told you," Eric shrieked. "I told you not to follow me. I told you. I told you she would die. I TOLD YOU!"

Joseph took a step towards him.

"Eric..." Joseph said cautiously.

"No! Don't you talk to me. Shut UP!"

With this, he cut the knife across Addison's neck, leaving a gash that spurted out blood in pulsing waves of glistening red.

"Eric! What are you doing?" Hannah yelled at him. "What is the point of this?"

"Yeah, Eric," Joseph said, stepping up beside Hannah, "what do you gain from killing her? All that blood... a waste."

"Oh, it's not a total loss little brother," Eric said with a smirk and then licked her neck. He made exaggerated smacking noises as blood spurted out from the corners of his mouth. "Really, she's delicious. You should come have a taste," he said, licking the blood off his fingers.

"Not like this, Eric. You're being reckless. You could hurt her."

"Oh? Well that would be a shame wouldn't it? If only there was someone," he said, looking directly at Taylor, "who would be willing to take her place."

"You can't have her either!" said Hannah.

"Oh can't I? What do you think, Taylor? You willing to let her die?"

Taylor looked back at Hannah sadly. Hannah seemed to understand what she was thinking.

"Taylor, you can't!" Hannah insisted.

"I can't watch someone die, either," said Taylor. "Not over me." She looked down at her feet, trying to muster up every scrap of courage that she possessed and then took a step forward.

"Taylor, NO!" Hannah screamed, trying to reach Taylor, but Joseph held her back.

"He won't kill her, Hannah. He's not a killer," he said.

"Are you so sure, little brother?" Eric said, tossing Addison to the ground in front of him while grabbing Taylor with his other arm. He pulled her close and held the knife to her neck. "You can go now," he said to Addison.

Addison lay still for a moment on the ground and then started to move slowly away from them.

"I said GO," Eric yelled.

She got up slowly and then began to run towards Joseph. Joseph released Hannah and caught Addison as she fell into his arms. He whispered into her ear and she fell unconscious. He laid her gently on the ground and walked forward to grab Hannah, who was moving towards Eric and Taylor.

"Stay right there, Hannah," Eric said menacingly, "or I swear I will kill her."

Hannah stopped moving. Eric leaned forward, and Taylor felt the warmth of his breath against her skin. She felt the knife pressed firmly against her neck and saw thin trails of blood flowing down onto her chest.

"Eric, stop. Please stop!" Hannah pleaded.

Eric looked up for a moment.

Sensing his distraction, Taylor knew immediately what to do, having grown up with an older brother. She dropped swiftly to her knees, her unexpected movement allowing her to fall easily through his arms, and shoved her elbow back as hard as she could, right into his groin.

He stumbled backwards, clutching himself for a moment, but quickly regained his composure. Not quickly enough to prevent Taylor from escaping his grasp, however, and she stumbled forward into Hannah's arms.

Eric smiled at them darkly.

"Oh this is not over. Now that I have a taste," he said, drawing his tongue slowly across the flat side of his blade, "I will have the rest. Maybe not now, but I will have it."

Eric seemed menacing for a moment, but suddenly his jaw slackened, and the color drained from his face. He stepped back and his weight shifted to his back leg. He seemed to be off balance.

"How... did you...?" he sputtered as he doubled over while clutching his stomach.

"How is this even... poss...i..."

He collapsed on the ground before he finished his sentence.

Taylor looked at Hannah in confusion, but she seemed just as uncertain as Taylor was.

"Are you okay?" Hannah asked her.

"I think so," Taylor said, touching the cut on her neck. "I think it's just a scratch."

Joseph rushed up from behind them and leaned over Eric.

"What did you do to him?" Joseph angrily asked Taylor.

"I... I don't know," she replied.

Eric groaned and began to stir. As he slowly rose, Hannah placed her arm in front of Taylor and pulled her back.

Eric looked up at them, and Taylor saw the same shadows dancing across his eyes that she had seen before. They were moving more slowly this time and appeared to be fading. He fell back down on one knee.

"I don't feel so good, Joe," he whispered.

"What's wrong, Eric? What's going on?"

"I don't..." as he said this, the shadows vanished from his eyes, leaving them neither black nor sky blue, but brown.

He collapsed into Joseph's arms. Joseph leaned over him and held him close.

"Hold on, buddy," Joseph said and then bit into his own wrist. He propped Eric's head back and let the blood flow into his brother's mouth.

"What is he...?" Taylor began to ask Hannah.

"He's trying to heal him. Stand back," she ordered.

Joseph looked up despondently. "I... I don't understand," he said.

"What?" Hannah demanded.

"His eyes... his mouth... He's human."
CHAPTER NINE

Hannah insisted that they get Addison and Eric back to the dorms so that they could recover, and Taylor and Joseph didn't object. Hannah and Taylor worked together to support Addison back up to the dorms, as Joseph carried Eric over his shoulder.

As they approached the dorms, Hannah stopped and turned to Joseph.

"Are you going to take care of his memories?" she asked him.

"What? Yeah. I guess that's best," he replied. "But if he's human, then..."

"Then you need to dig deep until we figure out what's going on. It's best if he doesn't remember being anything but human. When was he turned?"

"When? Recently. A few months ago."

"Then go back to then. If he's human, then he probably shouldn't remember any of the last few months."

Joseph looked unconvinced but agreed.

"And Addison?" he asked.

"I'll take care of her memories. She'll be fine."

Joseph sighed and then left towards Harris Hall with his brother in tow. Hannah and Taylor continued to drag Addison along to the building.

"You know, she's surprisingly heavy for such a skinny girl," Taylor remarked. "Aren't vampires supposed to have super strength or something?"

"Nah, that's a myth," said Hannah.

"Oh, that's a myth. It's good to know we still have those."

Hannah flashed her a weak smile.

"Nope, no super strength, no super jumping, no super speed. Just," Hannah said, pointing at her temple, "lots of mind tricks."

"Is that what you mean when you talk about their memories? Using your... vampire powers to erase them?"

"We can't erase them. It all still just tricks. It's more like we convince them it was a dream, and then they bury it in their subconscious."

"Oh... so why doesn't that stuff work on me? I mean, that's how Eric was trying to manipulate me, right? That's what you mean when you say I don't listen."

Hannah sighed and said, "C'mon. I'll explain when we're inside."

They dropped Addison off in her room, and Hannah said a few words to her that Taylor couldn't make out. Taylor noticed that though Addison's neck was caked in dried blood, there was no sign of a wound. She wondered if Joseph had healed her too.

"What about all that blood?" Taylor asked.

"I put a glamour on it. She won't see it and neither will anyone else. Besides, it only has to last until she takes a shower. She'll be fine."

"A 'glamour'?"

"An illusion. Another one of our mind tricks."

"What happened to the cut on her neck? It's gone. Did Joseph do that? I thought vampires killed people, not healed them."

"Vampires don't have to kill to live. You can lose a lot of blood before you die."

"Oh... well, that's... comforting, I guess. But the healing?"

"That's how we live indefinitely. Our bodies are constantly in a state of self-repair. When we bite others, we can pass it on. We can't cure cancer or anything, but we can heal a topical wound. That's how we don't get caught. We don't leave a mark," Hannah replied.

"And her memories?"

"Already taken care of."

"Well that's comforting... I think."

"It should be. This would be a real mess otherwise."

"Convenient."

"Yep. C'mon," Hannah said, leading Taylor back to their room.

Once inside, Taylor wanted to collapse onto her bed in exhaustion, but she knew she wasn't going to be able to sleep without answers.

"What exactly happened back there?" Taylor asked.

Hannah looked at Taylor for a moment, considering her response.

"I'm not exactly sure," Hannah replied. "But there's a reason I think that he has no effect on you."

Taylor stared at Hannah blankly, waiting for her to explain.

"Your father," said Hannah, "was a vampire."

"He was a... wait, you knew my dad?"

"Well yes, but mostly your mom. She was a dear friend. And she asked me to look over you. That's why I'm here. I'm older than this school. It's not like I need to go to college!"

"You're... older than... and my mom is... "

"Your mom was not a vampire. Just your dad," said Hannah.

Taylor suddenly felt lightheaded, and Hannah rushed to her side to prop her up.

"Look, that's a lot to process, I know," said Hannah. "She loved you very much. She only wanted your safety. That's why I'm here. Come lie down."

Taylor was too overwhelmed to argue.

"Look Taylor, I think you should rest. I will explain everything in the morning."

"But will I... my memories?"

"I couldn't touch them if I tried. Vampires have no effect on each other that way."

Taylor was relieved for a moment that her memories would be safe but jolted up in her bed when she realized that Hannah had said "each other".

"Are you saying that I'm a vampire?" Taylor asked.

"No," replied Hannah, "I'm saying that your father was a vampire."

"So what does that make me?"

"Well, there's not really a word for it because you're not supposed to exist. You're half of one and half of another."

"But what does that mean?"

"I don't know," Hannah said. "Like I said, you're not supposed to exist. Apparently we've learned this evening that your blood turns vampires back."

"But that's a good thing, right? That will protect me from vampires."

"You assume vampires want only one thing. We're not animals. We don't do all of our thinking with our stomachs."

"I'm not following."

"Imagine how powerful a vampire would be if he had the ability to render his enemies mortal. You would be extremely popular. And not in a good way," Hannah explained.

"Oh..." Taylor replied and put her chin down.

"That's why I'm here to help you keep a low profile. I'll keep you safe."

"So is that it? I learn that my father was a vampire, that I'm a half-vampire... or something. You're a vampire here to protect me..."

Taylor came to a sudden realization, and her eyes widened.

"Wait, if I'm... then my brother?" she said.

"Yep, him too. Don't worry. He has someone looking over him as well. Your mother loved you both very much."

Taylor felt tears welling up in her eyes. It was all just so overwhelming. Hannah sat down on the edge of her bed and stroked Taylor's hair.

"I know, Taylor. I remember the day my whole world changed too. It gets better," Hannah assured her. "At least you've got me!"

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it. I know you must have a lot of questions, and I promise I'll do my best to answer them. But for now, we should get some rest."

"Vampires sleep?"

Hannah giggled.

"Of course they do. God, can you imagine staying awake all the time? How exhausting!"

"There's a lot of things I wouldn't have imaged before today."

Hannah passed her fingers once more through Taylor's hair and then stood.

"Well keep imagining, hon. Your life will never be the same," said Hannah.

"Uh... thanks."

"Don't mention it. Good night."

There was no response; Taylor, exhausted, had already drifted off to sleep.

***

Joseph trudged up the path towards the dorms at Harris Hall with his brother slung over his shoulder, unconscious. Though he could easily escape the attention of humans, Joseph knew that any glamours he cast on themselves would only draw more attention if they encountered vampires, so they kept to the shadows. Under normal circumstances, vampire encounters were no cause for concern, but the circumstances of the evening were far from normal.

Joseph jammed his thumb into his brother's mouth and pulled the corner of his top lip back to reveal a row of perfectly normal teeth. Joseph had checked several times on the short trip back to the dorms to see if anything had changed. He was disappointed each time to find that his brother still appeared to be normal. Human.

Only a few hours earlier, Eric had the trademark fangs of a vampire. The brothers had even planned to go out feeding that evening, and Joseph wistfully wondered how different his evening would be if they had simply stuck to plan.

Instead, Eric had pursued an inadvisable obsession with a girl he had just met, and now Joseph found himself lugging the unconscious consequences back to their dorm.

Joseph tried to piece together what had happened with his brother, but he really didn't know what to make of it. He knew that Taylor Bain was trouble. The first and most important rule of feeding was to not get caught. He had warned Eric that this was why he shouldn't feed on his neighbors and especially not if those neighbors seemed to be immune to his efforts to control them.

He knew Taylor was trouble, and he had cautioned Eric strongly to avoid her, but Eric was used to being able to cheat his way out of trouble. With each inspection of his brother, Joseph became more convinced that Taylor was even more trouble than he could have imagined.

Somehow, impossibly, attempting to feed on Taylor's blood had triggered a relapse that Joseph had not realized was even possible. The brothers had thought that turning vampire was a one-way trip, but Eric was a heavy lump of proof otherwise.

Joseph approached the dormitory and peered through the windows into the entrance lobby. A student sat at the front desk, staring intently at a computer monitor. He would be no trouble, Joseph thought, but there were two other figures in the lobby with their backs turned towards him. He didn't recognize either of them and decided that he didn't want to chance a possible awkward encounter with vampires.

Instead, he repositioned Eric on his shoulder with a grunt and carried him towards the fire escape at the opposite end of the building. Eric had blood on his face, and the scent of it hung heavily in the air around them. As he always did when he smelled blood, Joseph felt the tips of his fangs extend and his heartbeat speed up. Between the allure of the scent and the curiosity about Taylor, he was tempted to taste, but his brother's lifeless body proved deterrent enough. However enticing the smell, Joseph decided that he was not willing to risk sharing his brother's fate.

They approached the base of the fire escape. He wished there was some way to glamour Eric to the top, but unfortunately, illusions offered no substitute for upper body strength. He took a step onto the stairs and felt the weight of his brother shift on his shoulders. Eric had started gently snoring and was blissfully unaware of the exertions of his brother. Joseph took another step, and the stairs creaked under their weight.

Joseph closed his eyes and imagined that the area around them was muffled in silence. Satisfied that his glamour would cover the racket, he again began slowly trudging up the stairs.

There were only three flights to scale, and Joseph took comfort that though each step required effort, his increased rate of healing repaired any damage to his muscles and kept the climb from becoming unbearable. Still, he could feel an ache in his arms as he reached the third landing. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, leaning against the side of the building with his brother still in his arms.

Joseph looked through the glass pane in the door leading inside. Though the hall was empty, there were several dorm-room doors open, and he knew that probably meant that there were students inside. Joseph noted that the RA's door was closed, but that was a minor comfort. Joseph hadn't met all of his neighbors yet, but he knew that the RA, at least, wasn't a vampire.

Joseph considered leaving Eric outside while he went inside to scope out the hallway, but decided that he didn't feel comfortable with Eric's chances of being discovered left out in the open. Joseph took a deep breath, adjusted his grip, and pushed the door open with his back.

"Eric?"

The voice of Tom the RA came from behind Joseph. Joseph spun around abruptly, smacking Eric's face against the door handle as he did. Tom winced, but Joseph barely noticed.

"Joseph? Is everything okay?" Tom asked.

"What? Oh yeah, everything's, uh... fine. We're just... uh, we're just headed in for the night."

Tom gave him a skeptical look, but didn't respond for a moment, so Joseph made a step towards their room.

"Do you need a hand with him?" Tom asked.

Joseph was anxious enough to unload Eric that he considered accepting the offer for a moment but decided against involving Tom.

"No, I've got him. He's fine, just needs to get some rest."

"Yeah, he looks real tired," Tom said, leaning in to get a closer look at Eric.

Joseph felt himself tense up as Tom came closer. He realized that he hadn't thought of what to say if they were caught and that he had no real explanation for Eric's condition. He hoped that Tom did not ask.

"So is he... sleeping?" Tom asked.

Eric, as if on cue, let out a gentle snore.

"And was he in a fight before he passed out?" Tom asked.

Joseph realized that Tom was referring to the dried blood caked on Eric's chin and immediately wished he had used a glamour to hide the evidence of Eric's encounter with Taylor earlier. He chided himself for being so careless.

"Yeah," Joseph replied, trying to sound nonchalant. "Some people just can't handle their liquor!"

Joseph immediately regretted not coming up with a better explanation. He was trying to avoid drawing attention to Eric, not get him into more trouble. Besides, because of their inherent ability to heal, he had never met a vampire who "couldn't handle their liquor".

Tom stared at Joseph for a moment with a befuddled expression.

"Uh... right. Might want to take it a little easier the first week. You've got a long semester ahead at this rate," said Tom.

"I know. That's my brother for you."

"Okay, well he looks drunk, so you might want to keep him on the down-low," Tom said, leaning in a little to inspect Eric's face.

"We're headed straight for bed," Joseph replied, pulling away slightly.

"Right... I mean obviously. Well... take it easy then."

"Yeah, you too," Joseph said and then hurried to their room without looking back.
CHAPTER TEN

The freshman dining hall was located on the first floor of the Harris building and was as bleak and utilitarian as any of the facilities they had experienced so far outside of the Redmund Center.

"You'd think they'd want to offer a good first impression to the freshmen and give us the nice facilities," Taylor remarked while looking around the large windowless room.

"You'd think," Hannah replied through a mouthful of cereal. "Maybe they're trying to discourage the freshman fifteen by making the dining areas as inhospitable as possible."

"You might be on to something there," Taylor replied, pushing rubbery eggs around the plate without eating them. "That would certainly explain the food."

"Stick with cereal," said Hannah, shoveling in another mouthful. "Can't go wrong there."

"Wait, why are you eating anyway? You can't tell me the blood-eating thing is a myth. I have it on good authority otherwise."

Hannah leaned in closer to Taylor and lowered her voice.

"Keep it down, hon. Just because half the campus is undead doesn't mean that you're safe, remember? Just play ignorant. Trust me."

"Wait, what? Half?" Taylor said, even more loudly.

"I said, keep it down," hissed Hannah.

"What? In case anyone hears me talking loudly about fractions? Fine," said Taylor, lowering her voice and leaning in. "What do you mean, half?"

"Okay, half undead is an exaggeration. Let's just leave it at half non-human," Hannah said, continuing to whisper. "And we eat. We feed on blood to replenish ours, but we still need energy from somewhere. We don't photosynthesize."

"Right. Because that would be ridiculous. You cast magic memory spells and drink blood, and it's absorbing energy from the sun that is unrealistic."

"Would you just drop it? You have questions? I can answer them later."

"Fine. It's just..."

"Drop it," Hannah interrupted.

"I mean..."

"Drop it."

Hannah leaned back and resumed munching away on her cereal while Taylor went back to rearranging the food on her plate. The awkward silence was thankfully interrupted when Tom plopped down into the seat beside Hannah wearing what appeared to be his pajamas. He had on a faded grey t-shirt and loose-fitting plaid cotton pants, complimented by a serious case of bed-head.

"Hey guys!" he said. "How's it hanging?"

"Oh, it's great!" Hannah replied without a hint of her former annoyance.

Taylor marveled at how easily Hannah could put on a happy face. Taylor forced a smile. She didn't quite share Hannah's apparent ability to change her mood on a whim, but she found Tom's unassuming friendliness disarming, and her forced smile soon relaxed into a more natural one.

"Do anything interesting last night?" Tom asked before shoving a whole sausage link into his mouth.

"Oh, we just stayed in. We were up all night talking, getting to know each other," Hannah replied casually.

She seemed to have no trouble at all concealing the truth, Taylor noted. She supposed it would come naturally after however long of being an undercover vampire.

"Really?" Tom asked. "I thought I saw you and Joseph heading off somewhere. Guess that was someone else. Could've been Eric. I saw them together coming home last night. Eric seemed to be pretty zonked out."

"Yeah, must have been Eric. We're both pretty short, especially compared to Joseph," Hannah replied.

Taylor looked at Hannah's attire. Today she had chosen a sweater-vest with a pink and green southwestern pattern and matching neck scarf. Taylor had a hard time imagining that she could be mistaken for anyone, even at a distance, but Tom seemed to accept this explanation without a second thought. Could it be more vampire mind tricks? she wondered.

"You said zonked out?" Taylor asked and instantly felt a firm kick to her shin.

Hannah's expression was unchanged, though Taylor was sure she was responsible.

"I mean... I guess that's none of my business," said Taylor.

"Oh don't sweat it," Tom replied. "I shouldn't have mentioned it. Boys will be boys. I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble for going out drinking. I know, I know, I'm a terrible RA. But you can't tell guys not to do something. That's basically just daring them to do it. Besides, I figure there's no better teacher than a good hangover!"

"I'd say there's no better teacher than a good teacher, but I'm old-fashioned that way," said Hannah.

"I think there's room for both," said Taylor. "Though I can't say I've had a good teacher or a good hangover."

"Well, school's just getting started. We'll make sure we get you to experience both," said Tom.

"Minus the hangover," said Hannah.

"Yeah, minus the hangover," Taylor agreed.

"Speak of the devil. Hey Joseph!" Tom said, looking past Hannah and Taylor to Joseph who gave a half-hearted wave and then turned as if to leave.

"Come sit with us!" Tom said, gesturing towards the seat beside him.

Joseph hesitated a moment and then gave in.

"Not hungry this morning?" Tom asked, noticing that Joseph did not have any food.

"Not particularly." Joseph replied.

"So you've come here to...?"

"I was going to grab something for Eric. He's still... uh, I mean... He's not feeling well."

"Gotcha," Tom said with a wink and a smile.

Taylor caught herself grinning as well. There was something about a guy winking that made everything about him more attractive to her. Even bed-head pajama-wearing Tom. Suddenly, in fact, the whole "just woke up" look took on a whole new light. Sexy, not slovenly.

Taylor felt the color rushing to her cheeks and tried to focus intently on her food. She quickly glanced around the table to see if anyone had noticed her, but it appeared that she was safe.

Hannah seemed to be listening very carefully to the exchange between Tom and Joseph, both of whom paid no attention to the two girls.

"I think, um..." Joseph began hesitantly and then leaned forward and looked directly into Tom's eyes, "I think you should give Hannah and I a chance to talk privately."

Tom's smile faded, leaving a blank expression.

"Oh," he said. "I guess I should give you and Hannah a chance to talk privately."

He sounded robotic, a marked difference from his prior cheerful demeanor. He stood up, left his food on the table, and began to walk away wordlessly.

"Tom?" Hannah called after him.

"Yeah?" he replied, sleepily.

"Take your food with you, hon."

"Oh, okay!" he responded, sounding more himself. He grabbed his tray and waved cheerfully, again all smiles as he walked off to another table full of people, plopped down, and began chattering away.

"You don't have to enthrall people just because you can, mister," Hannah said to Joseph, pointing a finger accusingly at him. "You could just find a normal nice guy way to get some privacy. Like, you know, just waiting a minute? What is with you two? You think you're the big vampires on campus?"

"Well, can't really include my brother in that now, can you?" said Joseph.

"I can, because he most certainly does think he's the big... something on campus. We don't know for certain what has happened to him. He appears human, but that doesn't mean he is human. You'd think after spending some time as a vampire you'd come to realize that not everything is always as it appears. How old are you again?"

"Eighteen," said Joseph.

"No I don't mean how old you were when you were turned. I mean, how old are you really?"

"Still eighteen."

"Oh, right. You said your twin brother was turned months ago. Well that explains a lot."

"Hey! I'm seventeen," said Taylor. "We can't all be ancient like you."

"Well if you both want to live to see ancient, you're going to have to grow up fast," said Hannah.

"I've had to grow up fast enough, thank you very much. My parents are dead, remember?" Taylor said, and the table immediately fell quiet.

After a few minutes of awkwardness, Joseph spoke up.

"Not to make this all about me, but remember my brother? The unconscious maybe-human upstairs in our room? What am I supposed to do with him?"

"Well, did you take care of his memories?" asked Hannah.

"No, he hasn't woken up yet. He's been asleep this whole time. I don't even know if he's going to wake up. I mean, he's breathing and all, but I don't know what the hell happened to him. Taylor?" he said, glaring at her.

"What? I don't know what's going on. I didn't even believe in vampires before yesterday," Taylor insisted.

"Ironic, coming from a vampire," said Joseph.

"Half-vampire."

"How can you be a half vampire?" he asked. "Isn't every vampire a half vampire? I mean, you're always something else before you are infected."

"Cursed," said Hannah.

"What?" he asked.

"Cursed. You said infected. It is not a disease."

"Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. You use your hoodoo terms; I'll use science, thank you."

"Oh please do tell, Mr. Science. And where did you get your degree from? Vampire University? Can't be much of an institution if they confer degrees on teenagers."

"Or maybe I'm just a damned smart teenager."

"Okay you guys, can we stop fighting and go back to the 'something else' part?" interrupted Taylor.

"Something else?" asked Joseph.

"Yes, something else. You said you're always something else before you are infected. What do you mean? What else could you be besides a person?"

"Well, you could be lots of things. You could be a tree. A leprechaun even," said Joseph.

"Okay stop," said Hannah. "First of all, if it weren't for this glamour I'm maintaining right now where we're all silently chomping away at breakfast, anyone listening in would think we're either insane or dangerous depending on what they know. So let's consider our surroundings before we start blabbering away, shall we?"

"Secondly," she continued, "It's not 'lots of things'. There are a dozen things, by which I mean an actual dozen. Twelve. Four of which are extinct, including leprechauns, and trees are not on that list either, so let's not confuse her with misinformation."

"Whatever. Trees are totally on that list," muttered Joseph.

"They ARE NOT," said Hannah, raising her voice quite loudly, though no one around them seemed to notice. "You're just being RACIST."

"Hey," Joseph said as he held his hands out in a mock surrender. "I didn't say there was anything wrong with being a tree. I like trees."

Hannah took a deep breath and spoke slowly, "Okay... I'm going to ignore that statement. Taylor, there is more than just the human race. There are other... similar races. They all look human, more or less, and those that look less have learned to blend. Human vampires are the most common and the most powerful, but they rely on humans to procreate. None of the accursed can procreate."

"The infected ones are sterile, is what she means," interjected Joseph.

"Do you have to put everything in the most obnoxious way possible?" Hannah asked.

"I'm a teenager. Can't be helped, apparently."

"As I was saying, we human vampires are the most common and also the most powerful."

"That's not what I hear," Joseph interrupted again. "I heard that red caps are pretty nasty."

"Also pretty extinct, so the point is moot," Hannah replied impatiently.

"Wait, you are going to have to slow down," said Taylor. "I'm still adjusting to vampires. Now there's trees and ... I mean, er... well, whatever the non-offensive versions of trees are. And now red... caps? As in hats?"

"Yes, as in hats," replied Joseph. "Scary undead leprechauns in red headgear. Nasty stuff."

"They don't wear red hats. Red cap is just a name, and the red refers to the blood that is constantly dripping off their clothes from their homicidal sprees," clarified Hannah.

"That's right, murderous midgets! Be afraid. Be very afraid!" taunted Joseph.

"You wouldn't be afraid if you met a red cap, Joseph, you'd just be dead. And they were not midgets, they were shape-shifters. They were only small if they chose to be. Otherwise they were perfectly normal-sized. Which is all besides the point because there hasn't been a red cap or a leprechaun for at least a century now. They're both extinct, and can we please get back to the point?" insisted Hannah.

"Which is?" asked Taylor.

"Which is," continued Hannah, "that we don't have time for history lessons and this isn't really the place for it either, because we have a comatose maybe-human upstairs, and Joseph needs to go take care of it."

"Him," Joseph corrected. "Not 'it'. Him. And he is not my responsibility."

"You want me to go take care of it?" asked Hannah.

"HIM," Joseph said, standing up abruptly.

"Hey look, I didn't mean..." Hannah called after him as he stormed towards the door, but he didn't slow down or turn to look behind him.

"Ah well," Hannah said, her cheerful smile returning. "We can follow up on that later. You gonna eat any of that or just play with it?"

"What? Oh. Yeah, I guess I'm not that hungry. This is all sort of... a lot. Do you mind if we just chill out for a bit?" asked Taylor.

"If by chill out you mean go to our freshman orientation class, then I think that's a great idea!"

"Wait, I thought class started next Monday?"

"Monday is when the academic classes start. This is like homeroom. What would you do without me, Taylor? Come on, we've still got like an hour to get ready. Let's swing back to the dorm first. Okay, hon?"

"Okay," Taylor replied half-heartedly and gathered her tray of mostly uneaten food.

She supposed it would be nice to have something normal to take her mind off things. Usually a new class would make her nervous, but after her experiences over the last 24 hours, a regular classroom didn't seem quite so scary.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Joseph opened the door to his room slowly so as not to wake his brother, but Eric was already sitting up on the edge of his bed. His head was buried in his hands, and he did not move as Joseph entered the room.

"You okay, man?" Joseph asked.

Eric remained motionless and said nothing. Joseph sat down gently next to his brother and reached to put his arm around him, but Eric jerked away from his touch and slid down along the edge of the bed so that he was just out of reach. He still did not speak.

"Eric, we need to talk," said Joseph.

"Do we? What exactly do we need to talk about?"

"Don't be stupid. You know what we need to talk about."

"Do I? Do I know what we need to talk about? Or do I know what you need to talk about? I cannot possibly imagine what you would have to say that would be of any use to me right now."

"You're probably right. But I could listen. You can't tell me nothing is wrong."

Eric didn't respond to this and resumed staring at the floor.

"Eric, look at me," said Joseph softly.

"Make me."

"You know I can."

"And that is exactly the problem now, isn't it? Now that I'm... whatever I am and you're not... I can't trust anything I say or do or even think when I'm around you, now can I? I might as well be your puppet. So make me look at you. Make me talk to you. Make me do whatever you want. Make me think whatever you want."

"I wouldn't do that, Eric. You know I don't believe in that. You're the one who got yourself into this situation by trying to manipulate others."

"Of course not. Always on your high horse. You finally have the opportunity to get what you want from me, and all you can think to do is remind me how morally superior you are. Well, thanks. Message received. You win at life," Eric said while still staring at the ground.

"Will you just look at me? Look, I'm sorry. I'm not here to lecture you. We've both used our... powers, I guess, to manipulate others. We have to to survive. But I won't use them on you, regardless of what Hannah wants me to do."

"Wait, what?" said Eric, finally looking up. "What does Hannah want you to do?"

"She wants me to clear your memory of last night. Actually not just last night, of being turned in general."

"Oh. Well, I guess that would be merciful at least. If I'm going to be human, might as well not know any better," Eric said with a look of defeat on his face.

"I don't think she intended to be merciful, Eric," Joseph replied, inching a little closer to his brother. "She seems really protective of Taylor. I think she knows more about her than she lets on."

"Like why Taylor looks like human, but tastes like vampire?"

"Well yes, that, but I think more importantly, she might have some idea of what has happened to you. And maybe what we can do to fix it."

"Fix it? Being a vampire is a curse, right? Accursed ones and all that. I should be thrilled to be cured, right? Yaaay," said Eric weakly, pantomiming as if he was shaking pom-poms in the air.

"I don't really think curse is the right word," said Joseph.

"Oh, right, science guy. Infected. Diseased."

"I don't think that's right either. It's just... it's like a condition. No, not a condition. That still sounds like an illness. Just a different way of being. Like being gay."

"Right, if you could get infected with gay. How very un-PC of you, little brother. Is that what happened to you, Joe? Did you get infected by a gay?"

"A gay person, not a gay. Gay is not a noun. And I'm not your little anything. Just because you popped out first does not change the fact that I'm taller than you. And no, it's not a perfect metaphor. I just think it's something that can't be helped. It's not right or wrong, it just is. And it can't be cured."

"Can't it?" asked Eric. "I seemed to be pretty well and cured. I should write a book. I'm Ex-Vampire and So Can You! I'll be rich. There's my consolation prize in all this."

"Let's not jump to any conclusions. This could all be temporary. I don't really think you want to stay this way, do you?"

"I... dunno... no. I feel... weak. Stupid."

"Well, that was always the case. I'm talking about the vampire thing," Joseph said, nudging his brother playfully in the arm with his fist.

Eric gave a weak attempt at a smile.

"I may be the thick one, but you were always the weakling," Eric countered.

"No and also, no. You are forgetting that I'm a full inch taller than you. I could take you in a second."

"Well, now you could. But only because you can cheat."

"Oh please. That's always how I've won. This doesn't change anything!"

"This... But Joseph, what is this?"

"Whatever it is, Eric, you know we're in it together. We always have been. Since the day we were born."

"As humans or as vampires?"

"Both. All of the above. Always."

Joseph slid closer to Eric and this time his brother did not move away from him. Joseph put his arm around his brother and pulled him close. Eric did not resist this time and let his head fall onto Joseph's shoulder.

"So what are we going to do, little brother?" Eric asked.

"I think you should just focus on surviving school right now. It just got a lot tougher. Let me see what I can find out from Hannah. I'll tell her that I cleared your memory, so you just need to need to act like it. Lay low. Study."

"Whoa there, buddy. Let's not get carried away. Lay low, I can do. Lie, I can do. But studying is where I draw the line. You're just going to have to glamour all my homework for me. It's the least you can do."

"The least," said Joseph, gently squeezing his brother's shoulder.

Neither of them spoke any further. Neither of them had what they would have considered easy lives, but as twins they always felt fortunate to have each other. In these moments they felt safe. Connected. There was nothing that could be said that would change how they felt about each other. Nothing that needed to be said.
CHAPTER TWELVE

"So the eyes," said Taylor as she and Hannah walked towards their first freshman orientation class.

"Hm?" said Hannah, who had been cheerfully humming as she walked.

"The eyes. What was up with Eric's eyes? I saw something before. Like a shadow. Especially when he was trying to... thrall me?"

"Enthrall. Thrall is what you are in when you are enthralled. Get it? A vampire will ENthrall you to put you IN thrall. He was trying to enthrall you. Make sense?"

"I guess so. I mean, at least grammatically. So en... enthralling does something to your eyes?"

"Oh, not at all," said Hannah matter-of-factly. "You were just seeing through the glamour. Glamours generally work on everyone, but vampires... well, vampires and you, apparently, are more... aware of them. You can see the cracks in the seams as it were. When you saw the shadows in his eyes, you were simply noticing his actual eyes and not the glamour."

"Wait, so he doesn't have blue eyes? I knew they were too dreamy to be true."

"Did you just say dreamy?"

"Ew. No, I mean, yes, but... ew. That is definitely not how I feel now. Ew."

"Well, I'm sure dreamy was what he was going for, so no need to beat yourself up over that. But no, his eyes aren't blue. They're black, in fact. They say your eyes are the window to your soul. I don't know about that, but they are your best clue to a person's true identity. It is the weakest part of a personal glamour, so always look at the eyes."

"So does that mean..." Taylor stopped short with a gasp.

Where Hannah's normally unassuming brown eyes had been, Taylor saw solid black with nothing distinguishing the pupil from the rest of the eye.

"Okay, stop that. Put it back," Taylor said after taking a moment to overcome the shock. "It's creepy."

"Gee thanks. I'm sorry my appearance is so unsettling for you. But I didn't do anything. Apparently you are quite perceptive."

"Sorry, I..."

"Look, it's no big deal. It's weird. I get that. See, the trick to seeing past a glamour is simply knowing that it's a glamour. If you know exactly what is behind the glamour, it's even easier, but just knowing that it's a glamour can be enough to unravel it. Since you correctly surmised that my eyes are black, you were able to see right through it. Congratulations!"

The combination of Hannah's smile and her midnight black eyes was completely unsettling to Taylor, and she made a point to look very intently around her at the buildings, sidewalk, cars, passersby, and anything else that wasn't Hannah's face.

"Still creeped out, huh?" Hannah asked.

"No, it's just..." Taylor said, at a loss for words.

"No, it's just yes. I get it. You can still see the glamour if you want. It's still there. It's all about seeing what you want to see now. The truth or the lie. You can pick."

"How?"

"Well, it can take a little practice, but you seem like a quick study."

They reached an intersection where the crosswalk sign was red, but the traffic flow was light, and the pedestrians around them continued to cross. Hannah held out her hand to stop Taylor as she began to step into the street. Hannah pointed at the light.

"Really? I think it's safe to cross," said Taylor.

"Rules are rules. We have to respect them. We, especially. Let the humans break their little rules. You should always follow them. Always."

"Um, okay..."

"I mean it, Taylor. There are those who are watching for people like us to make exceptions of ourselves. There are keepers of order. You do not want to be the exception."

"Well, isn't everyone else crossing right now? By following rules that everyone else isn't, aren't we being exactly the exception we aren't supposed to be?"

"Huh. All right, smarty-pants. We can cross."

"Thanks Mom. Light's green now anyway."

Taylor hurried to keep a step ahead of Hannah. She felt deeply uncomfortable looking at those eyes and wanted an excuse to not make eye contact.

The building they were headed to was just on the other side of the street. Their classroom was on the first floor and easy to find as there were several sets of double doors all labeled with the same room number. As they entered, Taylor realized that she had been picturing a high school classroom with rows of a couple dozen desks. This was nothing at all like what she had imagined. This was more like a movie theater with each set of double doors opening up to its own aisle with rows upon rows of cushioned seats all arching around a low stage and a movie theater-like screen.

There had to be hundreds of seats, if not thousands, Taylor guessed, though only dozens of students scattered about among them.

Hannah, as Taylor might have predicted, marched straight for the front row. Taylor would've preferred a seat far less distinct, maybe halfway back and a little to the side, but Hannah was as forward with her seat selection as she was with her introductions. Resigned, Taylor followed close behind and sat next to her.

"How is sitting in the front row not being the exception? We're the only ones up here," Taylor whispered to Hannah, careful not to make eye contact.

"Sitting in the front row is perfectly normal. There's no reason not to be exceptional, just because we're not being the exception," Hannah whispered back.

"That... that makes no sense," replied Taylor, looking around to confirm that they were the only ones sitting in the front row.

"Sure it does," Hannah said confidently and pulled out her notebook.

She wrote very neatly in the top corner:

Hannah Cohen

FROS 101 - Freshman Orientation

And then, at the top center of the page:
NOTES

"Do we really need to take notes for this class? Is this even actually a class?" asked Taylor.

"Well, we are in college now, hon. Time to start building good habits!"

"Right. Can I, um, borrow a piece of paper? And a, um... pen?"

"I see we definitely have some building to do!" Hannah handed Taylor a notebook and pen.

"I'm not usually this unprepared. I've just had a lot going on."

"Oh, I know." Hannah patted Taylor reassuringly on the shoulder. "I bet being a student is the last thing on your mind right now. But don't lose focus! We have plenty of time to get you adjusted to your... situation. But class won't wait!"

"Guess not," Taylor said glumly.

"This seat taken?" said a voice from behind them.

Taylor turned to see Joseph pointing at the empty seat next to Hannah's. All Taylor could pay any attention to were his eyes. They were as black as Hannah's. Taylor felt a chill run up her spine, and she shivered noticeably.

"Are you... okay?" Joseph asked.

"Oh she's fine," Hannah said. "It's just your eyes. Here, have a seat."

Hannah patted the seat next to her invitingly, and Joseph accepted her invitation.

"My eyes? What's wrong with them?"

"Oh nothing, dear," Hannah reassured him. "She just can see them."

"Oh. Sorry about that."

"Oh there's nothing to apologize for! You know how it goes. Adjustment period and all."

"Right."

"Yeah, no big deal," added Taylor, making a point to stare straight ahead. Never mind the small matter of his brother trying to eat her last night, she thought.

"You'll be able to turn it off with practice," he said, leaning towards her.

"That's what I hear," Taylor stiffened a little as he got closer.

Seeing her discomfort, he leaned back in his seat.

Looking over at Hannah's paper, he asked, "Are we supposed to take notes?"

"Well, we are in college," Hannah replied. "Let me guess, you didn't bring any note-taking materials either. Lot going on, right? It's a good thing I come prepared. Here you go."

With that, she produced another notebook and pen for Joseph.

"Yeah, prepared enough for a crowd, it appears," said Taylor.

"That's me!" Hannah agreed.

"All right everybody!" came a booming voice from the back of the room.

Taylor turned to see that the same older man who had barged in on them their first night at the pizza dinner was walking down the aisle. Taylor's heart sank.

"There are several hundred seats and about fifty of you," he continued loudly as he walked. "So of course being the little snowflakes that you are, you all have to sit in such a manner as to be as equidistant from your neighbors as possible. Must be individuals, right?"

He slammed the binder he was carrying on the podium at the front of the room.

"Equidistant. As in equally distant. Meaning that you are too spread out."

"He sounds fun," Joseph whispered to Hannah.

"So, if you will kindly take the hint and come occupy the first three rows, then I would be most obliged. I am sure you will enjoy the company of Mr. Chatty Chat-a-lot here in the first row who so clearly feels that he deserves to be the center of attention that he has the nerve to both occupy the front row and then chatter away as if he selected the back."

Joseph slumped in his seat, clearly embarrassed.

"Yes, I am talking about you, boy. What is your name?"

"Me?" asked Joseph, pointing to himself.

"No, the other boy in the front row."

Despite the obvious sarcasm, Joseph looked nervously to his side before replying.

"It's, uh... Joseph."

"And...?" the man said after staring back at Joseph for what felt like several minutes.

"And... I'm from Boston?"

"What a fantastic piece of historical trivia, Mr. Joseph. I will be sure that it is included in your biography. Consider that perhaps when I ask for your name, I in fact want the entirety of your name and not half of it with added backstory."

"Yeah, he's real fun!" Hannah whispered to Taylor, except she sounded sincere where Joseph was sarcastic.

Taylor waited for the teacher to scold her as well, but he didn't seem to notice. Taylor remembered breakfast where Hannah had mentioned using a glamour to hide their conversation and wondered if this is what had just happened here. Or, she supposed, it was more likely that his attention was focused on Joseph, though she was quickly learning not to take anything at face value.

"Joseph Evans, sir."

"Joseph Evans..." the man repeated, while looking down at his binder. "Ah yes. Unfortunately, you are in the right place. How disappointing. Any relation to an Eric Evans? Eric Evans. How charmingly alliterative. Is Eric here?"

"Uh no, sir. I mean, yes, we are related, but no, he is not here."

"How terribly disappointing for all of us that we are only graced with one Evans today. Since there are only three sessions of this class, I'm sure that he won't mind that missing one third of it will most surely ensure his failure."

Taylor noted that his expression seemed awfully smug for one who claimed disappointment.

"I, uh... I have a doctor's note, sir," Joseph said while pulling a blank sheet of paper from Hannah's notebook.

He approached the podium hesitantly and handed it to the teacher, who looked at it for a few moments and handed it back.

"Very well. Please do pass along my wishes for a speedy recovery," he said flatly.

"Yes, sir," Joseph replied and returned quickly to his seat.

"And make sure he gets a copy of the syllabus. I will excuse his absence, but he gets no free pass on the work."

"Yes sir," said Joseph.

"Now that you've all found more appropriate seats, we can proceed as if you are attending a real university-level course. My name is Dr. Alistair Dean. I am the dean of the freshman class. I can see your little gears turning right now so let me alleviate you of any notions that you are clever. Call me 'Dean Dean', and you will receive an F. I am Dr. Dean or simply the Dean, but never Dean Dean. Is that clear?"

There were uncomfortable nods, but no one had the nerve to speak up.

"As I have already indicated, this is, in fact, a real course, and you will receive, in fact, a real grade. Judging from the looks of you, many of them will not be the ones that you are accustomed to. There will be homework. The homework is indicated on your syllabi." Dr. Dean gestured towards a stack of papers besides him.

"My TA, Alexander, will assist now by distributing them. Alexander here will be the one grading your assignments, so I will suggest that if you have any questions, that you ask him and do not bother me with them."

He said this while gesturing to a tall slender dark-haired boy sitting off to the side. Taylor hadn't noticed him and was surprised to note that the one handling their assignments looked as young as she was, if not younger. He stood up and waved.

"Just Alex is fine. And unlike Dean Dean here, I'm always happy to help," he said, to which Dr. Dean gave an audible harrumph. "My office hours are listed in the syllabus along with my email and phone number, so don't hesitate to reach out."

"Do not follow Alexander's example, students. In any respect. He is not receiving a grade for this, though he does forget that there are... other consequences," said the Dean.

Alex seemed not to notice, however, and instead went about cheerfully handing out the syllabus. He had a disarming smile, and he maintained it the entire time he handed out the syllabus to each student. Perhaps it was merely in contrast to the stern Dean, thought Taylor, but Alex had an extremely comforting presence. She was glad it was him that her grade depended on and not the Dean.

"Now, if you will follow along, I will go over the expectations of this course with you. It is only three days, but it will lay the foundation of the rest of your academic career here at VanCamp. I do not..." He paused to look them each in the eyes, his gaze sweeping slowly over the auditorium. "I do not recommend taking this lightly."

He then proceeded to go over those expectations by slowly reading the syllabus verbatim. This took the better part of a half hour, and Taylor wondered if this was efficient use of time for a three session course but didn't feel inclined to question him. His expectations seemed to have far more to do with behavior than anything to do with orientation or academics.

It was only after a page-long sermon on plagiarism ("it will not be tolerated"), another on tardiness ("it will not be tolerated"), and a third on speaking when not spoken to ("it will not be tolerated"), that he finally arrived at the assignments.

For such a strict and unpleasant man, the homework itself was surprisingly flimsy, involving such things as visiting the library and interviewing classmates, but this was explained when the Dean assured them that these requirements were standardized and that he reserved the right to give "additional assignments based on your performance."

Taylor resolved to perform as well as possible.

When the Dean reached the end of the syllabus, he looked up and asked, "So, are there any questions?"

He said this with a look that did not particularly invite participation, and no one raised their hands.

"Very good," he said coldly. "If you do come up with any questions, as I'm sure you will—freshman can't seem to do anything without hand-holding—then Alexander is here to assist you. Please do avail yourself of his services before bothering me... any more than you already do."

With that, he slammed his binder closed, grabbed his briefcase from the podium, and exited the room without saying another word.

Once the door shut behind him, Taylor leaned towards Hannah, still not making eye contact.

"So, I guess that was it?" Taylor asked.

"Guess so," Hannah replied.

"Only three sessions and he spends one of them reading directly from a syllabus that he has already given us?"

"Yeah, welcome to college!"

"Yeah, welcome," said Joseph. "So glad we came."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"So, guys," said Hannah as they all stood outside in front of the classroom, "guess we should get started on these assignments, right? How's your brother, Joseph? He up to joining us?"

"I um...," Joseph began, shuffling nervously, "I mean, don't you think that would be weird?"

"Yes!" said Taylor quickly. "Hannah, really. I know you like everyone, but I just don't think Eric and I are going to be friends. He tried to attack me."

"Assuming Joseph did his job," said Hannah, looking at Joseph who nodded in agreement, "that version of Eric is no longer with us. We all have to act like nothing happened."

"That's all fine and good, but before 'nothing' happened, I was still not interested in hanging out with him. I mean... okay fine. I was a little. But I promise you that moment has passed. Way passed. I 'm sorry Joseph, it's just..."

"Say no more," said Joseph. "I love him, but I don't want to be around him most times either. Besides, I need to get this syllabus to him. Apparently it is of most grave importance according to Dean Dean."

"Careful," said Hannah. "You never know who is listening."

"Right, well gotta go. I'm sorry about Eric. I really am. I wouldn't blame you for not wanting to talk to him ever, but he's not so bad. He's just had a rough go of things."

Taylor didn't know what to say to this. She had no interest in giving Eric another chance, but she didn't blame Joseph for his brother either. So, she said nothing.

"So, bye...?" said Joseph, stepping backwards tentatively.

"Yeah, bye," said Taylor.

"See ya!" added Hannah. "Maybe we can hook up later for this interview assignment?"

"Yeah, that would be cool," said Joseph, and then he was gone.

"So, I'm thinking we should check out the library bit first," suggested Hannah.

"Oh?" said Taylor, not really paying attention as she watched Joseph walk off in the distance. "I guess Joseph seems nice enough. I would just as soon not have anything to do with either of them, really. I'm really not one of those people who needs this much attention."

"The library it is!" said Hannah, ignoring her. "It's right next to the science building, so we can kill two birds with one stone!"

She started off in that direction.

"Wait," Taylor said, while hurrying to keep up. "What is in the science building?"

"Science stuff," Hannah replied, as if the answer was obvious.

"What do we need science stuff for?"

"We're going to do science on you!"

"Oh, obviously," Taylor said glumly. "What are you going to do? Dissect me?"

"Good idea!" Hannah teased. "Hurry up. We haven't got all day!"

"Haven't we?"

"I thought if we finished up our assignments we could spend some time testing out your abilities."

"Do I... have abilities?"

"You might. Your blood certainly does seem special."

"What kind of abilities?"

"Well that remains to be seen, doesn't it? All the more incentive to get moving. Come on!"

Hannah picked up her already brisk pace, and Taylor felt she had no reason not to just keep up. This whole situation up until now just seemed inconvenient and unfair, but the idea of having abilities did a great deal to improve her outlook.

***

Joseph had been walking briskly to put some distance between himself and Taylor. He felt guilty being around her, though he had no reason to. Eric's actions were his own, but Joseph still felt a kind of responsibility for him. They were, after all, all each other had. When he turned the corner, and they were out of sight, he slowed down a bit.

"Hey there!" came a voice shouting from behind him. Joseph didn't turn to look at first, and then he heard:

"Hey! Joseph! Wait up!"

It was Tom, who was waving his hands wildly and half-running towards him. His brownish-red hair was as much a mess as it had been at breakfast, and he was still wearing the same cotton pajama pants. He had swapped the flip-flops he had on earlier for sneakers, and Joseph supposed this was Tom's idea of getting dressed. Joseph found himself smiling at Tom's perpetual lack of self-consciousness.

"Nice PJ's," said Joseph as Tom caught up with him, breathing heavily.

"Thanks," Tom replied between breaths. "That's the joy of college, man. If you change out of your pajamas before noon, you're doing it wrong."

"Unless you have class, I assume."

"Especially if you have class, my friend. You'll see."

"Well they're cute. The pants I mean," said Joseph.

Cute? You just called your RA's pajamas cute? Joseph thought to himself. Who are you?

"I know, right? And comfy," Tom replied, apparently thinking nothing of it. "So how's your roommate doing?"

"He's all right. Little hung-over, I guess," said Joseph, remembering his cover story from before. "Wait... oh man. He's going to kill me for telling the RA that."

"Look," said Tom, looking serious for a change. "You're in college. You're going to party. Not my thing, but whatever it is you guys were up to, my motto is 'ignorance is bliss'. Just don't bring it into the dorms and it's not my problem. Cool?"

"Yeah, cool," replied Joseph, nervously scratching the back of his neck. "It's not really our thing either. Just, you know, first night on campus and all."

"Say no more," Tom said, patting Joseph on the back. "So what are you up to?"

"Was just going to check on Eric."

"Oh, I'm sure he's fine. Come on, let's go grab something to eat."

"Didn't you just have breakfast, like, two hours ago?"

"Yeah man, now it's time for brunch! It's an unlimited-use dining card. If you're not eating all the meals, then you're doing it wrong!"

"Seems like there's quite a lot of things to worry about doing wrong here."

Tom laughed at this. "If you're worried about doing it wrong," he said, "you're doing it wrong. No worries, man. Stick with me. You'll figure it out!"

Joseph had to admit to himself that Tom was much more pleasant to be around than his brother, so he agreed.

"Okay, well I don't want to be doing it wrong," said Joseph.

"Course not. C'mon!" said Tom, squeezing Joseph's shoulder firmly for a moment.

Joseph found this oddly friendly, but Tom had such an easy demeanor that it made it seem like a perfectly natural thing to do, so Joseph did not object.

***

Intrigued about the possibility of having special abilities, Taylor convinced Hannah to visit the science building before the library on their way to the main part of campus. By virtue of its central location, the science building had the benefit of being one of the few not-ugly buildings on campus. It wasn't quite as historically memorable as the administrative building or library, but it was also not as utilitarian as the dorms were.

Over the massive double doors were carved various old science-related tools in a large circular emblem. There were a protractor, compass, telescope, and flask, all resting on a large open book. Above them, decidedly less science-y, thought Taylor, was a snake wrapped around an open-mouthed skull.

Hannah struggled a little to push open the large wood and steel door, and they entered into a small entry foyer with an old worn desk in the corner. A security guard sat behind it, slumped over and half-asleep. Hannah walked straight for him, but he didn't acknowledge her.

"Excuse me," said Hannah, extending her hand to shake his.

"Mm?" he mumbled, staring at her hand and making no effort to return the gesture.

"Excuse me," Hannah repeated, unfazed. "I'm going to need unrestricted and uninterrupted access to one of your biology labs. Preferably something in the life or medical sciences. Anatomy would be ideal. Or perhaps somewhere where frog dissecting happens?"

"Here you go," the guard said, tossing a ring loaded with a jumble of old-fashioned and new-looking keys across the desk towards her.

"Uh huh," said Hannah. "Well you're a quick one, I see. Let me break it down for you, hon. I need you," she said, pointing at the guard, "to stand up..."

He stood.

"...take the keys,..."

He picked up the key ring.

"...and escort my friend and I to an anatomy lab. That's A-NAT-O-MY. Do you know what that means?"

"Yes, miss," he replied.

"Excellent, now hop to it," she said while clapping her hands lightly.

"This anatomy lab... Would it be in use right now?" she asked as they followed him through a side door and down a hall.

"We don't have an anatomy lab, miss," he replied.

"Then where are we going, hon?" she asked, her impatience creeping into her tone.

"To the frogs, miss. You said you wanted to dissect frogs, right?"

"Not exactly, but we'll go with that for now. Thank you, sir."

Taylor stepped close to Hannah and whispered, "Why is he being so helpful?"

"Oh, he's in thrall, dear," replied Hannah. "He seems to require a bit more... specificity in his instructions than most, but he's getting the job done."

"I thought you had to look into their eyes. He didn't make any eye contact with you until he was already standing."

"Oh no, the eyes have nothing to do with it. It's a common misconception. People place all sorts of importance on the eyes, but it's really just all in your head."

"But I thought you said to always look at the eyes."

"You're paying attention. That's good! The eyes will tell you if someone is cursed or not."

"Cursed?"

"Right. Cursed, remember? Vampires, etc."

"Etcetera?"

"Well, there are many more accursed races than humans as I mentioned earlier. Oh, and there's gargoyles too. They cannot be cursed, but they have the black eyes of an accursed. Don't worry about them, though, you're not likely to meet any of those. And they'd never let you see their real eyes in any case. They use good old-fashioned shape-shifting to hide their true appearance."

"You have got to be kidding me. First leprechauns, now gargoyles?"

"I know, I know. Too much useless information. Ancient history and trivia, really. You've got a lot to learn about things that actually matter first, like... Oh, it looks like we're here."

"Here you go, miss," said the guard.

"Now when I said uninterrupted, what I meant is that I want you to stand outside and make sure no one interrupts us. Do you follow?"

"Yes, miss."

"Uh huh," said Hannah, looking unconvinced. "Let's do this quickly, Taylor, so we don't have to put his understanding to the test."

"Agreed," said Taylor, following Hannah into the room.

"So I guess this is where the frogs are," Hannah said, looking around the room which turned out to be not at all an anatomy lab, but rather a supply closet. "This is probably even better. Maybe that guy isn't quite so dim, after all."

"I don't know if I'd say that," said Taylor, running her hands along the rows of cream-colored bottles that all looked the same except for the various colors of labels. "What are we looking for exactly?

"Definitely this," said Hannah, holding up a scalpel in a sealed plastic pouch.

"Wait, what? What do you need that for?" said Taylor, taking a step back.

"For..." Hannah said and then paused while quietly scanning the room for a minute and then lifting what looked like a bulk-size pickle jar from the corner, "...this!"

Hannah loosened the lid, and a pungent odor filled the room. She lifted out a frog corpse and plopped it into a large beaker along with the scalpel.

"Are we really dissecting frogs now? I thought that was just a cover story."

"Why would I need a cover story? He won't remember any of this, and clearly we needed to be direct with him. Who knows where we would've ended up otherwise. Now for you we need..."

Hannah was quiet again as she scanned the room.

"Some of these!" she said triumphantly while dumping two packets that looked similar to the scalpel packages into the beaker.

Taylor picked up the beaker and looked inside. Hannah had added two packaged syringes to the collection.

"You are not using these on me," said Taylor, shaking her head as Hannah dropped a small bottle of alcohol in the beaker.

"Would you prefer the scalpel?" Hannah asked while rummaging in the corner. "Ah ha!"

Hannah added a bag of cotton and a roll of tape to the collection.

"I think I'd prefer an explanation before we add any more sharp implements to the collection," said Taylor.

"I told you, we're going to do science! I'm quite good at science. I worked for a scientist around the 19th century."

"That's not that comfort... wait, the 19th century? How old are you, exactly?"

"Old enough," replied Hannah, tossing a few more random supplies in the beaker: tweezers and other things that Taylor didn't recognize.

"Dates become sort of trivial after a while," she continued.

"I didn't think women worked in labs around the turn of the century."

"Sure they did. I was the maid!"

"So, you worked for a scientist by sweeping his floors?"

"You got it! Don't worry, you learn a lot through proximity, especially if you're trying. Now, we just need a... here we go! A microscope. The ones back in my day didn't plug in," said Hannah, fumbling with the cord, "But I'm sure the principle's the same!"

She grabbed the beaker from Taylor and handed her the microscope.

"Here, you carry this," said Hannah.

"So we're just going to carry these around the library?"

"Oh right, the library. Usually I'm the one who's prepared. How embarrassing. Guess we'll have to swing back by the dorms to drop these off. Unless..."

Hannah scanned the closet and then said, "Nope. Don't really see anything to carry these in. Back to the dorms it is. It's only a couple blocks."

They stepped out from the closet, and Taylor closed the door lightly behind them. The security guard was still standing outside, though he looked as inattentive as ever, slumped against the wall with his chin resting on his chest and his hat pulled down over his eyes.

"Okay, we're done. You can lock up now," Hannah said to him, but he didn't respond.

"Are you sleeping?" she asked, speaking more loudly now.

He jerked to attention.

"Mm?" he mumbled.

"Goodness," Hannah said to Taylor. "I guess I should have specified that he stay awake. You wouldn't think you'd have to spell these things out to a security guard."

"We are DONE NOW," Hannah said loudly. "You can GO BACK TO WORK."

The guard shrugged and locked the door behind them and then sauntered down the hall.

"Whatever work means to you," Hannah muttered and then followed behind.

***

"So, how's your brother doing?" Tom asked Joseph, his mouth full of cereal.

"He's uh... okay. Little bit of a headache, I guess," said Joseph, who was feeling like he wasn't sounding very convincing.

"That's good. I have to say, though, that I've never seen a drunk vampire before."

Joseph dropped his spoon and it hit the floor with a clatter. He quickly picked it up again, trying to act nonchalant about it.

"How did you...?"Joseph began.

"Hold on, hold on, please don't try to enthrall me," insisted Tom, waving his hands defensively. "I'm not going to tell anyone. I just don't like lying and well... I think we both know he wasn't drunk."

"I guess we do," said Joseph slowly.

His impulse was to immediately seize control of the situation using his abilities, but he also felt an immediate sense of relief to have the air clear. Joseph didn't like having to lie either.

"Look, I don't need to know what happened. I just wanted to know that you guys were okay. Genuinely."

"We are," said Joseph, relaxing further. "So how did you...?"

"Know? I've been doing this RA thing for a couple years now, and I see you guys all the time. You may not believe it, but I'm a perceptive guy. It's hard not to have your job be to babysit others and not start to notice your students'... idiosyncrasies."

"So, you just kind of... picked up on it?"

"I know what you're thinking, but you can see from my eyes that I'm not a vampire, right?"

Joseph looked closely. Tom's eyes were as green as Joseph's were blue, but Tom was clearly not cheating. Tom had been blessed with two of the most beautiful green eyes he had ever seen, thought Joseph. Suddenly self-conscious that he was staring, he turned away slightly.

"See? I'm not a threat to you. And I've got your back. I can tell you're a nice guy, and whatever happened to your brother, it's good to see that he's got someone besides his RA to look over him. Because God knows, you guys can be a handful," Tom said, shoveling another heaping spoonful of cereal into his mouth. "No offense."

"None taken," replied Joseph. "Because I really can't disagree with you."

"Good. Because I'm in charge of your floor and disagreeing is not allowed," Tom said with a wink.

Joseph felt his heart race at this gesture and made a point of looking very intently at his food as he ate. Joseph wondered if Tom was perceptive enough to see the effect he was having on him, but when Joseph looked up, Tom was happily digging away at his cereal, probably not noticing his reactions at all. It was nice not having to hide from humans for a change, and Joseph was grateful.

He was beginning to relax and might have even forgotten the stresses of the last few days for a moment if Eric's appearance at the entrance of the cafeteria didn't bring him back to reality. Joseph stifled a sigh as he watched his brother approach them.

"Anyone sitting here?" Eric asked, gesturing to the seat beside Tom.

"Naw, man. Go right ahead," said Tom.

"Thanks."

"Were you going to get anything to eat?" asked Joseph.

"Already ate," replied Eric. "I was looking for you."

"I have a phone, you know."

"So?"

"So what's up?" asked Joseph.

"We need to talk. Can you... you know?" Eric said while waving his hands at Tom.

"Enthrall me?" Tom suggested.

"Wait, what? But you're... you're not..." Eric stammered.

"A vampire? No. And neither are you, which is strange, because I could've sworn..."

"Joseph," Eric interrupted, "please, can you do something about this... this... RA person? We need to talk."

"I can still hear you, you know," said Tom.

"Yeah, Eric. You don't have to be such a jerk. And unlike you, I don't go around enthralling everyone all the time."

"Oh great. Now I get another sermon from Saint Joseph of Vampiria. If you want me to leave you so that you can make googly eyes at your new boyfriend, have at it. I'll just go take my life crisis elsewhere."

"Dammit, Eric," Joseph said, slamming his fist on the table. "You know he's not my boyfriend. You're just trying to embarrass me."

"And it's not working. You have nothing to be embarrassed about," said Tom. "If you guys want to have a vampire heart to heart, I don't mind. Er... or a vampire to... not vampire?"

"I used to be one," said Eric. "You weren't imagining things. And now I am not one, and it's kind of a stressful situation for me and no offense, Tom, but I'd kind of like to talk to my brother privately about it."

"Oh NOW you mean no offense," said Joseph, with a scowl.

"Hey hey, guys. No offense taken. I can imagine whatever happened to make you an... ex-vampire must have been pretty traumatic. Wait, what happened, exactly? I've never heard of an ex-vampire."

"It's a long story," replied Eric.

"Ah, say no more. I'm not trying to pry. I'll give you guys some privacy," Tom said, picking up his food and wandering off to another table.

"Thanks, jerkface," Joseph said once Tom was out of earshot.

"What? Was he really your boyfriend? Go get him, Tiger!"

"No. And it's not likely to happen with you chasing him off like that."

"So you're interested?"

"I didn't say that."

"It would explain why you're blabbing our secrets to him. Why did you tell him that we are... er... and were vampires?"

"I didn't. He figured it out."

"But he's not...?"

"No, he's not. But he's been an RA before, and he's had vampire freshmen before, and he's smart, so he figured it out."

"Smart, huh? You sound interested to me."

"Shut up."

"Right. Well, setting your romantic life aside for a moment, I need to talk about me."

"Don't you always?"

"Of course. So, I think I'm going to drop out."

"Drop out? We haven't even started yet."

"Yeah, well, the whole plan was to chill, game the system, meet some hotties..."

"That was your plan," interrupted Joseph. "I thought I might actually learn something."

"Of course you did. We are talking about me, though, remember? I just... This changes everything. You know that."

"I do know that. But where does that leave me?"

"You can still do the learning thing. You're still a vampire. You have everything you need to get by. Me, on the other hand..."

"I don't have everything. I need you. You owe it to me at the very least. My whole life got turned upside down because of you, and now we're all each other has."

"Don't be so melodramatic," said Eric.

"Me, melodramatic? You're the one giving up on everything after one minor setback."

"Minor setback? It's my life that just got turned upside down. And I'm not giving up on everything, just school."

"Okay, fair. You've just had a big life-changer. But I'm still here for you, right? Maybe we won't always need each other, but for now we do. You're not going anywhere."

"Oh, so that's it, then?"

"Yup," said Joseph. "Come on, you have not even gone to a single class, yet. At least try it."

"Okay fine. I'll try one class. But only for you."

"The whole semester."

"Nuh uh. One class. That's all you're getting from me."

"We'll see."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Back at their room Hannah laid out all the supplies on her desk, leaving the frog in the beaker. She carried it over to their mini-fridge and opened the door.

"You are not putting a frog in the refrigerator," insisted Taylor.

"Where else am I going to put it? You want the whole room to smell?"

"It beats having a fridge that smells like frog, doesn't it?"

"Formaldehyde."

"What?"

"Formaldehyde. The fridge is going to smell like formaldehyde, not frog. If we don't put it in the refrigerator, then the whole room is going to smell like frog. Take your pick!"

"Neither?"

"Nope," Hannah said, and apparently the matter, in her mind, was closed. "So are you ready to head back out to the library?"

"One second," said Taylor. "No offense, but... I mean, you said that I could choose whether or not to see a glamour, right? Could you show me? It's just that, well..."

"It's just that you're creeped out by my eyes. You don't have to beat around the bush. It's not like I haven't noticed that you refuse to make eye contact with me. Believe me, that's as uncomfortable for me as my appearance is for you."

"I'm sorry."

Hannah waved her hand in the air dismissively. "You apologize too much."

"I'm sorry," Taylor said again, and then quickly realized it. "Oh crap. I'm sorry, I... I mean, I'm... not sorry?"

"Nor should you be." Hannah patted her on the shoulder reassuringly. "Now let's get you un-creeped out. Close your eyes."

Taylor hesitated a second before doing as she was instructed.

"Okay," said Hannah. "Glamours work like any illusion. Think of those pictures that can be two things. Like the young woman and the old woman, or the two faces and a vase. You familiar?"

"With the vase one, yeah. It's two identical silhouettes of faces looking at each other."

"Exactly. And if you're looking at the faces, you see faces, but if you concentrate on the space between you see a vase, right?"

"Right."

"But you only can see one or the other at a time. Your mind doesn't see two faces and a vase, it sees one or the other and you can choose. You following still?"

"I guess. But those are two real images. We're taking real and fake here, aren't we?"

"Exactly. But it's still a choice you make. When you don't consciously choose, your mind takes the lazy route. If you don't know there's a glamour, then it is easiest for the mind to just play along, right?"

"I guess."

"You guess right. But if you do know there's a glamour, then it is easiest for the mind to see what is really there, right?"

"Okay, sure."

"So, the trick to seeing a glamour when you know it's an illusion is like choosing to see the vase when you know it's two faces. You just have to frame your point of view around what you want to see, and then your brain will follow along!"

"So why are my eyes closed, again?"

"Oh, right. I was going to have you visualize my eyes the way they appeared before you saw through the glamour. It's still there, you just have to choose to see it."

"Okay, I'm visualizing, but I don't know how to choose that image over the real one."

"That's all you do to choose. Just visualize. Now open your eyes!"

Taylor opened her eyes while trying her hardest to imagine a pair of normal brown eyes looking back at her. Her shoulders slumped in defeat, however, when she saw the same solid black eyes she had seen before.

"Ah, didn't quite take, did it?" Hannah asked.

"No."

"It can be a little tricky at first, but keep at it, and you'll get it. Just keep looking into my eyes and think brown and white."

Taylor did as she was told and stared intently at Hannah's eyes. Brown and white, she told herself. Brown and white. After what felt like several minutes she gave up and turned away. There had been no change, despite her efforts.

"Huh," said Hannah, frowning. "Well, keep at it. You'll get it eventually. Here, I'll give you something to practice with."

Hannah went across the room and shuffled through her desk drawer until she found what she was looking for. She turned around and held it out triumphantly.

"Ta da!" she exclaimed, holding a perfect red rose, just beginning to bloom.

"You keep flowers in your desk drawer?"

"Of course not. It's a pencil." Hannah handed it to Taylor.

At the moment Hannah said "pencil" the image of the rose transformed into an ordinary yellow pencil. Taylor took it gingerly as if it were a fragile thing, and held it in her open palm. She pushed it lightly with her finger, rolling it gently back and forth in her hand. It was just an ordinary pencil.

"So there you go," said Hannah. "A pencil with a rose glamour on it. So we don't have to suffer through staring contests while you practice, you can use that!"

"Thanks. And I'm sorry. I'll figure it out so that you're not uncomfortable."

"There you go apologizing again. Now are you ready to go to the library?"

"We have two days until our next class. I know you're all eager beaver, but can't it wait? I still have a lot of questions, and I'm really curious what kind of science you have planned with dead frogs and a syringe."

"Well, the syringe is to get a blood sample."

"From the frog? Don't they drain those things out before they, you know, store them?"

"Not the frog, silly. From you!"

"Yeah, no."

"Oh don't worry, it will be totally safe. It's a brand new needle. You can't catch anything from it."

"I'm not worried about disease. I'm worried about my college roommate jabbing me with sharp objects."

"You should be used to that by now," replied Hannah.

"Used to what? Being jabbed with sharp objects? Not exactly."

"Well, I wouldn't use the word 'jabbed' anyway. More like a delicate prick!"

"That's if you can find the vein on the first attempt. I don't suppose you were a nurse sometime in that last century."

"Not exactly. But I'm super good at finding the vein. I've had plenty of practice. Vampire, remember?"

"That is... surprisingly comforting."

"Well, would you feel better if I did it the traditional way?"

"Traditional way?"

"You know, fangs?" said Hannah, curling the top of her lip back to show her pointed fangs.

"That is less comforting. Why do you need my blood in the first place?"

"Well, I don't need it, first of all. I have no plans of drinking my roommate's blood if that's what you were thinking."

"You know, you'd think that would've occurred to me, but I hadn't thought of that. And, for the record, even less comforting. Whose blood do you plan on drinking?"

Hannah waved her hand dismissively in the air.

"Not important," she said. "I can assure you that it will be nobody anywhere near here, unlike some dumb boys who shall not be named. And no one will be harmed, so let's not focus on the unpleasant business of sustenance, shall we?"

"Sure."

"So anyway. Vampires have sort of a healing property. Like I said before, it's what gives us immortality, and it can also repair minor injuries in others. That's why you never hear about vampire bites."

"So when Joseph tried to heal Eric, he was doing what exactly?"

"Bleeding on him. That is why he bit his wrist and bled into Eric's mouth. When we pierce a human's skin, we apply blood directly to the site of the wound, but in Eric's case, Joseph was trying to get the blood directly into the digestive system.

"Ew. So back to me. You think my blood did what exactly?"

"Well, I think it's a fairly safe bet that your blood made Eric human. I think maybe that you healed the vampire right out of him."

"That doesn't make any sense. If my blood can heal away vampire... uh... ness."

"Vampirism," offered Hannah.

"Okay sure, vampirism, then why wouldn't vampirism just be, I don't know, self-curing?"

"Well that's just not how it works. But you seem to be something special."

"Gee thanks."

"You're welcome! You don't appear to be a vampire in any kind of way, but your father was a vampire, and clearly you inherited something from him. I think your blood may have some of the properties of a vampire, but possibly elevated."

"Like super healing?"

"Basically."

Taylor was intrigued enough by the idea that she felt her objections waning.

"So how much blood were you thinking?" Taylor asked.

"Just a syringe. Like I said, I'm not trying to start a food bank or anything."

"Okay, fine. Can your vampire powers make it not hurt?"

"Well, normally I could just enthrall you, and that would pretty much cover it, but you're apparently immune. Lucky you!"

"Yeah, lucky me," said Taylor, feeling less lucky by the minute. "Okay fine, but let's do it quickly."

"Yay science!" said Hannah, bouncing up and down and clapping her hands excitedly. "Okay, one sec."

Hannah wasted no time in getting out the syringe and ripped open the packaging a little too eagerly for Taylor's liking.

"Okay, give me your arm," said Hannah.

Taylor obliged.

Hannah leaned down and started sniffing near Taylor's elbow.

"Um, what are you doing?" Taylor asked, shifting uncomfortably.

"Looking for the vein. Now hold still," Hannah replied, placing a firm grip on Taylor's forearm to steady it."

"You can smell it?"

"Well, obviously we don't have x-ray vision."

"Obviously. So what does a vein smell like?"

"Like blood, obviously."

"Obviously."

"Okay here goes. You should just feel a prick."

Hannah pushed the needle into Taylor's arm, and Taylor looked away as she felt the prick of her flesh. The sight of her own blood made her queasy, so she made a point of not looking back down at it.

"All done!" Hannah announced after a few moments.

Taylor looked down and got a glimpse of the syringe full of thick dark blood and felt her stomach turn. She looked away again.

"Yeah, you're definitely not a vampire, all right," said Hannah. "Or at least if you were, you'd be a very hungry one. You're going to have to get a little more used to the sight of blood."

"Am I now? Whatever my blood does, I'm not trying to make a habit of bleeding on things."

"That's a very wise course of action, I would say," said Hannah, nodding. "I'd very much like for you to not go around bleeding on things as well."

"Glad we're in agreement on that one. Hmm... that's weird," said Taylor, inspecting her arm.

"What is? What's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing. It's just that it doesn't seem to have left a mark."

"That could be the vampire part of you. How's that cut on your neck?"

"What? This?" asked Taylor, pulling her collar down to show her neck. "You tell me."

"Yeah. Good as new."

"Weird. So vampires can magically heal?"

"It's not magic, Taylor. It's science. Everyone's blood has healing properties. Vampire blood is just much better at it."

"Oh. Well, that's good news for me, I suppose. So now what?"

"This is where the frog comes in."

"O... kay."

"See, vampires can bring dead people back only within the first few minutes after their death, which is basically how you get vampires. But something that has been dead for any longer, well, let's just say that doesn't generally end well. But with your super juice, I thought maybe..."

"You want me to revive the frog? Is that a good idea? Seems sort of... I dunno... like a perversion of nature or something."

"And what would that make me?"

"I don't mean anything like that. I mean... it's just... What if we get, like, zombie frog?"

"It's a frog, Taylor. We can handle it."

"Fine. If you say so."

Taylor took a step back as Hannah injected some of the blood into the frog. Sure it was just a frog, but she wasn't taking any chances. Several minutes passed as they anxiously stared at it, waiting for something to happen.

"How long is this supposed to take?" Taylor asked.

"I dunno. This is kind of uncharted territory, hon. But for vampires raising the recently dead... not this long."

They waited several more minutes, but still nothing.

"Man," said Hannah. "I was really hoping to reanimate that frog, but I'm thinking that's a no go."

"Bummer." Taylor wasn't all that disappointed.

"We do have the microscope though. Hold on."

Hannah pulled out the microscope they had brought with them and plugged it in. She took the syringe and carefully squeezed a single drop from it onto a glass slide and gingerly placed it under the microscope. She looked intently into the eyepiece and fiddled with the knob back and forth. After a few minutes of this, she sat back looking defeated.

"Well?" asked Taylor.

"Well, to be honest, I don't really know what blood is supposed to look like. You know, microscopically. I was hoping it would... I dunno. Sparkle?"

"Have you ever looked at blood under a microscope before? You know, in the course of your illustrious floor-sweeping science career."

"No... Wait! I know! Let me compare it to mine."

She stuck her thumb in her mouth and pulled it out covered in blood. She smeared this across another slide and looked into the microscope, again fiddling with the knob.

"Well?" asked Taylor.

"It looks the same, I'm afraid. Maybe we can get a teacher or someone to look at it for us."

"Is that really wise? I'd kind of like to not advertise my... unique circumstances."

"Oh I definitely agree. We'd just have to find a human and enthrall them, of course."

"Of course."

"Okay, well that was disappointing. What else... what else..." Hannah said, rubbing her thumb against her chin, absent-mindedly smearing it with blood. "Let's try a different approach. Let's see how you are with glamours."

"Well, we've established that I can see through them pretty well. Too well, in fact."

"Right right, but can you create them yourself?"

"I... have no idea. Can I?"

"Well let's find out, shall we?"

"It sounds preferable to bleeding, I'll give you that."

"Yeah, most things are, I hear."

"So what do I do?" Taylor asked.

"Here," said Hannah, pulling a pencil from her desk drawer that she handed to Taylor. "Try the rose thing."

Taylor took the pencil from Hannah's hand and held it out in front of her.

"So, now?" Taylor asked.

"This one's a little trickier to explain. You have to visualize the glamour as specifically as you can and think almost as if you believe that the glamour is reality. Concentrate hard enough, and your perspective will change."

"Change? In what way?"

"It's one of those 'you know it when you see it' sort of things. It's a definite change though. You'll be able to tell the difference. Once your perspective changes, you can project that glamour onto the object. Got it?"

"Not at all."

"Right. It takes time and a little practice. Just stare at the pencil."

Taylor did as she was instructed and focused as much as she could on the pencil in front of her.

"Great, now try to ignore everything but the pencil," said Hannah. "Well, that and me. Everything but me. And the pencil. But mostly ignore me and think about the pencil. Just listen to me, is what I'm saying, don't think about me."

"Uh, okay," said Taylor, trying to focus on the pencil.

"Now imagine that it's a rose and concentrate really hard."

"Okay." Taylor squinted.

"Think about its shape and color. Think about the texture. Think about how it feels in your hand. How light it is. How firm the stem is and how soft the petals are."

Taylor tried to do just that. She imagined that it was a red rose in full bloom. A single stem, with a thorn on the side. The petals would be soft, perhaps spattered with drops of dew. The petals would radiate from the center of the bloom, peeling away at the tips in a sloping curl, bound together where petals meet stem.

She imagined it, but nothing in front of her changed.

"Concentrate," said Hannah. "Do you feel the change?"

Taylor dropped the pencil out of frustration. "No, I do not feel any changing."

"Well, don't get frustrated. It's possible that this is something you're not able to do. And even if it is, I didn't get it on my first try either."

"Really?" said Taylor, looking up at Hannah.

"Okay, not really. But I'm a quick learner. Most people don't get it on their first try. Okay some people. I mean, I guess. I mean, it usually comes pretty naturally, but not always. Maybe it works differently for you? In any case, just keep giving it a shot."

Hannah picked up the pencil and placed it back in Taylor's hand. With her other hand, Hannah closed Taylor's fingers around the pencil and held her hand reassuringly for a moment.

"Here. Why don't you practice while I go out for a bit?" said Hannah.

"Out? Where are you going? I mean... I'm sor... I mean, it's not really any of my business."

"Oh don't worry. Just feeling a little peckish."

"Peckish?"

"It means hungry. Slang. British I think, but popular in the vampire community as well. Kind of evokes an image of puncturing don't you think?"

"Ew," said Taylor.

"Right, sorry. You're not a big blood person. I forget. Anyway, that's just something I need to attend to. Don't worry, I won't hurt anybody."

"I don't worry about you, Hannah."

"It's okay to worry, Taylor. The world is not a safe place and especially not for people like you and me. But as long as you've got me, I'll see what I can do to make it just a little bit safer for you."

"Thanks Hannah. I... appreciate it."

"Say no more!" Hannah replied cheerfully and then slipped out the door.

Taylor looked at the pencil in her hand and pulled out the pencil that Hannah had glamoured before. She stared at both of them and filled her mind with images of roses, but nothing changed. She still had in her hands two ordinary pencils. Frustrated, she put them both away and did her best to think of something else.

***

The next day, Taylor again woke up entirely too early for her liking. Hannah must have come in late, as she was not there when Taylor had gone to bed. Taylor was usually a light sleeper, so Hannah must have been exceptionally quiet.

Taylor recalled the times when Hannah had masked their conversations with what she said was a glamour, and Taylor wondered if she had somehow used that ability to mask her sound coming in as well.

Taylor wondered how you would go about visualizing an absence of sound and couldn't quite make sense of the idea. Then again, she hadn't been able to grasp how to create an optical illusion either.

Remembering the pencils from yesterday, she pulled her cell phone out from under the corner of her bed and used its light to locate her desk. She pulled out the two pencils. She still could not tell the difference. One supposedly had a glamour on it, but she couldn't for the life of her tell which one it was.

She lay back in bed and stared at them, thinking about roses in every possible shape, size, and hue that she could imagine, but nothing changed. She must have kept at this for what felt like at least an hour, or perhaps she had fallen back asleep, but she was jolted back to attention by the light turning on in the room. She looked at the time and several hours had passed. It was now 8 AM.

"Wake up, sleepy head. Another busy day awaits!" said Hannah.

Taylor looked around for the pencils and found them on the floor beside her bed. They still looked decidedly like pencils. She grabbed them both and dropped them into her bag before setting off down the hall to the bathroom to get ready for the day.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Taylor and Hannah ate breakfast together again, but did not run into either of the brothers, much to Taylor's relief. Hannah chattered away about people they had met at school and the sights around campus, and Taylor did her best to politely pay attention, though she kept thinking back to her attempts at glamours.

Not really knowing how to make glamours happen, she found herself trying to will random objects into other random objects. She spent as much time trying to imagine her spoon as other things—a flower, a fork, a twig—as she did eating her cereal with it, but she found that splitting her attention between Hannah and the spoon resulted in her being not entirely successful in paying attention to either of them.

Hannah did not seem to notice, or least she didn't mind, and the spoon didn't seem to be worse for wear, so Taylor tried not to concern herself too much about it.

When Hannah suggested that they go visit the library, Taylor was too distracted to object, though she didn't really see the point of touring the library when she was trying to figure out whether or not she had super powers. Somehow, homework for a freshman orientation class didn't seem quite as important as figuring out her identity.

Still, she followed along agreeably, even when Hannah insisted that they follow the self-guided tour instructions to the letter, which involved wearing goofy headphones and carrying an oversized cassette recorder as they followed the voice-over instructions that played through them. Taylor didn't think they made cassettes still, but given the worn look of the equipment they were given, it didn't appear that they had been acquired any time recently.

She felt slightly self-conscious walking around the building so clearly being the new person, but since classes hadn't started yet there were few students to notice. Still, she didn't like being the obvious freshman, so she focused on keeping up with Hannah and took her mind off her self-consciousness by using every opportunity she could to try to glamour random objects.

Having had not much luck with the visual illusions, she tried imagining all kinds of sounds around them. Singing books and shrieking desks filled her imagination, but to her disappointment, all she could ever hear was the droning voice on the cassette, occasionally interrupted by a tone that indicated they were supposed to pause until they reached the next destination on their tour.

Taylor was never quite paying attention to where they were supposed to be headed next, so she just followed Hannah's lead. That seemed as good a plan as any, at least so far.

Meanwhile, Hannah scribbled notes at every stop, far more than Taylor felt could possibly be necessary, so she was not overly concerned that she would be missing anything that Hannah couldn't make up for.

The tour concluded uneventfully. At no point did they see anything interesting, though Taylor would admit that the bar on what was interesting to her had been significantly raised in the past week. And much to Taylor's chagrin, at no point did the books break out into chorus, despite her best attempts.

She wondered if she really was special at all. She supposed that it would be nice to think so, but maybe she just had a lot of willpower and Eric just... well, she still had no explanation for what happened to Eric. Maybe nothing at all? Since when did someone being human require explanation? she wondered.

Hannah insisted that they get to work right away on typing up their assignment from their library tour, so they went straight back to the dorms. Hannah went directly to her desk and began typing, so Taylor followed suit and sat at her desk as well. She still felt too distracted to get any real work done, however, and only managed to get her name and a title onto the page before she turned her attention back to the pencils.

She set them side by side on the other side of her monitor so that Hannah wouldn't notice that's where her attention was turned to instead of the assignment at hand. Not that she had to work on the assignment just because Hannah was, Taylor told herself, but she felt self-conscious about spending so much time staring at pencils while Hannah was right next to her accomplishing something actually useful.

They both looked exactly the same to her. She had seen the glamour of a rose that Hannah had cast before, but once she knew it was really a pencil, she couldn't get the illusion back. As much as she concentrated, she couldn't seem to see anything but what was actually there, and she had never been so frustrated in her life for being able to see something exactly as it was.

She thought for a moment to ask Hannah which pencil was which so she could at least focus on one or the other, but she really wasn't sure what difference that would make. To see one as a rose she needed to imagine a rose, and to see the other as a rose she still needed to imagine a rose. She wasn't really clear on what the difference would be, so instead she just focused on the idea of two roses at once.

She tried squinting. She tried leaning close and then pulling far away. She tried holding them and setting them down. She closed one eye, then the other. Still nothing seemed to work. After what felt like hours, but was more likely minutes, she gave up and decided to turn her attention back to the screen. It was only when she turned away that she saw something red and green from the corner of her eye.

She froze, hesitant to look at it. She was pretty certain that there was a rose in her periphery vision. Two, in fact. Trying not to get too excited, she held her gaze straight ahead on the screen, afraid to look.

And then the change happened. Everything went soft and hazy like a camera lens just out of focus. The images in the corner of her eye seemed more solid and distinct, however. They were clearly flowers. She turned her head slowly, so as not to break the effect and saw exactly what she had been trying to see all this time. Where two pencils had sat on her desk now sat two roses. She wanted to cheer out, but was hesitant to do anything too suddenly lest she break the effect.

She had done it. She saw two glamours in front of her. One was Hannah's, of course, but the other was hers.

She looked over at Hannah, whose fuzzy outline was still typing away, and she decided not to interrupt her just yet. Taylor was afraid that if she broke her concentration she wouldn't be able to get the effect back, so she slowly turned her head back towards her two perfect roses.

She pulled a pen from her desk drawer and set it next to the others. This one she imagined as a yellow rose and to her delight the fuzzy form of the pen solidified into a single yellow rose. Why limit herself, she thought, to roses that actually existed though? She placed another pen next to the three roses and imagined this one as being a bright blue and it complied. Then another, this time in a shiny metallic gold. That too appeared before her.

The possibilities were endless, she thought. Polka dots and stripes. Tiny roses and enormous ones. Green leaves, of course, but also black, blue, and neon pink.

"Taylor."

She heard Hannah's voice saying her name, but she was so entranced at all the possibilities that she didn't take much notice.

"Taylor."

Hannah sounded more insistent this time. Just a moment longer, Taylor thought. Just one more, perhaps in plaid. She really was limited only by her imagination. This was incredible.

"TAYLOR!"

This time Hannah was shouting. Taylor shook her head slightly, and the room came back into focus.

"Taylor, what on earth have you done?" asked Hannah, sounding horrified.

"What do you mean? I don't..." Taylor began and then stopped when she realized that the room was covered in roses and vines.

Not just roses and vines, but flowers in a mix of both earthly and otherworldly colors and combinations covered the walls. There were plaid roses bursting from metallic vines and polka-dot buds jutting out from neon leaves. The effect was a little nauseating.

"Oh Taylor. I don't think is good," Hannah said and then jolted up and went towards the hall door.

"Okay, so it's a little tacky, I'll give you that, but..." Taylor stopped when she saw through the now open door that the display of psychedelic roses extended into the hallways. "Oops."

"Yeah oops," said Hannah and then crossed the room again. "How did you even...? What did you...? Taylor this is crazy. Did you do this?"

"I guess so. I mean, I didn't realize..."

"Did you at least keep it on this floor?" asked Hannah.

"I don't know. I didn't realize I wasn't keeping it on my desk."

"Oh, I hope so," said Hannah wringing her hands nervously. "We've got to get this under control."

"How? I don't..."

"Ohmigod outside," Hannah said and then bolted out the door.

Taylor ran to keep up with her and just caught her in the elevator before the door closed.

"It's uh... kind of pretty, right?" Taylor remarked at the interior of the elevator which was lined with the same nonsensical display of flowers. "I mean, I hadn't really thought that the world was missing out for not having plaid flowers before, but now that I see them it's kind of a design oversight don't you think?"

Hannah didn't answer. She looked pale.

The elevator stopped at the bottom floor lobby, and the doors opened to reveal a lobby lined with more roses and vines.

"Crap," said Hannah.

She ran straight out the front door.

"Crap, crap, crap," she said standing out on the sidewalk looking up.

"Oh crap," Taylor agreed, looking to see that the whole bottom half of the building was covered in multicolored flowers so thick that you couldn't see the building beneath them.

"Taylor, you have to undo this. Right now," said Hannah. "I can't conjure a glamour big enough to cover the whole building, and we've got to get this taken care of now."

"How do I do that?"

"Man oh man, now is not the time. Just concentrate like you did before. Wait, hold on."

With that, Hannah took off towards the street and poked her head into the side of a taxi cab that had stopped in front of the building to ogle at the sight of it. As soon as she popped out again, the cab drove to the end of the street and turned to block part of the intersection. Hannah ran to the next car behind it, also stopped in the middle of the road, and it then backed up to the opposite intersection and did the same.

"Are you concentrating?" Hannah hollered towards her from down the street. "I can't keep people away forever."

Oh right, thought Taylor. She had been admiring Hannah's quick thinking and hadn't been focusing on the task at hand. She looked at the building and tried to concentrate as much as she could.

Across the street, she could see Hannah running up to pedestrians who had stopped to look, and as she moved on from each cluster of people, they stopped gazing and went out about meandering down the street. Taylor was impressed at how quickly Hannah was managing the crowd.

Concentrate on the building, she reminded herself. She had to focus on the building. She concentrated as much as she could and squinted and cocked her head and rubbed her temples and did everything she could think to do short of standing on one leg (would that help?) to make the mental switch, but nothing was happening.

"Come on, Taylor! Concentrate!" came Hannah's voice from the end of the street, as she continued running around frantically, talking to everyone she could see.

Taylor saw a few students come out of the building. She could only imagine how many inside were seeing the same thing which only increased the pressure and made it more difficult to concentrate.

Then she remembered that it had only worked when she saw the objects in her periphery. Maybe that would help, she thought, as she turned to the side and looked at it from the corner of her eye.

That did the trick, as her worldview went soft again. She practically jumped for joy, but was afraid to break her concentration, so she kept her cool and slowly turned back towards the building.

Okay, she thought. Now what? Hannah had explained how to create a glamour but not how to remove one. She remembered the example of the two faces and tried to do as Hannah said and picture the image she wished to see. Before she had apparently chosen implausibly-colored flowers, now she imagined the more plausibly-drab building underneath.

As she did, the flowers in her view began to soften and grow fuzzy like the rest of the world around her and then faded from view entirely until all she could see was the gray building before her.

She heaved a sigh of relief and everything sharpened back into focus. Hannah appeared at her side and gave her a big hug.

"Well done!" Hannah said. "You're really something else, you know that? Cause I knew it!"

"Yeah, something else."

Taylor wasn't sure quite yet if that something else was good or bad, but she was definitely something else.

"Okay, no time to waste," said Hannah. "We've got some damage control to do! Come on!"

Hannah gestured for Taylor to follow and Taylor obliged, feeling overwhelmed and quite obedient. Hannah then went to talk to the taxi drivers on the street and then the few lingering pedestrians, instructing each to go about their business as if nothing had happened.

They then went inside and, per Hannah's insistence, knocked on every door in the building. If someone answered the door, then they were instructed under thrall to forget anything unusual that might have happened. Hannah didn't elaborate, but Taylor supposed she didn't need to. The "something unusual" would have been pretty obvious if they had in fact seen it. When they encountered the occasional vampire, Hannah simply said that they had knocked on the wrong door. "A frivolous glamour," Hannah later explained to Taylor, "is not worth explaining to them. They're used to it. No need to call more attention to it."

Taylor was impressed and a little unnerved with how easily Hannah manipulated people using this ability to enthrall. Taylor was glad that she was immune, particularly as she saw firsthand that there were more than a couple vampires amongst her neighbors.

Fortunately, the dorms had been fairly empty during the day, but still, it wasn't until the evening that they had finished interrogating the whole building. And they were both tired at the end of it. Taylor offered to pick something up to eat from downstairs—it was the least she could do—and they both ended up eating cold sandwiches quietly in their dorm.

"Thanks," said Taylor. "And I'm sorry."

"What did I say about 'sorry'?"

"Oh right. Well, thanks anyway."

"You're welcome! And thanks for dinner!" replied Hannah, who chomped noisily away at her sandwich.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Taylor slept well that night and did not wake up early for a change. It wasn't until her alarm went off to get ready for class that she awoke, and even then she could feel herself dragging.

She hadn't really had any time to discuss what had happened with the glamour incident since they had spent their whole evening doing damage control, but she was distracted this morning by a crisis of a different sort. She had forgotten the library assignment.

"You didn't finish yours?" asked Hannah, over breakfast.

"When was I going to finish it? I was a little busy covering the building in technicolor flora, remember?" said Taylor.

"Well, I finished mine. I guess I just figured you had done yours too."

"Well I haven't. I guess I need to go upstairs and try to do something real quick."

"We don't have time for that, Taylor. You're just going to have to glamour it. Actually... you should lay off the glamours for now. Let me handle it for you."

"Isn't that cheating?" asked Taylor.

Hannah shrugged.

"You seemed very concerned about playing by the rules the other day," continued Taylor.

"I'm more concerned about keeping you under the radar. I don't need you calling attention to yourself any more than you already have, and Professor Dean Dean doesn't seem like the type to let you go unnoticed if you come unprepared."

"And he won't notice, you don't think?"

"Nah. He's not a vampire. I checked."

"And the TA? He's not one either?"

"Nope. Checked him too. I always check. Remember," Hannah said while pointing to her eyes. "Always check for black. It's will always give them away."

"Right."

"Here you go," said Hannah, handing her a piece of paper that she retrieved from her notebook.

Taylor looked at it to see a double-spaced single-page paper with her name on it followed by an essay about the library.

"So, you just... wrote that all in your head just now?"

"What? Of course not," replied Hannah. "Glamours don't have to be that complicated. A person's mind is very good at making things up and filling in the blanks. I just have to suggest a fabulous A-worthy paper, and the viewer of said paper does all the work. I'm sure the TA will be able to fill in the details just fine!"

"That seems... grossly unfair."

"Yeah, well, we're not going to make this a habit."

Taylor was too nervous about glamours to even think about using them herself at the moment, but she was glad that Hannah stepped in to take care of it for her in this case.

When they arrived at class, though, she began to feel a bit more nervous about the whole idea. Perhaps honesty really was the best policy? Perhaps the Dean would make an exception if she asked? She remembered his icy demeanor, however, and decided against it.

Her discomfort increased as she turned to see Eric and Joseph entering the room. She quickly turned back to face the front of the class, hoping that they would not come to sit up front with them. Thankfully, Joseph had the good sense to steer Eric away, and they instead sat far to the back.

For the moment, Taylor was relieved, or at least she was until Professor Dean entered the room, with Alex following closely behind carrying what appeared to be the professor's briefcase.

He came to the front of the class and grabbed the briefcase abruptly from Alex and slammed it onto the podium. Alex took a seat off to the corner.

The professor scanned the room silently for several minutes as Taylor slumped into her seat, trying to look inconspicuous. She could feel the guilt of her cheating rushing to her face, and she was quite sure she was beet red. She looked down so that he wouldn't notice.

He did not appear to be interested in her, however.

"Is Mr. Evans here?" he asked.

Joseph spoke up from the back of the classroom.

"Um, which one, sir?"

"I remember you from the first class, young man. My brain is not quite as addled by age as you seem to think. I can see that you're here. Where is your brother?" the dean asked, tapping his finger loudly on the podium as he spoke.

"Um, here, sir?" said Eric, standing slowly.

"Are you asking me if you're here? Because I can only speak to your physical presence if that is the case. Whether or not you are mentally present, I couldn't possibly say."

"I'm here, sir," said Eric, trying to sound more resolute.

"Thrilling," said the dean. "I trust your brother gave you the syllabus?"

"Um, yes, sir?" replied Eric.

"Do you phrase everything in the form of a question? How exhausting."

"I, uh... that is..."

"That is quite enough, Mr. Evans. My question to you was as rhetorical as I'm sure your persistent questions are to me. Please have a seat."

Eric wasted no time in doing so.

"Now that we have that out of the way, Alexander here will go around and collect your assignments."

The moment of truth, thought Taylor, though she tried not to worry so much about it as she pulled out her glamoured "assignment". No one had any reason to think it was anything but ordinary boring homework, she reassured herself as she handed it as nonchalantly as she could to Alex.

He glanced at it for a moment before moving on to collect Hannah's paper and didn't even look at Taylor, much to her relief. Still, she couldn't get over her feeling of nervousness as the dean went on with his lecture, and she barely paid any attention to his droning on about the history of the college.

Thankfully, the lecture concluded quickly enough, as the dean seemed to have no interest in using the fully-allotted time and did not bother to take any questions. Taylor was relieved to be packing up to get out of there when the dean stepped back up to the podium and spoke into the microphone.

"I need Taylor Bain and Eric Evans to stay after for a moment, please," he said.

Taylor froze and gave Hannah a questioning look.

"Don't worry," said Hannah. "I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe some, um... extra credit?"

Hannah looked worried, however, and this did nothing to calm Taylor down.

"Do you think he...?" Taylor began to ask.

"Of course not," said Hannah. "I'm sure it's nothing. Do you want me to stay with you?"

"No, I guess not. I'm sure it's nothing like you said, and I'm a big girl. I can't have you always at my side."

"I don't mind, I assure you. But I'll save my overprotectiveness for real threats, not academic ones! How about I meet you at the food court across the street? We can grab some lunch. And that way I'll still be close by."

"Sure," said Taylor.

The class slowly filtered out, and Alex followed behind. It was just Eric and Taylor remaining with Professor Dean, all still in their seats.

"Eric, wait there for a moment, please. Taylor, you first," said the dean.

Taylor approached him nervously.

"What is this?" he said in a low voice while showing Taylor's paper to her.

"That's my assignment, uh... sir."

"Cut the 'sir' crap. You and I both know this is just a blank sheet of paper. How did you learn how to do this?"

Taylor felt her stomach tense up and her face turn red.

"I, uh... don't know what you mean," she said.

"You're going to stop playing games with me right now. I don't have the patience for it. I don't normally have to put up with this nonsense, but you... I can't read you at all. Why is that? And don't pretend you don't know. You just turned in a glamour for your homework."

"I, uh... look, I didn't do it, and that's the truth. I mean, I didn't do my homework, obviously, but I didn't do the glamour either."

"So you just happen to be friends with forsaken who do your dirty work for you?" he asked, regarding her suspiciously.

"For... saken? Look, I don't know what you're talking about. I swear.

The dean frowned, looking deep in thought.

"You know, I can always tell when someone is lying. I can always see the truth in everything. Except you. You're not human, are you?"

"What? Of course I am!"

"We'll see," he said and tore her paper in half. "You will turn in a real homework assignment on Friday."

"Yes, sir."

"And don't lie to me, Taylor Bain. I may not be able to see through it the same way I can with others, but that doesn't mean I believe you."

"Uh... okay," was all she could think to say.

She now wished desperately that she had asked Hannah to stay.

"You can go," he said, waving her away with his hands.

"Eric," said the dean, talking again at a normal volume. "You're up."

Taylor wasted no time in exiting the building and quickly made her way across the street. She needed to find Hannah.

***

Eric approached the dean cautiously. Eric had been flippant the last time they had met, but he had felt much more confident then and in command of his encounters. Now he remembered what it felt like to be intimidated by authority. It was not a feeling he had ever enjoyed, but the combination of his newfound vulnerability and the dean's dour personality made this feel especially unpleasant.

"Hurry up, young man," said the dean. "Just because I'm immortal doesn't mean that I have more hours in the day than any of you children. Your excruciatingly languid pace is wasting the time that I do have."

Eric hesitated. He hadn't realized that the dean was immortal. When Eric was a vampire himself, he was quick to pick out that trait in others, but he hadn't seen anything unusual about the dean when they had first met.

Eric looked at the dean's eyes and concentrated, trying to see past what he assumed must be a glamour. That was much easier to do when he was a vampire, but he knew it was possible for humans to do, and he thought that if any human would have a knack, certainly he would. There was no glamour that he could detect, however. As far as Eric could tell, the dean's eyes were normal.

"Oh stop squinting and get over here, you halfwit," the dean said, disrupting his concentration. "There's no glamour, if that's what you're looking for."

If the dean wasn't using a glamour, Eric wondered how he even knew about them. The dean did say he was immortal, but Eric wasn't aware of any immortals that didn't bear the curse, and he didn't know of any accursed that didn't have the mark of the black eyes. Then again, he didn't know many vampires that announced themselves as immortal to humans, either. Eric obeyed the dean, but he approached with an even more elevated sense of caution.

"Would you just hurry up? I've met you twice now, and you've already nearly drained every ounce of patience I have in me."

Eric had hoped the dean didn't remember their first encounter, but he now realized that it was neither forgotten nor forgiven. He didn't waste any more time in approaching the dean.

"Finally. So you're human," the dean said, appraising Eric from head to toe.

Eric didn't know what to say to this. Was it even a question?

"But you shouldn't be," the dean continued.

Eric agreed on that point, but he still didn't know what to say.

"Well?" said the dean.

"Sir?"

"Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"About... being human?"

"You are either too stupid to infer my point, or you think I am too stupid to make it. Either way is... irritating."

"I'm sorry, I don't..."

"Enough!" the dean shouted and knocked over the podium next to him.

Eric took a startled step backwards.

"Oh, you mean instead of a vampire?" Eric said, deciding to get to the point.

"And what else would I mean?"

"I..."

"Don't answer that. You're already wasting enough of my time. How did you undo the curse?"

"I didn't. I... I mean, I didn't undo it."

"No, you didn't. I can see that you're not lying. But it has been undone. How?"

"I don't... I don't know."

"You're lying!" the dean shouted while kicking the podium across the room, sending it airborne.

It fell to the ground with a loud crack. Eric noticed that it flew quite a distance for being kicked by a middle-aged professor. Vampires did not possess enhanced strength, so far as Eric knew, but this man seemed to be much stronger than his appearance would suggest.

"Well, I mean, I don't exactly know," Eric said.

"Yes, yes, you are too dim to comprehend the method of the change, but surely you know the mechanism of the delivery?"

"The mechanism of... what?"

"I'm asking you WHO did this, you mortal sack of waste."

"Oh. I... I mean, I don't know anything, uh... sir."

The dean punched the blackboard next to him, and a crack ran down the center.

"You're lying again."

The dean seemed quite certain he knew when Eric was telling the truth or not, and Eric had to admit that he had been deadly accurate so far. Also appearing to be deadly accurate were the dean's unnaturally strong arms and legs. Eric took a step backwards and scanned the room, making note of the nearest exits.

"You really are exhausting, you know that?" the dean said. "If you don't tell me now, I'm going to crack your skull like I did this board."

Eric backed away another step and said, "It was a... a girl. I don't know her name, though."

"A lie." The dean smiled. "It was that girl, wasn't it? Taylor Bain."

"What? No... It wasn't her."

"Enough. You're still lying, but it is of no matter. At least you've done well enough to lie with specificity. Saves me time. Do you know what she did?"

"I..."

"And before you lie to me one more time, might I suggest to you that your odds of leaving this room with limbs intact are greatly increased by telling me the truth."

"I... well, I mean, I don't know exactly what happened and I mean it, but..."

The dean's hands clenched into a fist.

"But uh... um..." Eric continued "...it happened when I tasted her blood. I mean, it happened right after that. So I guess her blood..."

"Enough," said the dean, holding his hand up to silence Eric. "That will suffice without your inane guesses. You've done well, boy. Or as well as you are capable of, given your limited faculties."

Eric was about to respond, but the dean pushed past him towards the exit. The dean gave what appeared to be a careless nudge, but Eric went flying into the seats with a thud. He barely had time to pull his arm out from being wedged between the seats before he heard the door slam.

Great, he thought. He should warn Taylor. But of what? That the dean was a super-strength-having lie detector who may or may not be after her? She was already hardly inclined to listen to him, much less believe something like that, and he didn't blame her. Maybe she would listen to Joseph, though.

He pulled out his cellphone and hit the speed dial for his brother's cell. Joseph didn't pick up, and it went to voicemail. Feeling helpless and human, Eric fell back into the seats.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Joseph had planned to go to the food court with Eric for lunch after class, and he decided to go ahead without waiting for him. Eric knew how to find it himself, and he probably wouldn't have waited either, Joseph told himself. When Joseph saw that Tom was there sitting alone in a booth, he was glad that he had a moment to talk before Eric scared Tom off again.

"Anyone sitting there?" he asked Tom.

"Oh hey, Joseph! Naw, I was just working on an assignment for class."

"You have homework already? I thought the only ones that had class right now were us poor freshmen with our orientation."

"Oh yeah, I remember that! No, this is real homework. Sorry, I mean... not that your homework isn't, you know... real or anything."

"Oh no, it's pretty much busy work. You don't have to apologize. Anything interesting?"

"Not as interesting as you," Tom said, closing his notebook. "Have a seat!"

"So really. How did you end up with homework already?"

"Oh it's a thing the professors like to do to torment us. Before they had these website thingies they couldn't inflict homework on us until we actually showed up. Now we're expected to read the syllabus before class and come prepared."

"The nerve."

"I know, right? I remember the days when you could expect that the first class was all about laying down the class rules and reading the syllabus word for word, but now they expect you to figure that all out before you show up. It's like they think we're adults or something."

"Or something. I don't think I'd mind that so much. This orientation feels like a big waste of time."

"Oh, I guess for you, huh? I mean, you're probably, like, a hundred and fifty years old by now, right?"

"No," said Joseph, staring at the table. He realized that in his eagerness to join Tom, he had forgotten to get anything to eat. "I've only been a vampire a few months."

"Really? Well isn't that something? Usually the vampires that come here are just looking to relive their younger years and mingle with the young-uns. But you're a young-un yourself!"

"Yeah, well. Guilty as charged. I'm a freshman-aged freshman. How old are you?"

"Me? Twenty-one."

"So old enough to drink?"

"If I wanted to. It was a lot more interesting when I was too young to do it than it is now. Can't imagine it makes a difference to you, right? Since vampires can't get drunk and all."

"Right."

"Speaking of, how's your brother? Is he still...?"

"Human?"

"I was going to say recovering, from the drunk... I mean, I guess... well..."

Tom was interrupted by a voice from behind them, both to Joseph's relief and annoyance.

"Hey boys! Can I join you?"

He recognized the voice as Hannah's.

"Absolutely!" said Tom, not seeming to mind the interruption.

"Yeah, we were just chatting about... stuff. You know, waiting for Eric to finish up with the dean," said Joseph.

Joseph felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, but he ignored it. It was probably Eric. He would just figure out that Joseph came straight to the food court.

"Yeah, I heard the freshman dean was teaching orientation this year," said Tom. "He doesn't usually interact with the students. Lucky him!"

"Yeah, lucky him," Hannah said, not really looking at them.

"Are you okay?" Joseph asked.

"What? Oh yeah," Hannah said and her mood immediately brightened. "I'm just a worrier! Wanna make sure that my roomie doesn't get kicked out of school her first week."

"That's very thoughtful of you," offered Tom.

"Oh, it's nothing. I'm sure Joseph does the same for Eric."

"Yeah," was all Joseph said.

He didn't really care about Eric's grades any more than Eric did, which was not at all, but they did look out for each other in other ways.

"Oh hey, there's Taylor!" said Tom.

But where was Eric? Joseph wondered.

***

Taylor found Hannah sitting with Joseph and Tom at a booth in the corner. When Hannah saw Taylor, she gestured for her to come join. Taylor sat down next to Hannah and Tom. Tom gave her a cheery "Hello".

"Uh Hannah, I really need to talk to you. Privately, I think," said Taylor.

Hannah grew instantly serious and turned to Tom.

"Tom, do be a dear and talk with Joseph for a bit, and don't listen to anything that Taylor and I have to say, won't you?"

Joseph raised his eyebrow curiously at Hannah, but played along.

"There you go," said Hannah. "He's not paying attention now. So what happened?"

"He knew about the glamour," said Taylor, slightly out of breath.

"What? How?"

"I don't know. He's not a vampire right?"

"No, definitely not. Did he say how he knew?"

"No, not really, but he kept saying something about reading me or something. He thinks I'm not human, Hannah. Am I not human?"

"Of course you're human. What else did he say? This is important."

"Well he said something about forsaken. He thought I would know what that meant, but I really didn't."

"That's just another word for vampire, Taylor. Kind of old-fashioned, actually."

"And he said he could always tell when people are lying, but not in my case."

Hannah's eyes got big, and she stiffened up in her seat.

"Tell me exactly what he said, Taylor," Hannah insisted.

"He uh... I guess he said that he can always see the truth in everything."

Hannah stood up abruptly, knocking over Joseph's drink in the process. All three of them stared at her.

"Crap, Taylor. Crap crap crap. I mean, are you kidding me? Crap."

"What, Hannah? What is it?"

"Crap. It's crap, Taylor. We've got to go."

"Wait, go where?" asked Taylor. "What's wrong?"

"We have to go away."

"Like off campus?"

"Crap, Taylor. Yes, off campus. Off the island. Out of the state. Maybe off this continent. Crap, crap, crap. How on earth? Here of all places?"

"Slow down, Hannah. It can't be that bad, can it?"

"Oh, it can," said a voice from behind them.

All four of them froze. It was the dean.

"Please, have a seat, little one," he said to Hannah, but she didn't budge.

"Or not," he continued. "I'm not really interested in you anyway. Interesting company you keep, Taylor Bain. You say you do not know about the forsaken, but the minute you leave me you come straight to them. Including the one who tried to pass off a glamoured 'doctor's note'. Interesting."

"I didn't know what you meant, honest," insisted Taylor. "Look, whatever you're thinking, it's not the case. I just met these guys. I don't know anything."

"Really? You, a simple little human, come to college, meet two forsaken, and... wait a second..." he paused, looking directly at Tom. "How very interesting indeed. There's quite a lot of impossible at this table for you to claim innocence, don't you think?"

"Look, I don't know what you're thinking, but..." Hannah began.

"Oh shut up, little one," the dean said coldly. "I'm sure you're quite unused to being the least interesting thing in the room, but that's where you find yourself, now isn't it?"

"What are you...?" said Hannah.

"I said shut up," he interrupted and then turned towards Tom. "You know what I'm talking about don't you, faeborn?"

Tom stood up at this comment, and everyone looked at him.

"Tom...?" said Joseph.

"Oh don't even think about shifting, or I'll drop the glamour that's keeping this conversation private, and everyone will see. You're not the only non-humans in the room, of course. And I'm quite sure that druid over there would love to see you change, wouldn't she? I think that we can all agree that you don't want her to find you out, now do you?"

Tom reluctantly sank back into his seat, not saying a word.

"Hannah, what is going on? Druid? Faeborn? What is he talking about?" Taylor whispered.

"I cannot tell if you really are this stupid or if you're just a very good actress," said the dean. "It's annoying really. I've never been deceived before. Can't say I like it much. But for you to hang out with an elf and claim not to know their animosity towards druids really does stretch reason, now doesn't it? Now you, Taylor Bain, and the elf-boy are going to come with me."

"I'm not an elf," said Tom, clenching his fist.

"Oh of course, how offensive of me. Let me use the proper term. Leprechaun. Although I can't much see the point in formalities when you don't even technically exist."

"Oh, you'll see how much I exist. I don't need to shift to take you down," Tom replied.

"Oh don't you? I think you underestimate me, elf-boy," said the dean while holding his right hand in front of his face.

Suddenly, the color of it darkened, from a pale skin-tone to a dark grey. The fingers elongated into pointed claws, and they hardened into a crackled stone. His hand had transformed into an enlarged stone fist.

"I knew it! Taylor, we've got to get out of here. He's not just any Alistair. He's THE Alistair!" screeched Hannah.

"What?" said Taylor. "I don't even know what that means."

"He's a gargoyle, Taylor!"

"Oh dear, now I'm the one to take offense. Gargoyle? How crude. Guardian is so very much more PC, don't you think? Oh, and I doubt very much that you don't know what I'm talking about. Why else would you be blocking me?" said the dean.

"I... Please stop. I'm just a girl. I don't even know what you mean by blocking you," Taylor insisted.

"Oh, we'll see about that, one way or another. Eric told me what you did to him. Quite impressive, I must say. I've never heard of a curse being cured before, but I sensed it the moment I saw him. That and your curious abilities to block my power make you quite an interesting find."

"What are you going to do?" asked Hannah.

"What do you take me for? A Bond villain? I'm not going to announce my plans."

"You're not going to do anything with your plans," said Joseph, rising up from the table.

He had a gun in his hand, and it was pointed directly at the Dean.

"Joseph, what are you...?" said Hannah.

"Yes Joseph, what are you doing with a firearm on campus? Naughty naughty, little boy. Those aren't allowed," said Alistair. "And besides, it won't do you much good in any case."

As he said this, the stone spread from his hands down his arm. His other hand changed too, and the effect spread until it reached his face, hardening his features into a grotesque statue of a man. His eyes were the only part of him that were not stone now, and these were a soulless solid black. The effect was chilling.

Joseph lowered the gun.

"Ideas, Hannah?" Joseph asked.

"I... I... don't know," she stammered.

"Of course not. Not so clever now are you, little one?" the dean taunted her. "I don't really need you anyway. What's one less forsaken in the world, eh?"

He reached out and grabbed Hannah by the neck and lifted her up. She kicked the air trying to struggle free.

"Don't struggle now, little one. I might just have to pop this precious little head of yours right off. All I have to do is squeeze," said Alistair.

With this, Hannah let herself go limp.

"Don't hurt her, Dean. We'll come with you," said Taylor.

"My name is Alistair, strange child. And of course you will come with me. That doesn't mean I won't hurt her, of course. You don't really have a say in the matter one way or another."

"Don't I?" said Taylor, angry that her friend was being put in danger and feeling emboldened by her fury. "How do you know what I can do? You have no idea, do you?"

The dean frowned slightly. Had she shaken his confidence? Taylor wondered. But what could she do? All she knew how to do was create illusions, and she barely knew how to do that. Still, she had to try.

She slowly turned her head to the side so that he was in the corner of her vision and tried to concentrate. The effect came quickly this time. Perhaps her anger helped her focus? She tried to think of a glamour to use. She needed help. A distraction, perhaps? If only someone could come to their aid.

With this thought, a figure started to materialize behind the dean. That's it, she thought. She imagined that figure was herself, and the fuzzy outline sharpened an exact copy of her. Perfect, she thought. But she could do more, right? So she imagined another. And another. And more until there was a whole crowd of Taylors behind Alistair.

"You might want to turn around," said Tom to Alistair.

"What do you take me for? I'm not taking instructions from you, elf."

"How about us?" said the group of Taylors from behind him, all in unison. "Can you take on all of us?"

He turned towards the voices and took a step back.

"I... am not fooled by your illusions, strange child," he said, but his voice betrayed his uncertainty.

"Aren't you?" they all said in unison. "We think that you are."

Whatever kept him from being able to read her, whatever kept Eric's thrall from working on her, she hoped that it would keep him from being able to see through her glamours. Given the uncertainty in his voice, she was beginning to think that she was right.

She imagined even more copies of her, until there were dozens. She didn't know the limit of her abilities, but she was going to test them now.

"Maybe I can't," said Alistair. "But what are you going to do? Bore me to death with imitations of yourself? You can't hurt me in this form, little girl."

"Can't I?" said Taylor. "You seem awfully confident for knowing so little about me. Now let my friend go."

"My only leverage against you. I do not think so, Taylor."

"Let her go, or we will break you," said the crowd of Taylors.

"Break you. Break you," they chanted in unison, closing in on him.

He backed away from them as they got closer, and he released Hannah. She scrambled back to the table, clasping her neck and breathing heavily.

"What can we do?" Taylor whispered to Hannah.

"We've just got to escape. He's right. We can't hurt him. But we can't leave a whole crowd of you behind. If he drops his glamour, then everyone will see dozens of you. You've got to remove yours first."

"And then what? He strangles us all to death? Can I turn him human? Like Eric?"

Hannah's eyes brightened.

"Taylor, you're a genius. If we could just get back to the dorms and get that syringe..."

"What's at the dorms?" said Tom, interrupting. "I can get there fast."

"In our room, in my desk drawer, a syringe filled with blood," said Hannah. "If we can get that..."

"Say no more," said Tom, and he suddenly vanished.

"What the?" said Taylor as she felt something brush past her legs.

She looked down to see a cat running towards the exit.

"Was that...?" she began.

"I think so," said Hannah. "Leprechauns were, er... are, I guess, shape-shifters."

"Why a syringe? Can't I just... I don't know, give myself a paper cut or something?" Taylor whispered.

"We've got to get it in him, and his only vulnerable spots are his eyes. I thought a syringe would do the trick," said Hannah.

"Hannah, YOU are the genius."

"We're assuming it does the same thing to gargoyles that it does to vampires. Here's hoping."

"What are you planning, girl?" said Alistair, bringing their attention back to him.

"What do you think I am?" the Taylors replied in unison. "A Bond villain?"

"Very clever, girl. I'd like you if you weren't such a liability."

"Such a shame," they replied.

Taylor felt something brush up against her leg. It was the cat again, back and holding a syringe in his mouth.

"You're fast," whispered Taylor.

"Meow," the cat replied and dropped it at her feet.

"Now here goes," said Taylor gripping it tightly in her hand.

She imagined the group of her doppelgangers closing in on Alistair and as they did he began to turn frantically.

"What are you..." he said. "Don't think you can... Just wait until I..."

"What?" they said. "Are you afraid?"

"Not as afraid as you will be when I get my hands on you."

"No," they all said still in unison and took a step closer encircling him in a crowd of illusions. "I am not afraid. You will not touch me."

Alistair turned to his right, and Taylor willed the crowd of her doubles to fill in to that side.

"I am not at your mercy. I am not at anybody's mercy. I decide, not you. Not anybody. Not ever again," they continued.

Alistair turned to his left, but they had already surrounded him on this side as well. He stepped back and then pivoted on his heel, directly into a syringe pointed at his eye.

Motivated by a mix of fear and adrenaline, Taylor buried her feelings of queasiness and did not hesitate as she plunged the syringe into his eye. It gave way easily. Looking away from the grotesque sight of his eye filling up with blood, she pushed it all the way in and then let go. He stumbled back a step and then ripped it out of his face.

"What have you...?" he began and then fell back another step.

"What... have... you..."

Each word came slower and slower, and his entire body slowed down with it, as if time were decelerating around him until he became perfectly still. He looked exactly like a statue.

"His glamour is fading, Taylor. Hurry, your copies!" said Hannah.

"Oh right," said Taylor and began to imagine their forms fading back into nothing.

One by one they vanished, leaving Alistair standing alone perfectly suspended mid-step.

"What happened to him?" she asked and hesitated a moment before gingerly placing a finger on his elbow.

At her slightest touch, the arm fell off from the stone body and fell to the floor. As it hit the ground, it shattered into millions of tiny pieces. The rest of him began to shatter and fall to the ground as well, until nothing was left but an unrecognizable pile of stone and dust.

"What exactly happened there?" said Tom, suddenly standing with them again in human form.

"I think, um," said Hannah, "I think that her blood sort of amplifies the effect of the blood of the person it encounters. Maybe with Eric it amplified the healing aspect of his blood, curing his curse, and with the dean it's like the stone part of him went out of control and took over the living part of him."

"Yeah, that made no sense," said Tom. "In any case, maybe we should get out of here? And can we keep a lid on the whole leprechaun thing?"

"Same with the blood, please," added Taylor.

"I don't really know what happened there, anyway. Hella creepy, though. 'Specially that Children of the Corn bit," said Tom with a shiver.

"Speaking of keeping a lid on things," said Hannah, "we need to put a lid on your brother, Joseph. I thought you took care of that?"

"I, uh... guess I missed a spot?" Joseph replied, sheepishly.

"Well, we're going to take care of that right now. Where is he?" said Hannah.

"How would I know?" replied Joseph. "Back at the dorms, maybe?"

"Well let's go find him then," said Hannah, and all three of them followed her as she marched out the door.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

When they arrived at the boys' dorm room, all of Eric's things were gone. All that was left of him was his cellphone sitting on top of a note addressed to Joseph.

"I'm sorry, little bro," Joseph read aloud. "I screwed up. I'll be in touch. I just need to clear my head, and I can't do it here. I love you."

Joseph crumpled it up and threw it on the floor.

"Guess we'll have to find him," said Hannah. "Do you know where he would have gone, Joseph?"

"What? I... no. I don't think he'd really leave, honestly."

"Well he's gotta be close, right? If we split up and canvas the city..."

"Are you kidding me?" interrupted Joseph. "The four of us are going to find one person in the middle of a city? We don't even know that he's still on the island. He could be on a train halfway to Florida by now."

"Or perhaps he's just out cooling off?" suggested Tom.

"Yeah, perhaps," said Joseph, glumly. "I sure hope so. I can't believe he left his phone."

"Okay, fine," said Hannah. "We'll wait for him to turn up. In the meantime, we could all probably use a little break."

"Hold on," said Taylor. "Not so fast. I think you need to tell me what's going on, Hannah."

"With?" Hannah asked.

"Well, for example, you said I'd never meet a gargoyle, and one just tried to do God knows what with me. And you said leprechauns were extinct, er... no offense, Tom."

"None taken," he replied.

"Right, so what is going on? It seems entirely likely that keeping me in the dark is going to get me killed. So fess up."

Tom spoke up as Hannah was about to reply.

"Look, Taylor. I don't know much about gargoyles, but there are no leprechauns but me. She didn't lie to you about that. And I need you guys to keep a lid on it. Like you, I'm kind of... unique... and I don't want to draw attention."

"Okay, fair enough, but gargoyles?" asked Taylor.

"Guardians. Technically they're guardians," said Hannah. "Each of the cursed races has one and only one. You see, once a person is cursed, they cannot have children. So even though the forsaken are generally much more powerful than their uncursed brothers, they need to preserve their uncursed race to continue on. Otherwise, they'd die off."

"I'm not sure I'm following," said Taylor.

"Okay, take humans. When humans are cursed they become vampires. But if all humans were cursed, and everyone was a vampire, then eventually they'd die off. This is what happened to leprechauns, or at least, what everyone believes happened," she said, nodding at Tom. "So the guardians stand up for the little guy, so to speak. They maintain balance."

"So... shouldn't he be on our side, then? He didn't seem like much of a protector to me."

"Oh, they are on no one's side but their own. Alistair, especially. They must maintain balance. If the race they protect dies off, then so do they. But they are hardly creatures of good. They are as self-interested as any. You're kind of a loophole, honestly, Taylor. Your blood tips the balance. Which is why we need to keep you inconspicuous."

"But he's gone now, right? I mean, I... Oh God, I killed someone," said Taylor, the realization suddenly sinking in.

"If only. Gargoyles don't ever really die. At least not permanently. He'll reincarnate somewhere, but it will be a long time before he's old enough to bother you again. But he's not the only one."

"But you said I'd never encounter a gargoyle. Though I guess Alistair disproved that."

"Well, it seemed unlikely. There's only eight in the entire world. Effectively now there are seven."

"So, one for each of the... accursed races, right?"

"Right."

"Okay, so, to be safe I lay low," said Taylor.

"Right. And everyone needs to keep this to themselves. Tom, you're in exactly the same boat, so I'm sure we can trust your discretion. It's just Joseph that I'm concerned about."

"Wait, what? Why me? I haven't done anything to earn your distrust," said Joseph.

"Like lying about enthralling your brother?"

"Oh, right. Uh... fair point, I guess."

"So we'll make you a deal. You keep Taylor's secret a secret, and I won't turn you human in your sleep. Deal?"

"What if I want to be human?" he replied.

"Do you?"

"Of course not. Or maybe I'll just use some of that blood to turn you human in your sleep."

"Can we stop threatening each other?" interjected Taylor. "Especially when we're talking about using my blood to do it? It's mine, and I'm kind of fond of keeping it to myself, honestly. Besides, Hannah, his brother just ran away on him. The worst thing Joseph has ever done to any of us is being loyal to his brother. I trust him."

"Trusting people is just going to get you in trouble, Taylor," said Hannah.

"What, like trusting you? Aside from all the curse stuff, college is hard enough as it is without friends. Why don't we all just agree to give each other the benefit of the doubt?"

"I trust you guys," Tom offered.

"Thanks, Tom. And we'll keep your secret safe too, right Hannah?" asked Taylor.

"Right," she replied.

"Okay now, enough bickering. I don't know about you guys, but I could really use a shower," said Taylor.

"Me too," agreed Tom. "You okay, Joseph?"

"What? Sure. Peachy. Everything's great. I just need to clear my head. Can I just have some space?"

Hannah eyed him suspiciously, but didn't argue any further.

"Of course, Joseph. I'm here if you need anything," Tom said and then closed the door gently behind them.

***

Eric stood at the edge of the dock waiting for the ferry to Manhattan, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He didn't know where he was headed or how he would get by, but he felt a sense of relief to be away from that campus. Besides, he had survived rougher things than being homeless. His mind drifted off to the possibilities of his future until a voice from nowhere startled him back to attention.

"Eric," the voice said.

"Hello?" he replied, turning to see where the voice was coming from.

He couldn't see anyone, however.

"I'm right here, Eric."

"Dean?"

Eric recognized the voice of the professor he had spoken to earlier, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was almost as if the voice was coming from inside his own head.

"That's right, Eric. It's me. You've done well, boy. Well indeed."

Continued in Book Two

in the Vampire University Series

The Last Leprechaun.

Available Now

