Tara had taken a brief nap after coming home, then immediately got to writing about her adventures. This had lasted all of thirty minutes, leaving her now to stare quietly at the paper in front of her. She wasn’t sure how to continue her story and for a time simply twirled her pen in her fingers as she thought.

A’rat had managed to reach the library, which Tara had carefully changed to ‘librarium’ in all the older parts of the store, only to discover that it was under the control of the vampire coven.

This is where Tara was stuck. In the past, she had only used vampires as enemies, barely human monsters, so A’rat could tear through them without remorse.

Now, however…

Tara had spent an inordinate amount of paper, two pages in fact, to describe the alter ego she had cooked up for Chrissy. After flipping through the dictionary she’d need for French, she had settled on naming her Christine Le Sang. After that she had written down how Christine looked and to leave matters short, the reader was supposed to know that Christine was beautiful, yes, but also an evil monster…

Tara was now stuck on how eating a hamburger would fit into the story.

She put her pen on paper again, started a letter, then ended by drawing a little circle. She traced a line above it, then another line parallel down and drew another circle. Cherries.

…Cherries.

Cherries!

She thought back to the cherry Chrissy had stolen from her milkshake in the burger place.

“You can have it back,” Chrissy had said. Had it been a joke or a dare?

Tara shrugged the thought off, then turned her brain to what would fit in a vampire’s world that looked like a cherry.

Her mind landed on blood, which didn’t have much more in common with blood than being red. It definitely wasn’t cherry shaped, unless…

“The vampire,” Tara started, then, after a moment’s pause, added, “ss.”

“The vampiress put a magic drop of blood, used to keep her alive when there were no humans victims cattle prey to eat feed on, in her mouth and let it pop between her teeth. She licked her lips, left sparkling…”

Tara sighed, picked up her thesaurus and leafed through it until she found a better word.

“Left shimmering in the torch light.

‘Would you like some’ Christine said.

‘I only drink the blood of my enemies’ A’rat said. She did not boast.

‘how about the blood of a friend? Christine said and licked her lips again, ‘It is very sweet’

Tara stared at the paper again.

“’Or are you scared?’” she wrote after five minutes of consideration.

Tara looked blankly at the paper, then suddenly started to write, in as much detail as she dared, about A’rat leaning in for a lick of the blood, which turned into a kiss.

When she was done, Tara tugged on her collar, then read back what she had written.

She gazed at the paper, unsure if she was horrified or excited about her creation.

Still contemplating with herself, she very slowly added, “A’rat did not notice that she was now in the vampire’s thrall.”

Tara honestly wasn’t sure what a thrall was, but she had heard the phrase before and felt this was the time to use it.

She read back again, once more, then a third time, and two more times, then very slowly closed the notebook and shoved it in its proper place above her desk, almost mechanically.

As soon as she realized what she had done, she picked it up and placed it in front of the first of the notebooks, hoping her mother wouldn’t read it.

She checked her watch, found it was four thirty and decided that four thirty was a great time for a walk. Never a better time even.

She stood up and headed outside.

“Where are you going honey?” Mrs Brooks asked when she heard the door to the garage open.

“Maybe jump in the river,” Tara mumbled to herself.

“What was that?”

“Just going for a walk!”