“Send her out! Send her out to us! Send her out or we will kill you!” The chaotic voices congealed into a single chant.

Malcolm glared. “You fuckers can’t come into a home, so shut up!” Then, in an abashed aside, “Pardon my language again, sister.”

But Sister Amanda knelt beside Jeremy and took him in strong arms. He sobbed while the other three stood uncertain. “It’s alright, Jeremy,” she said softly. “Nobody will be hurt this time. What happened then was not your fault. You were twelve, you were frightened. Please accept that you are loved and forgiven.”

“Send her out! Send her out. Send her out or we will kill you!”

“Sister, I need to know what’s going on,” Malcolm said, kneeling beside her.

A vampire seemed to surge into protected space! Malcolm looked up, startled, but it must have been an optical illusion; the boundary held firm.

“Jeremy, may I tell him?” the nun asked compassionately. He nodded, eyes closed, comforted by her gentle touch but deep in his personal hell.

“There was an accident four years ago, and Jeremy’s brother met his death,” she explained. “A vampire with an unusual amount of cunning called to Jeremy though the window, telling him just what these vampires are saying, to push his younger brother out to them and they would then spare him.”

“It was an older vampire, with a, kind of, round face.” Jeremy tried to be helpful through his misery. “You know how the rest of them all look alike? But not him. And once he started it, they all took it up.”

Malcolm looked at the vampires like someone waking from a dream. How had he never noticed that they all looked alike?

Again, the vampires seemed to push in slightly, the invisible wall around the plaza rippling like melting plastic. And then nothing.

“Anyway,” Sister Amanda finished, “there was a scuffle at the door, nothing to blame on Jeremy. The brother was taken by the evil ones and Jeremy blamed himself.”

And so, Malcolm filled in silently, did his parents, which is why they were only too happy to sign that permission form.

“But what have you got to do with it?” he asked. “Why are the vampires calling for you?”

The nun shook her head. “I honestly don’t know, Malcolm.”

“Even if I didn’t, like, actually push him,” Jeremy said from against the Sister’s breast, “I, I wanted it to be him, not me.”

“Completely understandable, Jeremy, believe me,” the nun said with great compassion. “I’ve made selfish choices too, my dear, and I know our Lord forgives me and accepts me for what I am. He loves you too, I know He does, and I know He forgives you.” The tall young man with green hair rolled his eyes and Malcolm glared at him.

There was motion in the white wall of bodies. Silence spread like white mist from the point in the crowd where the new chant had started. The line of vampires roiled, and one stepped to the front.

A vampire who looked different from all the rest.

“You’re the leader?” Malcolm said in surprise.

Jeremy’s anguished eyes snapped open. Terror-stricken, they searched for a face he had seen only twice in his life.

♦

Hand in hand, Sally and Lavinia walked down the sidewalk.

It was finally the way she’d imagined: they were outside, at night, without fear. Calm and beautiful evening purples filled the darkening sky and delicate stars gleamed like tiny gems.

The fluid circle of undead ringed them with poisonous voices like sublimating ice. Sally said quietly, “You’re violating the sanctity of our home with your evil words. Be quiet.” Lavinia’s proud hand squeezed hers as the noise faded to sweet silence. Sally relished the feeling of power as the monsters stepped back before her and her beloved.

Suddenly daring, she spoke again. “I don’t want to see your ugly faces polluting our home. Get out of my sight.” Snarls erupted and she was afraid she’d gone too far. But the vampires were pushed away. In moments, she and Lavinia stood on a normal city street under lighted windows where faces appeared, drawn by the sudden silence.

Just above Lavinia, a blond girl knelt on a sofa, solemnly picking her nose. Sally thought of waving but the parents appeared. The mother looked like she was about to scream, “Are you two nuts? Come inside!” But when her eyes met Sally’s she pulled the child quickly out of sight and the curtains were drawn the next moment.

Sally looked at other windows, trying to sense how people saw them. This might be the moment to publicly declare what they knew. Next to the house of the nose picker, a white-haired woman in a rainbow knit wool cap stared at them from a room hung with masks as she talked into a big handheld with a prominent plastic antenna. Windows across the street held a balding clerical type with the sensual face of Henry Miller, a worried young Hindi man with a gleaming round face and a heavy unshaven grouch in a blue bathrobe. They all looked suspicious.

What devil’s bargain did these people think she’d struck with the vampires? She shouted angrily, “We’re in love and wherever we’re together is our home! Any one of you can keep the vampires away!”

The grouch and the young man whisked away, Henry Miller look at them speculatively and the rainbow woman shook her head and cupped a hand to her ear. Sally, deflated, lacked the heart to yell again as they walked on down the steep hill.

Halfway down, they found the address on the card, a bright yellow Victorian with blue trim and white gingerbreading like traces of snow. Sally squeezed Lavinia’s hand and they climbed five steps of black speckled granite to an alcove.

They faced the front door. “Can you enter?” Sally asked.

Lavinia put her hand on the knob. “Locked. So, I still don’t know.” Then she looked up, startled. “No wait, I do know. This here’s not the way. We gotta go around the side.”

“You know that?”

“Yep. I feel it, like a fucking command. I think you were right about that card and what’s here.”

Lavinia didn’t say the words “You were right,” very often. Sally’s eyes crinkled affectionately.

A few steps up the street was a tall wooden gate with a simple latch.

But before Lavinia could try it, a vampire in evening clothes stepped up from behind them, said, “Excuse me,” lifted the latch and disappeared into a wooded garden inside.

Sally’s jaw dropped in delighted astonishment. Lavinia eagerly lifted the latch herself, and they walked in. The gate swung shut behind them with a gentle click.