“C’mon, kid, you’re chewing on something. I know that look. Cough it up!” Lavinia’s voice had an unusual tremor and pleading tenderness which offset the rough words.

Sally’s most precious gift was the ability to learn from repeated mistakes. Before the new knowledge could swell in size until it was unspeakable – she spoke it. “You were forced out because we were fighting, because I didn’t feel at home with you.”

Lavinia shook her head, not getting it.

“You’re a vampire,” Sally said, annoyed. “You can only be in a home because I’ve invited you. If I take back my invitation ‘cause of anything, you get pushed out!” As worried understanding sweep across Lavinia’s face, she went on, “It’s not right. I don’t want that power! I could order you to get out and you’d have to go!”

When she said, “get out,” Lavinia tensed.

Sally gasped, “Did I just…?!”

Lavinia shook her head, “Nothin’.”

Sally shivered. Six months ago, I was afraid of saying “welcome, come in” by accident.

They were still in the entryway. Lavinia drew her in with no trouble and sat on the sofa. Sally had been holding a full bladder for too long (miraculously she still had it even after the scare) so she made a quick trip to the bathroom before sitting next to Lavinia.

From the strong embrace, she looked around the room where her life had changed. I stood behind that curtain and she came through that door. That’s where she stood when she swept the curtain aside and I saw her eyes for the first time. Then she sneezed because of six months accumulated dust.

Lavinia looked embarrassed. “I’m gonna say something I don’t say much, and I was gonna say it even before what you just told me. I just wanna say I’m fuckin’ sorry I was such an asshole back there.”

“Back where?” Sally was actually nonplussed. “Oh, in the van. I can’t even remember what we were arguing about.”

A smile flitted across Lavinia’s face. “Lucky I was listening, then. And I was listening, babe. It’s just, I’ve got so used to, every relationship I’ve ever had, got used to winning every argument by stonewalling. But when that force slammed me, it was like somebody shook me and yelled ‘hey asshole, this is what a stone wall feels like!’”

Sally’s face worked and she leaned against Lavinia, who stroked her, murmuring, “So, I was working up to say sorry even before I learned I gotta suck up to you.”

“I don’t want you to have to suck up to me‼!” Sally screamed.

Lavinia’s grin snapped off. “I was just kidding….”

“Do me!” Sally faced Lavinia with fierce determination. “Do me now. I want to be with you, not….” She shook her head helplessly, confused by the ramifications of what she was asking. “I don’t want that power,” she finished.

She faced Lavinia, ready for the pain of the bite, vague in her mind about what came after but believing in a shining future flying in the sun with her beloved. She wanted this too much to look at how questionable her immediate motive was. This excuse would do as well as any.

She could see that Lavinia was tempted. She put her hand on Sally’s right shoulder and Sally breathed hard, suddenly repelled. Lavinia closed her eyes and displayed her gleaming fangs with intense suddenness.

Her head snapped forward! She bit hard, on the very spot on Sally’s neck which had felt funny several times. Sally struggled without meaning to. The fangs pierced and ached and this wasn’t supposed to be happening now, but it would be over in a few minutes. That scream of despair swelled – or was it a shriek of triumph this time? Why did she feel like weeping?

An instant later, Lavinia’s strong hands flung her away.

“I can’t do it, I can’t, sorry babe, I can’t,” she panted. “Blood tastes too awful to me now. I thought I could stand it but I can’t.”

Sally, feverish and dazed, cried in despair, “I have to stay human!”

Lavinia took Sally’s hands. “When the time comes, we’ll find some non-solar vampire to….” She trailed off.

“I have to stay human,” Sally said more calmly, despair fading into solid sureness. “What we’re going to do, there’s a reason I have to stay human. I don’t know what it is, but I know it. We came this close to wrecking our chance just now. Thank heaven blood doesn’t taste good to you anymore.”

Then she flung herself on her startled lover and they had some pretty hot sex right there on Lavinia’s dusty sofa.

They both sneezed several times.

♦

Charity chopped onions for her dinner frittata. The gray-haired grandmother wanted to help but Charity wasn’t ready to hand a knife to a vampire. She felt big eyes on her back.

Tommy didn’t interact much with the other vampires who wandered like opium addicts from room to room, touching things. He held his fire-engine blanket and watched her. He never sucked his thumb; she’d see it start for his mouth sometimes but then he’d look at it and drop it to his side again.

When he was still paralyzed by day, she’d stationed herself beside him when he woke up so she could greet him with a smile or a song or a tickle. The first week he had wakened zombie-like; the second week he had wakened shaking with terror from the “nasty talking man” of his dreams. And then the day before Lavinia flew, he sat up smiling, walked to the window to put his hand in the sun and said, “Yummy yummy, woo woo woo.”

It was time to try the idea which had made her hug herself. In a conversational tone, like she might have talked to her own grandmother, Charity said, “I want to take Tommy to a quiet place where he can practice flying tomorrow. I wish I knew just the right place, though.”

“Da zoo?” Tommy asked, out of the blue.

“Would you rather go to the zoo tomorrow, my lamb?” Charity asked hopefully.

“Kin I fwy dewe?”

“Eh, no, honey, if we go to the zoo, we’ll have to postpone flying for another day.”

“Mmm. Den wets do da zoo pose pone.” It took Charity a moment to correctly parse this sentence as “Then let’s postpone the zoo.”

“Alright. You see, we want to fly where there are no other people.” She didn’t want to scare him by talking about other people hurting or shooting at him. “We don’t want to make anybody jealous. But it must be a place with lots of sunshine. An open outdoor place with lots of sunshine that doesn’t get many visitors, even on a Saturday. But I don’t quite know where to go. I just have to think. Where would be a good place?”

“Whyn’t ya try Annadel State Park?” said a new voice. “Secret back entrance, don’t nobody hardly ever use.”

Charity’s heart sang. It had worked! Simply by asking for help, she had found a way to awaken one of the others!

Eyes tearing from the onions, she chopped too fast as she said, “So you know a secret back entrance – yaaahhh!”

Sharp pain sliced across her left index finger just as Tommy sang “Sequet entwance, sequet entwance!” and the male voice said, “Yeah, can’t remember the turnoff but I could find it for you.”

Then blood trickled down her finger and a hiss ran through every corner of her apartment.