Matt and Roseanne Paxton, in their aggressively cheerful morning phase, bustled around as if Cheerios with milk and sugar was a culinary feat. Jeremy joined them, smiling a secret smile. He and KerriAnne had done it twice more that night, talking in between in secret happy tones as lovers have done since before history began.

But then his mother saw him happy and pursed her lips in disapproval. His shoulders sagged automatically and she nodded, satisfied. He slunk away before letting the secret smile come back.

The week that followed was glorious. He even defiantly introduced her to his parents. It was a revelation that he could be happy.

And then the very next night KerriAnne stopped smiling.

For the week after that she brooded while Jeremy nobly told himself that he didn’t own her and that she could have her secrets. Then in the space of five seconds he found himself yelling, “Tell me right now what you’re hiding or I’m through with you!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry sweetie,” she gushed. She looked down at the bed where she sat, still clothed. Pinching up a corner of the new sheets (now a manly solid blue), she said in a tiny voice, “I found your vampire.”

“Why would you hide that from me??”

Miserably, she told him.

His face went long with dismay.

♦

As he walked the nighttime streets with her, he barely saw the houses slipping by or the vampires who kept step with them.

One white shape got too close and KerriAnne hissed, “You dare not touch us!” The intruder jumped back. She looked nervously at Jeremy. He smiled thanks through his misery and she brightened.

They crossed 24th Street with its trendy daytime businesses and passed James Lick Middle School. He’d been a student there when Alec died. It looked like San Quentin Prison.

As they turned onto Duncan Street and started climbing, KerriAnne stroked his arm tentatively. He took her hand, but he was sick at his stomach as they got closer. He thought about what KerriAnne said she’d seen and almost hoped there would be nobody home.

“Almost there, sweetie,” KerriAnne said, her face tense. They crossed an intersection marked by one of San Francisco’s eerie fairy circles of red brick and turned onto a steep final street.

KerriAnne put a hand on his shoulder. She pointed to a house.

This was it. Jeremy’s heart pounded so that he could barely hear. His legs trembled.

She put her finger to her lips and crept cautiously to where she could just make out faces in the bay window. Jeremy couldn’t bring himself to look yet. The vampires around them funneled toward a garden gate and vanished.

An anguished voice screamed KerriAnne’s name!

She leaped back, slammed into him and they both fell. The pavement whacked his elbow. Voices shouted and feet pounded down the stairs. They scrambled to their feet.

The front door opened. KerriAnne broke and fled wildly down the hill. Jeremy ran with her, not sure why they were running, nearly tumbling on the steep street.

But snarls and shouts echoed. She stopped and Jeremy, blindly obedient, stopped too. They turned.

A hurricane of white skin whirled around an eye partway up the hill.

KerriAnne ran back, screaming “Let her go! I command you! I’m your Queen, I command you to let her go!” But either she had lost her power or they were too blood crazed. Jeremy, lungs aching, ran up to the house again.

The next moment, all his thoughts were blasted away.

In the doorway of the house stood two men, calling the vampires to them. One was the short, red-haired man they’d called Jesse at the plaza. He had been with his husband but Jeremy had never seen the other man. The husband had always been behind someone or with his face buried in Jesse’s shoulder.

But Jeremy saw him now. He stood next to Jesse: an older man with a plump, roundish face and a white moustache.

Jeremy’s hands went ice cold as he stared. The face had not changed in nearly five years except that now it wore a mask of caring concern instead of naked craft and gloating.

When Alec died in a spray of blood, the older vampire gave me a wink and a thumbs up, welcoming me into a world of evil….

The older vampire put his arms around Jesse. Then he saw Jeremy watching him.

For a heart-freezing instant, their eyes locked.

The vampire vanished from the doorway. His husband, who had seen everything, kept calling to the vampires alone, his eyes wide and shell shocked.

KerriAnne’s hand touched his and his arm went automatically around her waist as the sister, Sally, walked up. KerriAnne’s face asked the question. Unable to speak, he nodded. She murmured something comforting. Then she turned and walked up to her sister.

Jeremy knew how KerriAnne worshipped her sister. When he had said, “Why would you hide that from me?!” she’d cried as she told him, “I recognized him from your drawings. He was at the plaza! Didn’t you see him? He came roaring up in that big red car. I just had to ask around and when I found the house, I looked in the windows to make sure it was him.

She’d looked up at him, eyes full of disillusionment. “In one of the bedrooms, there she was. Sally. In his house. Working with him. I just couldn’t tell you. Now I remember she was with them at the plaza too. I’m such a bun dan!”

He hadn’t had the heart or energy to ask what that meant.

Now she slapped the face of her only sister and snarled, “You bitch!” And she did it for him.

She took his hand and they walked away. He didn’t try for another glimpse of the monster. He didn’t storm the house to kill him. Pointless: he’d been warned, though he must have recognized Jeremy at the plaza and been on guard already.

KerriAnne wept silently and he vowed to be worthy of her. She’d gone days without feeding (he hoped); he’d convince her to get into sunlight if it was the last thing he ever did. And then they might find how to hurt those wicked people.

They got home to his darkened house, undressed, went hungrily to bed together and made love, whitish fluid from her wounded heart seeping onto his pale chest.