Chosen

release."
    "It's cool beyond belief, Grandma! Thank you so much."
    "Well, I know how much you love that spooky old story, and in light of recent events I thought it would be ironically funny for you to have a signed edition," Grandma said.
    "Did you know Bram Stoker was Imprinted by a vampyre, and that's why he wrote the book?" I gushed as I oh-so-carefully turned the thick pages, checking out the old illustrations, which were, indeed, spooky.
    "I had no idea Stoker had a relationship with a vampyre," Grandma said.
    "I wouldn't call being bitten by a vampyre and then put under his spell a relationship," my mother said.
    Grandma and I looked at her. I sighed. "Mom, it's way possible for a human and a vampyre to have a relationship. That's what Imprinting is about." Well, it was also about bloodlust and some serious desire, along with a psychic link that could be pretty disconcerting, all of which I knew from my experience with Heath. But I wasn't going to mention that to Mom.
    My mother shivered like something nasty had just run its finger up her spine. "It sounds disgusting to me."
    "Mother. Do you not get that there are two very specific choices for my future? One would be that I become the thing that you're saying is disgusting. The other would be that sometime in the next four years I die." I hadn't wanted to get into it with her, but her attitude was seriously pissing me off. "So would you rather see me dead or see me an adult vampyre?"
    "Neither, of course," she said.
    "Linda," Grandma put her hand on my leg under the table and squeezed. "What Zoey is saying is that you need to accept her and her new future, and that your attitude is hurting her feelings."
    "My attitude!" I thought Mom was going to launch into one of her tirades about "why are you always picking on me," but instead she surprised me by taking a deep breath and then looking me straight in the eyes. "I don't mean to hurt your feelings, Zoey."
    For a moment she looked like her old self, like the mom she'd been before she'd married John Heffer and turned into the Perfect Stepford Church Wife, and I felt my heart squeeze. "You do hurt my feelings, though, Mom." I heard myself say.
    "I'm sorry," she said. Then she held her hand out to me. "How about we try this birthday thing again?"
    I put my hand in hers, feeling cautiously hopeful. Maybe there was part of my old mom left inside her. I mean, she'd come alone, without the step-loser, which was pretty darn close to a miracle. I squeezed her hand and smiled. "Sounds good to me."
    "Well, then, you should open your present and then we can eat cake," Mom said, sliding over the box that sat next to the as yet untouched cake.
    "Okay!" I tried to keep the enthusiasm in my voice, even though the present was wrapped in paper covered with a grim nativity scene. My smile held until I recognized the white leather cover and gold-tipped pages. With my heart sinking down into my stomach, I turned the book over to read: The Holy Word, People of Faith Edition printed in expensive gold leaf cursive across the cover. Another glittering of excess gold caught my eye. Across the bottom of the cover it read, The Heffer Family. There was a red velvet bookmark with a gold tassel stuck inside the front pages of the book and, trying to buy time so I could think of something to say other than "this is a truly awful present," I let the pages fall open there. Then I blinked, hoping what I was reading was just a trick of my eyes. No. It was really there. The book had opened to the family-tree page. In the weird back-slanted left-handed writing that I easily recognized as belonging to the step-loser, my mom's name LINDA HEFFER had been penned in. A line had been drawn attaching it to JOHN HEFFER, with the date of their marriage off to the side. Underneath their names, written in as if we had been born to them, were the names of my brother, my sister, and me.
    Okay, my bio dad, Paul Montgomery, had left us when I was just a kid and had promptly disappeared from the face of the earth. Once in a while a pathetically small child-support check would arrive from him with no return address, but other than those rare instances, he hadn't been part of our lives in upward of ten years. Yes, he was a crappy dad. But he was my dad, and John Heffer, who seriously hated my guts, was not.
    I looked up from the bogus family tree and into my mom's eyes. My voice sounded surprisingly steady, calm even, but inside I was a big mess of emotions. "What