Definitely Dead

promised and promised to bring me over, because of course I wanted to be as he was. I wanted the strength.” Her eyes flicked over to me.
    I nodded heartily. I could understand that.
    “But when he needed money, for clothes and food for me, he would do the same thing with me that Clovis had, sell me for money. He knew the men would notice if I was cold, and he knew I would bite them if he brought me over. I grew tired of his failing in his promise.”
    I nodded to show her I was paying attention. And I was, but in the back of my mind I was wondering where the hell this monologue was heading and why I was the recipient of such a fascinating and depressing story.
    “Then one night we came into a village where the head-man knew Alain for what he was. Stupid Alain had forgotten he had passed through before and drained the headman’s wife! So the villagers bound him with a silver chain, which was amazing to find in a small village, I can tell you . . . and they threw him into a hut, planning to keep him until the village priest returned from a trip. Then they meant to put him in the sun with some church ceremony. It was a poor village, but on top of him they piled all the bits of silver and all the garlic the people possessed, in an effort to keep him subdued.” The queen chuckled.
    “They knew I was a human, and they knew he had abused me,” she said. “So they didn’t tie me up. The head-man’s family discussed taking me as a slave, since they had lost a woman to the vampire. I knew what that would be like.”
    The expression on her face was both heartbreaking and absolutely chilling. I held very still.
    “That night, I pulled out some weak planks from the rear of the hut and crawled in. I told Alain that when he’d brought me over, I’d free him. We bargained for quite a time, and then he agreed. I dug a hole in the floor, big enough for my body. We planned that Alain would drain me and bury me under the pallet he lay on, smoothing the dirt floor over as best he could. He could move enough for that. On the third night, I would rise. I would break his chain and toss away the garlic, though it would burn my hands. We would flee into the darkness.” She laughed out loud. “But the priest returned before three days were up. By the time I clawed my way out of the dirt, Alain was blackened ash in the wind. It was the priest’s hut they’d stored Alain in. The old priest was the one who told me what had happened.”
    I had a feeling I knew the punch line to this story. “Okay,” I said quickly, “I guess the priest was your first meal.” I smiled brightly.
    “Oh, no,” said Sophie-Anne, formerly Judith. “I told him I was the angel of death, and that I was passing him over since he had been so virtuous.”
    Considering the state Jake Purifoy had been in when he’d risen for the first time, I could appreciate what a gut-wrenching effort that must have been for the new vampire.
    “What did you do next?” I asked.
    “After a few years, I found an orphan like me; roaming in the woods, like me,” she said, and turned to look at her bodyguard. “We’ve been together ever since.”
    And I finally saw an expression in Andre’s unlined face: utter devotion.
    “He was being forced, like I had been,” she said gently. “And I took care of that.”
    I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. I couldn’t have picked something to say if you had paid me.
    “The reason I’ve bored you with my ancient history,” the queen said, shaking herself and sitting up even straighter, “is to tell you why I took Hadley under my wing. She, too, had been molested, by her great-uncle. Did he molest you, too?”
    I nodded. I’d had no idea he’d gotten to Hadley. He hadn’t progressed to actual penetration, only because my parents had died and I’d gone to live with my grandmother. My parents hadn’t believed me, but I’d convinced my grandmother I was telling the truth by the time he would have felt I was ripe, when I was about nine. Of course, Hadley had been older. We’d had much more in common than I’d ever thought. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” I said. “Thanks for telling me.”
    “Hadley talked about you often,” the queen said.
    Yeah, thanks, Hadley. Thanks for setting me up for the worst . . . no, wait, that was unfair. Finding out about Bill’s massive deception was not the worst thing that had ever happened to me. But it wasn’t too far down on my personal list, either.
    “That’s what