Vampire 01 - Daughter of Darkness

window had someone looking into our home before I turned to look out. Every creak was a clue, a letter, and a word to a sentence that would tell me something I didn’t know. It would be the same for her. The fact that I couldn’t satisfy her added to my own frustrations.
    Later that night, when I was in my room getting ready for bed, Ava came in. She came in the way she often did, silently, as if she walked on air. Many times she had told me we had to practice being soft. We had to catch people, especially young men, unaware. It added to the mystery when we suddenly seemed to appear beside them as if what they were fantasizing about had come true. Those sorts of little things, she said, were important. “Nuances of your sexuality,” she called them. “We finesse men, turn and twist them about like puppets on a string.”
    She certainly caught me unaware. I was in thebathroom, gazing at myself naked before the full-length mirror beside the tub. I didn’t know whether it was normal for someone to be so fascinated with her own body. Most of the girls I knew at school seemed to complain constantly about their bodies. They were too fat or had noses and ears that were too big. They were jealous of this one or that one. No one seemed to be satisfied. Sometimes I thought they hated me because I didn’t voice similar complaints or envy.
    “You think you’re so damn perfect, don’t you?” Meg Logan snapped at me one afternoon in P.E. All the girls were running through their litany of complaints about themselves, and I remained silent as usual. She realized I was just listening and not offering anything in common. Maybe it was the slight smile on my face that annoyed her.
    Actually, I was so curious about them, how they thought and what they said, so I just wanted to listen, almost the way someone from another country might. I couldn’t help wondering if I really was dramatically different from them in ways I was just beginning to understand.
    “No,” I told her, annoyed with how she had come at me so viciously. “Just not as imperfect.”
    “Huh? You’re weird,” she said. “No one knows who you really are and why you’re so damn secretive, slinking around here like some ghoul and guarding your precious privacy. Frankly, I don’t want to waste my time finding out anything more about you. I know enough to disgust me.”
    The others agreed, shook their heads at me, and moved away. I couldn’t argue with what she had said, although I wasn’t secretive in order to guard my preciousprivacy. I really didn’t know as much about myself as I would have liked to know. Sometimes I felt like someone inhabiting the shell of someone else, wearing my body and face like a costume and mask.
    Now, when I looked at myself in the mirror, I felt as if I were looking through a window at another girl, one who had just emerged from within. The tightening of my waist, the curve at my hips, the lift in my rear, and the soft lines now in my neck and shoulders made my heart race. I brought my hands slowly to my breasts, in awe of how they had filled and firmed. The excitement shot down to my thighs, and I moaned with pleasure.
    “Not bad,” Ava said, and I spun around, my face reddening. She nodded. “Daddy’s right. You’re looking more and more like me every day now. No wonder my clothes fit you so well. For a moment, I thought I was looking at myself when I was your age.”
    “Really?” I asked, reaching for my bath towel.
    “I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t so, Lorelei. I don’t flatter.” She sounded as if she wished she didn’t have to say it. “Stop fishing for compliments, anyway. You’re way past that need now, or should be.”
    “I’m not fishing for compliments. I’m just so happy about…”
    “Okay. I get the point. I came to tell you that you’re going out with me this coming weekend, but as I explained before, it’s just to observe and follow my orders. Consider it a field trip.”
    “I am? Oh, that’s terrific, Ava.” I clapped my hands and bounced on my heels.
    She shook her head and made a ticking sound withher lips the way Mrs. Fennel sometimes did. “I don’t remember being as naive and as innocent as you are. When Brianna took me with her for the first time, I didn’t gawk and gape and squeal like a tween or something.”
    “I won’t do that. I promise.”
    “We’ll see,” she said, and turned to leave, but then she paused to look at me again. “Daddy doesn’t see it in you,