Vampire 01 - Daughter of Darkness

when they were my age. Neither had ever expressed the unhappiness I felt at school and at not being part of anything girls my age were a part of. Why didn’t they long for these things as much as I did?
    Of course, I was very curious about what Ava wanted to discuss. It had to be important to get her up this early. She began the moment we were all in the car and leaving for school.
    “I told Daddy that I had a really good feeling about you last night. I don’t have to tell you, Lorelei, that I’ve had my doubts about you.”
    “Why?”
    “That doesn’t matter right now. What matters is I saw things going on in you last night that were positive, things that reminded me of myself when I first went out. You’re a quick study, maybe even quicker than I was.”
    “Really?”
    Was this my sister Ava talking? Giving me compliments? Was I really the reason for this new bloom about her face, this pleasantness and happiness? I couldn’t help but be suspicious. When would the famous second shoe be dropped? What was the catch here? Where was all of this flattery taking me?
    “Yes,” she said, smiling at me. “Maybe you don’t realize it yet, but the change, as Daddy likes to refer to it, has begun in you and, I might add, is going gangbusters. Don’t tell me you don’t feel it in yourself.”
    “I do, Ava, but I’m not sure what it is I’m feeling exactly.”
    “You’re feeling the power,” she said.
    “What is the power?”
    “The gift that makes it possible for you to do for Daddy what your sisters, what I, have done for him. It’s not just being attractive. You will mesmerize, capture, and fascinate. When the expression
He lost his head over her
is applied to you, it will have real meaning.” She laughed. “You’ll get to feel like a goddess, like the puppeteer pulling the strings and making them dance. You had a taste of that last night, didn’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    She smiled and nodded. “I remember my first taste of it. It was truly like drinking from the Fountain of Youth. The energy, the strength, the confidence in yourself that you feel right now will never die, Lorelei.”
    “You make it sound as if we’re immortal.”
    She smiled and then lost the smile quickly as her real purpose for getting up early and driving me returned. “The reason I wanted to drive you to school today and talk to you, something Daddy insists on, by the way, is that you’re going to see the change reflected in the way the boys in your school look at you today. You’re going to lay down a direct path to their libidos.”
    “What’s a libido?” Marla asked. For a while, I had forgotten she was with us, I was so lost in the things Ava was saying.
    “You want the technical definition?” Ava asked, winking at me.
    “Okay.”
    “It’s what Sigmund Freud called the generalized sexual energy of which conscious activity is the expression. I’m taking a course in human psychology,” Ava told me.
    She never discussed or even mentioned her classes at UCLA. I always thought it was an unpleasant experience for her but something she had to do because Daddy asked her to do it. In fact, she complained so much about doing it that I was afraid to ask her anything.
    “Daddy thought I needed the class,” she added. Then she turned to Marla and said, “It means getting them hot, Marla. You know what that is, right?”
    “Yes, of course,” she said. “I know when boys are hot.”
    Ava laughed.
    “I do.”
    “She’ll be right on your heels, Lorelei. Be happy about it.”
    “Is that why you’re so happy this morning, Ava?” I asked. “I’m right on your heels?”
    “Exactly. See, you are getting smarter, wiser, more perceptive.”
    “Why does that please you so much, Ava? Not that I’m upset about it. I just want to know why.”
    “Why? Why?” She shook her head. “Simple, Lorelei. You’ll be taking over that much faster.”
    “And what about you?”
    “I’ll leave to fulfill my destiny,” she said, and drove on, her face filled with such pleasure and delight it was truly as if she could see her destiny right before us.
    “What is this destiny, exactly?” I asked. “I never understood when Mrs. Fennel said that was what Brianna was pursuing, her destiny.”
    She looked at me and smiled. “When your time comes, Lorelei, you’ll know. Believe me, you’ll know,” she said, and left it at that, another secret still wrapped tightly in mystery.
    After we arrived at school, Ava asked me to wait