Vampire 01 - Daughter of Darkness

laugh at anything he said.”
    “Very persistent. Are you sure you were stern enough?”
    “Oh, yes, Daddy,” I said. I repeated the words I had used and then told him what had happened in the girls’ locker room and how I had turned the tables on Ruta Lee. That brought a smile to his face.
    “Very clever of you, Lorelei. But,” he added with concern, “I don’t want you getting into trouble at school. None of my girls gets into trouble like that and brings unpleasant attention to us. Ignore them from now on. Your days at that school are limited.”
    The way he said that made me think we might be moving again very soon.
    “Are we moving?”
    “Soon, yes.”
    “How soon?”
    “I’m not sure yet, but don’t worry about it, Lorelei. Moving at short notice is not a problem for any of us,” he added. “Okay. You can go do your homework if you’d like.”
    “Is Ava back yet?”
    “Not yet,” he said. “She won’t be at dinner, either.”
    She’s hunting
, I thought, and mentally counted the days. It was time. I didn’t see or hear her until the middle of the night. Apparently, she had gone much farther for her catch this time.
    To my surprise, Daddy wasn’t at dinner, either. When I asked why not, Mrs. Fennel said he had thingsto do and wouldn’t be home until late in the evening. Usually, she would just say, “He had things to do.” I was sensitive to the fact that she was speaking to me more now. Something had changed between us. She wasn’t sniping at me, and I thought I even saw her smile occasionally. There was no change in how she spoke or acted toward Marla.
    Marla was quiet and solicitous at dinner. I thought she was still afraid I would tell Daddy how she had behaved and even some of the things she had said. It was clear also that Daddy was not unhappy with how I had handled things in school with Mark. She knew that eventually, as Ava had been my mentor, I would be hers. I saw how frightened she was now of my holding a grudge. I was pleasant to her but took advantage of her timidity and bullied her a little. It made me feel more and more like Ava, and I wondered if I was tumbling headlong into her persona. Perhaps it wouldn’t be much longer before she would feel usurped and move on to fulfill her own destiny, whatever that was.
    After dinner, Marla went right up to her room. She asked me to stop in to listen to some music with her after I had done my work, and I said I might. I lingered in the dining room for a few moments longer, and when Mrs. Fennel came in to start cleaning up, I rose to help her. She never tolerated any help unless we had company and she wanted us to make a good impression. Since my younger days helping her in her herbal garden, I had always been timid about doing anything to assist her. We were responsible for our own things and our own rooms, but she guarded the rest of the houseas if it were her special kingdom. No one was to move anything ever and certainly we were never to touch the very valuable antique artifacts.
    Most girls my age would have loved not having to do kitchen and housework. A number of them in my class came from families that had permanent maids, and some even had cooks. Ava never minded our arrangements, and Marla, who was often too lazy to care for her own things, loved not being asked to do anything else, but I had a different feeling about it. As strange it would sound to my classmates, being so unattached to caring for our home made me feel more like a tenant. I wanted to cherish our possessions, feel that they were part of who I was. Sometimes I felt as if I were in some shop or model home, looking at things the way customers might look at merchandise.
    Mrs. Fennel glanced at me when I started to pick up plates to follow her into the kitchen, but, unlike after my other attempts, she didn’t say, “Just leave it.” She went into the kitchen and let me follow her. I put the plates down on the counter and went back into the dining room to bring in the rest. She was quiet and worked as I cleared the dining-room table. And then, in a very uncharacteristic soft tone of voice, she turned to me, smiled softly, and said, “You want to talk to me tonight?”
    “Yes,” I said, holding my breath.
    “Return to the dining room,” she said.
    I did, and a few moments later, wiping her hands with a dish towel, she returned as well and sat in Daddy’s seat.
    She leaned forward and said, “Go ahead.”
    “Marla was being a little brat today,”