Vampire 01 - Daughter of Darkness

at me. “Not true. I told you I was born and raised in Long Beach, and my father’s a dentist. We’re almost even.”
    “I was born in New York. We moved a few times. We lived in Nashville for a few years.”
    “Can you sing country?”
    “Hardly,” I said, smiling. “I play the piano, mostly classical pieces. Daddy loves classical music.”
    He just stared up at me.
    “What?” I asked.
    “You’re so beautiful. I think I’d be content just lying here and looking up at you for the rest of my life.”
    “Now you’re embarrassing me,” I said.
    “I’d rather cut off my right hand than embarrass you.”
    “So, what do you intend to do with your education?” I asked, trying to get him off the topic of me.
    He laughed. “You mean, what do I want to be when I grow up?”
    “Think you ever will?” I said, and he shrugged.
    “Maybe. When I get around to it,” he said. He rolled onto his back. “I’m leaning toward medical research of some sort. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by what we can’t see. There are worlds upon worlds swirling around inside us.” He turned back to me. “You weren’t far off when you said everything living feeds on something else living. There are bacteria living inside us, feeding off us. Even the bad guys feed off us.”
    “Bad guys?” I held my breath. He couldn’t mean anything close to what I knew.
    “Germs, viruses, you know.”
    “Oh. Yes, of course. I imagine you’re a good student,” I said.
    “Straight A’s. That was my nickname in high school, Straight-A Gilroy. And you?”
    “I’ve always made the honor roll.”
    “You’d always make mine,” he said. “Now, tell me really, what made you decide to call me? I gave up on the idea when you wouldn’t give me your phone number.”
    “It’s not a big mystery, Buddy. We had a good time at Dante’s Inferno. I thought you were different from your friends, so I decided to see if I was right.”
    “Any decision yet?”
    “Too soon to tell.”
    “Great. That means you’ll give me more time, which might mean you’ll give me your home phone number.”
    “Let’s leave it the way it is for right now,” I said. I embraced my knees and looked down at the sand.
    “Boy, why do I have the feeling there’s a ton you’re not telling me about yourself?”
    “Can’t imagine,” I said, smiling.
    “Your sister Elsa is, please pardon the expression, a piece of work.”
    I was quiet a moment, and then I turned to him and said, “Her name is not Elsa.”
    “I know,” he said.
    “You know?”
    “Yeah. I was just waiting to see how long you would keep up the lie.”
    “How did you find out the truth?”
    “I checked with someone in one of her classes. Her name is Ava Patio. I pretended to believe her, because I didn’t want to get her angry with me or something. I thought as long as she spoke to me, I had a chance of meeting you again. I searched the Internet to find your phone number. I called more than twenty Patios, but no one named Patio had a daughter named Ava.”
    “That’s why you spend time talking to her and being with her at school?”
    “That’s it, solely it,” he said. “Why, does she think otherwise?”
    I smiled.
    “What?”
    “Let’s just say Ava has no cracks in her wall of self-confidence.”
    He laughed. “Will you go out with me this weekend?”
    “I don’t know our schedule yet.”
    “Our schedule? What are you, a private jet pilot?”
    “I’ll go out with you one night if you promise me one thing.”
    “I’m ready to sign my name in blood,” he said, sitting up.
    “I don’t want you talking to or having anything at all to do with Ava. If she asks you to go somewhere with her, say no, especially if she wants you to go out with her. Will you promise me that?”
    “Sure, but what is this, some kind of sibling rivalry?”
    I smiled. “You can call it that. Do I have your solemn promise?”
    He raised his right hand. “I, Buddy Gilroy, do hereby swear not to have anything to do with Ava Patio. If she’s walking easterly, I’ll go westerly. If she’s within ten feet of me, I’ll immediately make it twenty feet. If she speaks to me, I’ll be deaf. If she looks at me, I’ll be invisible, and if she touches me, I’ll scream like I was burned and walk or run to the nearest exit.” He lowered his hand. “How’s that?”
    “It’s fine if you really follow it,” I said. I looked at him with steely eyes. “And I’ll know almost immediately