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why that was so trippy for me. I guessed just because I always associated him with revulsion. I felt weird for staring. I glanced quickly around the room to see if anyone had noticed that Fred was normal and pretty for the moment. No one was looking our way. I stole a fast peek at Kevin, ready to shift my focus at once if he noticed, but his eyes were concentrated on some point to the left of where we stood. He was frowning slightly. Before I could look away, his gaze skipped right over to me and settled on my right side. His frown deepened. Like… he was trying to see me and couldn’t. I felt the corners of my mouth twitch into not quite a grin. There was too much to worry about to really enjoy Kevin’s blindness. I looked back at Fred, wondering if the gross-out factor would return, only to see that he was smiling with me. Smiling, he was really spectacular. Then the moment was over, and Fred went back to his book. I didn’t move for a while, waiting for something to happen. For Diego to come through the door. Or Riley with Diego. Or Raoul. Or for the nausea to hit again, or for Kevin to glare in my direction, or for the next fight to break out. Something. When nothing did, I eventually pulled myself together and did what I should have been doing pretending nothing unusual was going on. I grabbed a book from the pile near Fred’s feet and then sat down right there and acted like I was reading. It was probably one of the same books I’d pretended to read yesterday, but it didn’t look familiar. I flipped through the pages, again taking nothing in. My mind was racing around in tight little circles. Where was

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Diego? How had Riley reacted to his story? What had it all meant the talk before the cloaks, the talk after the cloaks? I worked through it, going backward, trying to assemble the pieces into a recognizable picture. The vampire world had some kind of police, and they were damn scary. This wild group of months-old vampires was supposed to be an army, and this army was somehow illegal. Our creator had an enemy. Strike that, two enemies. We were going to attack one of them in five days, or else the other ones, the scary cloaks, were going to attack her or us, or both. We would be trained for this attack… as soon as Riley got back. I snuck a glance at the door, then forced my eyes back to the page in front of me. And then the stuff before the visitors. She was worrying about some decision. She was pleased that she had so many vampires so many soldiers. Riley was happy that Diego and I had survived…. He’d said he thought he’d lost two more to the sun, so that must mean he didn’t know how vampires really reacted to sunlight. What she’d said was strange, though. She’d asked if he was sure. Sure Diego had survived? Or… sure that Diego’s story was true? The last thought frightened me. Did she already know that the sun didn’t hurt us? If she did know, then why had she lied to Riley and, through him, to us? Why would she want to keep us in the dark literally? Was it very important to her that we stay ignorant? Important enough to get Diego in trouble? I was working myself into a real panic, frozen solid. If I still could sweat, I would have been sweating now. I had to refocus to turn the next page, to keep my eyes

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down. Was Riley deceived, or was he in on it, too? When Riley’d said he thought he’d lost two more to the sun, did he mean the sun literally… or the lie about the sun? If it was the second option, then to know the truth meant being lost. Panic scattered my thoughts. I tried to be rational and make sense of it. It was harder without Diego. Having someone to talk to, to interact with, sharpened my ability to concentrate. Without that, fear sucked at the edges of my thoughts, twisted with the always-present thirst. The lure of blood was constantly close to the surface. Even now, decently well fed, I could feel the burn and the need. Think about her, think about Riley , I told myself. I had to understand why they would lie if they were lying so that I could try to figure out what it would mean to them that Diego knew their secret. If they hadn’t lied, if they’d just told us all that the day was as safe for us as the night, how would that change things? I imagined what it would be like if we didn’t have to be contained in a blacked-out basement all day, if the twenty-one of us maybe fewer now, depending on how the hunting parties were getting along were free to do what we wanted whenever we wanted to. We would want to hunt. That was a given. If we didn’t have to come back, if we didn’t have to hide… well, many of us wouldn’t come back very regularly. It was hard to focus on the return while the thirst was in charge. But Riley had drilled so deeply into all of us the threat of burning, of a

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return of that hideous pain we’d all experienced once. That was the reason we could stop ourselves. Self-preservation, the only instinct stronger than thirst. So the threat kept us together. There were other hiding places, like Diego’s cave, but who else thought about that kind of thing? We had a place to go, a base, so we went to it. Clear heads were not a vampire specialty. Or, at least, they weren’t the specialty of young vampires. Riley was clearheaded. Diego was more clearheaded than I was. Those cloaked vampires were terrifyingly focused. I shuddered. So the routine wouldn’t control us forever. What would they do when we were older, clearer? It struck me that nobody was older than Riley. Everyone here was new. She needed a bunch of us now for this mystery enemy. But what about afterward? I had a strong feeling that I didn’t want to be around for that part. And I suddenly realized something stupendously obvious. It was the solution that had tickled the edges of my understanding before, when I was tracking the vampire herd to this place with Diego. I didn’t have to be around for that part. I didn’t have to be around for one more night. I was a statue again as I thought over this stunning idea. If Diego and I hadn’t known where the gang was most likely headed, would we ever have found them? Probably not. And that was a big group leaving a wide trail. What if it were a single vampire, one who could leap up onto the land, maybe into a tree, without leaving a trail at the edge of the water…. Just one, or maybe two vampires who could swim as far out to sea as

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they wanted… Who could return to land anywhere… Canada, California, Chile, China… You would never be able to find those two vampires. They would be gone. Disappeared like they’d gone up in smoke. We didn’t have to come back the other night! We shouldn’t have! Why hadn’t I thought of it then? But… would Diego have agreed? I was abruptly not so sure of myself. Was Diego more loyal to Riley after all? Would he have felt it was his responsibility to stand by Riley? He’d known Riley a lot longer he’d really only known me a day. Was he closer to Riley than he was to me? I pondered that, frowning. Well, I would find out as soon as we had a minute alone. And then maybe, if our secret club really meant something, it wouldn’t matter what our creator had planned for us. We could disappear, and Riley would have to make do with nineteen vampires, or make some new ones quick. Either way, not our problem. I couldn’t wait to tell Diego my plan. My gut instinct was that he would feel the same. Hopefully. Suddenly, I wondered if this was what had really happened to Shelly and Steve and the other kids who had disappeared. I knew they hadn’t burned in the sun. Had Riley only claimed he’d seen their ashes as another way to keep the rest of us afraid and dependent on him? Returning home to him every dawn? Maybe Shelly and Steve had just set off on their own. No more Raoul. No enemies or armies threatening their immediate future.

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Maybe that’s what Riley had meant by lost to the sun. Runaways. In which case, he’d be happy that Diego hadn’t bailed, right? If only Diego and I had taken off! We could be free, too, like Shelly and Steve. No rules, no fear of the sunrise. Again, I imagined the whole horde of us on the loose without a curfew. I could see Diego and me moving like ninjas through the shade. But I could also see Raoul, Kevin, and the rest, sparkling disco-ball monsters in the center of a busy downtown street, the bodies piling up, the screaming, the helicopters whirring, the soft, helpless cops with their dinky little bullets that wouldn’t make a dent, the cameras, the panic that would spread so fast as the pictures bounced swiftly around the globe. Vampires wouldn’t be a secret for very long. Even Raoul couldn’t kill people fast enough to keep the story from spreading. There was a chain of logic here, and I tried to grasp it before I could be distracted again. One, humans didn’t know about vampires. Two, Riley encouraged us to be inconspicuous, not to attract the notice of humans and educate them otherwise. Three, Diego and I had decided that all vampires must be following that guideline, or else the world would know about us. Four, they must have a reason for doing so, and it wasn’t the little popguns of the human police that motivated them. Yeah, the reason must be pretty important to make all vampires hide all day long in stuffy basements. Maybe reason enough to make Riley and our creator lie to us, terrify us about the burning sun. Maybe it was a

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reason Riley would explain to Diego, and since it was so important and he was so responsible, Diego would promise to keep the secret and they would be cool with that. Sure they would. But what if what actually happened to Shelly and Steve was that they’d discovered the shiny skin thing and not run? What if they’d gone to Riley? And, crap, there went the next step in my logical path. The chain dissolved and I started panicking about Diego again. As I stressed, I realized that I’d been thinking things through for a while. I could feel dawn coming on. No more than an hour away. So where was Diego? Where was Riley? As I thought this, the door opened and Raoul leaped down the stairs, laughing with his buddies. I hunched down, leaning closer to Fred. Raoul didn’t notice us. He looked at the crispy- fried vampire in the center of the floor and laughed harder. His eyes were brilliant red. On the nights Raoul went hunting, he never came home till he had to. He would keep feeding as long as he could. So dawn must have been even closer than I’d thought. Riley must have demanded that Diego prove his words. That was the only explanation. And they were waiting for the dawn. Only… that would mean that Riley didn’t know the truth, that our creator was lying to him, too. Or did it? My thoughts twisted up again. Kristie showed up minutes later with three of her gang. She reacted indifferently to the pile of ashes. I did a quick head count as two more hunters hurried through the door. Twenty vampires. Everyone was home except Diego and Riley. The

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sun would rise at any moment. The door at the top of the basement stairs creaked as someone opened it. I sprang to my feet. Riley entered. He shut the door behind him. He walked down the stairs. No one followed. Before I could process this, Riley roared out an animalistic shriek of rage. He was staring down at the ashy remains on the floor, his eyes bulging in fury. Everyone stood silent, immobile. We’d all seen Riley lose his temper, but this was something different. Riley spun and raked his fingers through a blaring speaker, then ripped it from the wall and hurled it across the room. Jen and Kristie dodged out of the way as it exploded into the far wall, sending up a cloud of pulverized drywall dust. Riley smashed the sound system with his foot, and the thudding bass went silent. Then he leaped to where Raoul stood, and grabbed him by the throat. “I wasn’t even here!” Raoul yelled, looking afraid I’d never seen that before. Riley growled hideously and threw Raoul as he’d thrown the speaker. Jen and Kristie jumped out of the way again. Raoul’s body crashed right through the wall, leaving an enormous hole. Riley caught Kevin by the shoulder and with a familiar screech ripped off his right hand. Kevin cried out in pain and tried to twist out of Riley’s grip. Riley kicked him in the side. Another harsh shriek and Riley had the rest of Kevin’s arm. He tore the arm in half at the elbow and threw the pieces hard into

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Kevin’s anguished face smack, smack, smack, like a hammer striking stone. “What is wrong with you?” Riley screamed at us. “Why are you all so stupid?” He made a grab for the blond Spider-Man kid, but that kid leaped out of his way. His jump left him too close to Fred, and he stumbled back toward Riley again, gagging. “Do any of you have a brain?” Riley smacked a kid named Dean into the entertainment center, shattering it, then caught another girl Sara and tore her left ear and a handful of hair from her head. She snarled in anguish. It became suddenly obvious that Riley was doing a very dangerous thing. There were a lot of us in here. Already Raoul was back, with Kristie and Jen usually his enemies flanking him defensively. A few others banded together in clusters around the room. I wasn’t sure if Riley was aware of the threat or if his rant came to an end naturally. He took a deep breath. He tossed Sara her ear and the hair. She recoiled away from him, licking the torn edge of her ear, coating it with venom so that it would reattach. There was no remedy for the hair, though; Sara was going to have a bald spot. “Listen to me!” Riley said, quiet but fierce. “All our lives depend on you listening to what I’m saying now and thinking! We are all going to die. Every one of us, you and me, too, if you can’t act like you have brains for just a few short days!” This was nothing like his usual lectures and pleadings for

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control. He definitely had everyone’s attention. “It’s time for you to grow up and take responsibility for yourselves. Do you think you get to live like this for free? That all the blood in Seattle doesn’t have a price?” The little clusters of vampires no longer seemed threatening. Everyone was wide-eyed, some exchanging mystified glances. I saw Fred’s head turn toward me in my peripheral vision, but I didn’t meet his gaze. My attention was focused on two things: Riley, just in case he started to attack again, and the door. The door that was still closed. “Are you listening now? Really listening?” Riley paused, but no one nodded. The room was very still. “Let me explain to you the precarious situation we are all in. I’ll try to keep it simple for the slowest ones. Raoul, Kristie, come here.” He motioned to the leaders of the two largest gangs, allied for this brief moment against him. Neither of them moved toward him. They braced themselves, Kristie baring her teeth. I expected Riley to soften, to apologize. To placate them and then persuade them to do what he wanted. But this was a different Riley. “Fine,” he snapped. “We’re going to need leaders if we’re going to survive, but apparently neither of you is up to the task. I thought you had aptitude. I was wrong. Kevin, Jen, please join me as the heads of this team.” Kevin looked up in surprise. He had just finished putting his arm back together. Though his expression was wary, it was also unmistakably flattered. He slowly got to his feet. Jen looked at Kristie as if waiting for permission. Raoul ground his teeth