Marguerite barely put it in park before she leaped out. She ran over and hugged me so tight I swore ribs cracked.

“Ack!” I struggled to get out of her embrace. “Good thing I don’t need to breathe.”

“Are you okay? What did they do to you? Are you hurt?”

“I’m a vampire, Mags. I can’t get hurt.” I waved at Neil stepping from the bushes. “But if you really want to mother someone, he’ll be my stand-in today.”

“Allo, Neil,” she said. “I am sure you do not remember me, but we have met, many years ago.”

“Good,” I said. “Saves on the introductions. I invited Neil and his parents to come to New York with us. Hope that’s okay.”

“Of course. If he would like that.”

Neil’s gaze flicked my way, then back to Marguerite. “I’d like that.”

“All set then,” I said. “You two can get caught up while I drive to the nearest pay phone.”

“You are not driving anywhere, mon chaton. Not for a very long time.”

When we reached the car, I looked back at the way we’d come, toward the clearing where we’d left the two bounty hunters. Back to where I’d fed as a vampire for the first time.

“It’s okay,” Neil whispered as we climbed into the backseat.

I nodded and smiled. It wasn’t quite okay yet, but it would be. For the first time in six months, I was sure of it.

Paul Michael had always wanted to escape.

He shuffled along in the hallway with his hands hanging at his sides, his back bent under the weight of his backpack. He hadn’t washed his hair and it was greasy—pieces falling in his face—and some girls in math class had been making noises about how he smelled. Sometimes he didn’t take a shower on purpose, just to see them squirm. He really didn’t care what they thought of him. He was dreaming about the planet he had created, Trellibrium, where the mighty Norser was defeating the evil forces of Kaligullo to save princess Namalie Galamara. Beautiful lights shone inside Paul Michael’s head. He didn’t need these kids, this school. He had something better.

But it wasn’t always enough. Sometimes Paul Michael got lonely. He wanted someone to share the other world with. He wanted a girlfriend.

The other thing he wanted, if that didn’t work out, was to leave the planet, because it sucked.

Lilith, the new girl, was walking down the hallway toward him. Her steps were somewhat tentative, as if her feet were too small for the rest of her. Paul Michael noticed this because he kept his eyes on the ground. She wore black boots, and their heels clicked lightly against the brown linoleum with its shiny streaks. He could also see her legs, which were long, and her hips that switched gracefully in a predatory, feline way.

Lilith was not like any of the other girls at school, Paul Michael thought. No one knew where she had come from. She had black hair and dark, thickly lashed eyes. She had small, high breasts; but it wasn’t only that she was beautiful. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her. She always wore a big hat in the sun and covered her skin under black clothes. She hung out alone, strumming her guitar on a bench by herself. She drove a big old black Mercedes, and the rumor was she lived in it. She was freaky and knew it and was proud. Paul Michael believed that if he ever got to talk to her about Trellibrium she would not laugh or roll her eyes or walk away but might actually be interested. She might actually listen.

Paul Michael.

He heard his name, but he didn’t actually hear it. It was a sound in his head. And it was in a voice he recognized from the time he had heard it last week, when he ran into her in the principal’s office where they were both receiving lectures on something. It was Lilith’s voice. As if she had spoken telepathically, like they did in Trellibrium.

Paul Michael stopped and reached for the amulet he wore around his neck. It was carved with the image of three archangels. Paul Michael’s mother had given it to him.

“To protect against evil spirits,” she said.

Paul Michael tugged at the chain, hard enough so that it broke. He threw the amulet into the trash can. Then he took off his glasses, pretending he just needed to rub his eyes, and looked up to meet Lilith’s gaze.

She tossed a smile at him like you would give a dog a bone. Her sharp incisors showed, and her lips were the kind you would never see out here in Nowhere unless you were looking at a movie star on the cover of a People magazine in the 7-Eleven.

Someday, her voice said in his head, before she was gone.

Paul Michael and his mother lived in a small plywood house with cactus in the front yard. She was a nurse at the local hospital and worked nights mostly. Paul Michael’s mother was so good at taking care of other people that no one thought twice about whether she took proper care of her son. He was strange; Paul Michael knew that was the consensus. She did her best, but he was just strange. Maybe he inherited it from his father, the neighbors speculated. There were rumors that he was a Satan-worshipping speed freak who had left Paul Michael’s mother while she was pregnant. He was probably in jail somewhere, everyone said. And his demon seed would grow up to be just like him, probably. The poor mom, they said.

Paul Michael trudged down the sizzling road to the school. The days were long and hot, and he spent them dreaming of the planet Trellibrium. Now he was dreaming about Lilith, too. Maybe he would see her later.

At lunch, Paul Michael sat pretending to write about Trellibrium in his notebook, but he was actually watching Lilith. She sat cross-legged under one of the few jacaranda trees that had been transplanted onto the campus, wearing—in spite of the heat—a black turtleneck tunic, leggings, and boots and playing her guitar. She looked as cool as if the temperature was thirty degrees lower than it was. Her dark hair fell over her face so that Paul Michael could only really see her small, fierce chin, her movie-star lips, and a bit of her high, pale cheek. Her fingers, with their chewed-on, chipped-black-polish nails, were long on the guitar strings, and Paul Michael imagined them touching him. He had washed his hair carefully and applied deodorant for the first time in a few weeks. He was even wearing a fresh T-shirt.

Carter and Kirk walked past him, and Carter spat on the ground near Paul Michael’s shoe. A little spittle flew and sparked white on the scuffed brown leather.

“Lookin’ good, man. You actually took a shower,” Carter said.

Kirk snorted. “I don’t smell him.”

“Got a girlfriend or something?”

Paul Michael scribbled furiously in his book, just nonsense words in tiny, unreadable script. In Trillibrium the princess Namalie Galamara had fallen prey to the evil Pharmatrons.

Carter and Kirk wouldn’t leave. They were smaller than he was, but Paul Michael knew they could smash his face if they wanted. He forced himself to look up and saw Lilith watching him. Almost imperceptibly, she nodded her head. Had he imagined it? His heart jolted blood through his veins.

Was she?

Yes.

Lilith was standing. She took her guitar off and left it on the grass. She put on her black sun hat and dark glasses. She was coming over. Carter and Kirk looked at each other, laughed nervously. Lilith kept stepping along in that precarious way on her black suede boots. She stood in front of the boys. Carter and Kirk moved back away from her. She ran her fingers across Paul Michael’s scalp, took the long strands in her hand and gently pulled so that his neck fell back and he looked up at her. His eyes were blue with pinprick pupils, and hers were very dark, ravenous.