Beth Bishop's Blog

Some time later, Kyler returned, and he and Santiago took Justin upstairs. Not long after that, Jay came into the dining room and helped me out of the chair. He looked showered and doctored, yet I was stiff and dirty. My scratches were red and swollen, and the gash down my right arm oozed. I suddenly realized I had no shirt on, just a sports bra and shorts, my skin pale from the cold.

Jay went with me into the bathroom, as if he was afraid I might fall over at any minute. When I saw myself in...

After only a few minutes, Leslie went in, and shortly thereafter, a limo with vampire-safe tinted windows left. Justin and I spent the next hour going over basic form for blocks and punches. It wasn’t that the members of Leslie’s family didn’t know how to fight; it’s just that they didn’t have any formal training. My training wasn’t formal in the old sense of the word, but I knew I had near perfect form.

We spent part of the second hour going through my usual yoga routine to encourage...

Leslie didn’t have much in the way of a yard. A left turn off the main drive formed a loop at the front of the house that enclosed a wide oval of dormant grass. The main drive led to the back “vampire” entrance, as I started to think of it, and connected with the loop on the other side of the house. Between the drive and the forest, the oval of grass was the only area large enough for training.

Since the front of the house had a northern exposure and it was late autumn, the wide covered porch...

The dream I had while I slept on the sofa was no less vivid than the previous dreams I’d had while staying in Leslie’s house. It began with Aster. I interrupted her from reading, but she didn’t mind. We chatted happily about childhood things like making flower necklaces and playing school with her dolls.

All too soon, the conversation turned to current, adult subjects. I promised her I would talk to Leslie about coming to visit, but I doubted I could come live with her. She ga...

Several different conversations picked up, and Justin leaned over to me. “Cami-girl?” he whispered with a pop of laughter.

I eyed him. “Jealous of my nickname? Give him time; he’ll think up one for you, too.”

We talked and drank, and I wondered exactly what our vampire friends were doing. Someone retrieved two bottles of wine. After the first bottle, we all thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company.

As I swirled the chilled white wine in my glass, I wondered where my parents were. Maybe they de...

Jay N Jay

While Selene and Justin played a game of cat and mouse and Leslie locked himself away in his room to brood, I tried to write in my journal. I began writing about the gala, and even with the disruption of Selene’s and Justin’s arguments, I made good progress. I wrote for a while and then went back over what I had written, adding or taking away, studying what happened and seeing if I could gain any insight from it.

By four in the afternoon, I had as much as I could stand, which was wh...

I wasn’t sure how I felt about Justin’s plans to stay. I was happy that I had someone I considered real family with me. I just didn’t know if the complications—and there would be complications— would be worth it.

I stared at the closed door for a long time and thought about what it meant to be family. If what Leslie told me about his was true, the people living in his home were very special to him and loyal. They accepted me, and although I hadn’t had much chance to get to know them yet, none...

“That was really unwise,” Leslie scolded as I vomited into the toilet again.

“Lesson,” I retched, “uh, learned.”

When my stomach was empty, I slid onto the floor, laid my face against the cool tiles, and closed my eyes. My heart hammered, and my chest felt like there was a brick on it. My body twitched as the adrenaline edge burned off. Behind it was exhaustion. The muscle men hadn’t fired on me, and as I regained the ability to form coherent thoughts, I wondered if they were on my si...

From the storage space under the basement stairs, I took out my mother’s wooden picnic basket. I opened the lid, with its grinning sun. I removed the plastic utensils and plates. I spread the checked napkins on the bottom. On them, I laid

I closed the lid and took the basket with me.

I kept the basket safe for years, never opening the lid until one day, you needed me to open it. I took out thes...

I stood in front of the refrigerator, nibbling on a piece of cheese (real cheese!) and trying to decide what else to eat. Yogurt was good and so was fresh milk, in moderation. I didn’t know if I could ever go back to powdered milk. I picked up both of them and, closing the door, found Justin standing behind it. I yelped in surprise.

“Jeez! You scared the crap out of me.”

“Did I?” He looked down at my bottom and gave me a half smile.

I rolled my eyes at him. “Gross. You know, we never kept any...