AGATHA
“Agatha… heyyyy, good morning. There you are.… How’re you feeling?”
“Aren’t you going to tape my mouth shut?”
“That was actually a bio-glue. It’s taking the place of stitches in smaller surgeries. We’re really excited about it.…”
“I want to leave.”
“I was hoping we could talk.”
“I don’t want to talk. I want to leave.”
“Well. I can’t let you. I mean, you get that, right?”
“No.”
“What you have, Agatha… it’s more important than you, you know?”
“What’s more important thanyou,Braden? Anything?”
“I have a role to play. I’m a participant in history. I’ve known since I was a kid that I was born for big things. Some people just are. You are, in your way. I think you might be the one who unlocks it for us.”
“I don’t consent to this, to any of it.”
“Agatha, this is bigger than one person’s freedom. It’s like eminent domain.”
“I. Am not. Eminent. Domain.”
“Why are you fighting this? What are you fightingfor? Do you even know?”
50
BAZ
I almost called my father this morning.
I woke up in the bath (Penny and Simon took the bed, Shepard slept on the sofa), thinking of the Normal from last night, and how close I came to biting him—probably killing him.
I kill everything I drink.
I always thought it was safer that way. If I let the animals live, they might end up like me. (Can a vampire Turn a rat? Or a deer? Or a dog? I’d rather not find out.)
When I’m thirsty, this isn’t really a decision. I just drink till there’s no more to drink. I haven’t ever tried to stop.
I’venevertasted human blood before. I’ve had low-risk opportunities, of course; in football, there’s blood everywhere—plus, I smashed Simon’s nose with my forehead once, and he practically bled into my mouth.
But I’ve never wanted to cross that threshold. Like, you can say you’ve never tasted human blood or you can say that youhave. And once you have, what does it matter whether it’s one person or fifty?
And what if one taste wasn’tenough? What if I couldn’t stop thinking about it? (I already never stop thinking about it.)
What then? What options would that leave me? The way I understood it, mass murder or mass conversion.
But maybe I haven’t understoodanything.
Vampires hate to Turn people, Shepard says. Vampires are capable of “sips.”
I could call my father, I thought to myself, while I was lying there in the empty bath.And my father would pretend I’m not a vampire at all. And then I could pretend, too. And that would be such a relief.
