"There must be -"

"Stop arguing!"

"I am not going to kill anyone!" I yelp. "Anyone I know! Forget it!"

"What are you up to? You're buying time." She's menacing. "You have a plan, don't you?"

"I wasn't . . ."

"You lie like s.h.i.t. What do you think you're doing? d.a.m.n, man, you are . . . !"

"I have a respect for human life and -"

"Yeah? Go, girl! They don't have any respect for yours!"

"So you think I should just give up and throw in my whole life just so -"

"I think you're up s.h.i.t's creek, is what I think!"

"- so I can go and dine with the d.a.m.ned!"

She glares at me. Her lips pull back and reveal her fangs. "Not 'd.a.m.ned,'" she hisses. "Just trying to live." And with that she moves swiftly past me to the door. She opens it. "Bat!" she calls.

I am used to having things happen to me, instead of me doing things. Now I realize that it is high time for me to do something quickly. Something escape-like. I have screwed up. She's looking angry, murderous, leaning out the door, her arm spread across it to bar my way. I crouch and fling myself into the hall. Bat is thumping down the hall toward me, bellowing like a Viking. "Let's PARTEEEEEE! PARTEEEEE! OWWOWOWOW!"

Then he sees me.

"What's the -?" he asks.

She's pointing at me and shouting, "d.i.c.kless here isn't going to -"

But I'm running low, trying to pa.s.s him.

He jabs his arm in my side. I slam against the wall and fall into a squat, but even then, I'm jumping forward toward the stairs.

I have to get into a large crowd. They can't risk a large crowd. He grabs at my shoe, but I'm slithering down the stairs like a snake, on my belly. Beer pools stain the carpet. Girls are screaming and standing up as I fall past them.

". . . so G.o.dd.a.m.n drunk! drunk!" one sneers.

And I'm in the thick of the party at the bottom of the stairs, and Bat in his muddy Keds is clomping down toward me with the look of an animal in his face.

My brother has gotten out his video camera and is trying to capture the essence of the party for future generations and anthropologists; big Pete Gallagher is growling, "Let me borrow it! Just one sec! Let me borrow it!"

"Come back here, weeeeee-zull! weeeeee-zull!" I hear Bat yell.

"Let me borrow it!" says big Pete Gallagher and he yanks at it.

"Stop!" says Paul. "You're gonna screw up the picture!"

"Let me borrow it!"

"Okay, already. Here. Careful," says Paul. "The b.u.t.ton on the side -"

"This?"

"No, look. No, don't do that one! G.o.d! No, you've got to push . . ."

Bat is shoving his way through the crowd toward me. Pete swings the camera around the room, saying, "Smile, man! Say 'Cheese!'"

Two of Pete's friends flex their muscles and say, "Cheese! Cheese, Petey-boy!"

"Careful!" says Paul, tagging along at Pete's side. "That's, like, an expensive piece of -"

"I'm careful! Be cool! I'm being careful!" says Pete, and he roars to Nicki Brown, "Bark! Bark like a dog! Up close and personal!" and he sticks the lens in her face and she's so drunk she barks like a dog.

Bat is pointing at me and only me from across the crowd.

He mouths the word "Die."

"Hey, care-careful!" says Paul again.

And I'm working my way toward the door.

"And the lovely Miss Lolli!" says Pete. "There's the lovely Miss Lolli! New aquaintance and playgirl of the month! Time for an up close and personal!"

"Careful!" says Paul. "I paid for that thing!"

"Yeah, yeah."

Lolli's just entered the room and they're clearing a way for her, and she's covering her face with her hand and saying, "Don't take pictures of me with that thing! I said: Don't take my picture!"

Pete has it in her face and now Bat has one eye on me but he's working his way toward her instead, yelling, "She said she doesn't like her G.o.dd.a.m.n picture taken! G.o.dd.a.m.n picture taken! That means," he says, grabbing Pete's shoulder, "she That means," he says, grabbing Pete's shoulder, "she doesn't like her G.o.dd.a.m.n picture taken! doesn't like her G.o.dd.a.m.n picture taken!"

"Pete, please," mewls Paul. "That's -"

"This is my a.s.sistant, Paul," Pete explains to Bat, zeroing in on Lolli's chest. "Paul likes doing films of slugs. We're making footage for science." Everyone is laughing at my brother.

Paul still is hovering around the camcorder and Bat suddenly grabs it from Pete and yells at the top of his lungs, "I'M GONNA BEAT THE c.r.a.p OUT OF YOU IF YOU KEEP TAKIN' PICTURES OF THAT GIRL! PICTURES OF THAT GIRL!"

I dart out of the room - Pete's friends screaming, "Who the h.e.l.l are you?" and Lolli screeching, "Get that thing out of my face!" and Paul whining, "Please, just give me the camera!" and Pete and Bat, they're both hollering at the top of their lungs, hardly words, just sounds.

And I'm out through the den, where an unwatched television shows Pretty Woman, Pretty Woman, and I'm through the kitchen, tripping in the dark, and suddenly I see there's someone in there, against the sink - and I'm through the kitchen, tripping in the dark, and suddenly I see there's someone in there, against the sink - And by the light of the moon through the window, I see Hors d'oeuvre Asheleighe, her shirt open, and Trunk McIntyre is feeding on her neck.

For a moment, I'm transfixed in horror. Then, "Run!" I scream hoa.r.s.ely. "Run!"

Trunk and Asheleighe recoil in surprise; Trunk spins around. "s.h.i.t!" he exclaims. "You watching? You little s.h.i.t!"

And as I slam open the kitchen door and push my way through the crowd in the dining room I can hear her saying, "G.o.d, that kid is, like, can you say schitzoid?"

And the dining room leads to the front door. I can hear them in the living room - "I said get it out of my face and I meant get it out of my face!"

"What's the problem? You jealous?"

"Hey, please give me my -"

"d.a.m.n!"

"Watch - !"

And I'm out the front door and into the night.

It's after ten, and I've blown it. I've blown my cover. I don't know how I'll find the conclave of vampires now, or how I would get there if I found it. The conclave is miles away. The town's spells of binding will be interrupted in less than two hours.

I am wandering around the fairground, full of the knowledge that I have endangered the world, and my body is sliding into a murderous thirst, and I can do nothing to stop either thing.

And worse than that, I am being sought. They want my blood, one way or another. I turn around often as I skulk from tent to tent, and I make sure that Bat and Lolli aren't slinking up behind me through the ranks of half-shirts and flip-flops.

On the loudspeaker, we are coming to the goat part of the evening. The mayor is talking about it. "Let's prepare the elements. Can, uh, can everyone at the other sites hear me?"

"Yes, Ed."

"Sure, Ed. We're reading you loud and clear."

"Thanks. First we'll, uh, prepare the goats. Out on the boat, we have Sal Garozzi, butcher at the Purity Supreme in Bradley. Sal has kindly offered, once again, to do the honors. You there, Sal?"

"I am, Ed."

"How's it looking, Sal?"

Sal considers for a minute. "Well, it's looking pretty nice out tonight. There's a moon. Oh, you mean the lake? The lake is calm."

I can't see the lake from here because of the trees, but I can see the three radio towers, their lights winking regularly like breaths softly hissed into the night.

That is when I spy Rebecca. She is walking with Tom and Kristen toward the tilt-a-whirl. Jerk bobs along behind them. I can see Rebecca laugh deep and long.

Above them all, there is the monotonous sound of the butcher, the mayor, and the town selectmen sacrificing a goat to cosmic forces. They say, "We cry out to you that the Dark may be bound. We cry out to you, O, shining sentinels, for strength in the night.

"And now we shall bind the foe, by your grace. And now with the blood of this living creature, and with these malleable spirits, we follow the silver cord into Darkness," the voice calls out.

I feel lighter just looking at her. Rebecca, who told me she would talk to me. Rebecca, who knows spells.

Suddenly, the screaming of the goat starts.

"Get the goat. Get that d.a.m.n goat!" someone out on the lake yells over the loudspeaker.

It screams again.

People stop what they're doing - stop licking their ice creams, pa.s.sing their tokens, playing their games. They look up.

There's a silence. Kristen has covered her ears.

There's a trickling noise over everything. It is brief and poignant.

I run toward Rebecca and the rest, all of them together, while above us, strung on wires and poles, the incantations continue, booming: "Hear us, O Tch'muchgar, Melancholy One, Vampire Lord. Hear us and despair. You shall be blinded with light. You shall be bound in radiance. You shall stare, unblinking, at the light that sears you, and burns you, and claims you, for all eternity."

Rebecca's step is light; and her sandaled feet arch on the gra.s.s as they did long ago, bare, that night when I saw her with her sister at Persible Dairy.

I want to embrace her.

Suddenly, as if cued by Rebecca's beauty, the air is filled with the cooing of distant police sirens, like pretty birds rising all around from a Persian palace court.

And I am by her side.

"Rebecca," I call. "Rebecca!"

"Hey, Chris," they all say as I run up.

"What happened to that girl?" says Chuck. "Lolli whatever?"

"I don't know," I say, trying to sound nonchalant but looking wildly over my shoulder, past the Dizzy Caterpillar. "She's trying to find me. There's safety in numbers."

"Especially ten, in the Cabala," Rebecca offers idly, looking sideways. "That's the number of the Sephiroth." Everyone finds that a bit of a conversation stopper. For a minute, we all think of what to say next.

Then Andy says, "Hey, want to go on the tilt-a-whirl?"

Everyone says yeah and starts to head over to it, Tom and Andy and Chuck looking back at me and whispering among themselves. They are whispering: Why is he running away from Lolli? Boy, if she were looking for me, man, I sure wouldn't be hiding, it would be ollie, ollie in-come-free. Jerk trudges beside them, looking guilty and upset at hearing bad things about me. Kristen walks up between Tom and Chuck.

"Rebecca," I say. "I -" For the moment, that seems enough. Then I continue, "Rebecca, I need to talk to you."

She stops. She hesitates, poised as if standing on top of a column. "What's wrong?" she asks and follows the lines of my face with her eyes. "You look really sick." She turns all the way toward me.

I shrug. "I need to talk to you," I say helplessly. "Could we talk?"

"Of course. I told you . . ." She nods. "You could come with me on the tilt-a-whirl."

I look ahead at the tilt-a-whirl. It flings people around at fifty miles per hour, their hair streaming, their mouths open, their hands clutching at the sides of the car. I admit, "I'm not sure we'd reach any definite conclusions after talking on the tilt-a-whirl."

Rebecca nods. "Just a sec," she says in shorthand. She jogs up to Kristen and whispers something in her ear.

Kristen points at me and says something to Chuck, Tom, and Andy. The three of them start laughing and glancing back at me.

I don't care. I glance up at their necks, craned back to look at me, and at the wiry tendons there, and I think a pa.s.sing thought about how pleasant it would be to kill them and feel their blood moving through me.

But now Rebecca is at my side, smiling uneasily.

"Come on," I say to her hoa.r.s.ely. "Come on."

"What is it?" she demands. "What?"