I shifted in my seat. I wanted to look away. I wanted to avoid his innocent stare. How do you look a little boy in the eye and tell him what I was about to tell him? I didn't know. I didn't know anything. He had to know. He had to. I believed that with all my heart and soul. My dead heart and d.a.m.ned soul.

I said, "Do you remember when you were sick last year?"

My son nodded absently. Mercifully, he looked away and was now playing with the zipper to his jacket.

"Well, last year you were very, very sick, so sick that Mommy had to make you stronger."

"Why?"

"So that you could fight the sickness."

"Oh, cool." He stopped playing with the zipper. He stared at it for a few seconds, then his little face scrunched up the way it does just before he asks a question. "But how did you make me stronger?"

The question I knew he would inevitably ask. Baby steps, I reminded myself. He needed only to be made aware that he was different...and why he was different. Baby steps for now. More later, when he's older.

"I gave you a part of me."

"What part?"

Looking into those round eyes, those red lips, those chubby cheeks...cheeks that were rapidly turning sharper and sharper...I just couldn't do it. I couldn't tell him that he fed from my wrist.

Not yet, I thought. Someday. Perhaps someday soon. Not now. Baby steps.

Instead, I tapped my heart. "I gave you love, baby. All the love I had in the world."

"And it made me stronger?"

"It made you strong like me."

"Wow."

"But this is our secret, okay?"

"Why?"

"Because we're a little different than other people."

"Can I still go in the sun?"

"Yes," I said.

"But how are we different?"

"Well, we are stronger than most people."

"Oh, cool."

"But it's our secret, okay? The way Superman keeps his ident.i.ty secret."

"And Batman and Spider-Man!"

"Yes, exactly."

"Oh, my gosh! Are we like...superheroes?"

I thought about that. I thought of my son taking care of the school bullies. I thought of myself taking care of Johnny and his gang.

I nodded. "Yeah, a little bit."

"Oh, cool!" He paused and c.o.c.ked his head a little. "But will I ever be normal again?"

His question hit me by surprise. Maybe I was dreading hearing it. Maybe I had hoped he would never ask it. I looked at him, then looked away. I rubbed my hands together, then ran my fingers through my hair. My son, I knew, would never be normal again. Ever. I was suddenly overwhelmed with what I had done to him.

"Why are you crying, Mommy?"

"I'm sorry, baby."

"Sorry for what?"

So innocent. So sweet. He didn't deserve this. s.h.i.t. I started rocking in my seat as my son watched me with wide, concerned eyes. He started patting me on the arm the way he does when he's nervous.

"I'm sorry, Mommy. I'm sorry I made you cry. I didn't mean to."

I covered my face and did my best to hide my tears, the deep pain that seemed to want to burst from my chest. I held it in. Or tried to.

"I'm so sorry, baby."

"It's okay, Mommy."

And he kept telling me it would be okay, over and over, as I rocked in my seat, weeping into my hands.

Chapter Thirty-two.

On the way home from Cold Stone creamery, I was certain we had picked up a tail.

It was a white cargo van with tinted windows. It had pulled out behind us as we exited the Cold Stone parking lot, then had dropped back four or five car lengths.

Where it held steady.

Until we were about halfway to my house, when it peeled away suddenly. I wouldn't have thought anything of it, except that my inner alarm system had begun buzzing steadily.

A block later, another van appeared behind me. A blue cargo van. Tinted windows. Again five car lengths behind. They were using a tag-team system. I was sure of it. If done right, it's a system that's nearly impossible to detect by the mark.

Except when your mark is a vampire with a highly sensitive inner alarm system. Except when your mark is an ex-federal agent trained to pick up tails.

I made a few random turns, and it kept pace. Anthony turned and looked at me curiously but didn't say anything. Mommy was weird, after all.

I led the van to a quieter street, one with only a single lane, and soon it was directly behind me. I didn't recognize the guy behind the wheel.

Soon, we stopped at a stop sign. Another thing I'd learned to do: reading license plates in my rearview mirror.

Backward.

At home, I ran the plate.

The owner was A-1 Retro Services out of New Jersey. No address. I did a Google search on A-1 Retro Services and got nothing.

This might seem like a dead end, but it wasn't. It was proof that I had, indeed been followed. In particular, by someone who knew how to stay anonymous. Not hard to do, actually, but it did take some creative accounting.

I stared down at my screen, drummed my fingers, let the information soak in. Ultimately, the question remained: why was I being followed?

I thought about that as I sat back in my office chair and listened to Anthony playing something called Skylanders on his Xbox. Tammy was still at school. I'd arranged with her best friend's mom to pick her up as well. These days, there were only so many times I could dash out the door and into the sunlight.

Either my condition was getting progressively worse, or I was becoming more monstrous.

Or maybe they were one and the same.

My inner alarm hadn't stopped jangling since we'd gotten home; now, it was just one long, continuous buzz inside my inner ear. Enough to rattle me and keep me on edge.

It's not uncommon for a P.I. to be followed. Granted, it certainly doesn't happen as much as it might in movies or books, but it can happen. The last time I'd been followed was seven months ago, by a handsome, blond-haired vampire hunter with issues. He was last seen heading west on a Carnival Cruise ship to Hawaii, courtesy of yours truly.

So who was out there now? Who was watching me? And why?

The two vans had been driven by experienced surveillance drivers, working in tandem with each other. Now, private eyes p.i.s.s a lot of people off. Especially cheating husbands and wives.

Except cheating husbands and wives did not use an advanced tag-team surveillance technique.

Down the hallway, in his bedroom, my son laughed loudly. Maybe I shouldn't let him play video games. Maybe a good mother would have punished her son for being suspended from school.

But I just couldn't justify punishing him for helping a girl. Punishing him for doing something right.

The inner alarm continued to buzz, so much so that I nearly yelled, "Stop!"

Instead, I got up and paced.

After a few laps, I realized the warning bells were only getting louder.

Jesus, what was happening? What was going to happen?

I didn't know.

Although my psychic abilities had grown, I still could not predict the future. And as I paced my living room, I paused twice to glance out the big living room window that overlooked the front lawn and the cul-de-sac leading up to my house. The cul-de-sac was empty. The street beyond was empty, other than two teenagers sitting on a neighbor's fence, talking and texting.

Random cars were parked here and there.

No sign of any cargo vans.

The buzzing between my ears sounded like a swarm of gnats circling my head. I nearly swatted at them, like King Kong swatting at airplanes on top of the Empire State Building.

I forced myself to sit on my couch, forced myself to take deep breaths, to calm down. I focused on my breathing.

There. Easy now. Calm down.

And from this state of semi-tranquility, I closed my eyes and was able to cast my thoughts out like a net. An ever-widening net that trawled through my house, through the different rooms, and out into the back yard- Where I saw two men creeping through my back yard.

They were both armed with crossbows.

I gasped and snapped back into my body, just as gla.s.s broke from down the hallway.

Anthony's room.

Chapter Thirty-three.

I stumbled off the couch, disoriented and dizzy, braced myself on a wall, then hurtled through my small house.

"Anthony!" I screamed.

I was in my son's room in a blink, and what I saw took a second or two to absorb. The bedroom window was broken. The sound of running feet. My son standing there in the center of his room, breathing hard, fists clenched.

"It's okay, Mommy. They're gone now."

I looked my son over wildly, then hurried over to the broken window. Our house abuts the Pep Boys parking lot, separated by our backyard fence. From inside the house, I could just see a white van peeling away from the fence, zigzagging briefly.

Sweet Jesus.

I considered pursuing, but there was no way in h.e.l.l was I leaving my son. I noted the broken gla.s.s wasn't inside the bedroom, as I had expected. The gla.s.s was outside, littering the dry gra.s.s, sparkling there under the last of the setting sun. A sun that was even now burning me alive.

I fought through it, grimacing, trying to piece together what had happened. The gla.s.s was broken out, which meant...

And then I saw it, a few feet away. Anthony's Xbox controller was lying in the gra.s.s, too, broken into two or three pieces.

He had thrown it. Through the window. I looked back at my son. But he wasn't looking at me. He simply stood in the center of the room, fists clenched, looking out through the broken window.

"What happened, Anthony?"