"I don't know."
He let out his breath and spoke slowly and sadly. "I have an idea."
Chapter 4
Rule Number One of living with humans. Always wash the blood off before coming in the house.
Jez stood at the outdoor faucet, icy-cold water splashing over her hands. She was scrubbing- carefully-a long, slim dagger made of split bamboo, with a cutting edge as sharp as glass. When it was clean, she slipped it into her right knee-high boot. Then she daubed water over several stains on her T-shirt and jeans and scrubbed them with a fingernail. Finally she whipped out a pocket mirror and examined her face critically.
The girl who looked back didn't much resemble the wild, laughing huntress who had leaped from tree to tree in Muir Woods. Oh, the features were the same; the height of cheekbone, the curve of chin. They had even fined out a bit because she was a year older. The red flag of hair was the same, too, although now it was pulled back in an attempt to tame its fiery disorder. The difference was in the expression, which was sadder and wiser than Jez had ever imagined she could be, and in the eyes.
The eyes weren't as silvery as they had been, not as dangerously beautiful. But that was only to be expected. She had discovered that she didn't need to drink blood as long as she didn't use her vampire powers. Human food kept her alive-and made her look more human.
One other thing about the eyes. They were scarily vulnerable, even to Jez. No matter how she tried to make them hard and menacing, they had the wounded look of a deer that knows it's going to die and accepts it. Sometimes she wondered if that was an omen.
Well. No blood on her face. She shoved the mirror back in her pocket. She was mostly presentable, if extremely late for dinner. She turned the faucet off and headed for the back door of the low, sweeping ranch house.
Everyone looked up as she came in.
The family was in the kitchen, eating at the oak table with the white trim, under the bright fluorescent light. The TV was blaring cheerfully from the family room. Uncle Jim, her mother's brother, was munching tacos and leafing through the mail. He had red hair darker than Jez's and a long face that looked almost as medieval as Jez's mother's had. He was usually off in a gentle, worried dream somewhere. Now he waved an envelope at Jez and gazed at her reproachfully, but he couldn't say anything because his mouth was full.
Aunt Nanami was on the phone, drinking a diet Coke. She was small, with dark shiny hair and eyes that turned to crescents when she smiled. She opened her mouth and frowned at Jez, but couldn't say anything, either.
Ricky, who was ten, had carroty hair and expressive eyebrows. He gave Jez a big smile that showed chewed-up taco in his mouth and said, "Hi!"
Jez smiled back. No matter what she did, Ricky was there for her.
Claire, who was Jez's age, was sitting primly, eating bits of taco with her fork. She looked like a smaller version of Aunt Nan, but with a very sour expression.
"Where have you been?" she said. "We waited dinner almost an hour for you and you never even called."
"Sorry," Jez said, looking at all of them. It was such an incredibly normal family scene, so completely typical, and it struck her to the heart.
It was over a year since she had walked out of the Night World to find these people, her mother's relatives. It was eleven and a half months since Uncle Jim had taken her in, not knowing anything about her except that she was his orphaned niece and that her father's family couldn't handle her anymore and had given up on her. All these months, she had lived with the Goddard family- and she still didn't fit in.
She could look human, she could act human, but she couldn't be human.
Just as Uncle Jim swallowed and got his mouth clear to speak to her, she said, "I'm not hungry. I think
I'll just go do my homework."
Uncle Jim called, "Wait a minute," after her, but it was Claire who slammed down her napkin and actually followed Jez through the hall to the other side of the house.
"What do you mean, 'Sorry'? You do this every day. You're always disappearing; half the time you stay out until after midnight, and then you don't even have an explanation."
"Yeah, I know, Claire." Jez answered without looking back. "Illtry to do better."
"You say that every time. And every time it's exactly the same. Don't you realize that my parents worry about you? Don't you even care?"
"Yes, I care, Claire."
"You don't act like it. You act like rules don't apply to you. And you say sorry, but you're just going to do it again."
Jez had to keep herself from turning around and snapping at her cousin. She liked everyone else in the family, but Claire was a royal pain.
Worse, she was a shrewd royal pain. And she was right; Jez was going to do it again, and there was no way she could explain.
The thing was, vampire hunters have to keep weird hours.
When you're on the trail of a vampire-and-shapeshifter killing team, as Jez had been this evening, chasing them through the slums ofOakland , trying to get them cornered in some crack house where there aren't little kids to get hurt, you don't think about missing dinner. You don't stop in the middle of staking the undead to phone home.
Maybe I shouldn't have become a vampire hunter, Jez thought. But it's a little late to change now, and somebody's got to protect these stupid- these innocent humans from the Night World.
Oh, well.
She'd reached the door of her bedroom. Instead of yelling at her cousin, she simply half turned and said, "Why don't you go work on your Web page, Claire?" Then she opened the door and glanced inside.
And froze.
Her room, which she had left in military neatness, was a shambles. The window was wide open. Papers and clothes were scattered across the floor. And there was a very large ghoul standing at the foot of the bed.
The ghoul opened its mouth menacingly at Jez.
"Oh, very funny," Claire was saying, right behind her. "Maybe I should help you with your homework. I hear you're not doing so great in chemistry-"
Jez moved fast, stepping nimbly inside the door and slamming it in Claire's face, pressing the little knob in the handle to lock it.
"Hey!" Now Claire sounded really mad. "That's rude!"
"Uh, sorry, Claire!" Jez faced the ghoul. What was it doing here? If it had followed her home, she was in bad trouble. That meant the Night World knew where she was. "You know, Claire, I think I really need to be alone for a little while-I can't talk