"No."
Phil let out his breath. "That's good. Because if you had, I'd have killed you."
James believed him. He was much stronger than Phil, much faster, and he'd never been afraid of a human before. But just at that moment he had no doubt that Phil would somehow have found a way to do it.
"Look, there's something you don't understand," he said.
"Poppy did want this, and it's something w e've alre ady started.
She's only just beginning to change; if she dies now, she won't become a vampire. But she might not die all thee way, either.
She could end up a walking corpse. A zombie, you know?
Mindless. Body rotting, but immortal."
Phil's mouth quivered with revulsion. "You're just saying that to scare me."
James looked away. "I've seen it happen."
"I don't believe you."
"I've seen it firsthand!" Dimly James realized he was yelling and that he'd grabbed Phil by the shirtfront. He was out of control-and he didn't care. "I've seen it happen to somebody I cared about, all right?"
And then, because Phil was still shaking his head: "I was only four years old and I had a nanny. All the rich kids in San Francisco have nannies. She was human."
"Let go," Phil muttered, pulling at James's wrist. He was breathing hard-he didn't want to hear this.
"I was crazy about her. She gave me everything my mom didn't. Love, attention-she was never too busy. I called her Miss Emma."
“Let go.”
"But my parents thought I was too attached to her. So they took me on a little vacation-and they didn't let me feed. Not for three days. By the time they brought me back, I was starving.
Then they sent Miss Emma up to put me to bed."
Phil had stopped fighting now. He stood with his head bowed and turned to one side so he wouldn't have to look at James.
James threw his words at the averted face.
"I was only four. I couldn't stop myself. And the thing is, I wanted to. If you'd asked me who I'd rather have die, me or Miss Emma, I'd've said me. But when you're starving, you lose control. So I fed on her, and all the time I was crying and trying to stop. And when I finally could stop, I knew it was too late."
There was a pause. James suddenly realized that his fingers were locked in an agonizing cramp. He let go of Phil's shirt slowly. Phil said nothing.
"She was just lying there on the floor. I thought, wait, if I give her my own blood she'll be a vampire, and everything will be okay." He wasn't yelling anymore. He wasn't even really speaking to Phillip, but staring out into the dark parking lot.
"So I cut myself and let the blood run into her mouth. She swallowed some of it before my parents came up and stopped me. But not enough."
A longer pause-and James remembered why he was telling the story. He looked at Phillip.
"She died that night but not all the way. The two different kinds of blood were fighting inside her. So by morning she was walking around again-but she wasn't Miss Emma anymore. She drooled and her skin was gray and her eyes were flat like a corpse's. And when she started to-rot-my dad took her out to Inverness and buried her. He killed her first." Bile rose in James's throat and he added almost in a whisper, "I hope he killed her first."
Phil slowly turned around to look at him. For the first time that evening, there was something other than horror and fear in his face. Something like pity, James thought.
James took a deep breath. After thirteen years of silence he'd finally told the story to Phillip North, of all people. But it was no good wondering about the absurdity. He had a point to drive home.
"So take my advice. If you don't convince Poppy to see me, make sure they don't do an autopsy on her. You don't want her walking around without her internal organs. And have a wooden stake ready for the time when you can't stand to look at her anymore."
The pity was gone from Phil's eyes. His mouth was a hard, trembling line.
"We won't let her turn into ... some kind of halfalive abomination," he said. "Or a vampire, either. I'm sorry about what happened to your Miss Emma, but it doesn't change anything."
"Poppy should be the one to decide-"
But Phillip had reached his limit, and now he was simply shaking his head. "Just keep away from my sister," he said.
"That's all I want. If you do, I'll leave you alone. And if you don't-"
"What?"
"I'm going to tell everybody in El Camino what you are. I'm going to call the police and the mayor and I'm going to stand in the middle of the street and yell it."
James felt his hands go icy cold. What Phil didn't realize was that he'd just made it James's duty to kill him. It wasn't just that any human who stumbled on Night World secrets had to die, but that one actively threatening to tell about the Night World had to die immediately, no questions asked, no mercy given.
Suddenly James was so tired he couldn't see straight.
"Get out of here, Phil," he said in a voice drained of emotion and vitality both. "Now. And if you really want to protect Poppy, you won't tell anybody anything. Because they'll trace it back and find out that Poppy knows the secrets, too. And then they'll kill her-after bringing her in for questioning. It won't be fun."
"Who're 'they'? Your parents?"
"The Night People. We're all around you, Phil. Anybody you know could be one-including the mayor. So keep your mouth shut."
Phillip looked at him through narrowed eyes. Then he turned and walked to the front of the store.
James couldn't remember when he'd felt so empty. Everything he'd done had turned out wrong. Poppy was now in more kinds of danger than he could count.
And Phillip North thought he was unnatural and evil. What Phil didn't know was that most of the time James thought the same thing.
Phillip got halfway home before he remembered that he'd dropped the bag with Poppy's cranberry juice and wild cherry Popsicles. Poppy had hardly
eaten in the last two days, and when she did get hungry, it was for something weird.
No-something red, he realized as he paid for a second time at the 7-Eleven. He felt a sick lurch in his stomach. Everything she wanted lately was red and at least semiliquid.