I chose comfortable jeans and my Big Mel’s Skateway sweatshirt. Downstairs, I found Dad clattering in the kitchen. No sign of Mom. I sat down, and my attention was diverted by Dad setting down a plate in front of me. Scrambled eggs, little sausages cut into penguin shapes like in a Japanese lunchbox, and a slice of whole wheat toast. My dad. World champion at cute breakfast.
He circled the table, drying his hands on a bumpy dishtowel. Taking a seat, he asked, “How’s my little hunter this morning?”
“Okay. Where’s Mom?”
Dad took a long sip from a deep mug of coffee. “What you did last night? Very wrong.”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
Dad shook his head. “Getting hurt, or killed, is not a good way to surprise us.”
He was right, of course. “Yeah. But I could handle myself.”
“No, Abby.”
“Yes, I could.” I speared a penguin to drive home my point. “Where is Mom?”
Dad was sheepish. “Talking to Mrs. Cooper.”
I was the apple of my father’s eye. It’s okay. I only use my power for good, but it wasn’t going to save me today. Fine. I tore into my breakfast. I’d need to be fortified for my sentence. I shoveled the last of the egg on toast into my mouth when the front door opened. Mom had returned.
Mom walked into the kitchen. From a cabinet she pulled a canister of English Breakfast, the favorite tea of all monster hunting librarian mothers on my block. Her hair was smooth like glass. No more confusion there. Mom was ready to pass sentence.
“Abigail.” Still Abigail. Sleeping on it hadn’t improved her temper. Oh boy.
“Mom.” I wasn’t sure of the right gambit. I decided to play straightforward. “I’m really sorry about yesterday.”
She sighed, one of those big shoulder quakers. “You’re thirteen years old, Abby. Thirteen! What do you think you were doing?”
“I don’t know!” My mind cast about. “If I wanted to be, you know, an Olympic athlete, I’d already be in training. I would have started training at three. Why shouldn’t I be out there, killing monsters?”
“Not many Olympic meets end in death.”
“Listen! I have to practice killing monsters. What if I get out there and I drive the stake into the wrong place?” I quoted a line from Dracula and the Disco of Doom. “Through the heart is a great start.”
“Through the lung and you’re done,” said Dad.
Mom swallowed. I realized she was biting back words in that repressed way that she does. “You are not helping, Reginald!”
Dad cleared his throat. “No, of course not, Polly.” Dad shifted his attention toward me. “Abby, hunting monsters is not something you go out there to do. You avoid it if you can.”
Hunh? I wasn’t avoiding this. I was ready. If last night proved anything, it proved I could use the backpack of doom in an emergency. Mom and Dad were thinking like stereotypical superheroes in comics. Protection of innocents is the reason superheroes never get together, to keep from having children they had to protect from those people who were their archenemies. Well, the time for thinking like that was way over. I was already here, and Vince and I were already the targets for old family “friends.”
“You do it,” I said. “I don’t see you avoiding anything.”
Mom contemplated her long hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea. “I am not giving in. Not an inch. I will not have you out there looking to save the world.”
“Mom—”
“Don’t even pretend you are in the right here. What you and Vince should have done was come to us about Ned. We are trained professionals.”
“His mom and dad were weird about Ned.”
“The issues are complicated for Nicole and Charlie. Why didn’t you talk to your father and me?”
I twiddled the handle of my fork. “I thought—”
“You didn’t think at all. Mr. Christopher tells me the vampire you were chasing saved you from being stabbed. What if he hadn’t been there?”
Dad sat down on the other side of me. “Abby,” he said, “why did you decide you needed to kill Ned? Did he do something to you?”
“No.” I looked from Mom to Dad and back again. “He’s a vampire. We had evidence he was. He was following Vince, and Vince was in danger, and what you do to vampires is slay them.”
Mom and Dad did the parental gaze over my head. “You were right, Polly. It is my fault. Too many movies.”
“Yes,” said Mom. “It is your fault.”
“Thank you,” said Dad. “That attitude makes swallowing this bitter pill so much easier.”
“All you’ve done since she was tiny is fill her head with...with...Anvil Studios.”
What was Mom’s problem? Dad’s films had taught me almost every technique I needed to stay alive out there. “Mom, lay off Dad. He was trying to get me ready.” My face reddened. “I am ready. You know, how you let me play with your potions and stuff? Trying to get me ready?”
“No. That was learning chemistry.”
“Chemistry with something extra!”
“Abby,” said Dad, “I will not tolerate you talking back to your mother like that. Apologize.”
Mom arched an eyebrow. Dad crossed his arms. Behold the power of the unified front.
“I’m sorry.” They looked disappointed in me, so they must have known I wasn’t pegging the sincerity meter.
Mom shook her head. “Mistakes have been made. Your father and I both underestimated your confidence and overestimated your common sense. We never imagined you’d do something like this.”
“It was exactly what you’d have done! Both of you!”
“Not so,” said Dad. “Neither of us would ever have jumped into the unknown like that.”
“There’s the issue of whether Ned was even a threat,”
