I glanced back at Ned after a terrifying snarl. His eyes glowed red, like in a bad picture. I wasn’t going to think about savage vampire Ned. I found the zipper I was looking for on the bean bag cover. I tugged on the zipper, but I wasn’t getting enough side traction. Ned lurched across the room. I jerked the zipper open. Little plastic beads spilled onto the stained carpet. It had been a long time since a bean bag chair was stuffed with beans, but there were little beads and they needed counting.
Ned got busy, and I cried, shaking in relief. I shook more beads out of the chair when it became obvious Ned wasn’t going to suck me dry. I moved away from him ever so carefully, although my body was rubbery and not cooperative. Ned snarled in frustration, but kept counting. I limped to the door.
No way I was waiting for Ned to run out of beads. The lock wasn’t a deadbolt. I found Ned’s army jacket behind the couch and rifled through the pockets. Ancient wallet. Bingo. Learner’s permit.
I wedged it into the door, just like Ned had showed me on the roof of the Galleria, impossible to do at first, with adrenaline and nerves. Eventually it worked. The door opened.
No one was guarding the door. Why would they need to? I should have been incapacitated. I locked the door behind Ned. He’d be busy with those beads for quite a while. I moved down the hall, trying to make as little noise as possible. I radiated pain from my shoulders, my legs, and my head. I headed back to the kitchen.
I grabbed a chef’s knife from a butcher block and stashed myself in a hall closet. I wouldn’t think about Ned counting beads, or what might be going on in the basement. I wouldn’t think about Mr. Christopher dying slowly of rowan poisoning, or my mom in the hospital, machines keeping her alive.
Time to take action. I grabbed another chef’s knife from a drawer and headed into the basement. I wasn’t going all ninja or anything. I would use the two knives as a cross if I had to.
I opened the door to the basement and caught the tail end of Larissa’s sentence. “—your daughter is already one of us.”
“Then there’s nothing to keep me from killing you.”
Dad? I took the stairs one at a time, waiting to be discovered after each step. When I reached the bottom, I peered around the corner. Larissa’s back was to me. No slumber party girls, no Coral, no Marty. Florence lay in a corner, slumped against the wall. Face off, Dad and Vince on one side, Larissa on the other. Dad looked a little worse for wear, but Vince looked pretty fresh.
Vince saw me, but he exercised a pretty good poker face. I crept forward.
By the time she smelled me, it was too late. Larissa whirled, and I rammed the two crossed knife blades into her chest.
She hissed.
This was the point where Dad would have shot her with his crossbow. However, I had made that impossible. Instead, his expert aim drove a stake right through her heart, and he followed up with a mallet. Larissa fell on top of me, me still holding the makeshift cross, her body pinning my arms.
In the movies, sometimes, vampires age and powder instantly. Larissa smoked. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see this close up. There was heat, not flames, but the kind of heat that you get when you get too close to the fireplace. I pushed, and bits of her came off.
“Abby!” Dad pulled what was left of her off me, and then I was enfolded in the smell of his hunting coat, Old Spice and wool. Safe. I was safe.
“Mr. Rath,” said Vince.
Dad pulled away. He dabbed at his eyes with a Kleenex that Vince handed him.
“Um...Ned’s gonna need some blood,” I squeaked to Vince. My jaw didn’t work right. “He’s counting out a bean bag upstairs, but that won’t hold him.”
Dad pulled me in again. I couldn’t breathe, and I was worried about Florence in the corner. “Dad.” My voice was muffled, so I know he didn’t hear me. “Dad. It’s gonna be okay.” I would freak out later, but right now I comforted my dad.
Dad had been waylaid by William while Larissa was taking care of Ned, but he was not hurt enough to keep him from finding Vince at Mr. Christopher’s. The two of them had come here to find me.
Now I watched, detached, as Vince tied up Florence. She would be arrested by the police, probably on kidnapping charges. The slumber party witnesses would see to that. Coral and Marty had gotten my classmates away, at least that’s what Coral told me when she came back to help Dad clean up. She found some blood for Ned, and after drinking three pints, Ned fell asleep.
Me? Once Coral gave the all clear, Marty came back, and she wouldn’t leave my side. Vince helped my dad, but he kept stopping over to make sure we were both okay. I knew I looked pretty rough, and I did hurt. I was wearing one of the tops Coral had helped me buy at the mall and it had melting Larissa all over it. “I didn’t like it anyway,” said Coral, as she lent me a shirt. When everything was more or less in hand, Dad sent me to the Coopers, and I slept an entire day.
The next afternoon, in bed at the Coopers, after I’d been band-aided and aspercremed and given some chicken soup, I finally realized the difference between a monster and not a monster. Monsters don’t have to be bloody or terrible or even supernatural. They don’t have to be scary, come with fangs
