I’d grown grateful for the security at the academy, which had clamped down on trespassers after a trio of freelance photographers stalked me to the cafeteria one afternoon. It was impossible to keep my identity a secret, but I’d figured that as long as I stayed on campus, I would be safe. Nothing could have proved more false, which was brought home to me when a drone had appeared at the dorm window, its camera trained on the room.
The administration had convened and come up with a plan to better police the grounds, and now a tense truce was in place between the paparazzi and the school. Celebrities and their kids went to school all the time, I reasoned, though I’d never had to give a thought as to how they managed it before.
“What’s on the agenda for the day?” I asked. Jared carried the firewood to the stone hearth and placed three split logs on the iron rack.
“Nothing special. We can make a snowman. Or go into town and see if there’s anything you’re interested in eating.”
I eyed him skeptically. “Do vampires make snowmen?”
“This one will if you want to.”
I’d grown used to being with Jared most of the time I wasn’t in school, but the frustration at being limited to how intimate we could be was a constant source of tension for us both. The good news was that we’d probably talked more than most couples did in a decade, and I felt closer to him than I would have thought possible – even if perennially unfulfilled. I knew he felt the same way, and upon waking each day I reminded myself that we had time to arrive at a solution to our problem…even if it didn’t feel that way.
The sound of an engine carried from the drive, and I glanced out the foggy window to where a pair of headlights was approaching through the snowfall. Jared peered through the glass and then smiled with genuine happiness. I set my cup of tea down with a frown.
“It’s just the mailman,” I said.
“I know. I’m expecting something.”
“What?”
Another grin. “A surprise.”
I regarded him skeptically. “I’m not sure about you and your surprises.”
A knock at the door interrupted us, and Jared twisted the knob and opened it. A postman in a heavy winter coat stood on the porch with a box large enough to hold a microwave oven.
“You Jared Richards?” he asked, pronouncing it Jay-red.
“That’s right,” I confirmed. “He’s Jay-red.”
The mail carrier looked at me and then back to Jared. “Sign here,” he said, setting the box down and placing a form on top of it. He held out a pen and Jared scrawled a signature where directed.
“Thanks,” Jared said, handing the pen back.
“Don’t mention it,” the carrier grumbled, and then made for his Jeep, looking up at the sky like he was expecting an eagle to swoop down and attack him.
Jared carried the box inside, and I walked eagerly over to him.
“Well? You going to open it?” I asked.
“Can you get me a knife from the kitchen?” he asked.
I did as requested, and he carefully sliced the tape along the seams of the lid and opened it. He reached in and removed another box, and did the same with that one. He set the knife on the table beside him, lifted the top, and extracted an old book with a cover of scuffed chocolate-colored leather. Jared inspected it reverently for a moment and then handed it to me. I opened it, noting the yellowed pages, and stopped at the title.
“What language is this?” I asked.
“Latin.”
I frowned. “You read Latin?”
“It was required when I went to school in France.”
I nodded. “That’s right. I keep forgetting.”
Jared lifted another book from the box. “This one’s in German. The last two are French.”
“You also speak German?”
He shrugged. “You pick up a few things over a couple of hundred years.”
“I always knew you were more than just a pretty face,” I quipped. “So…what are they about?”
“They’re vampire stories. Two have accounts of the mortality potion, and the other two chronicle the vampire ceremony. At least, that’s what I was told. They were recommended as the only books of their kind, all written over a hundred years ago.”
“Where did you find them?”
“A bookseller in Cologne knows a rare manuscript dealer in Morocco. He put out the word. This was the result.”
I eyed the books. “And you think they’ll help?”
“I don’t know. But it’s worth a shot. If not, I may have to fly to Egypt to meet with a sorcerer there. He’s rumored to be ancient. A hundred and nine, if the stories are true.”
“That’s barely out of the cradle for you,” I teased. “What’s he doing in Egypt?”
“Legends say that’s where we first appeared.” He paused. “Of course, there are also accounts of vampires in pre-Columbian texts, so it’s hard to pin down.”
“You don’t know where the first vampires came from?”
He shrugged again. “The oldest of our kind are Romanian and Hungarian. But they were made by someone. Whoever, and from wherever…that’s sacred lore.”
“Sacred?”
He nodded. “Nobody discusses it.”
“Why not?”
“We’re a superstitious bunch. There are prophecies. One such involves the original makers.” He peered into the box. “But we have a lot of time on our hands to make things up. Prophecies are one of them.”
“So you don’t believe in them?”
“I didn’t say that. I just mean that we tend to gossip among ourselves, and the stories grow with each telling.”
I ran my hand over the cover of the Latin book. “I hope there’s something in them that helps.”
Jared leaned toward me and grazed my jawline with
