—to guide souls to God.”

A thought occurred to me. What if you didn’t use your powers for their intended objectives, for good? What if you started using them only for your own selfish purposes, like I had with Michael lately? Could that explain why I’d felt so dark recently? Why I’d sort of lost that compulsion to help others? Al these questions assumed that I was an angel, of course. I asked my dad, “What if angels used their gifts for their own purposes?”

My dad paused before answering. I could tel my question kind of disturbed him. “That is precisely what these angels did at first, when they were sent to guard mankind. After al , even angels have free wil , the capacity to choose darkness over light. That is why they were cast out. Once these angels were cast out and became fal en, they ful y submitted their powers into the service of their own desires. Then the darkness—the urge to serve self rather than something higher—took hold. And that hold was—is—very, very hard to break, nearly like an addiction.”

Before continuing, he sort of shivered. Then he pul ed himself together and said, “Over the centuries, people in every culture, every society, began to take notice of these angels—especial y the fal en angels trying for redemption. Remember, these angels striving for salvation were trying to bring souls to God at the moment of death. People occasional y saw them in that instant, and attributed to them the deaths they witnessed. People started to fear these angels. Who could blame them? Sometimes, the people watched the beings draw close to the dying and whisper in their ears.

Other times, they saw the creatures touch their loved ones as they took their last breaths. And in rare occasions, they observed an exchange of blood between the dying human and the being. Of course, the people believed that the beings were causing the deaths—rather than facilitating the afterlife journeys of their loved ones. People created entire legends around these beings. The myths differed from culture to culture, from age to age. But the core always remained the same, and it gave birth to the legend. The legend of the vampire.

“And you can see how that legend was not too far off the mark with certain of the fal en angels, the ones who continued to serve themselves and reject the light. For they used their gifts to suck away humans’ souls and create a civilization that worshipped them, instead of God.”

My dad paused, and in the quiet, I couldn’t help but think that this last bit sounded a lot like the musings of Professor McMaster. Since when was my biologist dad a vampire scholar? Or a biblical scholar, for that matter? I looked over at him and noticed that, during the course of his long talk, his handsome face had grown craggy. He suddenly looked so sad and so old that I couldn’t possibly chal enge him.

He reached out to caress my cheek. “So my lovely daugh-ter, you cannot possibly be a vampire, because there are no vampires. Only fal en angels. Good and bad.”

“How do you know al this?” I final y asked, one among the many questions I’d amassed.

Before answering, he looked over at my mom, who’d remained stil and silent during the whole of his monologue. She nodded her head once, and he turned back to me.

“Because humans once cal ed me and your mother vampires.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

No way. My parents were perfectly normal, perfectly terrestrial. No way were they angels, or vampires, or anything else that whiffed of the otherworld. The very notion of my mom and dad as unearthly beings was ridiculous.

In fact, al of this suddenly felt laughable. It was too much, and I could feel the hysteria bubbling up in me. Tears streamed down my face. My stomach ached from the force of my laughter. When I realized that my parents weren’t joining in, the hilarity subsided a little bit. But then I looked over at them, somber and respectable and silent in their flannel nightgown and pajamas and robes, and the whole concept of them flying and divining thoughts seemed so hysterical y ridiculous that the laughter took hold again.

Final y, I calmed down enough to ask, “You two? Angels?”

“Yes,” my dad said quietly. Almost apologetical y.

“So, we’re like a family of angels? Are you two the good kind or the fal en ones?” I said with a giggle.

“We were fal en. But now we are trying to redeem our-selves,” my dad solemnly answered my not-so-serious question.

“Come on.” I don’t know why I was having such a hard time buying their claims, when I’d thought of myself as a vampire for some time. Except that they were my parents, and parents were supposed to be ordinary and respectable. Especial y mine, who were boring academics.

But the more I thought about it, the less ridiculous it seemed. My parents were uncommonly beautiful; people always commented on it. They carried themselves with an unusual grace and calmness, excepting their reactions to my most recent behavior, of course. They dedicated themselves to teaching others how to protect the environment while stil feeding the multitudes. They were the only people whose touch did not give me a single flash. And they were my parents, the ones who’d created me. If I was some kind of supernatural being, why not them? Lately, crazier things had happened.

The thought sobered me up—although I wasn’t quite ready to buy the entire notion.

My mom shot my dad a look, and he left the room. My mom and I sat there in an uncomfortable silence as we listened to Dad’s slippers clop up and down the attic stairs. He returned bearing a smal wooden box covered in metal designs, kind of like the tin-imprinted, wooden trunks Irish immigrants brought over with them on the ships a couple of centuries ago.

Reaching into her nightgown, my mom pul ed out a long gold chain made up of open, circular links. I knew that there was a plain, heavy oval pendant, also gold, on the chain too. As a child, I’d loved to play with it, running it up and down the chain until my mother tired of my game and admonished me to be careful with it. Over the years, I’d grown to see it as my mom’s one vanity, her one decoration in a wardrobe of simple, functional clothes. But I was wrong.

She twisted the pendant, and it popped open unexpectedly. The little motion made me jump; I never knew that the pendant was a locket. Then she reached inside, pul ed out a smal key, and handed it to my dad.

He slid the key into the box’s lock and opened it with one deft turn. Moving slowly and careful y, he thumbed through the items inside and removed a yel owed envelope. He placed it in my hands.

The envelope was sealed. Working my finger under the one loose corner, I looked up at my dad for confirmation that I could open it. He nodded.

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