When I arrived at my house, Emily was already in my room. Not only that, but she was wearing what I was pretty sure were her pajamas. A pink tank top and soft purple pants. I got the sense that this was another thing we weren't supposed to talk about. Today her backpack sat in my chair, but her books hadn't even been taken out.

She grilled me about where I'd been. I admitted that I'd gone to Megan Geron's house.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” said Emily. “You didn't bite her, did you?”

“Not technic---”

“Good. That girl is crazy, I'm not kidding. She talks to the trees in the courtyard. I've seen her. I don't want her hanging around.”

“She's not crazy, Emily. She's living in a crazy house.”

Emily eyed me suspiciously. “Did you tell her?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Great.” She got up from my desk and sat next to me on the bed. She very meticulously pulled all her hair back and brought it around to one side of her neck. Then she watched me, a challenge in her eyes. “Are you just going to sit there and pretend like you don't want to do it?”

I felt a smile tug at my lips. I said, “No.”

“Good. Acting cool doesn't suit you.”

I couldn't take much from her. But my teeth were relieved to finally break flesh, and I let the slightest amount of blood trickle so I could enjoy the feeding as long as possible. Afterward, I took her hand and rubbed the gray lines on her wrist.

“Did you ask your mom about these?”

She gave me a shifty look.

“They're from the accident.”

“What accident?”

“When I was three, my family was in a car accident. I guess my wrist got broken. Mom said they put pins in it.”

“These are the pins?”

“I think so. Mom said they were never supposed to come out, but I guess they decided it was time.”

Her face was dark. I assumed it was because the pins disturbed her, or maybe the thought of an accident and surgeries she didn't remember. But then she said:

“I have to show you something else. Maybe I should have done it already, but---well, try not to read too much into this, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, without knowing what I was agreeing to. Emily turned her back to me. All I could see was the waterfall of honey-blonde hair and the pink tank top. Then she pushed her hair aside, grasped the sides of her tank top, and slid the tank top up, over her head, and off.

“Don't get excited,” she said.

I pushed up onto my elbows and stared. At her bare back, at the lavender satin bra. I had never, in my entire life, seen a real girl in her bra. Not once.

[https://img.wattpad.com/3e0b45daef2ae8e2204a2436bdcbf145b50962be/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f736e6c716242674d6d4e744768773d3d2d313336383532303837392e313737646532636632646538346338633135303132333139313037332e706e67]

Emily clasped her shirt over her chest and looked back at me. She was too anemic to blush really red but the tinge of pink on her cheeks told the story.

“I told you not to get excited!” she said.

I made myself focus on her face. “But you're---you're taking your clothes off.”

“Not for fun, dummy. I'm trying to show you something. On my back. Look at my back!”

I looked at her back again, trying to find a benign point of interest that would hold my attention and keep me from ogling.

“The accident didn't just hurt my wrist, it hurt my back. I don't remember any of it, but I know I had to have surgery afterward. Would you at least blink?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. Emily was frowning back at me. “The surgery gave me a scar all down my spine. A really long one. Can you see it?”

I made myself look where she was directing. At her spine. I searched for a sign, a hint of a scar. But I saw nothing.

“Should I---is it under your bra?”

“What? No! It's nowhere. It's gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes, gone. I noticed it when I was blow-drying my hair this morning. The scar from the surgery is totally gone. And it wasn't little. It was almost as long as my back.”

“Where did it go?”

“I have no idea. But I know it happened fast because it was there last week.”

“Why didn't you tell me this before?” I said.

“I don't want to be telling you about it now. I mean, what if I'm becoming a vampire, too? Your stuff heals, too, right? That's what you told me.”

“Yeah,” I said. I took her wrist again. Indeed, the little gray pins weren't “in” anything anymore. They just floated under her translucent skin like little hitchhikers.

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I had no idea what to think. It hadn't occurred to me that I might not be the only one changing. I wondered if Sid had experienced anything like this.

“Sometimes I think I can feel it,” Emily said, as she pulled her tank top back on and faced me again. “It's your little bites. They sting like minty chapstick.”

I thought of Parva's bite. The way her teeth had burned like hot needles and her venom had seared its way through my veins. Was that what Emily was feeling? A tiny dose of venom? Was it changing her into a vampire, little by little?

I snagged my phone from my nightstand. I texted Sid and asked her if anything strange was happening to her body. If anything was healing. I didn't expect her to text back any time soon, but I got her response just a few minutes later.

Actually, yeah, she said. I think my allergies are gone.

Allergies? That was interesting, but I doubted we could empirically prove that was caused by vampire bites. Allergies came and went with the season. Wasn't it more likely that the colder weather had put a stop to all the plant sex and given allergy sufferers a break?

But then I thought of Porter and his list of forbidden foods. Shellfish was at the top, but also tree nuts and some other things. Maybe that's what Sidney meant.

I said, What kind of allergies?

Name it, she said. Strawberries cantaloupe tomatoes mango . . .

The list came hard and fast, each addition a new text bubble on my phone. Eggs. Dairy. Chocolate. Peanuts. It started to feel like she was just naming everything she could think of that could be bought at a grocery store.

I said, What do you eat?

Bread and Coke.

Emily was reading my conversation with Sid. She said, “I could have told you all that.”

I texted, I had no idea you were allergic to so much stuff.

Isn't it a rule that all geeks have allergies? she said.

I don't, I said.

Well lah dee dah.

How did you find out they were gone? I said.

Accidentally ate some peanut butter yesterday. I wasn't worried because I have an epi-pen, but then I couldn't find it and I started freaking out, and I yelled at my mom to help me and she couldn't find it either, and we were both freaking out but like fifteen minutes later I realized nothing was happening. My mom was like Oh good maybe you're growing out of your allergies. But I got curious and when I found the pen I started testing other things to see what else I could eat.

And what could you eat?

Everything in the house.

I looked at Emily. She said, “What does this mean?”

It meant that this was bigger than I thought. I didn't know anything about allergies but this wasn't just old scars smoothing over. This was something deeper.

To Sid, I said, Anything else?

Lost a couple of moles I hated.

Her words were so calm, but I knew her, and I knew she would be disturbed by the strange new workings of her own body. I said, It's not just you. It's happening to Emily, too.

Why?

Don't know yet. Still trying to figure it out.

Well let me know if Emily starts growing fangs. It was the end of the conversation, Sidney-style. I put my phone back on the nightstand.

“Scars,” I said. “Foreign objects. And what are allergies? Immune system?”

“I guess.”

I took Emily's wrist and examined the pins again. They were mesmerizing, but not in a good way. They were like an unscratchable itch. They mocked me from beneath the surface of Emily's translucent skin.

“How do these things feel?” I said.

She flexed her wrist back and forth. “Kind of gross. I mean, my wrist feels normal. But the pins are annoying. Like, no matter what I do, they're always there.”

“I hate them,” I said, without meaning to. Actually, I don't even remember saying most of what comes after this. Emily told me later that I said it.

“You do? Why?”

“They're not natural.”

“It's so crazy how they're moving after all these years,” she said. “I thought you were supposed to die with them.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“It's time for them to come out.”

“What?”

“I hate them and they need to come out. It's time.”

“What are you saying?”

I couldn't stop staring at the pins. Suddenly, Emily shrieked. Her wrist was in my mouth and my teeth were in her skin. I drew my teeth out and bit her again.

“What are you doing?” she yelled. She was trying to yank her arm away, but I didn't let go. Two of the holes I'd put in her skin lined up perfectly with the end of the pins. With surgical precision, I used my front teeth to work one of the pins loose. I spat it onto the floor, and then I pulled out the second pin. Blood dripped down her arm from the wounds.

I licked up the blood and cleaned her wound with my tongue. Then I observed her wrist, which looked so much better without those offensive bits of metal. Then I looked at Emily.

She stared back at me in horror. Her mouth was half-open like she'd been caught mid-scream. It was only then that I realized what I'd done. Torn her wrist open and pulled out the pins.

I was horrified, too, and my grip on her wrist loosened. She yanked her arm away from me and clutched her wrist to her chest.

“Oh, god,” I said. “Emily---”

“What did you do? Why did you do that?”

“I don't know, I---”

“Are you crazy?”

“I don't know what happened! I didn't even think! Does it hurt?”

She rotated her wrist. Her brow was furrowed and she kept glancing at me sidelong, like she was afraid I might try to do something like that again.

But she said, “Not really.”

“It doesn't?”

She poked at her wrist. “It burned like heck when you bit me, but then it got numb. Why did you do that?”

“I don't know, it just happened.”

She pouted her patented Annoyed-Princess-Emmy pout. “You could have left it alone. They were coming out on their own.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“They had to go.”

“Why?”

“I don't know why! They didn't belong there! You're beautiful and perfect and they didn't belong there!”

She blinked several times. Was she shocked? Disgusted? I couldn't tell. Honest to god, I don't know why I said any of this. I mean, it was an accurate representation of how I felt, but I rarely admitted it to myself so I don't know what made me admit it to her.

“Nate, nobody's perfect.”

“You are. You and Sid. You're both perfect.”

She was quiet for a long, awkward moment. I reached for her wrist. Slowly, so she would understand that I wasn't about to do something crazy. She reluctantly let me take it.

I examined the wounds I'd left. Even though I'd really torn into her with that second bite, the wounds were already starting to scab over. And, now that I was thinking about it, I realized that it always happened that way. Bites always closed up fast. Sometimes fast enough that I needed to bite a second time. Why had I never noticed how unusual that was before?

I was healing them. Years-old wounds and chronic health problems, things that the vampire in me hated intensely. Nothing could violate my precious girls, so I was doing away with all of it. They didn't heal as quickly as I did, but with time and careful attention, they would heal.

It had to be venom. But if that was the case then venom wasn't the right word for it. It was more like a drug. Something that could act as either medicine or poison. It healed my body, but it had turned me into a monster. Now it was healing my girls. They wouldn't change, though. Not if they only got the drug a little at a time like this. No, a little was just what they needed, and they could get it from a small bite, from a scratch. That was why I had to bite them every day. That was what they were addicted to. And that was how I was unlocking the power that was held in their blood.

How did I know all this? This knowledge---it felt like it was written inside of me. It felt ancient, and yet I intuitively understood it. If I bit my girls every day, they would never need any other medicine. All they would need is me.

Now I knew what I had to offer Megan. Health. The freedom of a life without diabetes. Maybe. Probably. I wouldn't know for sure until I bit her, but the cells in my body seemed to sing in affirmation.

“I don't like that look on your face,” Emily said. “It looks like you're planning to bring more geeks into my life.”

“Is that worse than dying from blood loss?”

She didn't answer. She looked like she didn't know the answer.