The sun finally climbed off Lavinia’s face. She sighed, the edges of her eyes wet.

“Darling?” Sally said and was reminded with a sudden guilty pang of KerriAnne. She’d never called Lavinia “darling” because of that stupid game where she and her sister called each other “Boss” and “Darling.”

“Mmmm, yeah tiger?” Lavinia murmured, face luminous. Shaking off the dread about her sister, Sally said, “It seems like you’re better again, love. How do you feel?”

“Really really reallyreallyreally good…” And she was asleep, face innocent of suffering and tough, defensive wit. The scars were healing where her skin had split. Even her nose looked less flattened.

Sally heard distant happy kid squeals. She smiled at a sweet fantasy: the girl would see her and Lavinia kissing and say “Dust wike Mommy Daddy.”

She and KerriAnne (who was just Carrie then) hadn’t played much with other kids; they’d been indoors doing homework for parents who demanded perfect grades in every class. At the thought of her sister, she felt again that vague dread.

Reluctantly she pulled out her phone and turned it on for the first time in a week. She didn’t expect signal and looked forward to putting it away, duty done. But there was one bar.

Seven messages and twenty-four texts. She knew without looking that they were from KerriAnne. She’d have to check them eventually but she put away the phone without looking, tired and near tears. She’d been wounded in love many times but her sister truly broke her heart.

Lavinia had asked once, “What is it with you and that sister of yours? She sounds like a real piece of work.” She’d wanted to cry with relief to hear someone else say it but instead she’d snapped something defensive that led to their fiercest argument.

If she was going to lead, she had to be able to ask for help. She started to wake Lavinia and ask her thoughts. But she had promised: Next time you sleep, I’ll stay by your side, loving you and knowing who you are.

She was shifting to ease the sore spot in her back, wondering how you go about “knowing who someone is while they sleep,” when she noticed something in the tangled blankets beside Lavinia’s chest, not far from the unzipped breast pocket of her jacket. A rectangle of paper, a business card. It must have fallen out while she undulated. Sally picked it up to tuck it gently back in.

Her breath puffed out at the picture on the card. It showed a little fairy woman about the size of a cat, saying “Welcome. Come in.”

Her dream, made visible, on a card printed to look like parchment, in Lavinia’s jacket pocket!

She looked closer. The fairy faced a closed glass door from the inside. Visible through the door was a heart surrounded by flames. Was it begging to come in?

A line of small print ran across the bottom and for a moment she was sure it said “Fliegt heim ihr Raben,” the Wagner quote on Lavinia’s jacket. But it was just an address. In San Francisco, not in Germany.

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Gently, she slipped the card back in. Had Lavinia known it was there or had the old ledermacher put it there when she bought the jacket? But that was years before the vampires appeared. What could it possibly mean?

Lavinia’s sleeping face creased and Sally remembered she was supposed to be “knowing who Lavinia was.”

Well, this was the woman who looked into her eyes as they made love, who shared her love of opera and physics and walking in the sun and old movies. This was the Brain who read the New York Times over breakfast and got her world perspective from the BBC (while claiming she just had a crush on the voice of Razia, their main presenter).

This was the woman who had turned Sally on to bagels and lox, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. And Sally had shared with her things like huitlacoche (Lavinia insisted on calling it Corn Smut), Nine Inch Nails, the erotica of Tee Corrinne and the husky voice of Barbara Sukowa chanting “Mitternacht” (“Sukowa? She worked with Fassbinder!” “Really? Bet that old hippie who sold you the jacket dated her too!”)

This was the woman who had given Sally her most cherished compliment. “Jeez, kid, how’d you get so wise? I was an emotional dunce at your age.”

Sally had tried to look modest as she lapped up the praise. “I don’t know. But maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to older … lovers.”

Lavinia knew by then that Sally was a monogamous bisexual, more attracted to women, who kept getting dumped, just as Sally knew that Lavinia had slept with a man exactly once, had had torrid affairs with women of all sizes and colors, had co-founded a women-only play party called Sapphisticated and had given up on love and sex two years ago.

With a grin, Lavinia had said. “You look for lovers your emotional age and they’re twenty years older?” Sally nodded, blushing. “And then they dump you ‘cause they can’t stand a chick who’s so damn smart.”

Sally nodded now in rueful affection. “But you didn’t run,” she whispered. “You’re my Lavinia and you’ll stay Lavinia. I’m your Sally, your tiger and I’ll fight for you.”

Her middle ached with sexual yearning. Her turn on used to be giving herself to lovers who didn’t deserve her. Now she was giving herself to someone worthy, someone who truly needed her. She wanted to walk on the beach but sat by Lavinia’s side instead. That sacrifice only fed the new fire.

This is what devotion is. This is what it means to keep your promises. Not easy, but so deeply satisfying.

Lavinia’s frown had eased, but she still seemed to see something troubling in the distance. Sally didn’t like it. This was exactly what they’d both feared.

“You’re still welcome in my home, babe,” she said softly. “I want you in my life, ‘till I’m old and gray. You’re my wife. I’ll find a way to marry you. You’re Lavinia Starr. You’re named after a character in a kid’s book, what was it, Johnny Tremaine, right? Your parents are, um, oh shit, I’m sorry, I forgot their names, but your dad is dead and your mom is living in Florida.”

Was this helping at all? She touched Lavinia’s face and she moaned, very faintly.

The inside of the camper seemed to pale. The hiss of the ocean became a hollow echo.

That does it, Sally thought. She shook Lavinia’s shoulder firmly. “Wake up my welcome Lavinia, my wife. I’m Sally Yan, your tiger, and I call you back. Your home is here with me.”

Under her closed lids Lavinia’s eyes flickered wildly, like she couldn’t find her way. Darkness seemed to vomit from her belly and cover them.

Terrified, Sally groped and felt Lavinia under her hand but couldn’t see her. Instead she stood in a black forest thick with conifers and saw at the center of everything a dead hiker in tall weeds by an ancient stone wall. At the center of everything…

There was a dark room below this clearing. There, something moved and planned. It would kill her if she made a sound. Her feet itched with caution.

But her hands still touched a warm body. She brought those seemingly empty hands closer. For an instant Lavinia emerged like a drowned body from a reflecting pond. Then, lost and hollow, she faded from sight.

Without thought, Sally plunged into the darkness to find her.