Jeremy’s parents called their cheerful goodbyes and pulled out of the driveway one by one. The sun was up but Jeremy stood watching the empty street in case they came back.

The room swam for KerriAnne as she lay paralyzed on the bed. She felt every blood vessel down to the tiniest capillaries squeeze together, walls touching. She steadied herself by watching his face, lean and hungry but handsome, like a young hawk.

He’d held her as the daytime paralysis came. Helpless in the power of a man: until a few weeks ago she’d known exactly what to do in this familiar, even comfortable place. How to look down and speak humbly, how to let pain become dull pleasure like an old rash. But her old well-practiced moves left her lost.

She remembered her months as Bunt’s prisoner.

First the night-dark, fever-red urge toward his tossed-out money and lines of coke. Then the excited horror as he took more and more control of her. He’d put that collar with the remotely triggered knives on her neck, he’d bled her for his runs and still a part of her found pleasure. So cold, so pale; she’d shivered all the time. He’d bled her every two weeks; was that why she went vampire instead of just dying when she took the pills?

The pills. She’d wanted to die, crumple into a little wad, pull Sally with her and then they’d be together and Sally would keep her safe and tie her up and hold her in that way that hurt just right…

But she hated Sally now with a passion which burned like witch fire. And she wanted to live.

She was terrified of what would happen soon. Life in the sun would not be allowed her, she was sure of it.

“‘Kay.” Jeremy turned cheerfully from the window. He seemed completely wrapped in his fantasy; she meant nothing to him at all. “C’mon,” he said, “this is going to be fine.”

But he saw her face. “Hey,” he said, stroking her cheek. “It’s gonna be fine. I’ll be right there. Hey, if you don’t wanna do this, like, y’know, we can just stay here.”

That was all she needed, just to hear him say that they didn’t have to do it. Suddenly she was sure everything would be fine. In the weak voice which was all she could manage, she said, “You’ll be there.”

“I will, I’ll be right there with you.”

He hoisted her onto his shoulder, staggering under her weight. His foot turned on a blanket edge but he recovered without dropping her.

She treasured the feeling of his arms, of being carried. He had to let her feet dangle to the floor as he levered the door open but then he brought her firmly through the dining room with its round cherry wood table and through the kitchen where she’d met his parents sipping the first of many cocktails and seen them size her up as a tramp.

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They reached a wide room with gleaming windows at the back of the house. Rectangles of sunlight glowed on the hardwood floors. A modern fireplace with glassed-in sides took up one corner of the room, along with two chairs of artistically bent wood which looked as uncomfortable as they were.

Jeremy lowered her just beside a patch of sun, cradling her head, then laying it gently on the floor. He moved into the sunlight and sat cross-legged. The sun was on him and he looked more golden and handsome than she had ever seen him.

He looked into her eyes. She twitched her head a yes, terrified again.

He lifted her hand and laid it where the sun shone in his lap.

KerriAnne had had sex which left her dripping and nearly blind with lust. But she had never felt anything like this, not even making love with Jeremy. That had been sweet but not hot (though she hadn’t told him that).

But this…

It was like heaven had been placed in her hand. It was whiter than the hottest orgasm she’d ever known. It hurt but the hurt was sweet, and nothing like the pleasure she’d squeezed from abuse. This was like her heart was going to burst!

She reached for more and rolled full into the sun.

Sally could have told her what would happen. She had seen a vampire with his throat torn out brought briefly back to life by the sun only to die from his terrible wound.

The great hole in KerriAnne’s heart spat a gout of black blood and, screaming for something she had never known she wanted, she died in Jeremy’s arms, even as he flung her out of the sun, slammed cold hands down over her slippery chest, roared out denial.

His frenzied horror was the last thing she saw. She wanted to tell him she felt joy, that the endless grief and the fear had burned away. But she could only look at him, eyes filled with tears because she would miss him.

His face blurred into the growing light.

She had died three times now. How many people could say that?

But this time she reached eagerly for what came next.

And she was gone.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Jeremy cried. The dark blood welled between his fingers and the heat which had burst through her body faded. She never moved again.

Sally and that devil vampire had lied the blackest of lies. And KerriAnne was dead because he had convinced her.

I don’t want her to be dead, he sobbed, I don’t want her to be dead. She had let him believe in love again, that couldn’t be taken from him, she couldn’t end so suddenly. There was so much he wanted to tell her.

They, they had been… It was the simplest thought which cut most deeply into his heart: they’d been going to spend their first day together….

♦

For one more moment, Sally felt her little sister’s presence.

KerriAnne was saying goodbye, she knew that. And whatever she had thought about Sally last night, she simply loved her now.

Sally’s eyes filled with tears. She whispered, “I love you, Darling. I always have.” Lavinia, straining to get them flying to Germany, didn’t hear.

Sally remembered stronger than ever a little girl sobbing her heart out at the ladybug rhyme. “Her house is on fire,” she’d wept, tears pouring down her chubby cheeks. “Her children are gone.”

Right at that moment, Lavinia got it.

With a surge which wrenched Sally’s stomach and drove every other thought out, they flew. But they flew east, not west (Sally would later figure out that it was 4.8 degrees north of east). And, heart-stoppingly, they flew slanting down the sky at what Sally would later figure out was a 41.5-degree angle of depression.

Lavinia was flying on a straight line for Germany and the only problem was that the earth was in the way.