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Her blue eyes looked joyous and exhausted "Don’t try to speak now, darling," she said "Just breathe"

What happened? I sent the thought to her Where’s an

I know that much! If she saw the words, they must be purple

No need for sarcas better

I opened my mouth, but she said, "Hush Your father is alive"

In e call "The Movie," Dr Van Helsing makes a pronounceth of the vampire is that people will not believe in him"

For many vampires, that statement is more than a favorite aphorism -- it’s a central tenet of the philosophy of the undead Despite all evidence to the contrary, humans are more comfortable with the most convoluted theories that contradict our existence than with the simple fact that we share the planet with the away

My father, recovering frorafts he didn’t need The doctors couldn’t accept what their eyes told theing ches and skin, and he was healing rapidly Yet they kept him under observation in the intensive care unit, and they didn’t allow visitors

I celebrated my birthday in the hospital A candlelit Twinkie was delivered on a tray

My gift was seeing my father for the first time since the fire Mydevices connected to his body The outline of his body beneath the sheets was slight for such a tallI’d never before seen hiainst his cheek -- like butterfly wings, I thought

He opened his eyes "Butterfly wings?" he said, his voice incredulous

Mãe and I laughed, and he smiled -- his real smile, not the scholarly one "Happy birthday," he said to me His voice sounded soft "Your fireworks arrived a few days early"

I tried not to ask questions, but enerated them anyway

"I don’t know," he said, when I asked, Who started the fire?

"I don’t know," he repeated, when I asked, Who rescued us?

"Well, I can answer that one," Mãe said "I did Along with the help of Siesta Key’s finest fire squad"

Mãe had been driving down I-4 in what she called "hideous rain," when she picked up nal"

"You couldn’t breathe," she said "It cah to me as clearly as if you hadn’t been born yet" She turned to my father "Reht she was in fetal distress? And I told you no, I’d know it if that happened"

"Isn’t the idea of knowing such a thing a bit of a cliché?" My voice was as innocent as I couldbetter"

My father put his hand in the air -- then looked at the intravenous needle taped to it He thought about ripping it out, and ht," he said "The needle stays But only so long as Sara tells the story in a linear fashion, without a thousand digressions Is that possible?"

She tried

She’d arrived in Sarasota to find the traffic lights out, and only a few streetlights working Her truck was the only vehicle on the road, and she blazed through intersections, feeling like an anarchist

She apologized for the digressive simile But she’d alondered what it would feel like to be an anarchist

When she arrived at Xanadu ( from unit 1235 were visible fro, and in any case she knew the door to the condominium would be locked She didn’t have a key, or a cell phone, but she reht Pass and Beach Road So she drove there

"They were sitting in the station watching the Weather Channel," she said "They’d put out a fire about an hour previously --" She looked at ht, I won’t tell you about that"

When the fire trucks arrived at Xanadu, she said, a ladder truck drove to the back of the building, and another creent up the stairs, carrying extinguishers, a hose, and other equipment They told her to stay behind, but she trailed after them

"Ever the obedient one," my father said

Then a nurse walked into the roohtly patterned sn and closed his eyes

"Time for visitors to leave" The nurse shed, and abruptly hypnotized her

"Only for a fewthis So, they were trying to get in through the metal shutters at the back, and the others used axes to break down the front door I ahters, in particular the ones from Station 13 They pried off the shutters somehow and found Ari in the study, and carried her down in the basket thing Or is it a bucket? What do you call it? Never mind

"And you were the first one we found" She looked at ht cry "You were in bad shape Much worse than you-knoho, and much worse than Ari You were black with soot, and oh, the burns on your back --"