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"Not to ainst all his principles"

"Well, he had to bite the man who vamped him--otherwise Raphael wouldn’t be a vamp" Dashay lifted Grace and set her outside the kitchen, shutting the door

Mãe and I exchanged a look, and a name: Malcolm, the name of my father’s old friend, who had turned on hiainst his will Malcolm had vamped my mother, too, after I was born

"Do we need to keep on talking?" Dashay yawned "I want to wash my hair"

"Have we answered all your questions?" Mãe asked

I sed athem I said I supposed so

"Wait," Dashay said "The reason we don’t go to Murray’s? It’s too bright in there Those fluorescent lights make me batty Plus, they don’t serve Picardo, and they have a terrible cook"

Later, ere alone, Mãe toldand seen a FOR SALE sign on its lawn

"Oh, rats," I said We orking in the herb garden, and I stopped weeding "Have you told Dashay?"

"Not yet"

"You have to tell her And it will break her heart all over again"

"Tell her what?" Dashay leaned out of her bedroom , her hair wrapped in a towel Then she heard ere thinking We didn’t have to say a word

My ent to see the house later that night They pretended that they wanted to buy it

"Why not be honest?" I asked "Tell her that you want to find Bennett"

Dashay refused, and Mãe agreed with her "This is the best way," Mãe said "Ariella, are you packed yet?"

We were leaving for Saratoga Springs the next day

"I need my metamaterial suit," I said

"No, you don’t" She didn’t like the suit, which iven me in order to let me turn fully invisible "I don’t knohere it is, and in any case, we’re going to be visible on this trip"

Thatjeans and T-shirts "Whatever," I said

They both looked shocked "I’et to bring a dress We’ll go out to dinner, you know" She liked to dress up and go to fancy restaurants

Left on my own after dinner, I turned on my laptop and decided to try to answer so ers, I arrived at the definitive reason why vampires and mortals tend not to mix: lack of trust

Va their identity And they lie to each other for all sorts of reasons When a va--or she , which is a more sophisticated tactic

Of course hts (not to mention hypnotize, scare, and bite thee

Could vampires and humans ever really coexist in the peaceful, productive way envisioned by the Sanguinists? I began to doubt it Could vampires lead ethical lives if they couldn’t be trusted? Weren’t honesty and trustworthiness essential to ethics?

If my father had been there, ould have talked for hours about those questions, considering an array of interpretations and ie to link the objective, social, and subjective worlds But he wasn’t there, and the questions re, I was happy to stop thinking Mysty’s voice, breathier and higher-pitched than ht with Jesse

I knew she wanted ood Great"

"We’re going down to the dock to, uht for it," I said "A full led, as if stargazeto a friend, I was out of practice

"I’ll be sure to ask Jesse about Mars," she said "I hope the bugs aren’t bad Mosquitoes loveherbs that repel rew some Then I realized that she didn’t want advice She wanted sympathy

Have you ever analyzed human conversation? Most of it lacks purpose in the sense of acco information Most of it attereement I knew this from conversations with my friend Kathleen, who, for a while, had called ht

"Mosquitoes," I said now "Yuck" Mosquitoes don’t bother vauess our blood isn’t to their taste