Her uncle stared at her for a moment. There was shock and despair in his face. Then he bent his head and shut his eyes.
"But how is it possible?" Jez whispered. "How am I here?" It was hours later. Dawn was tinting the window. She was sitting on the floor, back
against a bookcase, where she'd collapsed, staring emptily into the distance. "You mean, how can a vampire-human halfbreed exist? I don't know. Your parents never knew. They never expected to have children." Uncle Bracken ran both hands through his hair, head down. "They didn't even realize you could live as a vampire. Your father brought you to me because he was dying and I was the only person he could trust. He knew I wouldn't turn you over to the Night World elders."
"Maybe you should have," Jez whispered. Uncle Bracken went on as if he hadn't heard her. "You lived without blood then. You looked like a human child. I don't know what made me try to see if you could learn how to feed. I brought you a rabbit and bit it for you and let you smell the blood." He gave a short laugh of reminiscence. "And your little teeth sharpened right up and you knew what to do. That was when I knew you were a true Redfern."
"But I'm not." Jez heard the words as if someone else was speaking them from a distance. "I'm not even a Night Person. I'm vermin."
Uncle Bracken let go of his hair and looked at her. His eyes, normally the same silvery-blue as Jez's, were burning with a pure silver flame. "Your mother was a good woman," he said harshly. "Your father gave up everything to be with her. She wasn't vermin." Jez looked away, but she wasn't ashamed. She was numb. She felt nothing except a vast emptiness inside her, stretching infinitely in all directions.
And that was good. She never wanted to feel again. Everything she'd felt in her life-everything she could remember-had been a lie.
She wasn't a huntress, a predator fulfilling her place in the scheme of things by chasing down her lawful prey. She was a murderer. She was a monster.
"I can't stay here anymore," she said.
Uncle Bracken winced. "Where will you go?"
"I don't know."
He let out his breath and spoke slowly and sadly. "I have an idea."
Chapter 4
Rule Number One of living with humans. Always wash the blood off before coming in the house.
Jez stood at the outdoor faucet, icy-cold water splashing over her hands. She was scrubbing- carefully-a long, slim dagger made of split bamboo, with a cutting edge as sharp as glass. When it was clean, she slipped it into her right knee-high boot. Then she daubed water over several stains on her T-shirt and jeans and scrubbed them with a fingernail. Finally she whipped out a pocket mirror and examined her face critically.
The girl who looked back didn't much resemble the wild, laughing huntress who had leaped from tree to tree in Muir Woods. Oh, the features were the same; the height of cheekbone, the curve of chin. They had even fined out a bit because she was a year older. The red flag of hair was the same, too, although now it was pulled back in an attempt to tame its fiery disorder. The difference was in the expression, which was sadder and wiser than Jez had ever imagined she could be, and in the eyes.
The eyes weren't as silvery as they had been, not as dangerously beautiful. But that was only to be expected. She had discovered that she didn't need to drink blood as long as she didn't use her vampire powers. Human food kept her alive-and made her look more human.
One other thing about the eyes. They were scarily vulnerable, even to Jez. No matter how she tried to make them hard and menacing, they had the wounded look of a deer that knows it's going to die and accepts it. Sometimes she wondered if that was an omen.
Well. No blood on her face. She shoved the mirror back in her pocket. She was mostly presentable, if extremely late for dinner. She turned the faucet off and headed for the back door of the low, sweeping ranch house.
Everyone looked up as she came in.
The family was in the kitchen, eating at the oak table with the white trim, under the bright fluorescent light. The TV was blaring cheerfully from the family room. Uncle Jim, her mother's brother, was munching tacos and leafing through the mail. He had red hair darker than Jez's and a long face that looked almost as medieval as Jez's mother's had. He was usually off in a gentle, worried dream somewhere. Now he waved an envelope at Jez and gazed at her reproachfully, but he couldn't say anything because his mouth was full.
Aunt Nanami was on the phone, drinking a diet Coke. She was small, with dark shiny hair and eyes that turned to crescents when she smiled. She opened her mouth and frowned at Jez, but couldn't say anything, either.
Ricky, who was ten, had carroty hair and expressive eyebrows. He gave Jez a big smile that showed chewed-up taco in his mouth and said, "Hi!"
Jez smiled back. No matter what she did, Ricky was there for her.
Claire, who was Jez's age, was sitting primly, eating bits of taco with her fork. She looked like a smaller version of Aunt Nan, but with a very sour expression.
"Where have you been?" she said. "We waited dinner almost an hour for you and you never even called."
"Sorry," Jez said, looking at all of them. It was such an incredibly normal family scene, so completely typical, and it struck her to the heart.
It was over a year since she had walked out of the Night World to find these people, her mother's relatives. It was eleven and a half months since Uncle Jim had taken her in, not knowing anything about her except that she was his orphaned niece and that her father's family couldn't handle her anymore and had given up on her. All these months, she had lived with the Goddard family- and she still didn't fit in.