“Anna, I did not set Big Bertha on fire for the insurance money. For one thing, I wouldn’t get that much money. And for another, you know I would not do that to anything that belonged to Aunt Jettie. There’s this person who’s been leaving us threatening messages. The car is just his latest note. So far, we’ve let the vampire authorities handle it. There are reports, if you’d like to look them up.”

I handed her the note from Ray. “Down at the Council office, right?” she asked, scribbling on her clipboard. “I’ll ask Ophelia for the paperwork.”

“You know Ophelia?”

“Oh, sure, we, um, handle a few vampire-related fires every year,” she said, looking a little uncomfortable. She cleared her throat. “So, Mama wants to know why you haven’t called the bakery to order your wedding cake.”

Thrown by the sudden shift in conversational lanes, I stuttered. “W-well, that’s one of the things the wedding planner hasn’t booked yet.”

To be honest, I hadn’t really thought much about the cake, since I wasn’t going to be eating any of it. And I really hadn’t thought of it in the last few minutes, what with the “burning car” scenario playing out. But Mrs. Mastrofilippo worked at one of the best bakeries in town, so it made sense to order from her … even if I found the idea of a three-layer Italian cream cake that I couldn’t enjoy extremely depressing. And since Anna had her finger on the “Jane gets charged with vehicular arson” button, I decided it was prudent to play along.

“Well, tell her to call,” Anna said. “I think Mama’s feelings are a little hurt that you haven’t come by yet. When is the big day, anyway?”

“July eighth.”

“This the fella?” she asked, nodding toward Gabriel. He smiled and shook her hand as I murmured introductions. “Well, I’ll be expecting my invitation,” she said, offering me the clipboard. “I need you to sign here. We’ll have your car towed to the scrapyard. You’ll have thirty days to claim it before they stick it in one of those cubing machines.”

Dazed, I signed the release form. Anna bid my friends good-bye and left the shop, calling for her colleagues to “haul it!”

I turned to Andrea and Dick. “What just happened?”

When Gabriel and I arrived home, I was frustrated, sick, and tired. I knew that Big Bertha was only a car. I knew that she was just a hunk of metal and badly repaired paint. But she was also Aunt Jettie’s car. Big Bertha was the car she’d used to teach me how to drive, the first and only vehicle I’d ever owned. And now she was a pile of scrap metal. I wanted nothing more than a long, hot bath and a long pull off the bottle of Hershey’s Blood Additive Syrup. But the moment I stepped through the front door of River Oaks, I could tell something was wrong. The house was too quiet. There was no jumbled mess of sneakers by the door, no video-game noises coming from the parlor. There was no life in the house.

“Where is he?” I murmured, before calling, “Jamie!”

“What’s wrong?” Gabriel asked as I sped up the stairs.

“He’s gone!” I shouted from the landing after I’d searched Jamie’s room. “There’s no sign of him. What if he’s hurt, Gabriel? What if Ray McElray came here before setting my car on fire? What if—”

Gabriel gripped my arms as I tried to sprint past him toward the front door. “We can’t think like that. Let’s just calm down and try to think clearly before you go running off into some bizarre redneck trap. Also, your aunt Jettie is hovering behind you, trying to find a way to break into the conversation without startling you.”

I turned to find Jettie, wringing her hands. “Honey, I couldn’t stop him. Nothing I said made any difference. He wanted to see them so badly. I think he’s been waiting for an opportunity like this for weeks, and Gabriel leaving was just the excuse he needed.”

“Wanted to see who, exactly?”

“His family,” Aunt Jettie said, cringing.

I sighed. “How long ago did he leave, Aunt Jettie?”

“About thirty minutes ago,” Jettie said. “I stalled him for almost an hour before he took off. I had to play the pleading-grandma card to the hilt to keep him that long.” She frowned, adding, “Ruthie might have been able to get him to stick around.”

“I have to go after him.” I turned on Gabriel. “We can’t let him get near his family. He could lose control. He could hurt one of them. He’d never forgive himself if he did.”

“I’ll come with you,” he said.

I nodded and leaped off the front porch and took off at full sprint toward the Lanier place on Melody Lane. As I ran, pushing myself faster than I could possibly have driven there, I thought of the horrors that could be waiting for us at Jamie’s house. What would I do if he’d hurt one of his family members? Could I blame him, after the things his mother had said to him? Would I be able to turn him over to Ophelia?

“You realize, of course, that we could have driven my car,” Gabriel said as we skidded to a stop at the end of Jamie’s driveway.

“About half a mile ago, yes,” I said, resisting the urge to pant. I scanned the front yard of the Lanier home. Jamie was nowhere to be seen, but I could sense three very active minds inside the house. The thoughts weren’t happy, exactly, more contented and relaxed, certainly not the thought patterns of a family being terrorized by their former son. I crept around the side of the house and found Jamie standing there, in the shadow of an elm tree, tracks of blood tears streaming down his cheeks as he peered through the lit window. He stood on the edge of that golden patch of light, barely visible even to my keen eyes. I approached him slowly. His ears perked up, and his eyes shifted toward me, but he didn’t move. I carefully closed my fingers around his arm.

In the gentlest voice I could manage, I said, “Jamie, we’ve talked about this. You can’t leave the house alone. And you definitely don’t want to make contact with your family when they’ve told you to stay away.”

Jamie looked through the window and watched as his family sat around the kitchen table, eating pizza. They were talking about their day and laughing. It was hesitant, soft laughter, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Jamie’s jaw worked as he ground his teeth.

“Jamie—”

“I’m sick of this,” he whispered. “I’m sick of being locked away like I did something wrong. Look at them! They’re just carrying on with Pizza Night, like I’m not even gone. Like I was never there in the first place! Why did this happen to me? What did I ever do? This isn’t fair! I didn’t ask for this.”

I looked over my shoulder, where Gabriel was waiting. I thought of my own postexistential crisis, when I’d clung to the ceiling like a cartoon cat and accused Gabriel of slipping me a roofie so he could have his way with me and then turn me. So far, Jamie’s outburst was less accusatory but more heartfelt. He was far more levelheaded than I had been as a kid, YouTube antics aside. I thought back to all of the arguments I’d had with my mother growing up and how I’d hated it when she told me I was overreacting when I dared to express my feelings. So, instead, I nodded and said, “You’re right.”

Jamie did a bit of a double take and spluttered, “Wh-what?”

“No, you’re right, this sucks. I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry I was the one who did this to you. If I could go back to that night in front of my shop and move just a little bit faster, do more to warn you about the car—I would do anything to keep you from getting hurt, Jamie. You deserved a normal human life. Going to the prom. Finishing high school. Accidentally knocking up your girlfriend your sophomore year of college. Getting a nine-to-five job, so you can support her after your shotgun wedding—”

“You know, you’re not making human life sound all that great.”

“Huh.” I chuckled. “I guess I’m not.”

“Probably better off as a vampire,” he admitted, dropping to the ground and leaning against the tree.

“Probably.” I sat down next to him.

“It’s not fair,” he said, his voice suddenly calm and clear. “It’s not fair that they can just kick me out of the family. It’s not right that parents can just decide not to love their kid anymore.”

“You’re right,” I told him. “You are absolutely entitled to be pissed right now. But the thing about family is that you can’t control what they do. Trust me when I say that. If I could control my mother, the world would be a good and decent place. You can only control how you respond to it. And if they never come around, if they shun you for the rest of your life, it’s their loss.”

Jamie nodded, his head bent so low that his chin was practically touching his chest. Slowly, inch by inch, he leaned his head toward me until his temple was touching my shoulder. Blinking furiously, I slipped my arm around his shoulder.

“Your life is never going to be the same, but it can be so much more interesting,” I told him. “I would hate for you to miss out on it because you were scared or too hung up on your past to look to your future.”

He groaned. “Did Tony Robbins write that?”

And thus endeth the poignant siring moment.

“You are such a pain in the ass sometimes,” I told him as I helped him to his feet. “Look, I’m all for letting these emotional breakthroughs breathe, but we’ve got to get out of here before your family looks out the window and sees our pale asses lurking outside their window like a pair of undead Peeping Toms.”

In the distance, I could see Gabriel’s whole body relax as we moved away from the house.

“What even made you run off like that? I know you’ve been quiet and a little withdrawn lately, but I thought we’ve been getting along better.”

Jamie shot me a sheepish look. “For the last few weeks, I’ve been hearing this voice in my head, whispering. While I was trying to sleep. While I was playing video games. While I played with Fitz. It was telling me how I didn’t belong at River Oaks, that my family missed me, that my mother probably wanted to see me. How much I was hurting them by staying with you. And I just couldn’t take it anymore. Gabriel left, and I thought it wouldn’t hurt anything if I just ducked over to see them. And then I got here and saw that they weren’t exactly pining away for me.”

“This voice that whispered to you, was it male or female?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It sounded all hoarse and whispery, kind of like that Voldemort guy in the Harry Potter movies.”

“Yep, definitely Grandma, then,” I grumbled.

“But I thought you did that exorcism thing,” he said.

“The more time we spend together, the more you’ll see that I fail miserably at about half of the things I try.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Gabriel said, taking my hand and settling between us as we walked toward home, putting a brotherly arm around Jamie’s shoulder. “In fact, her failures are far more entertaining than her achievements. Have I ever told you about her foray into the local Chamber of Commerce?”

“Actually, my mom told me about that,” said Jamie, who was conspicuously not throwing off Gabriel’s proffered arm. “Didn’t you and your sister end up wrestling in the mud at the Fall Festival?”

“Yes, we did, and that’s why I don’t consider it a failure, because Jenny and I get along much better now that we’ve knocked some sense into each other,” I said, glaring at Gabriel. “I learn something from all of my failures, so it’s not something to laugh about, really.”

“What about the time you tried to move me into your house in the dead of night, so your mother wouldn’t know that we were premaritally cohabiting, only to have her show up on our lawn, screaming her head off? What was the lesson there?”