LITMIR.BIZ

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people, you can use only after a lot of practice and about a thousand years as a vampire. (Just in case that’s true, I’m careful not to think any of my more “degenerate” thoughts around Wilhelm.) So I couldn’t be sure what the hot guy’s expression meant. But I certainly wanted to know.

      “Maybe I should go investigate,” I said, my hand already on the door handle.

      “Wait,” Olympia said. “Let’s observe for a moment first.” I assume her high level of caution is how she’s managed to survive seven hundred years, but it drives me bats. (Ha ha ha! More vampire puns! OK, OK, I’ll stop.)

      Well, I don’t know what she was observing, but I kept my “observational” eyes on Mr Hot. Could he be a vampire? He seemed a lot more tan than me, but maybe he was just born with darker skin.

      The problem is that vampires don’t look particularly unusual most of the time. I think my canine teeth are maybe a teeny bit longer, but they only get really long and pointy and obvious right before I bite someone. Zach’s normal smile, for instance, is toothy and obnoxious, but not in a Look out! he’s going to bite! kind of way. It’s more like Look out, he’s going to hit on you, and then you’ll discover that he never flosses! And if you ask me, dental hygiene should rank pretty high on a vampire’s to-do list. Sure, we can’t get cavities, but Zach proves that bad breath can be eternal.

      Other than his meaty breath, I don’t think there are any clues about Zach that would make someone think he’s a vampire. He looks like any other doofy seventeen-year-old jock, all muscles and shiny, sandy-blond hair and stupid jokes about body parts. None of that dark, pale, brooding vampire stuff that you read about. He’s tall, but that’s where the resemblance to Dracula ends.

      My new best friend Vivi thinks Zach is dreamy, which I find faintly horrifying. (Despite the fact that I once felt the same – which is even more horrifying.) But I can’t convince her of how wrong she is, because she thinks I’m just like, “Ew, that’s my brother,” when of course the truth is that he’s not my brother at all. And I am definitely an expert on his long-term dateability potential.

      Zach has no problem with the blood-drinking part of being a vampire, by the way. He mixes it into his morning health shakes with raw eggs and protein powder and all kinds of other unmentionable goop that he says will make him more buff. No one’s had the heart to tell him that vampires pretty much stay the same shape they were in when they died. Crystal will never lose that last five pounds; Bert will always look like a teeny-weeny accountant, despite being in reality stronger than any of the men in town. That growth spurt I was sort of hoping for in my senior year is never going to happen – but on the other hand, I can eat as much ice cream and as many cheeseburgers as I want, which I’ll admit almost makes up for the fact that I still have to drink blood to survive.

      Anyway, if I can’t even tell by looking at Zach that he’s a vampire, I don’t see how I’m supposed to spot a vampire who’s a total stranger. I can’t exactly walk down the halls of my high school peering at everybody’s teeth.

      Even with super-sight, I couldn’t see anything special about my hot guy’s canines, although he did smile helpfully – and very cutely, I might add – at a couple of people who went past him. But once his friends had passed by, he went back to staring at the body in that intense, thoughtful, totally hot way.

      “That one,” Olympia said suddenly. But she wasn’t pointing at my guy. She was pointing at a tall, thin, pale guy in a hooded sweatshirt who was slouching up the sidewalk towards the school. I couldn’t figure out why she found him suspicious. He hadn’t even noticed the body yet. His blue eyes were focused on the ground.

      I squinted at him. OK, sure. He was kind of cute too. In a brooding-poet kind of way. Or – I glanced at Olympia – in a vampire way. Surely not all pale, brooding guys were secretly vampires though. Right? I mean, before I died, I’d known a couple of those quiet, soulful guys in my old school – the ones who never leave the house or cut their hair or speak in class. And they weren’t vampires. At least, not that I knew of. But Olympia’s vampire radar was probably better than mine.

      Olympia rolled down her window and pointed at one of the policemen, putting a finger over her lips. I was going to say, “Um, I don’t think they can hear us from here,” when I realised that now we could hear them…so if anyone out there was a vampire, they’d probably be able to hear us too. I kept quiet.

      The policeman spotted Poet Guy, hurried over to him and grabbed his elbow.

      Poet Guy blinked, finally looking up. “Dad?” His voice was soft, like if moss could talk. He stared around at the crowded parking lot and spotted the body. His expression barely shifted. “Oh. I see.”

      “Go home, Rowan,” his dad said in a low voice.

      Rowan shrugged. “Why? It doesn’t bother me.”

      “It should,” his dad snapped. “I don’t want you near this kind of thing. Go home.”

      Rowan’s eyes narrowed. “Is this because…Do you think I did this?”

      “Shut up,” the policeman growled, glancing around. He steered Rowan forcefully in a circle and shoved him along the sidewalk until the body was out of sight.

      “All right, all right,” Rowan said, jerking free. “Not like I care.”

      “See you at home, son,” the policeman said. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, looking nervous as he watched Rowan slink away.

      I used to like policemen until they totally failed to save my life. Now every time I see one handing out a parking ticket, I’m like, Really? You don’t have a dying girl to save somewhere? This seems like a better use of your time? OK, then.

      Olympia rolled up the window again and started the car. It was pretty clear that school was going to be cancelled for the day.

      “Well spotted,” Zach said. “I guess that guy’s totally a vampire.”

      “Perhaps,” Olympia said. “Perhaps not. You should keep an eye on him, Kira.”

      “Me?” I said. “Why me? Can’t I keep my eye on—” I was going to say “that guy instead,” but when I turned to point, I realised that my smiley Mr Hot had vanished. Sigh.

      “You’re on thin ice, Kira,” Olympia said. “I suggest you follow the rules as closely as you can until we figure out what happened here.”

      “I know what happened here,” I said. “Some vampire killed Tex Harrison. To be more specific, some vampire who isn’t me. A not-me vampire who has nothing to do with me.”

      “Kira!” Olympia said sharply.

      “All right, all right,” I grumbled, sitting back in my seat and folding my arms mutinously.

      Well, fine. It could be worse; at least Rowan was cute in his own way. And after all, I do have two eyes. Nobody said I couldn’t also watch Mr Hot.

      Wilhelm had already seen the news on TV by the time we got home. For all that he hates the last thirteen centuries so much, he sure doesn’t seem to have a problem with modern technology, most especially TVs. And microwaves to heat your coffee-laced blood. And lights that you can clap on and clap off from the comfort of your own coffin.

      “KIRA NOVEMBER!” he hollered from the den as soon as he heard the front door open.

      “I DIDN’T DO IT!” I bellowed back.

      “YOU GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW!” he shouted. Yeah, in case you were wondering, it turns out that dads are pretty much the same whether they’re fifty or fourteen hundred years old.

      Olympia put a firm hand on my shoulder before I could dart upstairs. “Let’s discuss this,” she said meaningfully. Ugh. I suppose I should be grateful that I get to be in on these “discussions”. My real mom used to just ground me, without an explanation or anything, which kind of

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