She shook her head. “I was getting a tour around the school during last period today. Which one are you in?”
“Photography with Jennifer, ah, Mrs. Hartford,” I said, catching myself. Heather probably wouldn’t know any of the teachers on a first-name basis yet.
She looked up from her mug. “Do you have to be good at photography to join?”
“Not really, it’s pretty casual, and Mrs. Hartford loves to introduce new people to everything. It’s cool because we learn how to develop our own film, and once you’ve passed the test, you’re allowed to come and use the dark-room almost any time you like.” I’d been in photography since I started at Crowther, and it was one of my favorite classes. “And we also make the yearbook.”
“I’ll join photography with you, then,” Heather said with a shrug.
I blinked in surprise. “You don’t have to do that just because of me. Our class is a pretty diverse group, so you’ll find someone in every elective.”
She put her hand up to block the sunlight and squinted her huge, dark eyes. “It’s very bright out here. Do you think there’s room for us to sit inside?”
“Um, sure,” I said to be polite. I’d assumed she’d want to sit outside where we could look at the town and enjoy the last of the summer sun. But since the first rush after school was over, the shop was emptying out, and there were seats free.
We went back inside and sat at a table away from the windows. I saw Heather visibly relax and had a sudden revelation. “Are you photosensitive?”
She looked at me sharply. “How did you know?”
“My dad’s a doctor. I’ve picked up a little medical jargon.”
“So, your father’s a doctor. Is he also a witch?”
I shook my head, smirking a little at the thought of Dad trying to cast a spell. “He’s not into magic,” I explained. “My mom is the witch in the family. Well, and me.” I frowned. “How did you know—?”
Heather looked down at my right hand. “You have the mark.”
I touched my hand, covering up the mark. All witches got a distinctive mark when they entered into the pact that gave them their magical powers. Mine was a five-pointed star on the ring finger of my right hand. After three years, I still wasn’t used to it.
I was starting to get nervous about the way that Heather was looking at me. Was she judging my choice? “Is your family, um, religious?” Most religions still had a major problem with witches.
“No,” she said. “Actually, I thought maybe because of your family situation, you’d understand mine better.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What kind of family situation?”
Her voice grew quiet and she lowered her eyes again. “The kind where you look human, but you’re not quite normal.”
I frowned, trying to figure out what she meant. “I thought you were human.”
She cleared her throat. “I am human, but my parents are vampires.”
I stared at her. She was very pale, and she didn’t like being out in the sun, but she didn’t look supernaturally strong. She actually seemed weaker than a human. “Isn’t that called a dhampir?”
Heather shook her head. “A dhampir has a vampire father and a human mother, so they get some of a vampire’s strengths and weaknesses. Both of my parents are vampires, so they shouldn’t be able to have kids at all. But there’s a, uh, magical work-around.”
I leaned forward, my curiosity getting the better of me. “How does that work?”
Heather blushed and looked down. “I don’t really know all the technical details.”
“I’m sorry.” I sat back in my seat. “But what does that make you, then?”
“Totally human, with a lot of medical problems.” Heather cleared her throat again and recited, as if she explained this often. “Vampire parents are granted permission to have offspring if they’ve also fulfilled the requirements for turning a new vampire. The assumption is that, when the child reaches adulthood, they will be turned to make up for their fragility.”
“So, when you turn eighteen—”
“—My parents will turn me.” Heather looked at me closely. “Do you think that will be a problem?”
“I don’t think so. No one has ever given me a hard time for being a witch, especially at Crowther, where so many of the students are different.” I smiled. “Besides, you haven’t, um, changed yet. You shouldn’t be judged by what your parents are.”
Heather sat up straight and stuck her chin out. “My parents are very nice people,” she said. “We keep a small herd of cows, follow all of the laws about their licenses and registration, and they never—you know. You should meet them sometime.”
I felt bad for insulting her family, so I said quickly, “I’d be happy to meet your parents.” Well, they could be nice. I’d never met a vampire before.
Heather gave me a large smile. “Thank you.”
I nodded vaguely, but decided to change the subject. “So, do you want to come to a party with me this weekend?”
Tuesday night, I helped Mom out in the kitchen while she made dinner. She was baking quiches, so she set me to grating all of the cheese. There were three different kinds of cheese in big blocks. I sat down at the kitchen table with a big metal bowl and the cheese grater and went to work.
Mom stood over the kitchen counter, rolling out the pie dough. The wooden rolling pin thumped in an uneven rhythm. “Who were you with this afternoon while your sister was at the library? I saw you with another girl downtown, but she wasn’t any of your friends that I know.”
It didn’t surprise me that my mom had seen us together when I was hanging out next door to her store. “That was Heather, the new girl at school,” I said. “Mrs. Almquist said that someone should show her around town and make her feel welcome.”
“And Lindsey didn’t want to go with you two?”
“No, she had plans with Peter,” I said without looking up. The first block of Swiss cheese was almost finished. I held onto it with just my fingertips so that I could grate as much of it as possible, but I had to watch carefully to make sure that I didn’t scrape myself on the grater.
“With Peter? What happened to Robert?” Her voice turned disapproving.
I gave up on the last little piece of Swiss and dropped it into the bowl. I picked up the next block and used scissors to snip open the plastic wrap. “She broke up with Robert a few weeks ago, remember? At first, she was hoping that they’d get back together, but now she’s just trying to get over him.”
Mom put down the rolling pin and turned to look at me. “What do her parents think about her dating so many different boys?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think they care. Two guys aren’t that many. Lots of teens date around, so it’s not a big deal.”
Mom shook her head and turned back to the pie crust. “I can’t believe that her mom doesn’t worry about her more. This is the kind of thing that I didn’t want you getting exposed to in a public school. I hope that you’re sensible enough to realize that you don’t need to date half the boys in school to figure out what you want.” She lifted the crust off of the cutting board and placed it in the waiting pan. “I didn’t even start dating until I went to college. When I met your father, I knew that he was the one I wanted to spend my life with.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes, because I knew that she couldn’t see me. I’d heard the story about my parents’ perfect relationship a million times. “I know, and now you’re living happily ever after.” I hoped if I jumped to the end she wouldn’t feel the need to tell the whole thing again.
“I hope that you girls can learn from my example.” She finished crimping the pie crust around the edge of the pan and reached for her pie weights. “So tell me about the new girl. Where did she move here from?”
I frowned, trying to remember the less shocking parts of our conversation. “Um, I think it was somewhere on the east coast. She’s still getting used to all of the big trees. I think that she’ll fit in well at school, though. She’s p
retty nice.”
Mom put the pan with the pie crust in the oven and looked at me with raised eyebrows. “She likes the school? Is she not human?”
“No, she’s definitely human,” I said quickly. I bent over the cheese so that she couldn’t see my face. Mom was too good at seeing through my lies. “She’s just, um, used to hanging around magikin. And she’s really nice, like, probably the sweetest girl that I’ve ever met. I think we’re going to be pretty good friends.”
Mom smiled. “Well, it’s good to make new friends. Just don’t forget the old ones.”
Then I remembered that Lindsey didn’t like Heather. Maybe I could get her to change her mind if she got to know Heather better, if she knew that Heather wasn’t going to steal Robert or Peter. Heather didn’t seem like the kind of girl to chase boys, anyways.
“It’s not like I have to choose between my friends.” I stopped grating and shook out my hand. “Do I really have to grate all of this by hand? My arm is already getting tired.”
Mom came over and looked down at the cheeses on the table. “You picked the softest cheese first,” she said. “You could have saved the easy one for last. Keep going.”
I grumbled to myself as I picked up the next block.
Mom went back to her work, ignoring my complaints. “Why don’t you invite her over to our house for dinner on Thursday? That way I can get to know her for myself.”
“Sure, I’ll ask her.”
On Thursday morning, Akasha and I were walking up to the front of the school when Kai walked up to me holding two cups from the Drip. He held one out to me.
I stopped and took it carefully from him. The cup was hot under the cardboard sleeve. “What’s this for?”
“I stopped for coffee on the way to school today, so I picked up a drink for you, too.” He flashed a smile that warmed me even more than the drink. “You like chai tea, right?”
“I’m going in,” Akasha said over her shoulder, but I just nodded vaguely without taking my eyes off Kai.
“Chai tea is my favorite,” I told Kai with a smile of my own. “But how did you know that?”
“Oh, uh,” Kai stammered, looking down at his feet. “I think I heard you say once that you drank tea instead of coffee.”
I shrugged. “Well, thank you. It was a nice gesture.” I sipped the tea. It was just perfect for the chilly morning.
We both stood there for a few minutes, sipping our drinks. I didn’t know what else to say.
“So,” Kai said at last, “you’re going to be at the party this weekend, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll probably be there the whole time. My parents don’t care if I spend the night at the castle.”
“Cool.” Kai took a deep breath and let it out again. “Are you going with anyone else?”
I glanced at him, and looked away. “I’m going with Heather.”
Kai laughed—then he looked at me and stopped short. “You’re serious? I thought you were getting kind of close with the new girl, but I had no idea that—”
“I’m giving her a ride on my broom,” I said with a blush. Was he just digging for another piece of gossip? I had to quash any rumors that I was dating Heather right away, before they got the wrong idea about her.
“Oh, so you’re just going as friends, then,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Of course!” I said. I swirled the tea in my cup. “She’s new in town and she doesn’t know anyone. I want to help her fit in. You know that I don’t date.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, I was just asking.”
“Are you going with anyone?” I asked. “A girlfriend, maybe?”
Kai shrugged. “No one I know that wants to go with me.” He cleared his throat and looked at his watch. “Well, I think that we better go in to class. Don’t want to be late.”
I stared at him as he rushed away. He always had a way of setting me off-balance, because I didn’t know when he was being friendly and when he was looking for a scoop. Although the school paper didn’t let him write a gossip column like he wanted, he dished out stories on his blog. And last year he’d written some nasty things about me and Lindsey—things that I’d had to threaten him into taking down, but not before the whole school already knew. I had to be more careful about what I said to him.
On Thursday afternoon, Heather came by the photography classroom. The room was in the new extension off the main school building, because the original ranch house didn’t have any rooms that could be easily converted into a darkroom.
Jennifer, the teacher, had agreed to let Heather try out the class to see if she wanted to keep it as her elective. The first thing she asked was how much she knew.
Heather admitted that she was an extreme beginner because her family had never owned a film camera before.
“My mom bought one of those new digital cameras a couple of years ago,” Heather said. “I could ask her if I could just borrow that. Isn’t it basically the same thing anyways?”
Jennifer shook her head. “It’s not the same thing at all. The quality of digital cameras has improved recently, but the process of taking film photos and developing them is entirely different, and that’s half of what we do in this class.”
Jennifer spent a considerable amount of time taking Heather around the room, showing off examples of things that we’d done, then the darkroom with its chemicals.
In the end, she gave Heather one of the school’s loaner cameras. “Just explore with it,” Jennifer said. “Don’t worry about how the image is going to turn out. Learn to look at the world through the viewfinder and take snapshots of anything that interests you, at home or school or wherever you go. When you’ve finished a few rolls of film, we’ll develop them together and maybe we’ll discover something surprising.”
I helped Heather load her first roll of film and suggested that we go outside so she could try it out. “You’re not using a flash yet, so you’ll get better shots when you have a lot of natural light.” Seeing her flinch from the door, I added, “I’m sorry, but maybe we can try to stay in the shade.”
I brought my own camera along for pictures. Crowther’s ranch setting had a lot of great spots for landscape shots. Heather followed me around and dutifully took her own pictures of everything that I was shooting.
After a while, she lowered the camera. “Do you always just take pictures outside, with plants and stuff?”
I shook my head. “No, you can take pictures of whatever you want. My favorite thing to shoot is people. People are harder to get than plants, though, because they keep moving. I go through a lot of awkward shots to get just a few good ones.”
Heather held up her camera and snapped a picture of me. “Like that?”
“Yeah.” I flashed a smile. “I get candid shots around school, and then ask people later if I can give them to the school paper or put them in the yearbook. And I take pictures at home of my family.”
Heather looked down at the ground. “I won’t be able to take pictures of my parents. They don’t show up on film.” She looked at me. “What’s your family like? I met your sister, but what about your parents? Is it weird that only half of you are witches?”
I shrugged. “Not really. We’re just like any family, I guess. And Akasha will be a witch in the spring, if she passes the test on her birthday.”
Heather kicked a rock with her shoe and watched it bounce down the hill. “Did you always want to be a witch?”
“Of course.” I took a picture of her standing there, squinting against the sunlight. “My mom was a witch, and I wanted to be able to do magic like her. I’m still learning a lot, but flying—there’s nothing like flying.”
She turned and squinted at me. “Really? So it’s worth all the trouble—registering with the Faerie Court, and passing the test, and swearing the oath—just so you can fly?”
“It’s not that much trouble.” I’d survived the test, and going to Faerie Court was something that I did all the time with my friends. “But yes. Just
for flying, it’s worth it. When you come over to my house for dinner tonight, I’ll take you out flying and you’ll see. Feeling the wind on your face, and getting that brand new perspective on the world when you’re up there without any people or things around—it’s just beautiful. You can bring your camera and try it out some more.”
She smiled. “That sounds like fun.”
That night Heather joined my family for dinner. We sat at the table out on the porch, eating grilled chicken and potato salad. The temperature dropped as the sun set, making the evening pleasant after a hot mid-September day. It was also the perfect time in the evening for mosquitoes, but Mom made an anti-bug charm that kept the porch—and the house—fairly well protected against creepy crawlies, so none of us were worried about becoming dinner for bugs.
Mom always insisted we all eat together so we could have a “conversation” that was more like her interrogating us about what we’d done that day. Tonight, she started with Dad. “How was your day at the hospital, sweetie?”
He put down his piece of chicken and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “It was uneventful. Flu season hasn’t really gotten into full swing yet.”
“That’s nice,” Mom said. “So, you won’t need to do extra clinic hours this week?”
“Not that I can foresee. Do you need me at home for something?”
Mom pointed out in the yard. “I need help to do some repairs on the garden fence, but I think it can wait until this weekend.” She looked at me with a smile. “Rosamunde, dear, will you be around to help re-cast the protection spell on the fence, or do you plan on being at your friends’ party all weekend?”
The nice thing about Fae holidays, such as the Fall Equinox, was that we usually got a day or two off from work and school. It was just easier not to expect too much from anyone when the Veil was so thin, because magic got stronger and everything got a bit, well, weirder. That year, the Fall Equinox landed on a Saturday, so we were getting a three-day weekend, and our teachers had assigned very little homework.