“Are you sure they’re wolves? Maybe they’re coyotes.” That was me trying to act normal. Playing the skeptic. But I’d been to those woods, and I knew she was right. Well, half-right.
“I know what coyotes sound like, and it’s not anything like that. Maybe—maybe they’re something else. Werewolves or something, you know?”
“Have you ever seen them?”
“No. I’m kind of afraid to go out there at night.”
“That’s probably just as well. Thanks for calling.”
As soon as I hung up, the next call was waiting. “Hello?”
“Hi—do you think that guy was really a vampire?”
“I don’t know. Do you think he was?”
“Maybe. I mean—I go to nightclubs a lot, and sometimes people show up there, and they just don’t fit. They’re, like, way too cool for the place, you know? Like, scary cool, like they should be in Hollywood or something and what the hell are they doing here—”
“Grocery shopping?”
“Yeah, exactly!”
“Imagination is a wonderful thing. I’m going to go to the next call now—hello?”
“Hi. I gotta say—if there really were vampires, don’t you think someone would have noticed by now? Bodies with bite marks dumped in alleys—”
“Unless the coroner reports cover up cause of death—”
The calls kept coming.
“Just because someone’s allergic to garlic doesn’t mean—”
“What is it with blood anyway—”
“If a girl who’s a werewolf got pregnant, what would happen to the baby when she changed into a wolf? Would it change into a wolf cub?”
“Flea collars. And rabies shots. Do werewolves need rabies shots?”
Then came the Call. Everything changed. I’d been toeing the line, keeping things light. Keeping them unreal. I was trying to be normal, really I was. I worked hard to keep my real life—my day job, so to speak—away from the rest. I’d been trying to keep this from slipping all the way into that other world I still hadn’t learned to live in very well.
Lately, it had felt like a losing battle.
“Hi, Kitty.” His voice was tired, flat. “I’m a vampire. I know you believe me.” My belief must have showed through in my voice all night. That must have been why he called me.
“Okay,” I said.
“Can—can I talk to you about something?”
“Sure.”
“I’m a vampire. I was attacked and turned involuntarily about five years ago. I’m also—at least I used to be—a devout Catholic. It’s been really . . . hard. All the jokes about blood and the Eucharist aside—I can’t walk into a church anymore. I can’t go to Mass. And I can’t kill myself because that’s wrong. Catholic doctrine teaches that my soul is lost, that I’m a blot on God’s creation. But Kitty—that’s not what I feel. Just because my heart has stopped beating doesn’t mean I’ve lost my soul, does it?”
I wasn’t a minister; I wasn’t a psychologist. I’d majored in English, for crying out loud. I wasn’t qualified to counsel anyone on his spiritual life. But my heart went out to him, because he sounded so sad. All I could do was try.
“You can’t exactly go to your local priest to hash this out, can you?”
“No,” he said, chuckling a little.
“Right. Have you ever read Paradise Lost?”