When Ferdinand awoke, the cell was full of insects, all different colors, some iridescent and jewel-like. A gigantic millipede walked up his chest. He brushed it off. “I take it Derrick’s come?” He stood to observe the situation, blinking in the morning sunlight.

Looking around, he saw everyone else was awake, too, and some were panicking. This was understandable; a boa constrictor was wrapped around each vampire’s chest except for Ferdinand and Nat.

Taylor shouted, facing up, “Did you hijack a plane? I told you not to.” There was a huge hole in the ceiling, a clean one, like someone had taken a huge knife and sliced it.

“Could your fiancé get these snakes off us, please?” Sally asked.

“That would be nice,” Lijah added, having turned almost as pale as the other vampires.

Derrick poked his head through the hole, eyes blazing orange, and with an owl perched on his shoulder, keeping balance despite Derrick bending at forty-five degrees. “I am not releasing anyone until I am sure that none of you hurt Taylor in any way. Nat and Ferdinand are friends of ours, so I know they didn’t, but what about the rest of you?”

“Let Sally go. She helped me. Did you attack anybody?” It seemed ludicrous that this rumpled missionary was ordering a wild, dark man wielding awesome power, but such was the power of romance.

“Those other three talked about eating you!” Derrick shouted. “Snake, uncoil from Sally.” The snake did so.

“Lijah didn’t know what to do!” Taylor retorted.

“What about the other two? Don’t lie to me, Ty, you never lie, and I can read your mind anyhow. You! Stop trying to move.” Derrick glared at Ming, who burst into tears.

Gao begged, “Please, if you let us go, we’ll never hurt any human.”

“I don’t believe you. I wonder how long it takes to strangle a vampire. Snakes, would you oblige?” At his command, the boas tightened their grip inexorably, despite the offending vampires thrashing and trying to bite the snakes.

Taylor put her hands on her hips. “No! This is no way to run an engagement. When I say you aren’t to kill anyone, you can’t kill anyone! I don’t care if they tried to kill me. If I tortured the people who had tortured me, you wouldn’t have teeth left, and you’d probably be blind. I know who you used to be. I had the power then, I was the dark-skinned one, and you ran up a huge debt to me.”

“I died for you. Let me kill,” he argued.

Lijah groaned. “My continued existence depends on a lover’s tiff.”

Rivki began to cry, and Nat handed him to Ferdinand. “He needs his daddy.”

Ferdinand sighed and let Rivki bite him again. “I suppose I’m the only father he’ll ever know.”

Sally was the only one who noticed the strange remark from Derrick. “He died for you?” she asked Taylor. “Thank you for speaking up for me, by the way.”

“It’s a long story, involving reincarnation and the end of an alternate universe. Derrick, if you don’t let everyone out here alive, or whatever state vampires are in, I will not marry you.” Her words carried finality.

The snaked slithered to Gao, Ming, and Lijah’s feet. Derrick said to nobody in particular, “When I see Taylor, I’m light as a feather.” He jumped into the hole and floated down into the cell. He looked around him, the bare cement, the bloodstained floor, and the insectness of everything. “Where is the dead body?”

Nat pointed at a pile of ashes. “When a vampire’s corpse touches sunlight, it turns to ashes.”

“There’s a bone sticking out,” Sally remarked, going to look.

“There can’t be a bone. That’s against all my research. Hello, Derrick. How’s the shop doing?”

Derrick chuckled, his eyes back to a normal dark color again. “Only you, Dr. Nat, would think to ask that of someone’s beetle-wielding fiancé. I had to put them all in cages, because only I can keep the cats from eating the rodents, and the dogs from fighting. Taylor’s friend Joy Driver is minding the shop when I’m gone.”

Sally held up a smooth rib bone. “If you’re quite done with pleasantries, I suggest we leave.” She handed it to Ferdinand, who took it with the hand not holding Rivki. “This is all he’ll have of his mother. Take good care of it and him.”

Ming lunged at Derrick, fangs bared, but Derrick smiled. “You’re petrified of me, aren’t you?”

Everyone but Taylor gasped. Ming had turned to stone. Basalt, actually. Ferdinand was embarrassed he could tell basalt by sight alone.

“How did you do that?” Lijah asked, his teeth chattering.

“You know how some people take every statement as though it were literal? I can make every statement as though it were literal. It is applied metaphor. Taylor and I learned it at Laconia College, but I was born with more ability for this than most people. I made the opening in the ceiling by making ‘I don’t know the place from a hole in the ground’ literal.’ How do we get this door to open?” Derrick rapped on the black wall. ‘Hello? Evil scientists? Anyone there?”

“You have very strange powers,” Sally mused.

“The first few times I tried it, it was messy. Never make ‘I’m going crazy for you’ literal.” Derrick banged on the wall again. “I have elephants at my disposal!”

“There’s a camera in here. They’re probably mounting up with lots of weapons. You haven’t answered my question about whether you hijacked a plane with snakes.” Taylor took his arm.

Derrick turned and wrapped an arm around her. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

She pushed him away. “Not until you answer my question.”

“It wasn’t snakes, and it wasn’t a plane.”

“Keep going.”

“I did coerce some people with insects in order to make things go faster. I didn’t tell you I’d come so soon for fear of disappointing you.” The door slid open, and Derrick’s eyes glowed again. “Hey, Taylor won’t let me kill you, but I am going to destroy this lab. Do you doubt me?”

A dozen men pointed tranquilizer guns at him, but it was too late for them to do anything. The insects scurried up their pant; causing the men to dance and scream, “Call them off!” several shouted.

They heard the trumpeting of elephants. “Climb onto the elephants,” Derrick instructed. “They will take you to a safe place. I’ll meet you there.”

“How do we get up? We can’t levitate,” Ferdinand pointed out.

Then a trunk grabbed him by the waist, and an elephant picked him up and put him and Rivki on the back of its head. “Wow,” Ferdinand murmured. He watched all manner of animals, some wild, some domesticated, leap into the hole in the ground and rush to Derrick’s aid.

Gao bit an elephant, refusing to leave Ming’s remains. They left him there, among the destruction. Everything took on a dreamlike quality, accentuated by the sun. They rode through forest, then farmland, and then the city. People shouted and pointed.

Ferdinand didn’t know how long it took. Rivki stopped feeding, so Ferdinand held him to his chest, covering him from the sun with his own shirt, staring at him instead of the scenery. Ferdinand ignored the pain and sunburn. He gave Miriam’s rib to Rivki, and he sucked on it. Maybe Ferdinand could carve a pacifier out of it. He needed to buy a Snugli baby sling, and some clothes. Thank goodness a vampire baby didn’t need diapers.

The elephants let them off in front of a cheap hotel, and then departed for wherever Derrick had borrowed them from. Lijah didn’t go in. He shook everyone’s hand. “I must go contact my company. The headquarters of the Chiang Mai branch are walking distance away from the center of the city.”

“Thanks for not attacking me,” Taylor said.

“Thank you for not letting your fiancée strangle me,” he replied.

“Are you really going in all this sun? It’ll take years off your life,” Nat admonished.

“I will find a shady place and sleep. Do not worry about me.” He left without a glance back.

Taylor, Nat, Ferdinand, and Sally strode into the hotel foyer, heading for a dark corner. Sally began, “I don’t quite know what to do now that I’m free. My son still doesn’t want me back, and I don’t know what else to do.”

“What’s your occupation?” Taylor asked.

“I’m a writer of children’s books and poetry.”

Ferdinand put his shirt back on, feeling out of place. Rivki was now clothed only in Nat’s oversized shirt. “The rest of us are from a town in the US called Laconia, which has a large nonhuman population. There is a government agency called the Official Magics Humans Institute, or the OMHI, which exists to regulate and help people like us. They could find you a place to stay. I have a house there, and you’re welcome to, I mean, not that I’m…you could stay for a while. They have a bureaucracy that would enable you to get a green card, even if you are what you are.”

Sally smiled and adjusted her broad-brimmed hat. “That is very kind of you, but I don’t want to move away from Australia just yet. Even if it doesn’t want me, it’s home. Could I have your e-mail address?”

“How are you going to get back?” Ferdinand asked. “It’s have a debit card that allows me to access my bank account even if the card is stolen, so I’m going straight to the bank to get some money. I have enough for an economy class ticket. Good luck with Derrick, Taylor. He’s a good man.” Sally gave Taylor a hug, shook Nat and Ferdinand’s hands, and left as well.

Taylor looked back and forth from the two vampires. “So what are you two going to do? Once Derrick comes, we can rest. Derrick’s reserved rooms for you, as well as plane tickets. We’re going home the day after tomorrow. You can pay him back when you’re back.”

Nat stared at the floor. “I don’t think I’m welcome in Ferdinand’s house anymore.”

Ferdinand’s arms were growing tired from carrying Rivki. “I don’t want you to disappear, Nat, I just don’t think you can live with me under these circumstances.”

“Right. Tell Derrick to cash in my return ticket.” A tear emerged from behind Nat’s sunglasses.

“What?” Ferdinand was alarmed. “You’re my best friend. I can’t make it without you. You’re my doctor. I can’t be alone. We could still be friends with you living somewhere else, still in Laconia.”

“I’ve thought it through, Ferdinand. It won’t work. I’m not about to stop feeling attracted to you, and that’s going to make you uncomfortable and be a strain, all the time. And I won’t be able to stand seeing you at an enforced distance. Before, I had the faintest of hope. Now I don’t have anything. You’re definitely straight. Besides, it was wrong of me to lie to you all the time. Our friendship was built upon that lie.”

“Taylor, could you hold Rivki, please?” After handing the baby over, Ferdinand gripped Nat’s shoulders. “I’m sorry for being so unkind to you when I found out the truth. It was a hard truth, and I don’t have any easy answers. Dianne loves you like an uncle. Don’t you want to see her child?”

“I do, but everything else is secondary. You overshadow everything else, and when you are no longer a possibility, when you are a source of shame rather than joy, it is everything else that turns into nothing but shadows. I have a plan. I want to take up being a traveling doctor again. I can do a lot of good for the world. Maybe I can forget.”

Taylor looked like she might cry. “Nat, we don’t want to make you an outcast.”

“It’s not a question of wanting to make me one. I am one. It’s bad enough being a vampire. Ferdinand has a family to legitimize his presence, but I do not.”

“You might get killed. You know how dangerous it is to be a vampire. How will I know you’re still alive?”

Nat removed Ferdinand’s hands and smiled. “Every birthday, and every Christmas, I will send you some sign that I am alive. Do not ask for more than this.” He turned away.

“Nat, no!” Ferdinand pleaded.

“I love you, Ferdinand. Remember the good part of that, and forget the bad.”

Ferdinand rushed to Nat and gave him a hug, a long, tight one. “Don’t let people say you’re a demon. You’re a bodhisattva.”

“And you’re a loving father. I don’t think you could be anything better. We’ve been friends, and being friends is telling each other the truth.” Nat’s arms were thin and weak, those same arms that had cleaned Ferdinand’s house and fought for him.

“That’s from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

“My dear Ferdinand, always literary.” Nat bowed. “Sawasdee krup, I hope you have enjoyed Thailand.” Then he, too, was gone.