I rose from my coffin at six PM, realizing I was late. In my rush I put my black Tour Guide sweatshirt on backwards and wasted additional time untangling myself. I also accidentally impaled my toothbrush on my teeth. “Evening, Dad, gotta go, Dad.”

Dad, at his usual post by the laptop, surrounded by annotated manuscripts, handed me a thermos. “Don’t forget your breakfast, Rivki.” He cut himself shaving again this evening. Even after nearly a century, he couldn’t get used to not seeing himself in the mirror.

“Thanks. See you in the morning. When’s your agent coming?”

“At eight. Brother Ng called – can you babysit his grandson tomorrow?”

“Sure.” I grabbed my lacrosse stick and microphone – tools of the trade – and headed out. It only took me a few minutes to get to work.

I met my six charges for the night on Main Street, and when I saw them, I groaned. They were all adolescent or slightly older, and all in pale makeup and spiky jewelry. “I requested no Goths,” I muttered.

One girl who dyed her hair abyss black with streaks of white asked, “Are you really a vampire?”

I touched her with the edge of my lacrosse stick and extended it perfectly horizontal, remaining on the other end. “Didn’t my supervisor tell you that I cannot deal with females while they have their period?”

“I lied,” she said. She looked hopeful, as if she wanted me to go berserk and bite her. I knew the type; they would never leave me alone.

I aimed to disappoint her on that count. “Here, take this lacrosse stick. If I come near enough to you for you to touch me with it, beat me over the head with it. Is that clear?”

She took it with the air of someone receiving socks as their only Christmas gift. “I was trying to –“

“Get me homicidal? I don’t appreciate that.” I showed her two ribbons on my shirt, a red one and a black one. “Do you know what these mean? Does anyone know what these mean? I am naturally a very, very nice person, but coming around me when you’re bleeding is like waving heroin in front of a junkie, understand?”

One boy raised his hand. “The red one’s for AIDS.”

“Yes, very good.” Nobody recognized the black one. I sighed. “Nobody reads Terry Prachett around here, honestly. It means that I am a temperate vampire, one who drinks animal blood, and who also stays away from anything satanic. Now, my name is Rivki Miriamson Anghel, and I have lived in Laconia all my life. Follow me.” I strolled down the sidewalk, beckoning them. My stress melted away as I breathed the scented Laconia air, and felt the textured Laconia cobblestones under my feet. Local history and the Church meant more to me than heated up pig blood. This thought reminded me to drink my breakfast. “What do you kids know about Laconia? No need to raise hands, just talk.” At the street corner I turned to watch them.

“Well, it has a lot of Magics,” said a dark-skinned girl in a purple dress.

The chubby girl she held hands with, wearing a necktie and baggy clothes, asked, “What does Magics mean, exactly?”

“People who either aren’t human or have magical traits,” said the oldest of the group, a rotund young man in his twenties.

“Why are you calling us kids?” asked the bitee wannabe, clutching my aluminum pole with a scrap of netting. “You look like you’re sixteen.”

“I’ve been a vampire since birth, and I age one third as quickly as humans. What else do you know about Laconia?” My charges often wanted to know more about me than they did about the town, and I always had to steer them back onto it. The half-Elf half-human ones didn’t have nearly as rough a time, nor did the magical humans. I got all the vampire fanatics. Admittedly, I appreciated the opportunity to educate them.

“Did you say you had AIDS?”

I walked ahead again, and couldn’t see who was talking. “Well, I’m HIV-positive. It means I’ll only live to be two hundred, and I can pass it on by all the regular routes. A lot of vampires are. My mother was.” Being adopted, that was one of the few things I knew about her.

“Do you go to the bathroom? I’ve always wanted to know if vampires go to the bathroom.”

“It depends whether I’ve been drinking blood or water.”

“What about alcohol?”

“I’m Mormon, I don’t drink alcohol, and if you’re intending to make any jokes about how Mormons call some of our church buildings Stake Centers, I hear that all the time.”

They stifled giggles, but their attention soon dissipated into the scenery rather than focused on me. Downtown Laconia had a lot more character than other towns, with ivy growing on the buildings, statues of famous Magics or advocates for them, and murals done by the Elves.

Skip this next paragraph if you don’t like backstory and family trees:

I am related to Elves by a convoluted combination of foster siblinghood, foster niecehood, marriage of that foster niece, and that foster niece’s husband’s biological father and foster mother. AHHHH I need a chart. How did Dianne keep it all straight when writing about her life? Dianne was the historian of the family, Dad’s biological daughter. She said it was time for me to take up the job. Dianne and her daughter are shapeshifters. Dad also considers Taylor Jangoral, the woman who converted him, to be like a daughter to him, though they aren’t legally or religiously so. Plus, Taylor now looks older than Dad. But I grew up with the Jangoral girls as big sisters…the Jangorals!

I turned on my portable mike to rise above the street’s clamor. “Our first stop is Junglelaughter’s Pet Pavilion, an oddly named store founded by an odd quarter-Elf, supposedly human. However, Derrick Jangoral has unprecedented and unduplicated abilities, some of which are shared by his daughters, who help him in the store.” There used to be a “jealous phenomenon” charm upon the pet shop, which meant it appeared to all and only those who were lonely or close to a Jangoral family member. Since it was now a tourist attraction, we could reach it all the time.

The tour also included the town hall, the place where Elves first announced their existence to the public before any other Magics had; the original Official Magics Humans Institute or OMHI, which now spread across the country and had a few offices in others; my apartment building, Pleasant View, the first openly interspecies community; and the Biteable Nighteable, a bookstore/smoothie bar/sparring arena where all the cool nonhumans hung out. I left them there, squealing with joy and trying to pick up young Elves. They’d paid their fees to my supervisor at the OMHI, and she would give me my cut at the end of the week.

I went to the male’s room (the Biteable Nighteable realized that not everyone who went in was a man) to wash out my empty thermos. Dad’s a neat freak and throws a fit if I don’t do this. He says dried blood is extremely sticky and difficult to clean off. I propped my lacrosse stick up against the wall. I don’t use it just for having girls fend me off; I play in the high school’s lacrosse team, even though I never went to the high school. My weird growing pattern always prevented that.

There was a cough, and a piece of paper fluttered to the ground. I looked around for someone and saw none. The note said, “Rivki, you don’t remember me, but I came to town to see you. Here’s how you can trust me: I know you were born in a laboratory under Chiang Mai, where scientist were experimenting upon vampires. I know your mother was Muslim woman who died in childbirth. I also know the only memento you have of your mother is a bone. The rest of her turned to ashes when the sun hit her corpse. Meet me in the Starbucks across the street.”

Without looking up, I took my lacrosse stick and whacked at the ceiling.

“Ow!” A short redhead going to gray fell to the tiled floor. “What’d you have to do that for?”

“I don’t like being stalked, Mr. Knows-Details-of-My-Birth. And everyone who’s seen Serenity can think of someone hiding on the ceiling.” I helped him up.

My eyes scanned for clues: two marks on the neck, deathly white skin, scrawniness, and either sunglasses or contact lenses. He wore angled sunglasses, a Buddha necklace, a Peace Corps shirt, and tight, tight leather pants. If he had been anything other than a vampire, I would have been alarmed.

When he grinned, it made me one hundred percent certain. “Little baby Rivki, all grown up. What are you, forty-seven?”

“It’s not fair for you to know my name when I don’t know yours.”

“Nathan Silver, veterinarian, general practitioner, psychiatrist, dentist, and, most importantly in your case, obstetrician.”

I gasped. “You’re Nat! Dad talks about you all the time. Why did you leave him? He cries sometimes, when he’s not crying about his wife, or about how his daughter looks decades older than him.”

“Little Dianne’s old? Oh dear, oh dear. Even with HIV infection, we live way too long.” Nat put an arm around my shoulders. “So, care to go talk in the Starbucks?”

“I’m Mormon. There’s very little point for me to go into a Starbucks.” I knew people from church who went to Starbucks and got hot chocolate, but vampires can’t metabolize hot chocolate like we can (but I don’t) black coffee.

“Oh, right. Care to go to a nightclub?”

“I’m Mormon. I can’t…”

Nat chuckled and sighed at the same time, which made a uniquely odd sound. “How about the library?”

“You can’t talk in a library. Why don’t we go outside and take a table and talk there?”

Nat smacked himself on the forehead. “Duh. You’re a clever lad.”

“ ‘Pragmatic’ is the usual word.” We wandered over to a booth. “If you want to talk to Dad, I can call him. He’ll drop everything.”

“No. You’ll see why when I explain.”

“So, explain.”

Nat took a deep breath. “There is no easy way to put this. I moved away because I couldn’t lie anymore about how I was in love with your foster father, Ferdinand. Hey, alliteration.”

“Oh.” I stared at the brown tabletop for inspiration. “When did that start and stop?”

“It started a year after I met him, and continues until now. I tried to forget. I must’ve slept with all the gay male HIV-infected vampires in Europe and Asia.”

“There’d be a lot more in Africa.” I couldn’t think of what else to say.

“Had flings with some of those, too. Lijah was the most long-lasting. He was in the cell with us when you were born, and he didn’t know how a vampire was supposed to act. He quit the mangosteen-juice business and took up teaching. We were just using each other, though.”

“Huh.”

“You must think I’m quite the sinner.”

I looked him in the eye then. “No. The Church says homosexuality is wrong, but it used to say giving the priesthood to black men was wrong, too. The Church changes as the people change, even though God is ever loving and the same yesterday and today. I think you were wrong to lie to Dad, but I think I can visualize it, if not understand it. And I can understand being hungry for love.”

Nat ruffled my hair. “I imagine being an AIDS contagious vampire is murder on your love life too.”

“No. I get girls I never met, and some guys too, throwing themselves at me. It’s being a Mormon who looks Arab that kills it. Lots of girls want to mess around with a vampire, because it’s mysterious and edgy, even if he’s sick, but who wants to marry a chaste guy who could give you AIDS? I never had a girlfriend. Some dates, yes, but no girlfriends. And the bishop doesn’t exhort me to achieve the highest level of priesthood like he does the other Priests.”

Nat looked confused, and I explained, “In the Church, all worthy males above age sixteen are Priests. They’re going by my developmental age rather than chronological, so I won’t become an Elder until I look like I’m eighteen.”

“What’s the highest level of priesthood?”

“You get it by marrying in the temple. You’re not complete unless you’re married.”

“I certainly know that,” came a voice. I turned and saw Dad in the doorway.

“Andy?” Nat asked. His lower lip trembled.

“Nat: my best friend. Sometimes my only friend.” Dad ran to Nat and hugged him. “I told you again and again I didn’t care, as long as you weren’t living in my house and being in love with me at the same time. Are you, still?”

“Yes. I can’t stay, Andy.”

“Just for a week?”

“Maybe for a week. Then I’ll go. Oh, Andy, Andy…”

I don’t like it most times when Dad cries, but this time it was acceptable. All three of us deserve the red and black ribbons, and we should stick together.