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You might question my decision to work in an insane asylum. I question it myself. I am ashamed that I allowed morbid curiosity to influence my life…particularly when, as a vampire, morbidity is hardly lacking in my day-to-day affairs, without even having to search for it.

The solace I can offer myself is that I saved a life. I saved an innocent girl from even more suffering that she had already endured. Perhaps, after all the mental and emotional anguish she had experienced, physical pain would pale in comparison. Regardless, I could not allow her to be tortured, killed, and drained of her life.

I well remember the day little Mary Alice Brandon was given up by her parents. It was gray and overcast, a bitingly cold wind adding to the bleak atmosphere. The Brandons arrived in their shiny black automobile- they were among the wealthiest family in Biloxi.

I cannot pretend I was surprised that they were finally abandoning their daughter. Few people had ever seen her, for it was well-known that she was "not quite right", a blight, as her parents saw it, on their sterling reputation and good name.

I was shocked, however, when I saw the tiny girl- her stature belied her age of nearly twenty- almost pushed from the auto by her coldly lovely mother.

Her father gingerly clutched the shoulder of her black dress, as though afraid that whatever afflicted her could be passed through physical contact. He did nothing to shield her from the gusts that blew her long, inky black hair about her face and buffeted her tiny frame as she shivered violently from fear and cold.

Abruptly she stopped, her eyes glazing over and her shivers transforming instantaneously into statue-like stillness. Her delicate hands, clenched so tightly even a human could see her veins from a distance, hung by her sides. I could hear her heart fluttering and her sweet, sweet scent filled my head.

Her father looked at her in revulsion and jerked her roughly. She blinked, and turned her shockingly blue eyes on me with a question that I did not understand in her gaze. I stared back, equally intrigued and saddened by this elfin creature being cast off by her parents.

The matron offered Brandon a lock of his daughter's hair after it had been shorn off, but he refused with an expression of distaste. I could have killed him in that moment, ripped his callous heart from his chest as his daughter said, in a voice like a bell, "Papa."

He raised a haughty eyebrow at the tears threatening to spill from her eyes. "Please," she whispered. She stretched her small hand toward him, trembling again.

Brandon pivoted sharply and returned to his wife without even a final glance at his child.

The treatments were terrible. She was given electrical shocks each time she had a vision, the theory being that if she associated the visions with pain she would stop having them…sheer idiocy. When this did nothing beyond making her writhe in agony, she was placed in seclusion, in the dark, in the hope that sensory deprivation was the antidote to her vision. I was appalled as I never had been before to see her treated thus. I refused to take part. I did not believe, not for a moment, that she was insane.

Her blood never tempted me. I could not bear to think of her broken in my arms, my eyes bright red with her life force. I rejected the possibility, going against my nature. I could never harm her. She was too precious.

I stole into her dark cell every night, when most of the workers were home and no one was likely to check on her. At first she was too pained, too lost, too afraid, to acknowledge my presence at all. I held her, a blanket between us to keep her warm, night after night, hour after hour. It seemed like mere seconds to me, but I could feel that every minute was a hopeless eternity for her.

I felt as her vision stole through her body, causing her to tense up in misery. I rubbed her back, desperate to soothe her in any way that I could. She had not spoken since her first day, nor had she cried…she did nothing but shake. She rarely even bothered to open her eyes anymore, since the darkness was absolute to her.

I spoke to her. I told her it would be over someday. I told her that her parents had been wrong. I told her she deserved much better.

I told her she was Alice.

"Do you know what Alice means, little one?" I murmured into the shadows, gently stroking her skinny arm. "It means 'truthful'. And you are. You are not mad. Your visions are true." I kissed the top of her head. "Be strong, Alice."

She acknowledged me with words only once, and I treasure that memory beyond any other from my human past or this existence that I will lose so soon.

Slender to begin with, the darkness and cold and constant shivering were breaking her. She barely ate or drank. She wasted away before me as I pondered changing her. It seemed the only way…she could die in her distressing cell or I could deliver her from its depths, return her to society…where she would be shunned again. Or I could change her. The decision tortured me, and my mind was not made up until she spoke.

"You're going to save me," she said softly, her head resting on my stone chest. Her bell of a voice was just as beautiful as it had been, if weaker.

"What?" I said back, holding her more tightly to me. Dear Alice.

"I saw it…that day. You're going to save me."

She drifted off to sleep then, her breaths barely deep enough to expand her lungs. She was dying. Poor little Alice was dying in a dank cell while she should have been out in the world, marveling in the beauty her lovely eyes beheld.

I was going to save her.

I didn't know it then, but I learned I was rescuing her not only from death in the asylum but also a gruesome death at the hands, and teeth, of a brutal tracker. Alice's sweet blood drew James to her, just as it enchanted me, but he had none of my pity and love for the girl. I just managed to escape with her before she succumbed to either fate.

I ran with her to a wooded area, praying that I would not be too late to save her. My right hand under hers legs and the other around her back, I could feel her bones and the blood slowing in her veins as her heart struggled to keep beating. Suddenly, her tiny hand was wrapped around my finger and I knew she was trying to hold onto more than me.

"You have to be brave," I said gently, settling her on the ground in the shelter of some trees. "I have to hurt you."

I bent to press my lips to her forehead. "Alice," I murmured. Those sapphire eyes opened for the last time and my heart, though stone-still for a century, broke into a million pieces for this little girl who had stolen it away.

I pressed my teeth to her throat and wrists, savoring her scent but in no danger of losing control. Not with someone I loved. Stroking her cheek one last time, and leaving anote behind me, I left Alice and went to fight James.

He'll be back shortly to burn me. Of course his anger at me for taking his prize is great, but I could not let him have Alice.

I hope she won't remember any of this. I hope she forgets her family, the pain, the dark, and me. I hope she finds others to love her as I did, and as her parents should have. I hope her future is bright, and that she obeys my note.

Be happy, Alice.

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