About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Eddie was a vampire hunter. Second, there was part of him, and I wasn't sure how potent that bit was, that wanted to thrust a stake through my heart. And third, I was absolutely fascinated with him.

All open hostilities officially ceased after that ride, and even though we did snipe at each other in the corridors, I was kind of enjoying having Eddie as a friend.

My other friends, however, acted like I was dating a serial killer.

"He's all wrong for you." Jessie's vehement reaction surprised me, when not that long ago she had been practically drooling on Eddie's shoes. But that was when I was certain I hated him

"Are you kidding me? Hot, smart, and owns his own transport. Yes, please."

For me, the rest of the day seemed to pass in a daze as I vainly searched for the source of Eddie's get out of town. He refused to tell me outright, no matter how much I bugged him. It was as if he thought that he kept me separate from whatever was bothering him, I would somehow not become involved.

Whatever was going on was centred around the thirty missing people. I was sure of that.

When I got home that night, Chuck was out. He'd left a note on the table saying he wouldn't be back until late. So I bummed around the house for a few hours before climbing into my pyjamas and parking myself in front of the TV. Chuck didn't have cable, so I wasn't exactly spoiled for choice.

And then suddenly a scary thought hit me. I was a vampire. And judging from the events earlier that month, I had an extremely good chance of living forever. Which meant long lifetimes stretched before me where there would be nothing to do except sit in front of the television and surf through channels where there was nothing to watch anyway.

Oh, the horror.

I threw the remote across the room and lent back on my forearms. Just then, someone knocked on the front door.

I glanced at the clock, hoping they'd go away. Who in their right mind would come calling at a quarter past ten at night? Whoever it was knocked on the door louder. They could see my car, and knew someone was home. I sighed.

"Yeah, I'm comin'." I bellowed, and the knocking ceased.

My hand was on the door when I looked down at myself: oversize Bart Simpson pyjamas, bright footie socks pulled up to my knees, and a pink fluffy thing holding my fringe out of my eyes. Hardly Kate Beckinsale in a pleather catsuit.

Mike and Jessie were standing on my doorstep. I wondered at the fact how they had suddenly seemed so much older. There was a manic glint in Mike's eyes that I had somehow never noticed before, and Jessie seemed wired, bouncing up and down on the tips of her toes.

"It's a bit late, isn't it?" I began cautiously, thinking that maybe there was some sort of weird initiation ceremony before I could officially be one with Fawkes.

I hoped they'd at least let me grab my pants.

"Come with us." Mike said firmly, in a very un-Mike-like way.

"It's time." Jessie added. I stepped back. In horror movies, this was the bit where they either dragged me away by my hair or knifed me to death.

I held out my hands in front of me.

"Okay, guys, I have no idea what you're talking about. Time for what?"

"To meet the Fawkes council." Mike gave an enigmatic smile, and I noticed that his teeth were very white, his canines slightly longer than they should have been. I ran my tongue over my own unnaturally sharp teeth. "The Others want to meet you."

"The other whats?" I whispered.

Jessie grinned, and for the first time really noticed her teeth as well. And then I realised.

How could I have been so stupid?

Of course I wasn't the only vampire in town.

"The others like us." She said.

As they waited, I swiftly shimmied into my jeans and sneakers, ran a brush through my hair, and then Jessie and Mike bundled me into the backseat of a shiny silver Volvo. I sat in the middle of the back seat, peering anxiously through the windscreen. I wasn't sure I wanted to meet Fawkes' council of vampires.

"So you're both vampires?" I hedged carefully. I swear I hadn't noticed anything unusual about them, but then, it's rude to read your friends' minds. I'd found that out the hard way in the city.

"Yup." Mike said.

"You don't look like vampires." It was an automatic statement, and even as I said it I realised how stupid I sounded.

Mike's lips quirked in a grin, and he glanced at me in the rear-view mirror. "Sorry, darlin', I left my cape in my other coffin."

Jessie laughed. Even her laugh was different now she didn't have to worry about giving herself away. "You're hardly an Anne Rice advertisement yourself, Ella."

I caught the reflection of myself in the mirror. In torn jeans and a jumper that had holes in it, I looked anything but the glamorous image the media had of us.

"How many vampires are there in Fawkes?" I asked curiously. I paused, a more perplexing question coming to mind. "What about the Collins family? Do they know about you?"

Jessie's eyebrows rose. "I was beginning to think you didn't know about the Collins'." She exclaimed. "If you know, why do you keep hanging around with Eddie Collins?"

After a moment of thought, I answered slowly.

"Because he's different."

Jessie sniffed.

"How old are you?" Mike asked curiously.

I knew the routine. "Seventeen and nine months. I've been a vampire for those nine months." I added.

Mike glanced at Jessie. "She's only young. Small transgressions can be forgiven."

"What transgressions?" I asked aggressively, scowling.

I could tell by the way her lip curled that Jessie was starting to sulk. I stared at the back at Mike's head, marvelling at how different he seemed. The class clown was gone, replaced by someone who was more mature and much more in charge.

"How old are you?" I asked.

"Twenty."

"How old have you been twenty?"

His smile seemed so much more scary now. "A while."

I folded my arms, chewing my bottom lip. Then something small and stupid occurred to me, but it was a rather burning question.

"Just curious, but if you're vampires, and immortal and whatever, why are you going to school?" I asked. Personally, the thought of vampires in high school explained a lot to me.

"You'd be surprised how much things change in two hundred years," Mike said idly. "One must stay up to date with current knowledge."

Jessie turned around and peered over her headrest. Suddenly she was schoolgirl-Jessie again. "Sometimes we swap with a couple in Perth so we can go to college and get jobs. Then we swap over when we can't pass for thirty-year-olds anymore." Jessie had the kind of face that could be made up to look ten years older and Mike had the measured wisdom of an older man, so I could easily believe that.

"Why?"

"So no one gets suspicious, Ella."

"But the Collins'," I persisted.

"Soon." Mike said. He pulled the car over. "Last stop, everybody out."

I stepped out, pulled my jeans up, and then looked up at the building. I blinked. This was the primary school downtown. There was a sign in front of the office.

Student Council Meeting Tonight. I raised an eyebrow and looked at Mike.

"Student council?"

"What were you expecting? Streamers and banners and someone handing out pamphlets?"

It grated on my nerves, the way he spoke to me like I was a moron. "You know, I liked you better as an idiot." My eyes narrowed.

"A lot of people say that." Mike observed. He strode up the steps before us, pushing the doors aside. I felt the butterflies in my stomach start up again.

"Don't worry about him; he's just in a mood." Jessie whispered. "He used to be a doctor in the 1800s and I think he thinks pretending to be a teenager is demeaning his intelligence." She reached out to take my hand. "Hey, you're not supposed to be nervous." She seemed to sense my emotional turmoil, and somehow her touch made me feel a little better. "You're about to become one of us."

Ominous. "I'm still not sure what you mean by that, exactly."

There was another sign in the hallway. Welcome, New Members. I tried not to giggle inappropriately as Mike ushered us into the assembly hall.

I marvelled at the faces I saw swing towards us. Some I recognised and most I didn't. But what made me gasp was the sheer number of people in the hall. And then I noticed a man walking towards us, me, and my eyes focused on his face.

"Dad?!"

For the first time since I got myself bitten, I felt sick, dizzy. My father, Chuck, a vampire? But as he reached me, he stretched out his arms and for the very first time he folded me into a great bear hug and I clung to him, trying to absorb in that one moment all the paternal affection I had been denied my whole life.

"My poor girl." He stroked my hair affectionately.

His body was warm, and his heart beat solidly against my chest. I could hear the blood that rushed through his veins. I looked up into his tired, worn face.

"You're not a vampire?"

"No, Ella." He said softly.

"Then why-?"

Someone cleared their throat at the head of the hall, seeming to make it clear in that one note that we were the ones holding up proceedings. There was a man standing on the stage, resting on the podium as if it was the only thing holding him up. He was stooped and withered with massive purple rings under his eyes and looked about a billion years old. He looked at me, with piercing amber eyes.

"If you could take a seat, Officer Swain, Miss Swain?" He nodded respectfully at Jessie and Mike. "Doctor Newman, Mrs Newman, thank you for bringing Miss Swain to us."

I stared at Jessie, eyes wide. "Mrs Newman?"

Jessie gave a small smile. "Long story."

The fossil on stage was still talking. "...the last thing we need at this present moment is a feral running around town." I bristled as Chuck took my hand and lead me to our seats. Jessie followed us as Mike joined the relic on stage.

"We're all here." Mike's voice rang out across the hall. "The ones of us that are left, anyway. I pains me, to see how little of us are left."

One hand in Chuck's and the other in Jessie's, I leant forward to hear everything that was being said at this vampire council.

Mike took the old bloke's place behind the podium. His brow was furrowed and his lips were pressed into a hard line. "My people, and other sympathisers." He began, inclining his head to Chuck. "Thank you all for coming so quickly. As you may have guessed, this is not a social call to see how we are all coping with our respective hungers."

He paused for effect, ever the showman.

"This is a Council of War."

A murmur passed through the gathered witnesses, but my mouth was suddenly dry. I could not have formed words even if I had known what to say.

Mike stared around the room, tawny eyes capturing the attention of each and every onlooker. I marvelled at his charisma. Not one person looked away from him.

And then he said the words I had been fearing.

"Vampires of Fawkes, the Collins family must die."

I sat there, not sure of what I should do next. Despite Mike's big words, it soon became apparent that no matter how hard he tried to convince the crowd, this was really just the bi-annual meeting of the Fawkes Vampire Support Group. I sat up straighter in my chair, craning my head this way and that to try and take in everything at once.

Two women who looked no less than eighty sat in the corner chatting away like they were at Bingo. There was an emancipated man in the row in front of me that was twitching uncontrollably like he was being pricked with hundreds of invisible pins. Neither he nor the women looked like they could bite through a particularly hard biscuit.

These were the fearsome vampires of Fawkes? Then it occurred to me that these were the vampires that had run away. The ones that had turned against their vampirism in the hope of being able to become something better.

There was a strange-looking child sitting cross-legged on the edge of the stage, close to Mike and the other, immensely old vampire. She stood out immediately as the only child in the room, and my gaze focused on her. Curling, bronze-ish hair tumbled delicately over pale, slender shoulders, and her eyes were brown, like mine used to be.

There was something strangely sinister about her and I had to wrench my eyes away.

Mike's eyes were on me, his gaze unwavering. I wanted to stand. I wanted to jump to my feet and demand what he was doing, when it was obvious to me that none of these people would be strong enough or courageous enough for what he had planned. There was no one here that even looked tough enough to take on a vampire hunter, except-

Me.