"Have you heard from Mom lately?" I asked Dad over the din at suppertime.

"Amy, I haven't heard from your mother since the divorce." He wrangled a bib onto James Alexander's neck, which James Alexander promptly ripped off and threw on the floor as soon as Dad walked away. "Maybe you should try calling her."

"I have. She hasn't been home." I picked at the skin on my chicken. "I thought she might be a little more concerned about me."

"You know, she was probably pretty upset that you wanted to leave, even if you only did it for her sake. Maybe she's spending more time with her new boyfriend."

That just made me lose my appetite. I did want my mother to be happy, but I still wanted her to worry about me. Not go running around with her boyfriend every weeknight. Not forget that she has a daughter.

When I hadn't heard from her by eight, the time she normally would have gone to work, I decided to call her at work. First I had to wait until the brats went to bed, and settled down. Mom would definitely be at work at nine. I dialed her work number.

I had to talk to the receptionist, two nurses, and wait on hold for several long minutes. Then the person I got on the phone wasn't even my mother. "Amy? This is Karen." Karen was probably my mother's closest friend at work. She had young kids, but sometimes she and my mother would go out for coffee.

"Is my mom there?" I asked.

"No..." There was something in her voice, something wrong. "She's not at home?"

"I don't know. I moved in with my dad. She didn't tell you?"

"I haven't... When did you move out?"

"Monday."

I was getting a really bad feeling.

"Amy, she hasn't come into work all week. Not Monday night, or any night since then. I haven't seen her since last Friday."

When I looked down, I saw that there were goosebumps on my arms. "Did she call out sick or something?"

"No. We haven't heard anything. We've tried calling her, and I even stopped by your house, after our supervisor asked me to. I don't know if she was home or not, if the car was in the garage. No lights were on, and she didn't answer the door. The door was locked so I couldn't run in and see if she was sleeping or anything."

"Oh."

I didn't know what else to say. I knew what had happened. I hoped that I was wrong, but I knew. And it scared the shit out of me.

"Okay, Amy? I've got to get back to work... but let me know if you hear from her, okay, hon?"

"Yeah. Thanks, Karen."

Just in case, I dialed home. No answer.

The house was quiet except for the television going downstairs. I tiptoed down the stairs and walked into the living room. "Dad, can you drive me over to Mom's?" I asked.

"You want to leave already?" he said. There was absolutely no surprise in his voice. Laurie, however, looked slightly offended.

"No, it's just—" I took a deep breath to calm myself as I realized I was shaking, ever so slightly. "I haven't heard from Mom, and so I tried calling her at work, and they said she hasn't been in all week. No one's been able to contact her. I'm worried about her."

He sighed, and turned to face the screen again. "It's late, Amy. Why don't you wait until tomorrow morning, and I'll see if I can swing you by there before I go in to work."

"Wouldn't it be better now, while the kids are asleep?" I shifted my weight from foot to foot. "I mean, what if something happened to her?"

He sighed again.

"Please?"

Without a word, he got up and took his keys out of the ceramic bowl on the table by the front door and opened the front door. I quickly followed him, thanking him the whole time.

During the fifteen-minute drive back into Middlebury, an awkward silence filled the car. Finally my dad said, "Amy, what's the real reason you wanted to come live with me? I just... I mean, you know I'm thrilled that you want to be part of my life but... is there something else going on? You don't seem to be too excited about living with us."

Dad, I really only wanted to live with you because there's a vampire after me...

"I am, I mean, I'm just worried about Mom, that's why I don't seem too excited," I said. "Plus it's a little hard to get used to, with little kids around and all."

"You're sure that's all?"

"Yes."

"Your mother's new boyfriend... he hasn't tried to hurt you or anything, has he?"

"No! No, nothing like that."

Dad's car slowed at my house and pulled into the driveway. There were no lights on.

"It doesn't look like she's home," he said.

"I'm going to go inside and check."

"Whatever eases your mind." He put his head back and closed his eyes.

The summer night air was cool, which didn't help the chill already spreading throughout my body. My fingers shook as I put my key in the lock.

I opened my front door into dark silence. "Hello? Mom?"

I grew up on a steady diet of horror movies, so the first thing I did was turn on the lights. I'm not an idiot.

The living room and kitchen were empty. There were no dishes in the sink or any other evidence of my mother having been there recently. A blinking light drew my attention to the phone on the wall: seven new messages on the answering machine. I wondered if mine was one of them. But I didn't push play.

I ran up the stairs and halted at the top landing. "Mom?" I asked.

No reply.

My bedroom door was closed, which was not how I left it. Maybe my mother had closed it, closed me out of her life.

Her bedroom door was closed, too.

I stared at it, trying to will myself to move forward and open it. I've seen those horror movies, too, where it draws out all the tension as the heroine creeps forward, and at the last minute flings open the door to unveil a bloody scene of horror. As my feet crept toward the door, I tried not to see those scenes in my head: my mother, prone on her bed, a pool of blood from her neck puddled beneath her head. Perhaps I'd even catch Lane in the act of draining her. Or I might find her looking like she was asleep, but when I rolled her body over, her skin would be translucently pale, a trickle of blood coming from her mouth.

My hand now rested on the doorknob, rattling it as my hand shook. A deep breath, and I flung the door open.

The bed was empty, not made up neatly, but empty. I turned on the light to see better. The windows were open, the gauzy white curtains billowing out in the breeze. Screens intact. Nothing unusual, aside from the unmade bed, but my mother often forgot about things like that.

I shut off the light and closed the bedroom door, taking more care to be quiet than was necessary, given that there was no one to disturb.

My closed bedroom door glared at me.

I approached it more swiftly than I had my mother's, and I opened it and flipped on the light.

I'd half-expected to find Lane there, waiting for me, or perhaps my mother, sleeping in my bed. In this latter scenario she would wake up and begin crying to find that I had come back to her, and wrap me in a hug and tell me she was sorry she hadn't called me, it was just that she was so hurt, and couldn't I come back home?

In the Lane scenario, he might have at least told me what he'd done to my mother, casually describing her murder and telling me she didn't taste as good as I did, all the while reclining on my bed. Then he might beckon me with a limp movement of his wrist and I would be pulled to him. I would offer my neck. And all this worry now housed in my stomach would disappear.

But my room was empty, and almost exactly the way I'd left it. My mother must have closed my windows and shut my curtains. The air inside was stifling.

I still didn't want to go in there.

Before leaving the house, I opened the basement door and flipped on the light and called down, just in case my mother had somehow fallen down the stairs or gotten locked in. My voice echoed back to me, and I closed the door and locked up the house. I felt strung tight.

I wished there were green eyes out in the darkness, winking at me. But it was just dark all around.

"She's not here," I said, climbing into the car.

He looked at me. "What do you want to do, kiddo?"

"I think we should file a missing persons report," I said.

I could tell by the look on his face that he thought I was overreacting. "Maybe you should sleep on it. We can always try again tomorrow."

He put the car into reverse, making the interior light dim us into darkness. I stared out the window at my house, its empty black eyes watching me go.

I can't really explain why I didn't push it. Maybe because I knew he'd had a long day. Because I'd had a long week. Because I had a very good idea of what had happened to my mother, and all I wanted to do was cry. I choked those tears back until after we got back to what I now needed to start thinking of as home and silently went up to my room and closed the door quietly. Then I allowed the tears to come.

My mother was gone. I didn't know if she was going to come back. It was possible that Lane had enraptured her, led her away, and was holding her hostage until I returned. Possible. But I don't think he did. I think she's dead and he killed her and made her disappear just like all those people I read about in the newspaper. He did it because he was angry to come into my room and find me gone. It was all my fault.

I thought he was only after me. I'd only thought about my own safety, after I invited him inside. Why hadn't I asked my mother if we could move, or maybe go on vacation for a while? Deep down I knew it would have been impossible to convince her to leave. It wasn't unreasonable to think that Lane wouldn't harm her—after all, he'd never even met her.

If Lane was angry enough to kill my mother, what would he do to me?