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“Are you even going to try and meet Jean-Claude with an open mind?” I asked.
He looked startled then, as if he hadn’t realized that his thoughts were so clear on his face. “I don’t understand what we did wrong that you would even have dated one of them, Anita. You were raised a good Catholic, and you know what the Pope says about vampires.”
“They’re either seen as suicides or as dead bodies animated by demons or other evil spirits, so either way vampires are damned in the eyes of the Church,” I said, like I was quoting.
“If you know all that, then how did it happen? How did you date one of them, let alone be willing to marry one?”
“I want to marry Jean-Claude; the fact that he’s a vampire isn’t really the important part,” I said.
“How can you say the fact that he’s a vampire isn’t the important part? That’s the only important part here,” he said.
“More important than my happiness?” I asked.
“No, don’t do that, don’t make this about happiness or unhappiness, this is your immortal soul at stake, Anita. If you marry this creature, then you will be damned to hell for all eternity. Don’t you understand that, Anita? Love is important, but it’s not more important than that.”
“So why did you come, Dad? If that’s your final word on the topic of my marriage, then why didn’t you just stay home in Indiana?”
He leaned forward until the seat belt tightened and wouldn’t let him move anymore. “It’s not my last word on your wedding, Anita, just on you marrying one of these creatures.”
“If you call Jean-Claude a creature one more time I…I don’t know what I’ll do, but it won’t be good.” There was a time in my teens when I would have made some extravagant threat, but I tried to never say anything I wouldn’t really do, and right now I couldn’t see hurting my dad for real.
“Fredrick, I showed you that article that Anita sent us about the fact that people who become vampires never lose brain functioncompletely, so in effect they don’t die. It was just so faint that no one could detect it without the technology we have now.” She tried to touch his hand again, but he pulled away. She gave me a look likeI’m sorry.
I gave her a thank-you nod and had to fight not to feel angry that it was my hated stepmother on my side against my dad. It just felt weird. It was like there was more to Judith than I’d remembered and less to my dad. It made my chest tight. Damn it, I would not cry about this.
Dad shook his head. “The Pope made his views known about the new medical evidence. The Church’s stance is unchanged; vampires are damned and anyone who marries them is damned with them.”
“Wait,” I said, “do you mean the Pope actually added that last bit for real, that anyone who marries a vampire is damned?”
He nodded.
Judith widened her eyes and gave a much more nervous nod, like she didn’t want to do it.
“Well, since I’m Episcopalian now it doesn’t really make a difference to me.”
“You only left the Church because of the ruling about raising the dead,” he said.
“Yeah, I raise the dead, so I’m excommunicated from the Church. Trust me, Dad, I didn’t forget why I became Episcopalian. All the salvation, half the guilt, it’s great,” I said.
He gave me a beseeching look. “You’re a U.S. Marshal now, surely you could give up your side job as an animator.”
“It’s not a side job, Dad, it’s my psychic gift.”
“Fredrick, we discussed all this when Anita was fourteen and the dead animals started following her home. She must use her gift, or it finds other ways to…to be used.”
“It’s not a gift, it’s a curse and a blasphemy in the eyes of the Church.”
“You sent me to my grandmother Flores to learn to control myanimating abilities, Dad. Thanks for not choosing the exorcism that our priest was recommending.”
“I couldn’t do that to you, you weren’t evil, there was no demon inside you. You just inherited a family curse, and that’s my fault, our fault, but your mother didn’t have it. None of her sisters had it. We thought it had died out with her mother. We thought you were safe.”
“Are you saying that if you had thought I could inherit the family magic that you and…Mom wouldn’t have had children?”
“We would never have given you up, but I am so sorry that the curse is inside your blood. Your mother would have been so…We never meant to do this to you.”
“The summer I spent with Mom’s family everyone seemed to respect Grandma Flores. No one was afraid of her or treated her like she was cursed.”
“You never heard the stories about your mom’s childhood.”
