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with the truth. “Because it was dangerous. And, knowing this, what exactly did you do?”
    “I went into the cellar.”
    “No,” she said. “You went into the cellar with a knife. What have I told you about knives?”
    “Technically, it’s a turkey carver,” he pointed out.
    “What was that?” Amanda’s voice hit a pitch normally reserved for dogs and bats. Yulric, who could become both, checked his ears for blood.
    “Don’t play with knives,” replied the returning dutiful child within Simon.
    “Right. Don’t play with knives. What if you had tripped and fallen down the stairs? You could have impaled yourself, and then where would you be?”
    The vampire envisioned exactly where the child would have been. And where Yulric would have been. And what condiments he would have used. He was very hungry.
    “What did you think you were doing?” asked the adult.
    Simon mumbled his reply, pulling from the eight-year-olds’ handbook a chapter entitled “When You Are Caught.”
    “I’m sorry?” replied his sister, not having any of it.
    “Vanquishing a zombie,” he reluctantly repeated in full voice.
    “Excuse me?”
    Both humans turned to the eldritch voice in the middle of the basement.
    “A what?” it asked.
    “A zombie,” Amanda told it.
    “A what bee?” it asked again.
    “A zombie. He thinks you’re a zombie,” blurted Amanda, who was growing ever more frustrated with this thing. Bad enough that it had ruined last night’s planned rendezvous by turning out to be a hideous monster, but now it was throwing her off her disciplinary stride.
    “And what exactly is a zom-bie?” it inquired, unabated by her rising anger.
    “How can you not know what a zombie is?” Amanda barked.
    “A zombie smart enough to know it is a zombie would not be a zombie,” Simon whispered to his sister. He stepped toward the creature, who had been ready to rend him limb from limb, and explained, “A zombie is an undead creature who rises from the grave to feast on the flesh of the living.”
    “Like a ghoul?” it replied.
    “No,” said Simon.
    “Ah, a revenant then.”
    “No.”
    “A fext?”
    “No, listen. An undead creature—”
    “—which feasts on the flesh of the living,” interrupted Yulric. “The definition does not narrow it down.”
    “Indeed,” said Simon. Zombies of any kind weren’t known for making reasoned arguments. Kicking himself over his misidentification, he turned to his sister. “I deserve to be punished.”
    “For . . . ?” she prompted.
    “Going into the cellar when I was expressly forbidden and the wielding of knives outside of mealtimes,” he said with a suspicious lack of hesitation. “I’ll be off to my room then to think about what I’ve done.”
    “Oh no, you don’t,” Amanda stopped him. “Outside.”
    Simon stomped his feet and made the scrunched-up face of children everywhere. “But why?”
    “Because you’re grounded, you little snot,” Amanda gloated. “I want you to go . . . play.”
    “Play?” whined the boy.
    “Play.” She smiled. “With children.”
    “Mom and Dad never would have made me play.”
    A pall fell over the room. Yulric was intrigued by the sensation. Usually, he was the pall that fell over a room.
    “Library card,” Amanda said coldly.
    “I’m sorry,” Simon said sheepishly. He knew he’d gone too far.
    “Library card,” she repeated, her hand outstretched.
    “Amanda, I’m sorry,” he moaned.
    “Give it,” she demanded.
    Head bowed, the boy reached into his pocket and, with reverence, pulled out a little laminated card. He placed it into her palm, where it was quickly and without ceremony enfolded.
    “You’re right,” she continued. “I’m not Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad pretended not to notice that you liked being sent to your room. They did it because they loved you. But I’m your sister—your big sister—and it’s my job to call you out on your crap. So I want you to go outside. I want you to play. And