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wholesome vampire novel instead?”
    “I don’t need to research vampires, Dad. I’ve been reading about them all my life.” I looked out at the dark garden. Apart from the breeze ruffling the leaves of the big oak tree outside my window, all was still. I stared hard into the shadowed branches. Just the place for a stalker to lurk, clutching a stake and a cross....
    “You sure you’re going to be okay by yourself?” Dad said, breaking my train of thought. “I could stay up.”
    “You look deader than I do, Dad.” I shooed him away, opening the lid of my laptop again. “Go to bed.”
    He cast me a stern backward glance from the doorway. “No more morbid Googling, Xanthe Jane. Promise?”
    “Yeah, whatever.” Making sure he could see the screen, I pulled up the BBC News website. The state of the world hadn’t changed much while I’d been dead. Blah, blah, riots somewhere, economy crashing, political scandal, blah, blah, blah. I clicked randomly through headlines without reading, and after a second I heard my dad’s footsteps moving down the hall. My hearing sharpened as I concentrated; I could hear therustle of the sheets being pulled back, and the creak of the springs as my parents got into bed. Straining my senses to the utmost, I could even catch the soft sound of their breathing. I waited until they’d both slipped into a deep, easy rhythm.
    Then, of course, I went straight back to Fang-Girls.net.
    I’d never thought of myself as a Big Name Fan or anything, but literally hundreds of people had posted messages about how great I’d been as a moderator, and how insightful my commentaries had always been, and how much fun I’d been in the role-playing chatroom, and what a tragedy it was that I’d never finish my epic, multi-fandom, crossover crackfic saga (though there were not, in my opinion, nearly enough comments expressing this latter regret). With the number of times my family had moved, I’d always found it easier to maintain friendships online than in person; I’d never even met most of these people, but I’d still been a part of their lives. And they’d missed me when I went away.
    For a while, at least.
    People may have been sad about my accident, but … fandom went on. My smug glow evaporated as I realized just how much it had gone on in my absence. Four months was like a year, in internet terms. While I’d beenin my coma, whole flamewars had broken out and died down again; at least three new fangroups had formed, mainly over characters I’d never even heard of; several prominent bloggers had flounced off the site over some imagined insult, only to come creeping back again a couple of weeks later. There were masses of squee over a trailer for a new vampire film; twenty-eight of my favorite fanfic authors had new stories up; there had been six vampire-related conventions in various parts of the world, dutifully blogged about by hundreds of fans; new pictures, new book announcements, new reviews, new arguments, all new, new, new....
    It was a good thing I was an immortal vampire ( not a zombie), because it was going to take me at least two years to catch up with all the gossip. My fingers automatically hovered over the keyboard … then hesitated. Normally—if I’d been on holiday or something—I would simply post asking people to let me know the juiciest happenings, but I could hardly do that now. Sure, I could make a new account, a new user name … but then it wouldn’t feel like being me . I was dead to all these people. All my friends.
    Great. Now my mood was hovering dangerously close to angst. I determinedly clicked over to the fanficforum. Nothing like some imaginary angsty vampires to distract you from your problems, even when you’re a real , angsty vampire.
    I was settling down to the latest installment of my favorite long-running fanfic novel (thirty-four chapters, and still going strong) when there was a bing. I nearly fell off my chair in my haste to grab the phone—but it