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whining.
    “Where have you been?” he asked, panicked. “The nurse sent her home from school early. They said she has the flu. I gave her three Advil, but her fever’s getting worse.”
    “Mom?” Scarlet moaned, weakly.

    Scarlet lay there, twisting and turning, looking worse than Caitlin had ever seen her. Her forehead was damp with sweat and she groaned in pain, squinting with closed eyes as if fighting off some awful sickness.
    Caitlin’s heart broke at the sight. She ran over to Scarlet’s side, sitting on her bed, placing one hand on her arm and the other on her forehead.
    “You don’t feel warm,” she said. “You feel ice cold. When did this start?”
    “That’s what’s weird,” Caleb said. “Her fever’s getting worse—but in the wrong direction. She’s abnormally low: 71 degrees, and dropping. It doesn’t make sense.”
    “I’m freezing,” Scarlet said.
    Scarlet was ice-cold and clammy to Caitlin’s touch. Caitlin’s heart pounded, unsure what to do: she had never encountered anything like this.
    “Mommy, please. It hurts so much! Please make it stop!” Scarlet groaned.
    Caitlin’s heart sank, wishing she could take the pain away. She sensed this was no ordinary sickness. Scarlet began to cry.
    “What hurts, sweetheart?” Caitlin asked. “You have to tell me. Please, calm down, and tell me,” Caitlin asked firmly, feeling desperate. “Exactly what happened to you? When did this begin?”
    “This morning, when I went to school. I was sitting in class, and my eyes started to hurt. They hurt so bad. The light—it was so bright. And then my head hurt. I went to the nurse, and she shined a light in my eyes, and it made it much worse. Everything is killing. They had to put me in a dark room.”
    “I had to close all these blinds,” Caleb said. “She said the light was killing her.” Caitlin surveyed the room and noticed the closed blinds for the first time. Her heart dropped.
    Here was Scarlet, ice cold to the touch, unable to stand sunlight. Was there any truth, she suddenly wondered, to anything Aiden had said?

    “My stomach—it hurts so bad,” Scarlet said. “I can’t explain it. It’s like I’m hungry and thirsty at the same time. But not for food. For something else.”
    “For what?” Caitlin asked, sweating.
    Suddenly, Scarlet shrieked and curled up into a ball, clutching her stomach. Caitlin was terrified.
    She had never seen her like this.
    “We have to get her to a hospital,” Caitlin yelled. “Call 911. NOW!”
    “Mommy, please, make it stop. Please!”
    Caleb turned to get his phone—but then stopped in his tracks. So did Caitlin.
    Because at that moment there came a sound that shook the entire room, a sound that raised the hair on the back of both of their necks.
    It was a snarl.
    They both stopped, frozen, and turned and looked over at Scarlet.
    Caitlin could barely process what was happening: Scarlet was now sitting bolt upright in bed, and right before her eyes, she was transforming. She let out a snarl so vicious and hair-raising that even Ruth yelped and ran from the room, tail between her legs.
    Caleb, a man Caitlin had never seen scared of anything, looked absolutely petrified, as if he were caged in the room with a wild lion.
    But Scarlet ignored them both: instead, she looked towards the open door.
    In that moment, Caitlin suddenly understood. Suddenly, she had a flashback to some place—she could not remember where—when she herself was feeling the same thing as Scarlet. A hunger pang.
    A need to feed. Not on food. But on blood.
    As she saw that look in Scarlet’s eyes, that desperate look, the look of a wild animal, somehow she knew what she was thinking: she had to get out. To escape. Through that door. To sink her teeth into something.

    It was at that moment that she knew, without a doubt, that Scarlet was indeed a vampire.
    And that she, Caitlin, had once been one, too.
    And that everything that Aiden had said was true.
    Scarlet was the last