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feed, and then they went to the acropolis to pick through the rubble in search of his family portraits and other remnants of his past. One night, they recovered three of his books, completely intact, whereas a dozen others right next to them had been incinerated. They also found the feather mattress Calandra had filled with her instruments, even though the instruments had been crushed to bits. On the third night, they found one of the paintings—the one of Calandra as a little girl. This made Jeno very happy—and very sad.
    After leaving the acropolis, Gertie and Jeno would spend a few hours back on the island. Sometimes they prayed with the others, whose numbers had doubled, and sometimes they went off on their own to stroll along the beach and gaze at the stars. Gertie rarely thought about what had happened there weeks ago with Alexander. She was determined to forget about the past and accept her future. When thoughts of Hector and the Angelis family crept into her mind, she pushed them away, refusing to dwell on them.
    She could sense Jeno undergoing his own struggle to forget the past. Everywhere he looked reminded him of his sister, his life-long companion. Some days, he seemed to cling to the past, like when he gazed at his sister’s portrait; and other days he blocked it out.
    It was easiest to block the past while they were swimming. With their superhuman speed, they could move through the water faster than any other creature, and with their superhuman vision, they could see everything underwater for miles. Gertie used to be terrified to swim in the sea, but as a vampire, she had no fear of it. Jeno taught her how to swoop down deep near the ocean floor, build momentum, and then shoot yards into the air before looping back down again.
    It still wasn’t as magical as the night she had leapt into the ocean after Hector only to be rescued by his father, Hephaestus, in the form of a giant white crane.
    Ouch.
    Oh, Jeno. It was the presence of a god that made that night magical.
    Of course it was.
    After that, he taught her how to block her thoughts from other vampires. It was too hurtful for him to be reminded of her feelings for Hector over and over again, and there was nothing she could say to defend or justify, because her mind was an open book.
    Blocking the mind turned out to be a lot like making the body invisible. It was a defense mechanism, but instead of pulling all the energy inward, a vampire had to pull the energy toward the mind and erect it as a shield. Manipulating energy seemed to come naturally to Gertie, and Jeno made it easy for her to visualize it.
    What didn’t come naturally to her was going without clothes. Her one set of clothing was quickly becoming ragged and worn. She used illusions to make herself look more respectable when they entered the city at night to feed, because otherwise her appearance would only further reinforce the stereotype that vamps were tramps. She washed in the sea every day in her clothes, but that didn’t stop them from becoming more and more threadbare as the days wore on. One night, out of desperation, she snuck into a department store and stole a fresh new set. Jeno was appalled but he soon forgave her.
    Gertie also grew more independent over those next several days. Before, she’d been terrified to leave Jeno’s side, but eventually she was able to make trips into Athens on her own. As a new vampire, she needed to feed almost twice as often as Jeno. Since it was familiar to her, she always went to Omonoia Square.
    Once she was walking near the square when she came across the older women who had tried to lure her with their mesmerizing eyes the night she had gotten lost and Jeno had saved her. At that time, she hadn’t the slightest idea that vampires were creatures of anything more than folklore and mythology. Tonight, the three older women were shocked to recognize her as a fellow vampire. A quick check of their minds revealed that they lived in slums in the