Lucas poured me back into bed, and we worried about what to do. I told him everything that had happened at the clinic and the weird readings that had made the nurse panic. “Never happened before?” he said. I shook my head. “Then—you’re changing. Whether you like it or not. You’re becoming a vampire. A full vampire, I mean.” “I can’t be a full vampire unless I kill. That’s the only way it works.” “How do you know?” Lucas demanded. He lay on the bed with me, though I was beneath the covers and he was on top of them. “Nobody really understands what happens with kids like you, right?” “Almost nobody. But my parents understood. They never would explain most of it, but this part, they were really clear on.” I stared up at the white ceiling, studying the whorls of plaster. “There are only two ways a person becomes a vampire. Either you’re a regular person who gets bitten repeatedly by a vampire and then is killed by the final bite, or you’re a born vampire—like me—who makes a kill.
