"Jessica Hamby, before I invite you in, I have a question." The sweet voice flowed with friendship and warmth, acceptance, and carried with it the smell of Adilyn's fairy blood.

Jessica sat cross-legged on the Bellefleur's front yard, thinking how much easier it would be if Adilyn could just hate her. Her acting like it hadn't happened made it so Jessica was like the only one who remembered. Had to remember.

"Okay," she said, glancing over her shoulder for any Hep-V vampires. Much easier than facing Adilyn.

"Wait, does me just saying 'I invite you in' let you in, regardless of context, or do I have to mean it? Could I say 'I invite you in… NOT' and then you'd… I don't know… fly through the wall?"

Jessica's lips twitched, showing the empty spaces where her fangs would flip down. "I don't know… I think it has to be deliberate. We can't just record you saying 'I invite you in' and then use a tape deck to let all of Fangtasia through the door." Her almost-smile was forgotten, her hands suddenly tightening into fists. "Why? Did someone try to get in? Another vampire?"

Adilyn was quick to reassure her, almost stepping over the boundary of the doorway. "No, no, I was just curious. That wasn't even the question!"

"Okay then. What's the question?"

Adilyn smiled, a bit embarrassed with herself over the misunderstanding. "I was just—you know, thinkin'—I was just thinkin', do you think you'd like it in the house… if that was an option… or would you rather stay outside? I mean, I know my daddy isn't the cleanest fellow, but he tries, and we have, like, a foosball table…"

Jessica allowed herself a thin smile, always remembering she couldn't be too friendly, couldn't charm, couldn't seduce—couldn't inch further into Adilyn's life than the hole she'd left in it. "It's a real nice house, Adi. But you should mind your daddy."

He was an adamant man, if not obstinate. Andy had said Jessica could come inside in the case of an emergency—an emergency, he emphasized—but Adilyn always had to rescind her invitation at the first opportunity. And he said he has a length of silver chair to use if he ever caught Jessica sleeping in his house again. He'd actually dug her a hole in the backyard in case she needed to sleep through the day. No coffin. Just a hole.

"I know, I know what he said. But," Adilyn emphasized, with her fulsome smile in full force. "What if you could come inside and you weren't a danger to me or anyone else?"

Adilyn had such a great smile, Jessica thought. She'd shown it a lot more when her sisters were still alive. "If this is about some herbal supplement or somethin', they don't work, trust me."

Adilyn looked downcast. "Will you give me a chance? Please?"

Jessica didn't have the right to say no to her.

A few minutes later, Adilyn pushed an old-fashioned wheelchair through the front door. It looked comfortable enough, but Jessica didn't understand the ropes of cloth dangling from it.

She looked at Adilyn. "You want to break my spine before I come in?"

"No! No! Nothing like that!" Adilyn said quickly. "You just—sit down. Let me show you."

Reluctantly, Jessica sat, smoothing down her dress and getting comfortable. It was nice—felt freshly reupholstered.

"See, the ropes," Adilyn explained, "are silver chains, but with cloth laced around them so they won't hurt you. Unless you, uh, try to break loose. Here."

Moving fast, Adilyn went to Jessica. There were two ropes: one that went around Jessica's waist and one that bound her feet. Adilyn quickly tied them together, then put on a pair of locks, and her nearness carried the smell of nervous sweat to Jessica. Like fresh coffee in the morning. She found her head tilting ever so slightly forward…

"Does that hurt?" Adilyn asked, stepping back, finished. "Tell me if it hurts."

"It doesn't hurt," Jessica assured her.

"Okay, good. So, is that alright? I can just—push you around and we can hang out. It'll be nice. Like having a—friend."

Jessica had been about to say no. But she caught the hitch in Adilyn's voice, the thought in her brain. She'd deprived Adilyn of all the companionship in the world. She wouldn't do that again. Even if Adilyn wanted her.

Adilyn pushed Jessica inside, rolling her toward the kitchen. "I'm so glad you said yes," her voice came from behind Jessica. "I don't think I could've spent another minute knowing you were out there all alone…"

"I didn't mean to frighten you—"

"You didn't frighten me!" Adilyn patted Jessica on the shoulder. The touch was so quick, so fleeting. "I just don't like you being in some kind of solitary confinement all night. I appreciate you taking care of me and all, but you don't need to be Batman to do it, you know?"

"Adilyn," Jessica said sternly, looking up at Adilyn as best she could. "I'm dangerous. I wish I weren't, but I'm always going to be. Till the day I die."

Adilyn just kept pushing her. "Do you watch Pretty Little Liars?"

"I did," Jessica nodded. "Kinda stopped keeping up with it once—werewolves. Did they ever find out who A was?"

"Oh, honey." Inside the kitchen, Adilyn parked Jessica to hurry to the refrigerator. She began filling a tray with snacks. "You don't mind carrying the food, do ya? I can't manage it and you. I'm one of those fairies with only two arms. Yeah, anyway, I've got like nine episodes on the DVR. We can catch up together!"

Jessica nodded along. "Yeah. Sure. Whatever you want, Adi."

Adilyn stopped to look at her. "You don't have to if you don't want to. Really. We can watch something else."

"No, PLL is fine."

"Okay! Great!" Adilyn suddenly broke out in a fierce grin. "Hey! Guess what I found on eBay?" Reaching into the refrigerator, behind the health foods, she brought out a case of TruBlood. "Don't worry! I checked with Mr. Compton and it's from before the Hep-V stuff, so it's perfectly safe to drink."

Jessica bit her lip. "Adi…"

"You are drinking it, Jessica." Adilyn's tone was as serious as a black thundercloud. "Just… consider it part of guarding me. You need to be fed to heal to take care of me, so not drinking it is like… not having a gun!"

"I don't have a gun."

"If you needed a gun, I mean. My daddy needs a gun to be a cop, you need blood to be a vampire. So you're drinking." Adilyn added a bottle of it to the tray and set the whole thing down on Jessica's lap. End of discussion.

For a few hours, Jessica lost herself in the byzantine problems of four supposedly normal teenage girls. Bad boys, cell phone pictures, red graffiti. She wished that was all she or Adilyn had to deal with it. At least it was on the outside. You could run away from things on the outside. Not guilt. Not loss.

An Ezra scene came up, so Adilyn muted it. Jessica wondered if she knew she could fast-forward. "So, you're, like, always gonna protect me… right?"

"Yeah."

"But… does that make us friends?"

Jessica looked at her. Then she fidgeted with her chains. She could almost feel the chill of the silver through the cloth. "Not if you don't want us to be."

"Well, if you're taking care of me, you have to take care of my emotional wellbeing too. Right? Not just my body."

What Jessica could do to her body… "I think it'd be best for you… emotionally… if I just kept my distance—"

"But you owe me, right? That's what this is? If you owe me, then—I want you to ask me something."

Jessica shifted her feet, the chain straining inside its cloth. "Ask you something?"

"Yeah. Anything. Just say something to me, start a conversation—there's got to be something you want to ask me. Big, small, doesn't matter. Just something."

"I…" Jessica shook her head. "How're your grades?"

"I'm home-schooled. But, I'm a little immortal, so no rush."

"Hunh." Jessica watched Ezra and Aria on the TV screen, wordlessly dancing around this or that. "And, uh, do you have a boyfriend?"

"No."

"Really?" Jessica looked at Adilyn. Cute hair, cute smile, bubbly personality. Did guys not go for that anymore? "What about, uh, Roe?"

"Wade," Adilyn corrected. "He… we didn't work out. He sorta doesn't… do… anything for me anymore. I think I just liked the thought of being in love and having some epic romance," Adilyn was almost sighing, "but there really wasn't much of him for me to fall in love with."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Of course. How could she be expected to fall for someone when any moment he might be ripped apart by bloodsuckers like everyone else in Adi's life.

"There is someone," Adilyn added, perhaps guessing the reason behind Jessica's sudden pout. "Someone I really like."

"Good. That's good. So you're not… official?" Jessica tried to recall the teenage terminology. What was it, something to do with Facebook now? "Officially official?"

"It's complicated. I'm not sure they're open to a relationship. And there's someone… how are things with you and James?"

"Oh? James?" Jessica stopped fidgeting. "Alright, I guess." Her arms dropped to her sides, touching the rope securing her torso. She folded her arms instead. "We're going to break up."

"Oh no!"

"I mean, eventually. I don't think he's very interested in me. I'm not real interested in him. We're just kinda letting things… run their course. I guess it's an immortality thing. No need to rip the Band-Aid right off when it's slowly peeling."

Suddenly, Adilyn giggled. "Has our discussion of our crap love lives cheered you up yet?"

Jessica didn't laugh, but she smiled with her. "I don't need cheering up."

"Could've fooled me."

"I mean—you shouldn't waste your time cheering me up. I feel how I deserve to feel."

Adilyn was all of a sudden looking away, not sure if she could meet Jessica's eyes anymore. "Well, you feeling bad isn't making me feel any better. It's not making anything better."

"What could get worse?" Jessica bit her lip, shook her head. What was she doing, making Adilyn feel like crap? "Hey, uh, do you ever dress up as Iron Man?"

Adilyn's brow wrinkled, even as her face split in an incredulous smile. "Iron Man?"

"Yeah. And then use your fairy fingers to—" Jessica held out her hand, palm upright, then yanked it back as if with recoil. "Ka-pow."

Adilyn burst out laughing. "Next Halloween. You can be Pepper Potts! You have the hair for it."

After five episodes, Adilyn conked out. Even with school closed and her sleeping half the day, she wasn't Jack Bauer. She couldn't go twenty-four hours at full steam. Jessica watched her slump over on the sofa. So much like her sisters. She was never meant to be on her own, cut down to a fraction of herself. Just like Jessica had never been meant to be a vampire. She'd thought she had, thought she was actually better drinking blood and living by night, but now she knew.

She was bad. The only point to her was to stop things that were even worse.

Jessica sat in her wheelchair, looking at Adilyn, and thinking of what life did to people. Marking them for death just cuz a the way they smelled. Giving them families that didn't love them. Giving them loving families and then ripping them away…

"You're crying."

Jessica looked up sharply. What time was it? How long had she been lost in her thoughts? However long it'd been, Adilyn was up now, stretching herself awake, looking at Jessica with weary concern.

"I'm sorry." Jessica wiped her face hurriedly. "I don't have no right to cry. Not in front of you."

Adilyn pinched her lip. "It must be very hard to be a good person and have to live with doin' something so awful."

"I'm not a good person."

Adilyn's mouth contorted, compressed, chin wrinkling, cheeks hollowing. Jessica knew what she was saying on the inside; just too good to let out. Not a good person? That's putting it lightly. You're a monster, Jessica Hamby. Your momma thought so and she was right. Maybe you were a bad person when you were still human, when the worst you did was thinking about kissing your best friend like kissing a girl wasn't the grossest thing a girl could do with another girl, but now you're a vampire, the worst vampire of all, because at least the others can control themselves.

"No!" Adilyn said finally, standing, her bright, pretty face all seriousness. "No, you are good! I can prove it!"

"Adi…"

"All the other vampires… they're all decades and centuries old, right? From before coming out of the coffin? And before TruBlood came around, they all just—they raped and murdered people, every last one of them. Mr. Compton. Mr. Eric. Pam. Even James. They all did horrible things, because they wanted to. You… you just couldn't control yourself. That's not your fault. You didn't make yourself a vampire."

"I wasn't a baby vamp. I should've been able to stop myself…"

"But you didn't!" Adilyn was suddenly so close, her hands on the wheelchair's armrests, her face right up to Jessica's, as if she meant to feed on her. "You didn't and my sisters are dead and I almost was too. But you know what? All those terrible things Pam and Eric and Bill did, I don't see them feeling sorry. I don't see them trying to make up for what they done, trying to redeem themselves. I see you. I see you feeling like shit for what happened and willing to sacrifice every inch of yourself to make it right. That's a good person. It ain't just not doing bad. That old lady, Mrs. Fortenberry, I'm sure she ain't killed no one, and she's one of the worst people I've ever met. You've hurt people, same as her, same as everyone, but you try to make good on it. Now, can you bring my sisters back?"

Jessica blinked, as if Adilyn's stare was suddenly too much for her. "What?"

"Can you bring my sisters back?"

"No!"

"Can you take back what you did?"

"No!"

"Can you go back to that night and do one thing differently?"

Jessica felt herself crying so bad, the blood was like that of deep cuts. Thick, arterial. "No."

"Then you're doing all you can do. How could I ask for more than that?"

Jessica couldn't stop crying. Not when Adilyn still smelled so good—and that made it so much worse. "I'm sorry, Adi… I wish it'd been me. I wish I were dead."

Then Adilyn was holding her head in her arms, hugging Jessica to her stomach. "Well, you ain't. So I guess you're stuck with me." And then she was petting Jessica's hair. Jessica didn't think she'd ever felt something so good in all her life. "I won't ask you to forget what happened. But try to remember—I'm the one you hurt. I'm the one who lost. And I forgive you, Jessica Hamby."

The quiet hours before morning, when the night sounds drop away and you wait, suspended, for joggers, sprinkler systems, the first car engine to turn over. Adilyn got the key to the locks; it jangled as she rolled Jessica out the front door.

"Jessica Hamby, I revoke your invitation," Adilyn said, and Jessica felt a kind of sadness that yearned.

"Unchain me," she said distantly.

Adilyn unlocked and untied the silver at Jessica's feet.

"Adi," Jessica said softly, because it was too hard to look at her and not say anything.

Adilyn looked up at her. The key fisted in a white-knuckled hand. "Yeah?"

"If you feel like you can't be angry with me… like you're obliged to not be angry with me… it's okay to feel however you want to feel."

"You have no idea how I feel."

"That's true," Jessica admitted.

"No, I mean…" Adilyn stood a little, trying to raise, but instead stayed eye level with Jessica in her wheelchair. "I mean…"

"Just unlock me, Adilyn. I should go."

Adilyn extended the key from her fisted hand, held it out, withdrew it, like it was the pin of a grenade and she didn't know whether to put it back or throw the bomb.

"Don't think of this as making up for what happened," Adilyn said, and Jessica had no time to figure out what she meant before she was being kissed—Adilyn's lips and tongue tentative, clumsy, exploring Jessica's mouth in soft strokes, but the blood of her, the flesh of her, the taste was so sweet that just that was enough to give Jessica a contact high. Her fangs popped involuntarily, but nothing more happened. She held herself still as Adilyn kissed her, and when Adilyn was done, the fangs slipped away, unused.

And Jessica stared at Adilyn, whose smile was nervous and giddy and perfect. It wasn't like that with James. It wasn't like that with anyone.

"I'm sorry," Adilyn said. "But I didn't think you'd let me after I unlocked you."

"I don't… know." Jessica coughed and stood. Her lips tingled. Inside her gums, she was aware of precisely how hard her fangs were—how sharp. She didn't know if she wanted to kiss Adilyn again or bite her. But she wanted to do something.

"See you tonight?" Adilyn asked, glancing at the bruise-purple sky where the dawn was coming.

"Yes. Yeah. I'll try to bring a DVD. So we have something—to do." Jessica slipped off the porch, side-stepping Adilyn, trying to pass her but not get too close to her but not just take off in another direction like she was fleeing. Adilyn was too far away to really smell, but Jessica still felt dizzy. "That wheelchair was a really good idea. You're really smart."

"You're really pretty," Adilyn replied, and smiled as she ducked her head, and dodged inside the house, and shut the screen door. "Go, go, the sun's comin' up."

Jessica knew that. As she sped away, she thought she could feel its warmth, even in the darkness. Like she was human again.