*bonk*

"Ow! Son of a bitch!"

I hadn't been moving all that fast when I bumped into the padded surface, but it still hurt. I dropped back on my little satin pillow, rubbing the smarting spot on my forehead and swearing in three different languages. That's an advantage of having a French mother, a German stepfather, and living in America--wider range of obscenities to choose from. After a moment I put my hands flat on the quilted surface above me and muttered, "So help me, if whoever put the lid down locked it, something is going to die tonight."

I pushed, sitting up at the same time. The lid moved smoothly on its hinges, so I avoided another knock on the noggin. I pulled the switch that was set in the side of the box near the end, and the side dropped, letting me swing my legs over the side. I'll always love Dad for that if for nothing else.

Dad has always favored traditions, so he used to encourage me to stick with the usual 'coffin on the floor' arrangement. I thought that idea was so old fashioned that it should be packed away in mothballs and tissue paper, but Mom asked me privately to not complain too much, out of respect for him. Well, he's the only Dad I've ever known, and he's always treated me like his own blood--no different from Chuck. I quit bitching about the climbing in and out making my backache, but I was sick of my coffin laying on the floor. I felt like some dorky Gen Xer who'd just moved out, and was too damn lazy and cheap to get anything more than a mattress on the floor. I spent my own money to buy a table to put the coffin on, and a step stool to help me mount and dismount.

I think what finally persuaded him was when the table collapsed, dumping me out on the floor while I was, you should pardon the expression, dead to the world. Mom was the one who found me, and it scared her into a faint. She thought some crackpot vampire hunter had somehow managed to sneak in and stake me. The next Christmas I had the biggest present under the tree. How the hell they managed to get enough matching paper to wrap the thing, I'll never know.

The coffin rests on a solid wood pedestal, and the right hand side lowers, so I can get in and out easily. I love it, but I haven't been all that enamored of having it closed since I first woke up in a coffin. Long story--maybe I'll tell you about it some time. Any way, I haven't got the same relationship with my coffin that some vampires have. I'd just as soon sleep on a nice Posturepedic. You just can't freakin' stretch out in a coffin.

I got dressed in black jeans and T-shirt. The T-shirt had a cock-eyed, trembling, foaming at the mouth, fang showing cartoon Chihuahua on the front. I have an extensive collection of 'fringe' T-shirts. *shrug* Some people collect teapots. I wasn't planning on going out, but I decided to make up anyway. Most people who come by the house know what to expect, but you never can tell who, or what, might drop by. I never do much, anyway. I just used the palest powder offered, smudged some kohl around my eyes, and put on some lipstick. I was in a pissed off mood, so I used the black lipstick.

I have to pass through Dad's lab to get to the stairs. He was working on something at the table. He was so engrossed that he didn't even notice me, but that isn't unusual. Dad sort of goes off into his own world when he's doing his experiments. I came up behind him quietly and watched for a minute.

Dad's a sexy beast--ask Mom. He looks like he's about in his early forties, with thick, dark hair, just starting to get some gray at the temples. He's really handsome, and the slight irregularity in his features just makes him look interesting. He was lucky that the Doctor managed to get him a face all in one piece, so that there aren't a lot of scars. He couldn't very well expect it to fit perfectly, given the differences in skeletal structure.

He was adjusting a wire leading to a sensor pad. There was the naked corpse of a large rat clamped to the table before him. The beastie was a crosspatch of stitches. I patted his shoulder, and he jumped a little. "Oh, gutenaben, Schatz. I didn't realize it was so late."

I love to listen to him. He still has that faint Teutonic flair to his speech, and I guess he always will. "Now, there's something novel--you losing track of time. Check my make up."

He peered at me. "Beautiful as ever, but..." He pulled a tissue out of a box on the table, then carefully wiped just at the edge of my right eye. "There. The smudging was uneven."

I kissed him. "Thank God you're comfortable enough with your masculinity to help me with my make up."

"It's nothing, Schatz. I don't know how you can stand it," he patted my cheek affectionately, "not being able to see this pretty face in the mirror."

"You old flatterer." I nodded at the rat. "How goes it?"

He sighed gustily. "Much as always. I'm going to try one more time tonight, with a higher voltage, but I doubt it will make a difference. Perhaps I should return to trying the chemical methods."

"Ew. I hope you don't. The frying smell goes away a lot quicker than the chemical stink."

"Maybe the problem is that the subjects are too small. Perhaps I should try moving up to Guinea pigs."

"Maybe. I suppose they couldn't look any weirder after you shave them than the rats do." I noticed that when he'd loosened his tie, he'd pulled his collar askew. The thick white scar that encircles the base of his neck like a choker necklace was showing. I straightened his collar, concealing it again. "You getting up, or going to bed?"

"Hm? Oh, to bed in a moment. Chuck will be taking over from Brunnie in an hour or so. You know, I'm so glad that your mother's cousin decided to bring his family over. It's wonderful to have more employees--ones that we don't have to worry about."

"Yeah. It's nice that we can actually take some time off now and then without having to close the store. Dad, you didn't by any chance come into my room today, did you?"

He gave me a surprised look. "What on earth for?"

"Never mind."

I went upstairs, and Mom was in the kitchen, wearing her dressing gown and slippers. I gave her the slippers for her birthday--I doubt that such a powerful witch would have chosen fuzzy pink bunny slippers for herself. "Hello, dear." She took a closer look at me. "Uh-oh--black lipstick. You're in a bad mood. Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed?"

"I smacked my head getting up. If I wasn't low on blood, there's be a bruise," I touched my forehead, "Right here." I reached into the refrigerator and located the plastic Tupperware pitcher of blood. "Somebody put the lid down while I was sleeping--again."

"Really?" Someone who's over two centuries old shouldn't be able to look that innocent.

I opened the pitcher and sniffed. "Pig?"

"I'm sorry, but we're out of cow. I have some on order, and it should be here tomorrow." I poured some into a mug, put the pitcher away, then put the mug in the microwave. "You know, your father has a friend that should be able to get us some dog." I gave her a sharp look. "Gathered humanely. They have dogs that donate blood--just like humans."

I nodded. "It would make a change, but don't try to switch the subject. The lid was down."

She sat down at the table. "Why are you accusing me?"

"Oh, I don't know... Because no one else has ever done it?"

"It could have been Chuck. You know how he likes to tease you."

"Mom, Chuck hasn't gone into my room without an invitation since he was thirteen, and I caught him reading my diary."

She put a hand over her heart, looking pained. "You two scared me to death. Poor Chuck."

"Poor Chuck? Are you forgetting that I almost lost a finger? I'm just lucky Chuck bit it off clean, and didn't swallow it." Dad had sewn it back on for me, but it had been a month before it was reattached firmly enough for me to risk taking out the stitches.

"You know he didn't mean to. It was just the first time that he wolfed without the full moon, and he wasn't in control. It wouldn't have happened if you hadn't scared him so badly, and he caught the worst of it. HIS scar isn't going away."

I'd almost ripped one of his ears off. Chuck wasn't the only one who'd lost control. Both of our supernatural natures had kicked in. If Dad hadn't grabbed me, and Mom hadn't thrown up a barrier between us... Well, we might have needed fewer reservations for any family outing, and I won't speculate on who would have been missing--Chuck is a tough booger. The microwave binged, and I took out my breakfast. Sitting down opposite her I began, "Mom..."

She sighed. "All right--I did it. Carmilla, you know how much your sleeping with the lid up worries me."

I took a sip. The blood was perfect--just this side of cooked. "Mom, I'm in a windowless room--in a windowless basement. I don't have to worry about being struck by a stray beam of sunlight unless someone bombs the house."

"Well, I'm your mother, and..."

I finished the sentence with her, "...and a mother worries. I know, but you're going to have to stop being quite so protective."

"You live in the house, you deal with the protectiveness," she said flatly.

I drained the mug, then shoved it away. "Rub my face in it, why don't you?"

She looked a little ashamed. "Milla, you know I don't mean it like that. I'd miss you like crazy, but nothing would make me happier than to see you with a nice place of your own, living like the free and independent woman I know you are. But sweetie, on what we can pay you for helping at the store..."

"I'm not asking for a raise, Mom. You and Dad already pay me more than any other graveyard shift clerk would get at any other store." I sighed. "Damn. You'd think that someone who was technically a corpse wouldn't have to worry about the high cost of living."

I'd been wanting to move into my own place for years. Oh, I had privacy in my room, and I could come and go as I pleased, but it just wasn't the same, damn it. I was creeping up on seventy (granted that about three-fourths of that was as the undead), and I was still living in my parents' basement. Talk about slacker.

Mom and Dad paid me enough for me to afford an apartment, but it would have to be in the bad part of town--the neighborhood where I did my hunting when I needed an infusion of human blood (Didn't happen often--usually when I was sick or injured). I was always assured of finding some misogynistic yo-yo willing to try to mug or rape a girl walking by herself at night. God, I just loved the looks on their faces when they finally realized they'd over reached in a big way.

The lights flickered, and we both glanced toward the basement door. "He's trying a higher voltage," I told her, and she nodded. A second later we heard Dad stomping up the stairs, swearing in German. "It didn't work."

"It never does. I just wish that he'd been able to save his father's notes from the fire."

"Damn peasants. Dad is such a sweetie. How could they think that he'd...?"

"It wasn't him, Milla, and it's hard to entirely blame the peasants. We've told you how badly the first one turned out. The peasants didn't understand that Conrad is a completely different being. Well, you know how it is. It's the same as someone thinking that Chuck must be viciously homicidal, just because he's a werewolf, or I must be malignant and demonic just because I'm a witch."

"The vast majority of the population can be awful jerks sometimes."

"Yes, dear."

Chuck came into the kitchen, buttoning up his shirt. "Hey, Mom." He dropped a kiss on her head. "Hey, wicked older sister."

"You left something out."

"Sorry. Hey, wicked cool older sister."

"Hey, yourself."

Chuck is my baby brother--only eighteen. Okay, so he's actually my half-brother, but make an issue of it, and I'll have to get nasty with you. Chucky was a surprise baby. Mom and Dad hadn't been actually trying to get preggers, but they hadn't been trying to avoid it, either. That's something about we supernatural sorts--we just don't reproduce all that often. I think it has something to do with blending into the environment, or maybe it's that a human population in one area can only support so many predators. Whatever. Any way, Mom getting knocked up was pretty much of a 'what the hell?' experience, but everyone was happy about it. Sometimes he drives me nuts, but I love the little snot.

Chuck looked pretty geeky up until the last year or so. Then he shot up almost four inches--bitched about his bones aching constantly--and he lost his puppy fat. Now baby brother looks goood. He's tall and lean, has lots of sort of dust colored hair and hazel eyes, and a jaw line you could cut paper with. I think it's that lupine thang coming through. Yeah, he has to get active with the tweezers regularly to keep the eyebrows from going straight across, but that's a pretty minor consideration for any woman who isn't a picky bitch.

He went and got a box of cereal and a bowl out of the cabinet. As he opened the drawer for a spoon, he said, "Milla, did they really have...?"

"Yes, Chuck, they really did have a cereal promoted by a werewolf. It was called Fruit Brute."

He put his load on the table, then got the milk and sat down. "You don't need to sound so weary when you say that."

"Well, I must've told you a hundred times. I showed you pictures of it on the Internet."

He fixed his cereal. "It's easy for you to be blase. You're cereal is still selling."

"Yes, I love having my species represented by a cartoon vampire promoting presweetened cereal, with marshmallow bats."

Chuck started to shovel down cereal. Mom cleared her throat. He kept shoveling. She cleared her throat again. This time she kicked him under the table, too. He made a surprised grunt, and she gave him a 'look'. He blinked, and obviously got the message. "Oh, Mom, I had a chance to look over that brochure you got for me." He pulled a little pamphlet out of his back pocket and dropped it on the table--in front of me. "It looks really, really cool. I'm definitely going to think about going to Ducain when I graduate." He looked at me expectantly.

The cover of the pamphlet said Hugh Ducain University--For the Uniquely Gifted Student. The picture was typical of most college brochures--a group of cheerful students gathered in a landscaped quad--but there were some differences. It was under moonlight instead of bright sun, one of the students was as pale as I was, another had ears more pointed than Mister Spock or Legolas, and another was obviously in the first stages of decay. "Hu Du U? Ah, damn, Mom--not this again."

Again the innocent look. "What? Chuck is just reviewing his options for the future." Her eyebrows drew down a little. "He's taking it seriously."

"Sure he is. He asked me yesterday if I thought they offered a degree in Xtreme Motocross."

"Hey," Chuck protested. "Some of those guys make pretty good money."

I pinched his cheek. "And if they have night races, I can come watch you compete. Nice try, Mom."

"Milla, just look at it, will you? What could it hurt?"

The slightly pleading tone in her voice made me feel guilty, but I'd been stubborn about this for a long time. "Honestly, Mom, I don't want to go away to college. Ducain is in freakin' Montana."

"That's one of the pluses. Since the population is so sparse, security is a lot more... secure."

"Yeah? Well, the population may be less dense, but what there is consists mostly of survivalists and paramilitary groups. And I can't believe that they actually print and distribute these things." I picked up the pamphlet and opened it. "Look at this. 'Special dietary needs are provided for in our on campus meal program. A donor program with a nearby town assures our vampiric students of a steady source of healthy, tasty human blood. Our ghoul students are not neglected. Our 'donate your body to science' program keeps us supplied, though sadly the bodies must be kept frozen for lengthy periods of time, so freshness cannot be guaranteed. For those who find that more important, there are several nearby cemeteries, but we require that students exercise caution. Rules are provided upon enrollment.'" I slapped the pamphlet back down. "What if one of those fell into the hands of a human?"

Chuck laughed. "They'd think it was a joke publication--like something put out by National Lampoon."

I had to smile. "You're probably right."

"Milla, I just want you to be happy and secure," said Mom. "I'm not going to be around forever..."

"You're not? You're going pretty damn strong for someone who had to haul ass out of Paris to avoid Madame Guillotine during the Revolution."

She ignored the crack. "Everyone knows that the best way toward security is a good education. It broke my heart that you were turned before you had a chance to attend college."

"I intended to go, Mom--you know that." I really had intended to go to college. I was working to save up enough money to pay my way through when some stupid vamp thought that making a childe out of a powerful witch's daughter would be a quick way to win friends and influence people. Ass hole. He didn't even bother to try to seduce me into it, either. When he couldn't pick me up at the bar I was working at, he just jumped me on the way home. Then he expected Mom and Dad to welcome him into the family as a sort of half-ass son-in-law. I'm not even going to tell you what they did to him. Let me just say that when I woke up three days after I'd been drained, they were still in the process of cleaning the house.

That was in 1955, and back then the only real night courses available were for secretarial skills, and since there weren't many offices open at night, there just didn't seem to be any point. I'd kept an eye on the college scene, and things had opened up a lot since then, but you still had to take a butt-load of courses during the day to qualify for anything I might have been interested in.

Ducain was fairly new on the scene. They'd only been open for about eight or nine years, and Mom had been bugging me to attend for that entire time. They were tiny--never more than about three or four hundred enrolled. That meant a good teacher/student ratio and lots of personalized attention, but it also meant that tuition was pretty damn high. There were a lot of specialized needs that had to be taken into account, after all, and on campus living was required. They couldn't risk exposure by having a landlord come into a student's apartment to find him to all intents and purposes dead.

Dad had come up out of the basement, and gotten himself a glass of milk during the last bit of conversation. "You know, Schatz, you don't really have any excuse not to complete your education now. We finally have an accredited university just for our kind. You can earn a degree in just about anything you want, and do it in a friendly, safe environment. There aren't that many mortals who have that opportunity."

"It's too expensive." When you feel yourself being backed into a corner, bringing up finances is usually a safe bet.

"It is expensive," he agreed, "but not beyond our reach. I can channel the proceeds of a few of my patents into a college fund."

"But that's for your and Mom's old age," I protested.

There was a moment of silence, then we all broke into laughter. Mom might develop a few gray hairs around the turn of the next century, Dad was going to hold on as long as he kept replenishing that green stuff he had instead of blood, and we didn't know how long Chuck was going to live (but we'd run into a lycanthrope who claimed to have been there to greet the Mayflower, and he was still pretty damn spry). Me? I'm already dead, so quality of life in my golden years isn't an issue.

"Not a valid excuse," Mom said firmly. "And I can take on a few more commission jobs now and then--brew a few more potions." She smiled. "If worst comes to worst, I can always call in a favor, have a luck charm placed, and Conrad and I will go get ourselves banned from Vegas and Atlantic City."

Dad said, "This is something you need to do, Schatz. It would be different if you were a stupid girl, but you're not. There are so many things you can do now, with the proper education. Those computers..." he shook his head, "Erstaunlich. I know you like them. Get a degree in programming. Companies will let a really good worker choose their own times, and you can do most of that sort of work from home."

"You could say exactly the same thing about running a phone sex line."

"You joke, kleines Madchen, but you know that your mother and I speak wisdom." Dad came over and rubbed first Chuck's head, then mine. I grumbled at him, trying to push my hair back into order, but he knows I really like it when he does that. "If you will not do it for us or for yourself, then do it for those who are not yet among us. Those yet unborn, and unturned, need their own pioneers. You are the future, Milla--whether you want to be, or not."

I picked up the brochure again. "Chuck, are you really considering going here, or was it just hoo-ha?" This was significant to me. Since Chuck really only had to deal with his 'issues' a few nights a month, there was a real chance for him to go to a regular college--if he could find housing that had, say, a boiler room he could lock himself in on nights of the full moon. That's more for Chuck's protection than the population's. Since he wasn't bitten late in life, he isn't out of control during his changes. It's sort of like the difference between a dog that's been socialized since it was a puppy, and one that grew up feral.

He held up his hand, like he was taking an oath. "True. My coach is having conniptions because he's sure I'm going to be scouted for a full scholarship by an Ivy League school if my times in track keep up. Of course, he'd be more broken hearted if I was gonna be scouted for a team sport--like football."

Chuck didn't go in for team sports. There was too much of a chance that the wolf inside would get over excited by all that macho, testosterone driven physical confrontation. It wouldn't do for him to take a bite out of some full back who tackled him. I mean, never mind the penalty and possible lawsuit--there'd be another lycanthrope on the scene, and lupines are territorial.

I flipped through the brochure again. "It says here that they can give 'get acquainted' tours to eligible and interested candidates. In fact, they have a couple of pictures of some of the 'student hosts'." I didn't mention the fact that one of them was a particularly fine looking male vamp. I'm pretty sure I didn't have to--Mom would have zeroed in on that.

Mom nodded. "You don't have to commit to anything right away. All we're asking, Carmilla, is that you consider it carefully. Give it a chance."

"I'll take the tour." They broke into grins. "But even if I attend, I won't get the full college experience. I'm pretty sure they won't have any fraternity or sorority chapters on campus."

"You might be surprised," said Dad.

"I dunno. From my previous experience with a variety of frat boys," I drawled, "blood suckers and werewolves are too darn civilized to have much to do with them."