and so on? No, she had to ask her questions, and if she was going to ask anyone, it
would be Victor.
She'd ask him about coffins first and then move on to things like the ability to slip into
others minds. The conversation she'd overheard between Alessandro and Harper had
her curious. Could she read minds and control others as Alessandro had suggested
Edward may have done with Mabel?
Mabel had insisted Elvi try to read minds and so on when she'd first changed. After all,
Dracula could apparently do it, but Elvi hadn't been able to manage the task and had
decided that only he, as the king of vampires, could do it. But if Edward could do it too,
maybe she just hadn't tried long enough.
Mabel had also wanted to go to Transylvania and find Dracula, though she'd been sure
the name would be different. Mabel had really been into the vampire thing, but then
she wasn't the one who'd been turned. She'd wanted to be, at first asking Elvi to turn
her as well so they could both be vampires. However, no matter how many times Elvi
had bitten her, or how much blood she took, the other woman hadn't turned. Elvi had
finally insisted they stop trying when she'd nearly killed her by taking too much blood.
She was glad she'd given it up when two years ago, Mabel had confessed she was
really rather glad it hadn't worked. After seeing all that Elvi had lost—food, wine,
enjoying the garden in daylight, trips to the beach, barbecues with friends, and so on,
she thought perhaps it wasn't such a great deal.
Aside from all those things, Elvi had found herself faced with a myriad of legal
problems as well since the change. ID for instance. Passports, driver's licenses, and
health cards had to be renewed every so often. All of them had expired within two
years of her change. As for replacing them? Forget about it.
According to all her ED she was sixty‐two. She didn't look sixty‐two. It would have been
a problem. Fortunately, she no longer needed a health card, but traveling was out of
the question without a passport.
Her driver's license had also lapsed, but Elvi hadn't bothered to renew it even though
she could have done so here in town where they knew her and wouldn't question her
being sixty‐two but looking twenty‐five. Renewing it hadn't seemed worth the trouble,
however. She could pretty much walk everywhere in Port Henry, but if she needed the
car to collect groceries or something, Teddy and Barney wouldn't have given her a hard
time. Other than that, she simply didn't drive. The risk was too great should she be
pulled over by an out‐of‐town officer. There was no way she could pass for the sixty‐
two on her driver's license.
In effect, she was pretty much trapped here in Port Henry. But now that Victor and the
others were here she wondered how they dealt with such issues. She had no idea how
old they were, but each of them spoke with a certain formality that suggested they
were older even than herself.
Except for DJ, she thought, and smiled to herself as she recalled the way he'd been
flirting with Mabel all evening. Elvi's friend had obviously found it all rather upsetting
and put on her short‐tempered, irritated old lady act, but Elvi knew under all the
embarrassment the woman was flattered. Mabel was showing her age, but still
attractive, and she wondered if DJ might really like her.
Spotting the pink tinge to the sky outside the bathroom window, Elvi rushed through
the last of her ablutions. She then scampered into her room and climbed into her
coffin with a grimace, wondering when Victor and the others had moved their caskets
in. They'd all arrived in cars so must have had them shipped down, she reasoned, as
she pulled the lid of her own casket shut.
Chapter Nine
"An accidental vampire," Victor muttered to himself as he entered the room he shared
with DJ.
"Victor?" The sleepy question came from the far side of the dark room as he closed the
door. It was followed by rustling as DJ stirred on the pullout couch. "Did you say
something?"
"Yes." Victor snapped on the bedroom light.
DJ sat up, the sheets slipping down to his waist. "I'm up. What's wrong?"
Victor strode across the room, glowering. "Elvi says she's an accidental vampire."
"What?" he asked with confusion.
Victor nodded. "She hasn't learnt any of our laws or rules from her sire because she
doesn't think she has one."
"Well, of course she does," DJ said reasonably. "Someone has to have turned her."
"That's what I said," he admitted. "But she says she went to Mexico with Mabel, was in
a car accident, and woke up a vampire. She's an accidental vampire."
"That's not possible," DJ pointed out. "Maybe the accident is all she remembers.