The windowsill was cold on Charity’s fingers.

She faced the sea of hissing faces. Heart pounding, she opened her mouth to speak.

“If,” she began, then had to stop and clear her throat. The assembled faces watched with such icy hunger that she almost gave up. But she remembered gentle Walter LaMont, and she persevered.

How had she known so quickly that Walter was a vampire? Was it that he smelled like the lavender honey potpourri that had always simmered on Grandma Clare’s wood stove? Or that she’d seen him boxing up his whole meal for leftovers? But they’d trusted her with their house and garden full of half human vampires, and the knowledge, unspoken but precious, that Jesse had loved his husband back to humanity. She’d meant it when she told Walter he was welcome in her house.

And she meant what she was going to say now.

“If you will protect me,” she said, voice cracking, “and shield me from any who would harm me…”

The massing crowd hushed, dozens of eyes watching. “And if you will respect the sanctity of my beautiful home, then …” Her voice became strong. “You may come in and be welcome.”

The invisible barrier melted away. “Gently,” she added before they could surge.

One by one the evil undead climbed through the picture window and became persons.

A slender blonde man touched with gentle fingers her framed print of “The Land of Make Believe” by Jaro Hess. Three others, two tall and one short, gathered in front of that wonderful picture, tracing with their fingers the path which ran all around the kingdom of make believe, just as Charity had done when she was a child.

She realized with a start that the short vampire was a child, a little boy with big eyes.

A punk teenager with spiky green hair looked at her hungrily but before he could begin to move on her, the others threw him abruptly out the window.

♦

Jeremy’s horrified eyes darted along the line of vampires, looking for the fat round face of the vampire who had ruined his life.

“It’s not him,” Jeremy whispered, and collapsed back into Sister Amanda’s arms.

The leader stepped to the boundary, lifted a slender white hand, pressed it to that wall. Inch by delicate inch, the hand moved forward. The pale face smiled. “A vampire has been inside this ‘home.’ With persistence, we will enter too before long.”

“What are you talking about? No vampires have been in here, ever.” Malcolm couldn’t know that one second after he’d declared the plaza his home, Jesse Casselberger had whispered a welcome to his husband.

“Sshhh,” the leader said, with that maddening smile. Motion stopped. “You will all die. Unless you send her out to me. Now.”

Sister Amanda laid Jeremy gently down and strode forward. “I will come out to you,” she said, her voice shaking, “if you’ll all swear by anything you hold sacred to spare these people.” She looked desperately sad and resolved.

Malcolm and the three young men moved forward to protect her, but the leader of the vampires looked at her with scorn. “Who the hell are you?”

A delighted hiss rippled through the hordes. “I don’t want you; I want her. I know she’s here; I saw it on the news.” She held up a smart phone which glistened as though it had been licked clean.

“Who are you talking about?”

“My sister,” said the murderously hungry pixie face under the gleaming blonde hair. “I want her. Send her out to me or you will all die!”

The chanting started up again and the hordes pushed another inch forward, and another.