Lavinia searched for a dozen blocks until she found a parking place with no street cleaning until next Wednesday. That gave them a week. “Although I guess worst that happens is we get a ticket,” she mused.

Sally climbed out, carrying the duffel bag. Lavinia started to get out but stopped, like she’d just thought of something. She rummaged in the glove compartment, pulled out something and stuck it in the pocket of her leather jacket, the pocket with the raven of Odin stitched on it.

“What’s that?” Sally asked as Lavinia climbed out but she just shrugged. “Sump’n.” She looked embarrassed so Sally let go of it.

They walked the five blocks to Ocean Beach, hand in hand. Sally sweated in her warmest clothes, head shapeless in a sock cap. Vampires led the way and dogged their heels; she thought of ordering them out of sight but they were behaving so she kept quiet.

Sally’s back-of-the-envelope calculations said they could fly across the Pacific Ocean during daylight since they would catch up with the sun and have a nice long day. It looked like the weather would stay fair but her smart phone was getting balkier every day. She pictured it slipping from her nervous hands and plummeting into the endless blue and shivered.

At least worrying about that took her mind off KerriAnne and Walter. Malcolm had told them Jeremy’s tragic story (almost certainly without Jeremy’s permission) and it had all come together for her last night.

My sister has become a moral person.

And she thought I was in league with evil.

“You and me,” Lavinia said as they walked to the beach to fly west with the sun. “Honest to god, this is how I wanted it from the first. Just us.” The word “God” was always in lowercase when Lavinia said it.

“Me too,” Sally said. All that support we could have had … but not if we have to work with evil.

They climbed onto Great Highway and crossed empty lanes, feet grating on sand which drifted over the roadway. The morning was as still and clear as a July morning can be. And there was no fog. Lavinia couldn’t fly without direct sun. They would have had to start from miles inland if there’d been fog. As she darted into a rank public toilet, she realized they could have done that anyway, found a secluded spot to leave the camper for weeks and flown the few extra miles with ease.

When she came out the sky had become cool grey-blue. The last stars vanished and the ocean gleamed mysteriously as they slid down sand hills and onto the beach. The low, ugly rectangle of the Cliff House squatted on the bluffs to the north. There were no seals on Seal Rock, vampires could swim that far.

The prowling vampires at the periphery slunk one by one off to daytime hidey holes.

Lavinia got naked while Sally watched adoringly. They had been together day and night for months now and the sexual heat of the early days was mellowing. But the fierce affection, the intense soul-to-soul contact and the delight in each other showed no signs of fading.

When Lavinia handed her clothes to Sally, she was tempted to see what Lavinia had stuck in the jacket pocket but she didn’t. She stuffed everything into the duffel bag and slung it over her shoulder just as the sun lifted its glad gold head like a chrysanthemum peeping over a fence. The sea kindled into sparkling sapphire.

Lavinia had trained herself to stand calmly neutral in sunlight but now she spread her arms and legs and took the light in, quivering with ecstasy like a dieter who has just found out that hot fudge sundaes cause weight loss.

Sally put her arms around Lavinia from behind so as not to block the sun. She twined her legs around Lavinia’s waist and waited, fists knotted around Lavinia’s breastbone.

Like a feather before a puff of wind, Lavinia surged upwards, barely seeming to feel Sally or the thirty-pound bag. The beach shrank to a thin line between city and sea.

Once Lavinia had enough juju to keep going, Sally swarmed around into the safer haven of arms and lifted knees. Lavinia glued her lips to Sally’s, kissed her with teeth knocking and tongue demanding.

Nothing is more arousing than the ecstasy of someone we love but Sally insisted, “Babe, babe!” around the wild kisses and undulations.

“Huh, huhh, right,” Lavinia gasped. “Flying. Around the fuckin’ world. Yeah.”

She closed her eyes in concentration. Sally, dizzy with the height, focused on her face. The sky was empty except for a few white birds.

For long moments nothing happened. They hovered between sky and sea, as still as a dream.

Without warning the thought of KerriAnne burst into her heart.

It was almost like she hovered right beside Sally. Sally eyes flooded with tears, for the presence was that of little Carrie Yan, the girl who had sobbed for the poor ladybug in the rhyme, even when Sally explained that her house wasn’t really on fire and her children weren’t really gone.

Her sister’s presence grew brighter and stronger by the second. What did it mean?

♦

KerriAnne looked at her small, pale hands in Jeremy’s warm ones. “You’re sure you saw a vampire in the sun?”

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “At the rally I saw the girlfriend, Lavinia? I saw her fly when the sun hit her. I think that part was real, whatever else they might have been up to.” But she saw him realize that Lavinia and Sally worked with the monster. Could she trust anything they said?

She was wretched with nausea. Sally, the only anchor point she’d ever had, was on the side of evil. No matter how bad KerriAnne had been, she’d always known Sally was good.

She kept her eyes on Jeremy’s hands. They were only slightly larger than hers. That felt wrong; her man should have big, rough hands. She was at the edge; she would jump if he told her to. But she had never made a decision for herself.

Jeremy wanted to believe. “How ‘bout this? After Mom and Dad leave, I’ll carry you to the sun windows.” His room faced west but the big windows at the back of the house would get the first rays as the sun came up over the east bay hills. “We’ll stick just, like, a hand into the sun. If anything goes wrong, we’ll pull it back, like that. No harm, no foul. But if it’s good, well, wow, God, that would be so great.” He hid his doubts. “You game?”

She nodded shyly.

If her heart could beat it would have pounded now. She’d nodded yes. She’d stepped over the edge.

“Hold me, hold me, hold me!” she gasped.