Patti was uncertain. While it was true Jolene had been a coward in life, all of Patti’s research showed that the life after always seemed to make people stronger, more cocky. It was a big self-esteem boost, with a healthy dose of added evil. Sure, they could act scared, especially in the face of their eminent re-death, but to some little teenager? She couldn’t see it. On the other hand, Jolene was clearly dressed like an elf, and that wasn’t something she’d seen many other vampires stoop to, either.

Was it possible she’d simply stumbled upon the most ineffectual vampire ever? One that she’d be doing a favor – not just to the world, but to it, personally – by killing it? No, not killing, she reminded herself. Slaying was the technical term, the one she’d used to psych herself up for this, to convince herself she could do it.

Things may have gone back to normal for Jolene, but Patti knew things would never be the same before she’d even set foot outside the camp. There were dark things in the world, she now knew, things most people were oblivious to. She could attempt to ignore them – for the first week or so, while she was still trying to figure everything out, she did try – but they kept haunting her from the shadows of her dreams, shapeless, but definitely there, and very, very evil.

The modus operandi for most monsters was rather similar to what she’d seen – luring caretakers out into the night, killing innocents – but it hadn’t taken her long to figure out it had been a vampire. It had a human shape, after all, which narrowed things down a good ways. The moon had been full, so a werewolf was also a possibility, though she didn’t buy that. While they did tend to revert to their human form after death in movies, Patti had a feeling that, in real life, they’d still be wolves until the full moon set. And, besides, werewolves, in their more beastly shapes, didn’t seem smart enough to hang their victims from tree limbs to terrify future prey.

Her parents hadn’t understood, not that she could really blame them. They did their best to be understanding, considering what she’d been through, but even so, they just wouldn’t – or couldn’t – accept the truth. She played along for a while, even went to the psychiatrist for them a couple times, until he started trying to get her to take pills. Her parents agreed with him, of course.

So she left. She couldn’t afford the dullness the drugs would bring, couldn’t let herself chase away the dreams, much as she’d like to be rid of them. They kept her sharp, kept her resolve strong, made her believe that maybe, just maybe, when the time came, she would have a chance to slay at least one of the monsters.

She took the bat. She knew it was just a regular baseball bat, nothing special, even a little beat up, but she felt safe with it. She took her car, too, stopping at a Wal-Mart a few towns over to take a license plate off a car at the edge of the parking lot there, ditching her own after a few more hours of driving, flinging it over the fence at the landfill just outside town.

She’d read somewhere that vampires would likely return to the place they were reborn, but she didn’t dare try to go back to the camp. In her mind, that was the most obvious place to go, which meant there was a chance her parents, or her shrink, would realize she would probably head there. And she couldn’t let herself get caught.

Instead, she pulled her notebook out of the glove compartment. When she’d gotten home, it had been one of the first things she’d done, while everything was still fresh on her mind. She’d written down everything she remembered about her fellow counselors, where they lived, where they went to school, whatever she could think of that she’d spoke with them about, or overheard from other conversations. She’d seen a lot of them the day after, sure, and even some out in direct sunlight. But who knew how long the transformation could take? And there was some lore, including the original Dracula story, that suggested vampires could, in fact, endure a little light.

So, knowing nobody was truly beyond suspicion, she took out her list, read over it once, then again, and then started out on her hunt.