Call of the Vampire by Gayla Twist

People who wouldn’t be missed. When my mom was still almost still a girl, he forced her into an arranged marriage with a wealthy businessman. She had two boys and a girl. Then, when she turned twenty-four, he turned her. He did the same with both her siblings. My uncle made it through, but my aunt died during transformation.”
    “What about your dad?” I ventured to ask.
    Jessie shook his head. “Once there were heirs and my mother was turned, there was no more use for him.”
    “Oh,” I said, not really knowing what else to say.
    “Grandfather was a cruel and selfish man. He bullied my mom into turning my brother when he was twenty-four, even though he and his wife never had any children.”
    I made sure not to ask what happened to the wife. “What about you? You’re not twenty-four.” He looked as seventeen as any kid in my class, only better dressed.
    “No, there was an outbreak of scarlet fever when I was seventeen, and I came down with a bad case of it. We were living in Hungary at the time. Hitler was starting to make trouble in Europe, and my grandfather saw the signs. He had just finished shipping the castle to America to be rebuilt and was eager to get away. We’d already booked passage on a steamship and everything. My mom offered to stay behind and nurse me through, but Grandfather didn’t trust her. He knew she would try to spare me the fate of the Vanderlinds if she could. So he turned me.”
    “But you didn’t have any children,” I said.
    “No, and neither did my brother. My sister was younger than me, so my grandfather intended to force her to have a large family.”
    “What happened?”
    “While we were crossing the Atlantic, my grandfather was discovered feasting on a cabin boy. The other passengers were horrified and threw him overboard in the middle of the ocean. We never saw him again.”
    “Didn’t the passengers come after you, then? I mean, you were his family.”
    “No, my mother had insisted that we all book passage under different names and then pretend not to know each other during the voyage. That way, if one of us was caught, the others would be safe.”
    “She sounds very smart.”
    “She is very smart,” he smiled. “Smarter than my grandfather, at least that one time.” In response to my questioning look, he replied, “She’s the one that sent in the cabin boy.”
    I was horrified. Not that she wanted to get rid of her own father, he sounded like a monster, but that she would sacrifice a child. Reading my face, Jessie quickly added, “The boy lived, in case you were wondering. And when we arrived in America, it was discovered that a distant relative he never knew existed had left him a bit of money, so he was able to leave his maritime ways and go to school. He became an engineer.”
    “Where is your sister?” I asked. I had met his brother, Daniel, at the party.
    “She died of old age many years ago. My mother never turned her.”
    “Wow,” was all I could manage for several seconds. “And here I thought my family was screwed up, but we just have the basic Dad-leaves-Mom-for-a-younger-woman thing going on.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” Jessie said. He made a gesture like he was going to reach through the open window and squeeze my hand, but then withdrew. I didn’t know if that was because I was on the inside of the house or because he just thought better of it.
    “It sucks, but there’s nothing I can do about it.” I tried to play it off like it was no big deal, but my voice was a little quavery so he probably didn’t believe me. I hated thinking about my dad.
    “The Bronte Family were vampires,” he said casually, but I knew it was to get my mind off my father.
    This left me so stunned that I forgot to avoid asking questions. “You mean the writers? Wuthering Heights ? Jane Eyre ? Those Brontes?” Jessie nodded, but I still couldn’t take it in. “I thought they all died of consumption.”
    “Actually, one of them was a vampire. I’m