Sunshine by Robin McKinley

like the worst case of heartburn you can imagine, and then it exploded , and shot down my arms in fiery threads, and there was an almost audible clunk . Or maybe it was audible. I opened my hands. My arms felt as weak as if I’d lifted a boulder. There was a key lying in my right palm.
    â€œYou’re a magic handler—a transmuter,” said the vampire in that strange voice I no longer always found expressionless. I heard him being surprised.
    â€œNot much of one,” I said. “A small stuff-changer only.” The kids from the magic-handling families taught the rest of us some of the slang. Calling a transmuter a stuff-changer was pretty insulting. Almost as bad as calling a sorcerer a charm-twister. “I thought you couldn’t look at me in sunlight.”
    â€œThe sound and smell of magic were too strong to ignore, and your body is shading your hands,” he said.
    I extended the foot with the shackle on it. This was the real moment. My heart was beating as if … there was a vampire in the room. Ha ha ha. My hand was shaking badly, but I found the odd little keyhole, fumbled my new key in it, and turned it.
    Click .
    â€œWell done,” he whispered.
    I looked out the window. It was maybe seven o’clock. I had about twelve hours. I was already exhausted, but I would be running for my life. How far could adrenaline get me? I had a vague but practical idea where I was; the lake itself was a great orienter. All I had to do was keep it on my right, and I would come to where I’d left my car eventually … probably twenty miles, if I remembered the shape of the shore correctly. If I stayed close to the lake I could avoid the bad spot behind the house, and I would have to hope there weren’t any other bad spots between me and my car that I couldn’t get around. Would I be able to change my shackle key into a car key? I doubted the vampires would have folded up my discarded clothing with the key in the jeans pocket and left it for me on the driver’s seat.
    Surely I could do twenty-odd miles in twelve hours, even after the two nights and a day I’d just had.
    I turned to the vampire. I looked at him for the first time that day. For the first time since I’d bled on him. He had shut his eyes again. I stepped out of the sunlight and his eyes opened. I stepped toward him, knelt down beside him. I felt his eyes drop to my bloody breast. My blood on his chest had crusted; he hadn’t tried to wipe it off. Or lick it up.
    â€œGive me your ankle,” I said.
    There was a long pause.
    â€œWhy?” he said at last.
    â€œI don’t like bullies,” I said. “Honor among thieves. Take your pick.”
    He shook his head, slowly. “It is—” There was an even longer pause. “It is a kind thought.” I wondered what depths he’d had to plumb to come up with the word kind . “But it is no use. Bo’s folk encircle this place. The size of the clear area around this house is precisely the size of the area Bo thinks can be kept close-guarded. He will not be wrong about this. You will be able to pass that ring now, in daylight, while all sane vampires are shielded and in repose, but the moment I can move out of this place, so will my guards be moving.”
    And you aren’t, of course, at your best and brightest, I added silently.
    I stood up and stepped back into the sunlight and felt it on my skin, and thought about the big tree where a tiny sapling used to be. There are a lot of trees and tree symbolism in the magic done to ward or contain the Others, because trees are impervious to dark magic. And then I thought about traps, and trapped things, and about when the evil of the dark was clearly evil, and when it was not quite so clearly evil.
    There was a very long pause, while I felt the sunlight soaking through my skin, soaking into the tree that up till a few minutes ago I hadn’t known was there, felt the leaves of