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over for a study group and we were practicing first aid and Lucy didn’t understand what she was seeing. But tonight, for Tyler, Arielle and Nia decided we’d better go outside, in case Lucy saw us again.”
    “Everyone met up here?” I asked. “Arielle and Nia and the others?”
    Kira nodded. “I told them to be quiet, but I guess Lucy woke up and saw us leave. She knew Petra’s number because I wrote it on the refrigerator for Mom, so she called Petra.”
    “Why do their mothers let them come here?” I wondered.
    Kira hunched a shoulder. “I suppose they say they’re going off to do good deeds on some poor stupid immigrant family.”
    “It’s not like that!” Tyler burst out. “Arielle said we all should say we were going to her place for a sleepover, except her, she told her mother she was going to Nia’s. Then we met over on North Avenue, at the bus stop next to our school, and rode over here.”
    I rubbed my eyes. I could picture it all. In fact, when I thought of my own childhood, the exploits I’d committed with my cousin Boom-Boom when my mother thought I was asleep in my attic bed, I could picture it all too well.
    “You headed over to the cemetery, all seven of you together, and then Tyler saw the vampire.”
    “I didn’t really,” Tyler said.
    “No, really you saw a person,” I agreed. “Man or woman?”
    “I don’t know. It was just out of the corner of my eye, it was just like a shadow, I can’t talk to the cops, if I do they’ll tell my dad.” Her voice rose in her anguish.
    I wondered uneasily about Tyler’s home situation, whether her father was a garden-variety domestic tyrant, or if he was actively violent. I decided to sic Petra on that and keep my focus on what had happened in the cemetery.
    “And the dead man—who was he?”
    “I don’t know! Don’t keep acting like I killed him or something, I never saw him before.”
    I glanced at the clock on the television. It was almost three. If Tyler or Kira knew anything about Miles Wuchnik, the dead detective, my brain wasn’t working well enough to come up with a clever question to pry it out of them. In any event, Arielle and Nia were the driving forces of the group; they had chosen the site. But did they have enough power over the other Carmilla club members to get them to engage in murder?
    “What did Arielle and the others say when they left you?” I asked the girls.
    “This one girl, Jessie Morgenstern, her dad gives a lot of money to, like, politicians. She said her dad would get someone who works for the mayor to take care of things with the police,” Kira said. “But me and Beata, we can’t talk to the police, our moms could get deported, so Beata, she went back to her place, she just lives two blocks from here. Her mom and mine work at the same hotel.”
    “Enough for tonight.” I got up. “Tyler, are your parents really out of town? Where were you going to spend the night?”
    “I thought maybe Arielle—or even Nia—but I asked them before they ran off, and they—they were mean, they said I was a coward and a crybaby and they wouldn’t ever talk to me again and they’d see no one at Vina Fields ever did, either—” Tears rolled down the sides of her face.
    “She can’t stay here,” Kira said stonily. “Me and Lucy, we share a room, and my mom has a bed, and that’s it.”
    “I’ll take her,” Petra said. “Your folks coming back tomorrow, Tyler? I’ll take you home in the afternoon and tell them you were meeting with my book group.”
    I blew my cousin a grateful kiss. Before she left, I went over to inspect the place on Tyler’s palm where Arielle had stuck her. There was a small puncture hole, covered with a thin crust of dried blood. I told Petra to clean it with peroxide when they got to her place.
    “If it starts swelling, or you find any red blotches on you, you get to a doctor on the instant,” I warned her. “You can make up any story you like for your dad, but you ladies are