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isn’t necessary, my dear. Since I created this popularity, I know exactly how it is going.”
    She had thought he was part of the shutters, that the tower room was his coffin, that his tomb was the house. But no. He was growing out of the trees, the thick, black, towering hemlocks. But maybe that was part of it. The trees themselves were also a tower.
    I could cut the trees down, she thought. If I need to, I will cut the trees down.
    She wondered why she would need to. She had finished her commitment to the vampire. It was over between them. It was just that she had a complaint to register. She said, “I didn’t think Celeste would be that tired.”
    The vampire shrugged. The trees lifted and fell with his shoulders, swishing blackly. “I didn’t promise degrees of tiredness,” said the vampire.
    Althea wet her lips, and the vampire, laughing, wet his lips.
    She put a hand over her heart, and the vampire, laughing, put a hand over his heart.
    He said, “All the gestures are blood symbols, did you realize that?”
    “But you don’t deal in symbols,” she said.
    “No.”
    Once more, the air thickened around them. The blackness of earth and sky faded to a predawn gray, and the gray was so thick that Althea thought she would suffocate, that the human body could not absorb clouds of wool. She panted, struggling for air, and stumbled away from the hemlocks toward the house.
    The sun rose.
    The tower of the house cast the first shadow of day. A shutter flapped where it had come unfastened. It sounded like a soul unhinged.
    The school had its own broadcast studio.
    The first week she attended high school, Althea had been awestruck. If you were the president of a club, or the captain of a team, you went on television and announced your meetings and games. What would it feel like to choose your outfit in the morning, knowing that you would be on television?
    Kimmie-Jo had not been captain of Varsity Cheerleading when Althea was a freshman; a senior named Katya had held that honor. Katya was tall and lean and looked like an Ethiopian princess. She always wore the most awesome jewelry, and when she was on TV, Althea was overcome with admiration and amazement.
    This year Kimmie-Jo made the cheerleaders’ announcements. Her approach was markedly different. No exotic Cleopatra on the Nile, Kimmie-Jo was a bubblehead whose statements of when the game was, or where the practice was, or when Spirit Day would be, always sounded breathless and questioning, as if Kimmie-Jo was not entirely sure and was hoping a really kind football captain would help her out. Really kind football captains always did.
    TV announcements were a time in which to say terrible things about people’s hair or clothing or degree of nervousness. “It’s Kimmie-Jo again! Does that girl bring her own hairdresser to school?”
    “Oh, wow, look at that outfit. Kimmie-Jo could be one of those TV lifestyle reporters right now, in those same clothes.”
    “That would be a good career for Kimmie-Jo. Clapping and squealing. I think she has that down pretty well.”
    Althea never made cruel comments. If she were on the school TV, she would probably hide behind the principal rather than face the camera. She was filled with admiration for kids with nerve enough to appear live on TV. She dreamed of being the kind of girl who didn’t even bother with notes, but chatted away, perfectly relaxed, as if having fun.
    This afternoon, Mrs. Roundman came on. She was nicely named. Small, slightly chubby, pink-cheeked, relentlessly energetic. Althea felt that the young Mrs. Santa Claus had probably looked like that, pre-white hair and elves, so to speak.
    “Good afternoon.” Mrs. Roundman’s smile vanished quickly, and she became fierce. “We have an unexpected vacancy on Varsity Cheerleading. Tryouts will be limited to those girls who tried out in September. Any girl who wishes to try out must commit four afternoons a week, plus the game schedule. She must have a C average