07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

Long pause. Then her mother drained the contents of her glass and called, “Janet, another
one, please.”
“Now, Gabriella—” her father said, chiding.
“’Nando—I can’t bear this. The thought that mi hija inocente…”
Meredith said, “Look, I think I can make this easier for you. I already know…well, first,
that I had a twin brother.”
Her parents looked horrified. They clung together, gasping. “Who told you?” her father
demanded. “At that boardinghouse, who could know—?”
Calming down time. “No, no. Dad, I found out—well, Grandpa talked to me.” That was
true enough. He had. Just not about her brother. “Anyway, that was how I got the stave. But the
vampire that hurt us is dead. He was the serial killer, the one who killed Vickie and Sue. His name
was Klaus.”
“You thought that there was only one vampire?” her mother got out. She pronounced the
word the Hispanic way, which Meredith always found more scary. Vahm-peer.
The universe seemed to start moving slowly around Meredith.
“That’s just a guess,” her father said. “We don’t really know that there was more than the
very strong one.”
“But you know about Klaus—how?”
“We saw him. He was the strong one. He killed the security guards at the gate with one
blow each. We moved to a new town. We hoped you would never have to know you had a brother.”
Her father brushed his eyes. “Your grandfather spoke to us, right after the attack. But the next day…
nothing. He couldn’t talk at all.”
Her mother put her face in her hands. She only lifted it to call, “Janet! Another, por
favor!”
“Right away, ma’am.” Meredith looked to the housekeeper’s blue eyes for the solution to
this mystery and found nothing—sympathy, but no help. Janet walked away with the empty glass,
blond French braid receding.
Meredith turned back to her parents, so dark of eye and hair, so olive of skin color. They
were huddling together again, eyes on her.
“Mom, Dad, I know that this is really hard. But I’m going after the kind of people who
hurt Grandpa, and Grandma, and my brother. It’s dangerous, but I have to do it.” She dropped into a
Taekwondo stance. “I mean you did have me trained.”
“But against your own family? You could do that?” her mother cried.
Meredith sat down. She had reached the end of the memories that she and Stefan had
found. “So Klaus didn’t kill him like Grandmother. He took my brother with him.”
“Cristian,” wailed her mother. “He was just un bebé. Three years old! That was when
we found the two of you…and the blood…oh, the blood…”
Her father got up, not to orate, but to put his hand on Meredith’s shoulder. “We thought it
would be easier not to tell you—that you wouldn’t have any memories of what was happening when
we came in. And you don’t, do you?”
Meredith’s eyes were filling with tears. She looked to her mother, trying to silently tell
her she couldn’t understand this.
“He was drinking my blood?” she guessed. “Klaus?”
“No!” cried her father as her mother whispered prayers.
“He was drinking Cristian’s, then.” Meredith was kneeling on the floor now, trying to