Page 3 of A Visitor’s Guide to Guarded Vampires

“Ellery! You get back here this instant.” My father’s voice follows me.

“Let her go, Richard,” my mother says. “She’ll come around. She always does.”

Not this time.

Chapter 2

Ellery

The A train pulls in with a rush of hot, moist air. I find a seat at the back and tip my head to the glass. My bare face is against a New York subway window, and I do not care. That’s how far gone I am.

My hand finds something in my coat pocket. Emergency candy, jammed in there on some other bad day. Thank you, Bill. I bite into the chocolate and let the sugar blunt the edge.

Expecting my parents to become different people is on me. If I don’t want the path they’ve chosen, I have to make another.

My phone buzzes. Willow.

How was brunch?

I’m done.

Ah. A classic Ashford Saturday.

Things have to change, Will.

It’s your life, E. Take it back.

I slump against the hard plastic seat.

Ads plaster the length of the car. Protein bars. Musicals. Anxiety meds. Then a girl in a red puffer jacket standing between towering trees, snow at her feet, the aurora shimmering overhead. Explore Alaska.

She’s alone. No boyfriend cropped half out of frame, no tour group, nobody waiting just out of shot. She wandered out into the dark, looked up at the stars, and called it a vacation. Sat inside the stillness, with no one to push or pull her, under a sky full of energy, crackling and alive, like anything’s possible.

I’m two stops past mine when I remember to get off.

The apartment is two bedrooms in a neighborhood my father approved, furnished by my mother’s decorator. I couldn’t tell you which of it I picked. Everything in here is beige and the gloomy daylight isn’t helping.

I dig the tequila out of the bottom drawer, the bottle my roommate Jenny and I reserve for breakups and getting fired, and pour for one. She’s away with her boyfriend until Sunday.

Sinking into the couch, I stare up at the ceiling.

Willow’s right.

Take it back. Like it came with a receipt.

The girl in the puffer jacket is still in my head when a memory I haven’t touched in years comes up. Curled up with my nanny while my parents were out at some gala, watching Northern Exposure on DVD, Francisca attempting to fast-forward through the jokes she thought I was too young for. The quirky town, all those people just living, miles from anyone, in the wild, on their own terms. It became our thing.

The tequila’s gone warm and I drink the rest of it. It’s terrible. God, I miss her.

I drag my laptop across the coffee table. One search for “Alaska,” and it fills with images of auroras, moose, blush-pink salmon laid out on ice. Mist-covered mountains and miles of woods. For the first time in a long time, I’m sure of something.

Here. I need to go here. But Alaska’s huge. I bring up a map, close my eyes, and drop my finger on the screen. It lands in the middle of nowhere. I zoom in and scroll around for the nearest town with an airport.

Fairbanks.

Thirty-something thousand people, according to the search results. It’s no Manhattan. I swallow down my creeping doubt.

There’s one seat left on a flight in a few hours. My mouse hovers over the booking button.