Regret Has Fangs

The first thing Lyra Moreau learned about grief was that it was quiet.

She was five years old, sitting on the bottom stair of a house that no longer felt like hers, with her shoes on the wrong feet and her small hands folded in her lap the way her mother had taught her. Grown-ups moved around her in dark clothes, speaking in low voices. Someone had given her a cup of warm milk. She hadn't touched it. Every few minutes a woman she didn't know would crouch beside her and say, "Oh, sweetheart," and Lyra would look at her and wait for her to say something that made sense.

None of it made sense. Her mother had kissed her goodnight three days ago, smelling of lavender and the bread she always burned a little. Her father had tucked the blanket under her chin, his cold fingers gentle against her cheek, and promised that when she woke the sun would be up and he would be back. He was a vampire, and the sun was the one thing he could never see, but he always said it anyway, because it made her laugh.

In the morning, there had been sirens. Then there had been strangers. Then there had been this, the bottom stair and the cold milk and the word gone that nobody would say to her directly.

"Lyra."

The voice was soft, and it did not sound like the others. Lyra looked up. A tall woman stood in the doorway with rain on her coat and her dark hair pinned back, as though she had come in a hurry. Her eyes were red, but she was not crying now. She walked across the room, knelt down on the hard floor in her good coat, and held out her hands.

"Do you remember me, little one?"

Lyra did. She had a quiet, careful memory for faces. This was the lady who came to the house on Sunday afternoons with a tin of shortbread and loud, laughing boys. This was her mother's best friend. "Mrs. Ashworth," she whispered.

"Eleanor is fine," the woman said, and her voice cracked slightly. "I made a promise to your mother a long time ago. If anything ever happened, I would look after you. Would you like to come home with me? There are four boys there who have been very worried about you. I think they might drive me mad if I come back without you."

Lyra did not understand much of what had happened, but she understood this: someone had come for her. She took the hand. It was warm and a little unsteady, and she held on.

The Ashworth house was the biggest Lyra had ever seen. It stood at the end of a long gravel drive with tall windows and a wide stone porch, and every window was lit, even though it was still afternoon. Eleanor carried her in out of the rain, and the moment the door opened, four boys came tumbling into the hallway as though they had been standing behind it for hours.

"Is that her?"

"Is she okay?"

"Why is she so small?"

"She's five, Julian."

"Boys," said Eleanor, and they went quiet at once. She set Lyra gently on her feet and kept one hand on her shoulder. "This is Lyra. She is going to live with us now. I want each of you to be very kind to her, and I want you to remember that she has had a very sad week."

The oldest boy stepped forward. He was nine, tall for his age, with serious dark eyes and the posture of someone who had decided to be responsible. "I'm Adrian," he said. "I'm the oldest. You don't have to be scared. Nobody here is going to hurt you."

Lyra stared at him. She had not realized she was scared until he said it. Her lip trembled, and she bit down on it hard.

"That's Damien," Adrian continued, pointing at a boy a year younger with untidy hair and a scab on his chin. "That's Julian, and that's Kieran. Kieran is the baby."

"I'm not a baby," said the smallest boy. He was six, with big thoughtful eyes and a stuffed rabbit tucked under one arm. "I'm six."

"You're the baby of us," Damien said, not unkindly.

Kieran ignored him. He took a step toward Lyra, looked at her for a long moment, and then held out the rabbit. "You can hold him," he said.

"He's good when you're sad. His name is Mr. Buttons."

Lyra looked at the rabbit. It was gray and worn, with one ear nearly chewed through. Something in her chest, which had been tight and frozen since the morning of the sirens, cracked a little. She took the rabbit in both hands and pressed her face into its soft, matted fur, and for the first time in three days, she cried.

Nobody told her to stop. Adrian stood beside her like a guard. Damien awkwardly patted her back. Julian, after hesitating, put his arm around her shoulders. Kieran sat down right on the hallway floor next to her and did not say a word. Eleanor knelt behind them all with a hand over her mouth, and the rain went on tapping against the tall windows.

That night, they put her in the room next to Kieran's. It had a white bed and a window seat and a night-light shaped like a moon, which Julian had gone and found in the attic without being asked. Eleanor tucked her in and sat on the edge of the mattress until Lyra's breathing slowed.

"Your mother was my dearest friend," she said softly. "I'm not going to pretend I can take her place. But I'm going to love you as best I can, Lyra. Every single day. You are not alone."

Lyra clutched Mr. Buttons. "Is Papa coming back?" she whispered. "He said the sun would be up."

Eleanor was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was steady, though it cost her. "No, sweetheart. He isn't. But the sun will be up in the morning. And I'll be here when you wake."

It was not the answer Lyra wanted. But it was honest, and some part of her, small as she was, knew it. She closed her eyes.

In the middle of the night, she woke from a dream she could not remember and found a small shape curled on the floor beside her bed. It was Kieran, wrapped in a blanket with a pillow under his head, snoring faintly. He had come in without a sound to make sure she wasn't alone.

She looked at him for a long time. Then she reached down and pulled the corner of the blanket over his shoulder, and fell asleep again, and did not dream.

The months that followed were not easy, but they were kind.

Adrian walked her to the garden gate every morning and waited until she was safely inside before running off to his own lessons. Damien, who feared nothing, taught her how to ride a bicycle in the long gravel drive, running behind her with one hand on the seat and shouting that he had let go, even when he hadn't. When she fell and scraped her knee, he glared at the nearest boy who laughed until the boy remembered somewhere else he needed to be. Julian saved her the last piece of every cake, and when Eleanor asked why, he shrugged and said, "She needs it more than I do." Kieran followed her everywhere, quietly, the way a small shadow follows a larger one.

By the end of the first year, no one in the house remembered a time before her.

On a spring evening just after her sixth birthday, a visitor arrived at the Ashworth home. She came after dark, and she came alone. She was a tall, striking woman in deep plum velvet, with dark hair twisted low at the nape of her neck and skin so pale it seemed to hold its own light. Lyra, who was sitting on the porch steps with a picture book, looked up and felt something old and familiar stir inside her. The woman smelled of cold air and night jasmine. She smelled, a little, like Papa.

"So this is her," the woman said softly, crouching so that their eyes were level. "Lyra. I am Seraphine Draven. I knew your father very well. And your mother, too. They were my dear friends."

Lyra studied her. Something about the woman made her feel safe, in the same way Eleanor did, but different. Older. "Are you a vampire?" she asked.

Seraphine smiled. It was a lovely smile, sad around the edges. "I am. As was your father. You are a little of both, you know. Human like your mother and something else, like him. One day you will have to choose which part of yourself to follow. But not for a very long time." She reached out and touched Lyra's cheek with cool, gentle fingers. "I only wanted to see you. To make sure you were loved."

"I am," Lyra said at once. "The boys are my brothers. Adrian and Damien and Julian and Kieran. And Eleanor is like my mama now."

Behind Seraphine, a boy stepped out of the shadows. He was about ten, tall and slim, with dark hair and dark, steady eyes. He looked at Lyra with quiet curiosity, and a small, careful smile came onto his face.

"This is my son, Lucien," said Seraphine. "He insisted on coming."

"Hello," said Lucien. He sounded very serious, as though greeting her was an important duty. "I'm sorry about your parents. My mother says they were very good people."

Lyra tilted her head. "Are you a vampire too?"

"Yes. But I don't bite," Lucien said gravely, and she laughed, a real, surprised laugh that startled all of them. It was the first time she had truly laughed since the night of the sirens.

Eleanor, standing in the doorway with her hand against the frame, was crying quietly.

Before Seraphine left that night, she took Eleanor's hands in both of hers. "Thank you," she said. "For taking her in. For loving her. She will need all of you in the years to come."

"Always," Eleanor said. "She is ours."

As the Dravens walked away down the long drive, Lucien looked back once over his shoulder. Lyra waved. After a moment, he raised his own hand, a small, solemn gesture, and then the dark swallowed him.

She did not know it then. She was six years old, sitting on a stone porch with a picture book on her lap and four boys arguing noisily about who got the last biscuit. But a promise had just been made that night, quietly, in the shadows at the edge of her life. And years later, when everything she trusted came crashing down around her, that boy and that promise would be waiting.

For now, though, she was only a little girl who had been loved. Loved so thoroughly and so completely that she could not imagine the day it would be taken away.

She would learn.