He'd invited me to dinner, but he didn't eat.

Tad did. Tad ate a lot.

Well, boys always do. I mean, look at mealtime in the Ackerman household. It was like something out of a Jack London novel. Only instead of White Fang and the rest of the sled dogs, you have Sleepy,

Dopey, and even Doc, chowing down like it might be their last meal.

At least Tad had good manners. He'd held my chair for me as I'd sat down. He actually employed a napkin, instead of simply wiping his hands on his pants, one of Dopey's favorite tricks. And he made sure I was served first, so there was plenty to go around.

Especially since his father wasn't eating.

But he did sit with us. He sat at the head of the table with a glass of red wine – at least, it looked like wine – and beamed at me as each course was presented. You read that right: courses. I'd never had a meal with courses before. I mean, Andy was a good cook and all, but he usually served everything all at once – you know, entree, salad, rolls, the whole thing at the same time.

At Red Beaumont's house, the courses all came individually, served by waiters with this big flourish; two waiters, so that each of our plates – Tad's and mine, I mean – were put down at the same time, and nobody's food got cold while he or she was waiting for everyone else to be served.

The first course was a consommé, which turned out to have bits of lobster floating in it. That was pretty good. Then came some kind of fancy sea scallops in this tangy green sauce. Then came lamb with garlic mashed potatoes, then salad, a mess of weeds with balsamic vinegar all over them, followed by a tray on which there were all these different kinds of stinky cheeses.

And Mr. Beaumont didn't touch a thing. He said he was on a special diet and had already had his dinner.

And even though I don't believe in vampires, I just kept sitting there wondering what his special diet consisted of, and if Mrs. Fiske and those missing environmentalists had provided any part of it.

I know. I know. But I couldn't help it. It was creeping me out the way he just sat there drinking his wine and smiling as Tad chatted about basketball. From what I could gather – I was having trouble

concentrating, what with wondering why Father D hadn't given me a bottle of holy water when he'd first realized there might be a chance we were dealing with a vampire – Tad was Robert Louis Stevenson's star player.

As I sat there listening to Tad go on about all the three-pointers he'd scored, I realized with a sinking heart that not only was he possibly the descendant of a vampire, but also that, except for kissing, he and I really had no mutual interests. I mean, I don't have a whole lot of time for hobbies, what with homework and the mediating stuff, but I was pretty sure if I'd had an interest, it wouldn't be chasing a ball up and down a wooden court.

But maybe kissing was enough. Maybe kissing was the only thing that mattered, anyway. Maybe kissing could overcome the whole vampire/basketball thing.

Because as we got up from the table to go to the living room, where dessert, I was told, would be served, Tad picked up my hand – which was, by the way, still a bit poison oaky, but he evidently didn't care; there was still a healthy amount of it on the back of his neck, after all – and gave it a squeeze.

And all of a sudden I was convinced that I had probably way overreacted back home when I'd asked Jesse to have Father Dominic call the cops if I wasn't home by midnight. I mean, yeah, there were people who might think Red Beaumont was a vampire, and he certainly may have made his fortune in a creepy way.

But that didn't necessarily make him a bad guy. And we didn't have any actual proof he really had killed all those people. And what about that dead woman who kept showing up in my bedroom? She was convinced Red hadn't killed her. She'd gone to great lengths to assure me that he was innocent of her death, at least. Maybe Mr. Beaumont wasn't that bad.

"I thought you were mad at me," Tad whispered as we followed Yoshi, who was carrying a tray of

coffee – herbal tea for me – into the living room ahead of us.

"Why should I be mad at you?" I asked, curiously.

"Well, last night," Tad whispered, "when I was kissing you – "

All at once I remembered how I'd seen Jesse sitting there, and how I'd screamed bloody murder over it. Blushing, I said, unable to look Tad in the eye, "Oh, that. That was just … I thought … I saw a spider."

"A spider?" Tad pulled me down onto this black leather couch next to him. In front of the couch there was a big coffee table that looked like it was made out of Plexiglas. "In my car?"

"I've got a thing about spiders," I said.

"Oh." Tad looked at me with his sleepy brown eyes. "I thought maybe you thought I was – well, a little forward. Kissing you like that, I mean."

"Oh, no," I said with a laugh that I hoped sounded all sophisticated, as if guys were going around sticking their tongues in my mouth all the time.

"Good," Tad said, and he put his arm around my neck and started pulling me toward him –

But then his dad walked in, and went, "Now, where we were? Oh, yes. Susannah, you were going to tell us all about how your class is trying to raise money to restore the statue of Father Serra that was so unfortunately vandalized last week …"

Tad and I pulled quickly apart.

"Uh, sure," I said. And I started telling the long, boring tale, which actually involved a bake sale, of all things. As I was telling it, Tad reached over to the massive glass coffee table in front of him and picked up a cup of coffee. He put cream and sugar into it, then took a sip.

"And then," I said, really convinced now that the whole thing had been a giant misunderstanding – the thing about Tad's dad, I mean – "we found out it's actually cheaper to get a whole new statue cast than to repair the old one, but then it wouldn't be an authentic . . . well, whoever the artist is, I forget. So we're still trying to figure it out. If we repair the old one, there'll be a seam that will show where the neck was reattached, but we could hide the seam if we raise the collar of Father Serra's cassock. So there's some wrangling going on about the historical accuracy of a high-collared cassock, and – "

It was at this point in my narration that Tad suddenly pitched forward and plowed face-first into my lap.

I blinked down at him. Was I really that boring? God, no wonder no one had ever asked me out