I could make that choice. Here and now, I could take ownership, take back my life again.

"Vampire it is," I whispered. It wasn't much, but it was enough to get me off my knees in the middle of the night, in the middle of the quad.

And this time, I rose on my own terms.

My direction decided, I resituated the empty satchel diagonally across my chest and headed for Walker. The building was dark, locked. I pulled out my key, unlocked the door, and made my way up the stairs.

Each graduate student had a mailbox. I used mine like a scrap-book, kept in it the detritus of my time at Chicago. A ticket stub from a midnight screening of Rocky Horror I'd watched with fellow TAs and lecturers. A ticket stub from a basketball game we played against NYU, where I did my undergraduate work.

I opened my satchel and loaded papers, memorabilia, mementos into the bag. Tangible memories. Evidence of my humanity.

But also in my box was something new - a pink envelope, sealed but unsigned. I unhitched my bag, placed it on the floor at my feet, and slipped my thumb under the seal.

Inside was a scalloped pink card, glittery letters congratulating a girl for her sixth birthday. I grinned, opened it, and found inside, beside an equally glittery unicorn, the signatures of a good chunk of the grad students in the department, most with smartalecky well wishes for my new, fanged life.

I didn't realize until I saw the card that I'd needed it. I needed the connection between my old life and my new one. I needed them to know why I'd disappeared, why I'd stopped showing up to class. It was closure of a kind. It didn't excuse the fact that I hadn't called my friends in the department, hadn't called my mentor or my committee chair. God only knew when I'd have the strength to do that.

But it was something.

For today, it was enough.

So I grabbed my bag, left the key in my mailbox, and walked away.

I returned to the brownstone to find, as promised, a glass of now-cold blood on the kitchen counter. The house was quiet, Mallory still asleep. I was alone, and glad that she wasn't there to witness what I was about to do.

I stared down at the thin orange-red liquid in its glass, and felt the hunger rise again - signaled by the humming of my blood. My pulse quickened, and I didn't need a mirror to know that my eyes had silvered. Still, it was blood. My mind rejected it, even while my body craved it.

Craving won.

I wrapped a hand around the glass, fingers shaking, and raised it, knowing this was truly the end of my life as a human, and the beginning of my life as a vampire. There'd be no more justifications, no more rationalizations.

I lifted the glass to my lips.

I drank.

It took mere seconds for me to empty the glass, and it still wasn't enough. I drained two more bags that I pulled straight from the refrigerator - bags I hadn't bothered to heat or prepare. I drank the liquid - more than I'd ever put into my body at one time - in minutes, finally stopping when I felt my own blood slow again. Three bags of blood, and I'd ingested them like I'd been starved for food and water, denied sustenance for weeks.

When the hunger was sated, I caught sight of the discarded bags on the floor. I was appalled at the act, at the substance, at the fact that I'd actually drunk - willingly drunk - blood.