She grabbed her shoulder bag and tiptoed out of the room, rushing down the stairs, and out of the house. She had her iPhone out before she hit the long dark driveway, calling for Murray.

The headlights soon appeared in the deserted street as the big limousine coasted up to her. She had never been so glad to see Murray in all her life.

“What’s the matter, Rose!” Murray demanded.

“Just drive,” she said. In the big black leather backseat of the car, she put her head down on her knees and cried. Her head was still aching from the blow, and when she rubbed her forehead she felt the soreness there.

She felt stupid suddenly for ever trusting this man, for ever thinking that she could confide in him, for ever allowing herself to be intimate with him. She felt like a fool. She felt ashamed and she never, never wanted anyone ever to know about it. For the moment, she couldn’t understand the things he’d said. But one thing was clear. She’d trusted him with the most precious secrets of her life, and he’d accused her of borrowing stories from a novel. He’d hurled that heavy book at her, not giving a damn whether he hurt her with it. When she thought of herself naked beside him in that bed, she shuddered.

The following Monday, Rose dropped Professor Gardner Paleston’s classes, giving family problems as a reason for having to cut her schedule. She never intended to see him again. Meanwhile, he was calling her constantly. He came by her house twice, but Aunt Marge agreeably explained that Rose wasn’t home.

“If he comes again,” Rose told Murray, “ask him please to stop bothering me.”

It was a week later, on a Friday night, in a bookstore downtown, that Rose saw a paperback book with the title: The Vampire Lestat.

As she stood in the aisle examining the book, she saw that it was number 2 in some sort of series of novels. Quickly, she found several others. These books were called the Vampire Chronicles.

Halfway home, she was so upset thinking about Gardner again that she was tempted to throw the books away, but she had to admit she was curious. What were these books about? Why did he think she was repeating stories from them?

Since that awful night, Rose had been in a kind of a daze. She’d lost all appetite for school, for friends, for everything. She’d been moving around the campus as if in a half sleep, scared to death of running into Gardner anywhere or everywhere, and her mind kept circling back over what had happened. Maybe it would do her good to read these books and see just how unfair to her Gardner had been.

Rose read the entire weekend. On Monday, she cut class and continued reading, complaining to Marge of an upset stomach. Sometime around Wednesday, she heard voices outside the little house and looked down to see Murray arguing with Gardner Paleston at the curb. Murray was clearly angry, but then so was Gardner. Finally the professor turned and walked off, shaking his head, his hand flung out before him, clawing at the air, and he appeared to be murmuring to himself.

By Friday of that week, Rose felt remarkably calm about the situation. Whatever she was thinking no longer had much to do with Gardner. She was thinking of the books she’d been reading and she was thinking of Uncle Lestan.

She knew now why Gardner had made his distasteful and hostile accusations. Yes, she could see it quite clearly. Gardner was a self-centered and inconsiderate man. But she knew now why he had said what he had said.

Uncle Lestan’s physical description perfectly matched that of “the Vampire Lestat,” and his friend and lover, “Louis de Pointe du Lac” was certainly a dead ringer for the Louis who’d rescued Rose from Amazing Grace Home for Girls. Dead ringer. Now that was a good pun.

But what did it mean that this was the case?

Not for one moment did Rose believe in vampires. Not for one second. She no more believed in vampires than she believed in werewolves, or Bigfoot, or the Yeti, or aliens from outer space, or little winged fairies living in gardens, or elves capturing people in dark woodlands and transporting them to Magonia. She didn’t believe in ghosts, or astral travel, or near-death experiences, or psychics or witches or sorcerers either. Well, maybe she believed in ghosts. And well, maybe she believed in “near-death experiences,” yes. She had known a number of people who had those.

But vampires?

No. She did not believe in them. Whatever the case, she was intrigued by this series of fictional stories about them. And there was not a single description in any of them of the Vampire Lestat, or a single line of dialogue spoken by him, that did not check completely with her vision of Uncle Lestan. But that was sheer coincidence, surely. As for Louis, well, the character with the similar name was indeed exactly like him, yes, but that was sheer coincidence, too, wasn’t it? Well, it had to be! There was no other explanation.

Unless they belonged to some organization, her uncle and this man, in which they engaged in role-playing games of some sophisticated sort modeled after the characters in these novels. But that was ridiculous. Playing roles was one thing. How in the world could anyone make himself look the way Uncle Lestan did?

She felt a strange embarrassment at the very thought of asking Uncle Lestan whether or not he’d read these books. It would be insulting and demeaning to do this, she thought, rather like Gardner insulting her when he threw the book at her face, and went on with his accusations.

But the entire problem began to obsess Rose. Meanwhile she read every last word of every book she could find with these characters.

And the stories in truth amazed her, not only by their complexity and depth, but by the peculiar dark turns they took, and the chronology they laid out for the main character’s moral development. She realized that she was now thinking of Uncle Lestan as that main character. He’d been wounded, shocked, the victim of a series of disasters and adventures. He’d become a wanderer in these books. And his skin was tanned because he kept letting himself suffer the effects of sunlight in a painful attempt to mask his preternatural identity.

No, this is impossible.

She barely noticed when Marge told her that Gardner had gotten hold of their home number and she had had to change it. Rose keyed the new number into her cell and forgot about it. She didn’t use the landline much, but of course it was the principal way to reach Marge. So she had to have that number.

“Do you want to tell me what’s the matter?” Marge asked. “I know something happened.”

Rose shook her head. “Just reading, thinking,” she said. “I’m better now. I’m going back Monday. I have a lot of catching up to do.”