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He spun around, looking not ahead but up at the sky. When he saw that the sun was still shining, unobscured by the lowering cloud, he lowered his gaze and saw . . . a girl.

“Hi,” said the girl. She was about his age, and really pretty, but Amos backed up to the mailbox.

She wore no crosses, and her light sundress showed a bare neck and arms, and even a glimpse of her breasts. Amos gulped as she moved and caught the sun, making the dress transparent, so he could see right through it.

“Hi,” the girl said again, and stepped closer.

Amos raised his bracer-bound wrists to make a cross.

“Get back!” he cried. “I don’t know how you walk in the sun, vampire, but you can’t take me! My faith is strong!”

The girl wrinkled her nose, but she stopped.

“I’m not a vampire,” she said. “I’ve been vaccinated like everyone else. Look.”

She rotated her arm to show the inside of her elbow. There was a tattoo there, some kind of bird thing inside a rectangle, with numbers and letters spelling out a code.

“Vacks . . . vexination . . . ,” stumbled Amos. “That’s devil’s work. If you’re human, you wear crosses, else the vampires get you.”

“Not since maybe the last twenty years,” said the girl. “But like you said, if I am a vampire, how come I’m out in the sun?”

Amos shook his head. He didn’t know what to do. The girl stood in his path. She was right about the sun, but even though she wasn’t a vampire, she was a girl, an outsider. He shouldn’t be looking at her, or talking to her. But he couldn’t stop looking.

“I don’t have a problem with crosses, either,” said the girl. She took the three steps to Amos and reached over to touch the crosses around his neck, picking them up one by one, almost fondling them with her long, elegant fingers. Amos stopped breathing and tried to think of prayers he couldn’t remember, prayers to quench lust and . . . sinful stirrings and . . .

He broke away and ran a few yards toward the village. He would have kept going, but the girl laughed. He stopped and looked back.

“Why’re you laughing?”

She stopped and smiled again.

“Just . . . men don’t usually run away from me.”

Amos stood a little straighter. She thought he was a man, which was more than the village girls did.

“What’s your name?” asked the girl. “I’m Tangerine.”

“Amos,” said Amos slowly. “My name is Amos.”

Behind the girl, the fog kept coming down, thick and white and damp.

“It’s good to meet you, Amos. Are you from the village up the mountain?”

Amos nodded his head.

“We just moved in along the road,” said Tangerine. “My dad is working at the observatory.”

Amos nodded again. He knew about the observatory. You could see one of its domes from the northern end of the village, though it was actually on the crest of the other mountain, across the valley.

“You’d better get home before the fog blanks the sun,” he said. “It’s vampire weather.”

Tangerine smiled again. She smiled more than anyone Amos had ever known.

“I told you, I’m vaccinated,” she said. “No vampire will bite me. Hey, could I come visit with you?”

Amos shook his head urgently. He couldn’t imagine the punishment he would earn if he came back with an almost naked outsider woman, one who didn’t even wear a cross.

“It’s lonely back home,” said Tangerine. “I mean, no one lives here, and Dad works. There’s just me and my grandmother most of the time.”

The fog was shrouding the tops of the tallest trees across the road. Amos watched it, and even as he spoke, he wondered why he wasn’t already running back up the road to home.

“What about your mother?”

“She’s dead,” said Tangerine. “She died a long while back.”

Amos could smell the fog now, could almost taste the wetness on his tongue. There could be vampires right there, hidden in that vanguard of cloud, close enough to spring out and be on him in seconds. But he still found it difficult to tear himself away.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, and bolted, calling over his shoulder. “Same time.”

“See you then!” said Tangerine. She waved, and that image stayed