In Dreams by Erica Orloff

the fact that the bathroom floor of a school restroom is about as repulsive as you can get. But that won’t help me. The window on the wall of the end stall is too small for me to squeeze out of, even if I wanted to try.
    My cell phone . I pull it out of my back pocket. In the upper-left corner, it reads NO SERVICE . Our school is in a dead zone. Besides, whom would I call? I wouldn’t want Annie to be in danger. And somehow 911 doesn’t seem quite right. “Excuse me, but three vampires from my dream followed me back to reality.”
    I remember Aphrodite’s words. That I’m powerful. I feel anything but. Didn’t my mom say the Keres feast on human flesh? Or blood. Or something. Think, Iris . They are daughters of Nyx, so technically they’re my aunts, and somehow they’ve been transported into my high school. It’s them versus me. Yes, me, athletically challenged and new to the world of gods and goddesses. I don’t know the rules. And I suspect that even if I did, the Keres don’t play by them.
    I wonder for a moment if I can reason with them. I was on the forensics debate team in ninth grade. We won the county championship. Reason with the Keres, though? I doubt it. Epiales didn’t listen toreason. I’d love to explain to them that I can’t control any of this. When I sleep, I always go to the hallway of many doors. And if they know a cure, I’m open to hearing it. I don’t want this. I don’t want this destiny. I don’t want this birthright. So cure me. But I wonder if their cure is my death.
    Click-click-click . I look up again, hoping for an answer, and I see one of them crawling across the ceiling . The ceiling. The rules of gravity and physics, the rules of the mortal world don’t apply to them, not in the same way they apply to me, anyway. She stares down at me, her eyes colder than a snake’s. She doesn’t blink. She hisses, and her head skews at an odd angle, the way no human neck can. I silently pray Ms. Cannalloni, our gym teacher, will walk in right now to do one of her bathroom sweeps, looking for smokers. I picture Ms. C. flinging a dodgeball at the Keres on the ceiling.
    But no one comes to my rescue.
    I have to face them alone.
    Find your power . I try to feel the kind of confidence I think Aphrodite has. Something stirs in the pit of my stomach, but mostly, I think it’s an icy fear. Still.
    I take a deep breath and open the stall door anyway, because I can’t think of a single other thing to do.
    “What do you want?” I say it with as much force and courage as I can muster while petrified.
    They are identical. Triplets. One of them licks her lips. “We wanted to see you for ourselves. The filthy half-breed .” The one on the ceiling leaps down, landing directly in front of me. Even if I wanted to make a break for the door, I can’t now. She puts her face inches from mine and growls at me. Her breath smells like blood.
    “Look,” I exhale, then take a step backward. “I don’t know how to stay out of the Underworld. If I did, I would. I promise you.”
    She grabs my wrist so fast, it’s just a blur. Her fingers are icy as a corpse’s. She pulls my wrist to her mouth. I fight her, pulling back. Please don’t bite me .
    She bares her fangs. The canine tips gleam, their points incredibly sharp.
    She licks the inside of my wrist as I struggle to pull my hand away. Her tongue is cold, too. I see frost forming on my inner wrist.
    I open my mouth to scream, thinking maybe someone will come.
    Then the bathroom door opens and a gaggle of five or six girls walk in. They stop and stare.
    As quickly as she grabbed my hand, the Keresreleases it. The three of them glare at me; their pupils open like cats’ eyes. Then they turn on the heels of their six-inch blood-red stilettos, and click-click-click their way out of the bathroom.
    “Who were those freaks?” asks Dari from my English class.
    “I have no idea,” I say, and roll my eyes. I walk to the sink, my hands shaking. I turn on