SNAP: The World Unfolds by Michele Drier

Hah. I was really out in the deep end now, swimming as fast as I could with no land in sight. The water was salty, though, and I was aware I could float. It would support me and keep me beautifully afloat as long as I didn’t struggle. Floundering around and lashing out pulled my head under water and made me choke. If I stayed calm and swam carefully, I would be comfortable and make headway.
     
    And maybe the fins I saw were dolphins, not sharks.
     
    I dreamt. Hands were trying to hold me as I hung out over an abyss. I shouted at them to pull me back. Several of them let go and I was falling. But I was falling up. I could see the land and the canyon growing smaller as I rose, becoming part of a much larger landscape. I stopped rising and began to waft over the land, occasionally coming down in some soft oasis, sometimes touching the tops of dark forests with wolves howling in the night. The forests were terrifying, which made the oases unbelievable warm and cocooning so I tried to find them. I reached out to put my arms around the next oasis and smiled.
     
    Consciousness came back. I was wrapping the duvet around me and was smiling when I remembered where I was. Lisbet appeared with a tray a few minutes after I pulled the cord.
     
    “Hello, did you sleep well?”
     
    “I did. I had odd dreams but seem to have made some peace. I saw you watching Jean-Louis last night. Are you in love with him?”
     
    Luckily, Lisbet had set the tray down. She covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh, no! We wouldn’t dare have any feelings like that for any of them!” she said and I remembered her Catholic comment last night.
     
    “You seemed to watch him closely when he left.”
     
    She reddened and put her hands over her mouth again. “I can’t help myself sometimes. There are only a few of them that make me feel like that. They’re just so...mesmerizing...they’re so....beautiful. Particularly when they’re trying to charm you. He was dazzling last night. He’s definitely being attractive for you.”
     
    Jean-Louis did seem chameleon-like. When we were working, when we were in L.A,, he was an attractive man. Well, more than attractive, and he made heads turn. Since we arrived in Hungary, he was even more lovely. Lisbet was right, he was beautiful and it was close to impossible to resist. That may have underlain the decision in my dreams.
     
    I was going to stay. I had to take both the wolves and the oases. I needed the adventure, the change that would be mine by staying. SNAP, the vampires and Jean-Louis would be my future.
     
     
     
    “ You again!” Matthais sneered at the Kandeskys in front of him. “I don’t know why you keep coming into the neutrality.”
    “ Because it’s neutral,” hissed Simon. “You’re not supposed to be there either.”
    “ We weren’t,” Matthais smirked, his pale skin translucent in the firelight. “Those were the werewolves and pigs, not us. They didn’t sign the pact for the neutrality.”
    “ Picky point. We know and you know they’re following orders—your orders. I heard one of the Weres say ‘let’s take him to Matthais’. Did you send out the hunting party?”
    Matthais paused. If he admitted he’d given the order for a patrol one night after a full moon, it would be a violation of the pact. On the night of the full moon, the pact allowed the Weres hunting rights in all the forests that abutted Kandesky holdings, a huge tract that covered several thousand acres. Any other time, the swath of land covered by the Pact of Neutrality—land given up by both the Huszars and the Kandeskys—was agreed to be neutral. No hunting, no patrolling, no traps or snares to be set. Only the feral pigs regularly ran through. Anyone else was required to get approval and stay on the paths.
    On the other hand, if he denied it, the Kandeskys could tell if he lied, and that would invoke stronger penalties. Vampire to vampire, Simon and Matthais stared, each probing the other’s