There was something off about the conversation, something Lucretia wasn’t saying, something worrisome. Here they were in the middle of the damned cafeteria of the student union, surrounded by kids and adults, talking, laughing, joking, or studying, some listening to iPods, some eating or drinking coffee or sipping on sodas, and she and Lucretia were actually talking about vampires and cults. Something soulfully evil? She eyed her ex-roommate and wondered what had happened to her over the past few years. “What about you, Lucretia?” she asked, watching for the tiniest reaction. “Where are you on the whole vampirism thing?”

Lucretia glanced at the window to the gloomy day beyond. “Sometimes I don’t really know what’s real and what’s not.”

A shiver of apprehension slid down Kristi’s spine. “Seriously?”

“Do I believe in vampires? As in the Hollywood archetype? No.” Lucretia shook her head slowly. Thoughtfully. As if she were wrestling with the idea for the first time. Almost unconsciously, she began shredding her paper napkin.

“Let’s take Hollywood out of it,” Kristi suggested. She should probably drop the entire conversation. It was too weird. Too unreal. But she couldn’t help herself. Her curiosity had been whetted with the mystery of the missing coeds and she’d already decided to look into their disappearances; maybe Lucretia could help. She certainly seemed as if she wanted to.

Lucretia thought hard, then said, “Philosophically, I believe that you can make your own truth. People who hallucinate, whether from drugs or medical conditions, see things that are very real to them. It’s their truth, their frame of reference, though it isn’t, maybe, any one else’s. My grandmother, before she died, saw people who weren’t in the room, and she was certain she’d gone places that she couldn’t have, because she was stuck in a hospital bed in a nursing home. But she described her ‘trips’ with amazing clarity, to the point she nearly convinced us. Was she dreaming? Hallucinating?” Lucretia shrugged her shoulders. “Doesn’t matter. Her reality, her truth was that she had been there.”

“So you’re thinking that the students who are in this cult, they’ve altered their reality. Through what? Mental problems? Drugs?”

“Or maybe desire.”

Kristi felt an icy wind cut through her soul. “Desire?”

Sighing, Lucretia finally brushed the pieces of her napkin aside, piling the tiny bits with the gooey used packets of condiments. “They want to believe it so badly that it’s real. You know what I mean. Wanting something so badly in your life that you can almost taste it. Wanting something…something you would do anything to get.” Her dark eyes zeroed in on Kristi and she grabbed her hand, holding it so tight her knuckles showed white. “We all want something.”