“Those are all my friends at camp,” I said, thinking my three years there had been some of my best summers. “Look,” I said, pointing. “You can see the lake. It was way up in New York somewhere. I only went swimming once, since it was so cold. Made my toes cramp up.”

“I never went to camp,” Nick said, looking at the faces intently.

“It was one of those ‘Make-a-Wish’camps,” I said. “They kicked me out when they figured out I wasn’t dying anymore.”

“Rachel!” my mother protested. “Not everyone there was dying.”

“Most were.” My mood went somber as my gaze roved over the faces, and I realized I was probably the only one in the picture still alive. I tried to remember the name of the thin black-haired girl standing beside me, not liking it when I couldn’t. She had been my best friend.

“Rachel was asked to not come back after she lost her temper,” my mom said, “not because she was getting well. She got it into her head to punish a little boy for teasing the girls.”

“Little boy,” I scoffed. “He was older than everyone else there and a bully.”

“What did you do?” Nick asked, a glint of amusement in his brown eyes.

I got up to put coffee in my mug. “Threw him into a tree.”

Jenks snickered, and my mother rapped the spoon on the side of the sauce pot. “Don’t be modest. Rachel tapped the ley line the camp was built on and threw him thirty feet up.”

Jenks whistled and Nick’s eyes grew wide. I poured out the coffee, embarrassed. It hadn’t been a very good day. The brat had been about fifteen, and was tormenting the girl whose shoulder my arm was draped over in the picture. I had told him to leave her alone, and when he pushed me down, I lost it. I hadn’t even known how to draw on a ley line; it just kind of happened. The kid landed in a tree, fell, and cut his arm. There had been so much blood, I got scared. The young vamps in the camp all had to take a special overnight trip across the lake until they could dig up the dirt he had bled on and burn it.

My dad had to fly up and sort things out. It was the first time I had used ley lines, and basically the last until I went to college since my dad had tanned my hide but good. I’d been lucky they hadn’t made me leave right then and there.

I went back to the table, looking at him smiling at me from the photo. “Mom, can I have this picture? I lost mine this spring when—a misaligned spell took them out.” I met Nick’s eyes, the shared understanding in them reassuring me he’d say nothing about my death threats.

My mom sidled close. “That’s a nice one of your father,” she said, pulling the photo out and handing it to me before she went back to the stove.