Read Online Interview With a Jewish Vampire by Erica Manfred - Free Book Online

High Priestess they didn’t have much choice. Actually she’d been trying to talk me into joining for years but I’d refused, partly because I felt that if I was going to get religious I’d go to a synagogue and partly because it was in the Bronx.
    I’d allowed Charlene to drag me up there on this freezing night in December—which actually was the darkest night of the year—to a winter solstice ceremony because one of the coven members claimed acquaintance with a vampire, who maybe knew Sheldon. Maybe they all knew each other, there might be some vast vampire network, or at least a telephone tree. Even though I still couldn’t stop thinking about him, I wasn’t planning to throw myself at him in desperation; I was no stalker. I’d been ready to accept that he was just not into me after a week with no call, when Charlene had another idea. After Dr. Cohen called I’d raced up to her apartment, gasping for breath through my tears.
    “ I know I’m supposed to be resigned to my mom dying, Charlene, she’s eighty-one and she’s not going to live forever. But I just can’t deal with it. I can’t. I’ve lost too much—a husband, the family we were supposed to have. I’m forty-one, I’ll probably never have kids. She’s all I’ve got—and you of course.”
    “ Wow. Living forever. Now there’s a concept.”
    “ What on earth do you mean?”
    “ Don’t you know someone who lives forever?” she suggested coyly. “And couldn’t he… arrange for other people to do the same.”
    “ What? Turn my mother into a vampire? That’s the most grotesque idea I ever heard.”
    “ And why is it grotesque? Is Sheldon grotesque? From what you told me he’s a real gentleman. Just because you’re a vampire doesn’t mean you have to be a killer. Haven’t you read Twilight ? Maybe he could teach your mom his secrets—make her a de-fanged immortal.”
    “ Can you just see my mom as a vampire?” I had to laugh. “She’d be mortified. She’s so conventional. How could she keep hanging out with her friends? That’s the only thing she likes to do. They’re all in bed by sunset.”
    “ I’m sure they’ll adjust. They love her and want to keep her around too. If they have to give up early bird specials they’ll survive. I’m sure the food later at night is a whole lot better.”
    “ But my poor mom won’t be able to eat it. She’ll be cruising the streets looking for poor, unsuspecting victims.” I couldn’t imagine my kindly mom, who volunteered at the hard of hearing association and mentored ghetto kids, tracking down human prey. What if she attacked those kids?
    “ Sheldon sounded eminently civilized,” Charlene reassured me. “He hardly attacked you, and showed no interest in sucking your blood.”
    “ I have no idea how he gets blood,” I said. “He says he gets it from animals. I hope that doesn’t mean he kidnaps people’s pets. Maybe he goes hunting for big game in the Catskills, like the Cullens. Can you see my mom doing that? She’s strictly a City girl.”
    “ C’mon, Rhoda, you have no idea how he survives or how she would. The first step is to find him and ask him.”
    “ That seems to be the problem. He’s disappeared.”
    “ I bet Karen knows him. She’s networked up the wazoo. She’s even been invited to dinner at the White House. OK, she crashed, but she didn’t get caught like that blond broad who crashed the White House state dinner. She knows everyone and as soon as vampires got hot she starting bragging that she knows some personally.”
    “ You believe her?’
    “ You would too if you knew her. That girl is the Arianna Huffington of the paranormal. She actually was a consultant on the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer . How do you think they came up with all that ancient vampire and monster lore?”
    Finally I agreed. Maybe Sheldon could save Mom by bringing her into his undead fraternity. If turning her into a vampire was her last chance at life—maybe eternal life