Chapter 1

I was the only odd one in a family of vampires.

While my brother discussed the most elegant way to sever an artery, I tended my vegetables.

While my sister sharpened her fangs for the coming feast, I tended my vegetables.

While the whole family prepared to revel beneath the blood moon, I was still tending my vegetables.

I cared so much about growing them well that I converted the cellar into a climate-controlled greenhouse and trained our familiar bats to serve as pollinators.

Mom and Dad took one look at the sea of green filling our grounds. Exasperated but helpless to change me, they took the rest of the family on vacation so they would not have to see it.

For a long while after that, I enjoyed the idyllic peace of country life.

Then one day, as I was picking pests off my cucumbers, a luxury car screeched to a halt outside the gates.

A wealthy young lady in a lace dress pointed at my castle and shrieked coquettishly to her eight brothers,

“Baby wants it turned into a Barbie dream castle! This is where a princess belongs!”

Before I could react, movers began hauling in piles of pink furniture with brutal disregard for everything in their path.

As the young lady passed me, she pinched her nose in disgust.

“That country bumpkin reeks of dirt and manure. Stay away from this sweet, soft little strawberry!”

I stared at my crushed tomatoes in silence for a long moment. At last, gritting my teeth, I made an international call.

“Mom, Dad, an all-you-can-eat buffet just arrived at the house. It’s even your favorite flavor—strawberry.”

…

“Hey, you stupid hick! Are you deaf?”

A shrill voice interrupted my call. Sheng Nuannuan—the girl who called herself Baby—stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at me.

“Baby is talking to you! Hurry up and clear this filthy patch of ground. Can’t you understand human speech?”

The filthy patch of ground she meant was my vegetable garden.

Everything was at its best right now: the eggplants, cucumbers, and cabbages.

And there were the mutant tomatoes I had worked so hard to cultivate, each one as broad as the mouth of a bowl.

Now the furniture movers had trampled all of them, splattering juice everywhere.

Ruining the vegetables was bad enough. The mess would attract pests, too.

I turned, scooped up a dipperful of wood ash, and covered the smashed tomatoes with it.

Then I picked up a broom and calmly swept the area clean.

“It stinks!”

Clutching a doll, Sheng Nuannuan stamped her feet. Then she burrowed into her eldest brother’s arms and complained in an affected little voice,

“Big Brother, Baby can barely breathe with this awful smell.”

“There’s mud everywhere. Baby’s delicate little feet refuse to step in it.”

The eldest Sheng brother soothed her gently, then pulled out a black credit card and contemptuously flicked it into my face.

“We’re requisitioning your house.”

“There’s enough money on that card to keep you comfortable for the rest of your life.”

He looked down at me from on high.

The second Sheng brother folded his arms, his tone thick with the smug superiority of a man bestowing charity.

“Don’t be ungrateful. If Nuannuan hadn’t wanted a castle for her birthday and refused to wait for one to be built, you never would’ve gotten a windfall like this. Take the money and get lost.”

They looked utterly confident, as though there were nothing in the world money could not solve.

I simply picked up the card, slipped it back into the eldest brother’s pocket, and dusted the ash off my hands.

“Not for sale.”

Never mind how much care I had put into every vegetable in this garden.

The castle alone had stood for centuries, and practically everything inside was an antique.

The pittance on his card would not have bought a single floor tile.

The instant I refused, Sheng Nuannuan’s mouth crumpled and tears sprang readily to her eyes.

When the third Sheng brother saw that his sister was about to cry, he immediately roared at his men,

“Why waste your breath on her? Rip out this lousy vegetable patch and cover it with Nuannuan’s favorite pink carpet!”

Emboldened by his support, Sheng Nuannuan added smugly,

“And spray strawberry-scented weed killer everywhere. Strawberries are Baby’s favorite.”

The whole crowd rolled up their sleeves and charged into my garden.

My heart clenched with fury.

But the sun was merciless today. Even beneath the eaves, waves of burning pain washed over me.

All I could do was watch as they ripped up the vegetables I had labored to grow and tossed them into chaotic heaps.

Sheng Nuannuan kept chattering out one outrageous demand after another.

“The castle walls are hideous. Baby wants them covered with eighty-eight thousand rhinestones.”

“And replace that front gate with a giant bow made of solid gold!”

Bzzzz—

A drill started up, its ear-splitting whine instantly filling the courtyard.

At that moment, however, the dense thunder of wings came from deep within the castle.

An instant later, a swarm of bats poured out of their roost.

They flew straight at Sheng Nuannuan and her eight brothers.