Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina

on her return, she saw three, yes, four heads popping in and out of the parlor windows, and the moment they saw her, several hands were waved, and several joyful voices screamed…
    “Here’s a letter from the old gentleman! Come quick, and read it!”
    Beth hurried on in a flutter of suspense. At the door her sisters seized and bore her to the parlor in a triumphal procession, all pointing and all saying at once, “Look there! Look there!” Beth did look, and her already white skin somehow turned impossibly whiter with delight and surprise, for there stood a little cabinet piano, with a letter lying on the glossy lid, directed like a sign board to “Miss Elizabeth March.”
    “For me?” gasped Beth, holding on to Jo and feeling as if she should tumble down, it was such an overwhelming thing altogether.
    “Yes, all for you, my precious! Isn’t it splendid of him? Don’t you think he’s the dearest old man in the world? Here’s the key in the letter,” cried Jo, hugging her sister and offering the note.
    “You read it! I can’t, I feel so queer! Oh, it is too lovely!” and Beth hid her face in Jo’s apron, quite upset by her present.
    Jo opened the paper and began to laugh, for the first words she saw were…
    Miss March:
    Dear Madam, I have had many hats in my life, but I never had any that suited me so well as yours. Heartsease is my favorite flower, and this will always remind me of the gentle giver. I like to pay my debts, so I know you will allow “the old gentleman” to send you something which once belonged to the little granddaughter he lost. With hearty thanks and best wishes, I remain
    Your grateful friend and humble servant,
JAMES LAURENCE.
    “Try it, honey. Let’s hear the sound of the baby pianny,” said Hannah, who always took a share in the family joys and sorrows.
    So Beth tried it, and everyone pronounced it themost remarkable piano ever heard. It had evidently been newly tuned and put in apple-pie order. Beth lovingly touched the beautiful black and white keys and pressed the bright pedals.
    “You’ll have to go and thank him,” said Jo, by way of a joke, for the idea of the child’s really going never entered her head.
    “Yes, I mean to. I guess I’ll go now, before I get frightened thinking about it.” And, to the utter amazement of the assembled family, Beth walked deliberately down the garden, through the hedge, and in at the Laurences’ door.
    “Well, I wish I may die if it ain’t the queerest thing I ever see! The pianny has turned her head! She’d never have gone in her right mind,” cried Hannah, staring after her, while the girls were rendered quite speechless by the miracle.
    They would have been still more amazed if they had seen what Beth did afterward. If you will believe me, she went and knocked at the study door before she gave herself time to think, and when a gruff voice called out, “come in!” she did go in, right up to Mr. Laurence, who looked quite taken aback, and held out her hand, saying, with only a small quaver in her voice, “I came to thank you, sir, for…” But she didn’t finish, for he looked so friendly that she forgot her speech and, only remembering that he had lost the little girl he loved, she put both arms round his neck and kissed him.
    It was the closest Beth had been to a human sinceher own transformation so many years before, and she couldn’t get over the warmth of his flesh, the lovely smell of his blood, sweet like metal, as it throbbed through his veins so loudly she could hear it. Gently, she pressed her nose to his neck, feeling his heart so strongly it was as if her own still beat, and slowly, so slowly she hardly knew she was doing it, opened her mouth and wrenched her fangs into his skin so that his blood gushed through her lips and over her tongue and down her throat like a river of life. Yes, it was life she was giving him, eternal life, born of an impulse so wholesome and pure she might as well have been an infant