Amadeo knew when they came to the house.  He could feel it.  Joy and Julien were there, searching for him.  Amadeo got up and straightened the bed covers.  Then he sat up in bed on top of the cover.  He listened, trying to hear what was being said, but couldn't really hear anything.  But almost intense as a vision the memory of the other night, when Julien had nearly killed him came back to him.  Joy he remembered as being mouth-wateringly luscious, and soft, like her brown eyes, like chocolate candies.  But the memory of Julien made Amadeo ache and burn. 

They came up in the elevator.  His father was bringing them to him.  Amadeo watched them come into his room.  His father looked confidant, Julien looked almost scared.   Joy wore a black velvet dress and a huge emerald on a chain around her neck, she didn't even look human.  Athen who Amadeo had never seen before, was glaring at Julien because he had only just been told what Julien had done the night before last.  Athen turned to look into the room.  He was expecting Amadeo to be younger, and Amadeo was expecting Athen to be older.  He was a boy, tall and well built but maybe 17 years in the flesh, with wavy black hair and green eyes, wearing a sharp black suit.  Amadeo thought him as beautiful as the other two, pure and conscious beauty.

"Come, sit on my bed," Amadeo said.  It was obvious Athen thought it very improper but Joy sat right beside him and put an arm around him.  Amadeo asked Athen if he could keep the paintings in his room.  Athen said he could.  Athen didn't seem to be paying much attention to Amadeo.  It was all given to watching the younger Vampyres.

 It seemed to Amadeo that Joy was telling him she knew about the test that he was given when he was 18.  He wanted immortality.  She, for some reason, would enjoy making him a Vampyre.  He wanted it.  He turned to look at her.  She was only inches away from him, and when he looked at her he knew that it would not happen now.  "You're leaving aren't you?" he asked.

"We have to," she said.                                                         

"Are you coming back?" he asked.  He saw his father leave the room with Athen.

"Not for a while maybe.  But you have years to wait." Amadeo felt strange, as though this was something arranged before he had even met her.  He had never made the decision, except to answer his father's test incorrectly, but now that she told him he had to wait, he didn't want to.  "I promise I will do it.  I won't forget you."

She was crying.  She felt forgotten herself.  Even though she was a Vampyre Amadeo didn't find her thoughts hard to see.  It was Julien's blood that had made her a Vampyre, which she had drunk, from a bottle.  Her making Amadeo would prove something in her mind.  Amadeo wanted to laugh, but he saw Julien had not moved the whole time.  Julien worried him.  He just stood staring, not even blinking, right at Amadeo, in fact at his neck and Joy's fingers on it.  But it wasn't jealousy in his eyes.  It was obvious fear.  The fear kept him paralyzed.  What was he afraid of?  Amadeo or himself?

Joy kissed Amadeo.  Her skin was so cold.  He wondered if she had risen from a coffin just to come here.

Athen came back into the room with Steven.  Athen was watching Joy.  Almost the way Julien had been watching.  "Name a holiday and both your children can come to Los Angeles and see their great grandfather," Athen said.  His voice was beautiful, slightly high and honey sweet like a woman's voice, yet he sounded cold.

"Halloween."

That was five months away.

Joy kissed Amadeo again before she left.  She scurried to leave the room with the other's eyes on her.  Julien tore himself away from gazing at Amadeo and the two painting's over his bed and just disappeared.  Athen left last with a shrug of both shoulders and walked slowly from the room. It seemed Athen had a lot of control over the other two.