Free The Radleys by Matt Haig Page B

eyes as his dad plows on with his introductory lecture on vampirism. Apparently, a lot of great people have been vampires. Painters, poets, philosophers. His dad provides a list:
    Homer.
    Ovid.
    Machiavel i.
    Caravaggio.
    Nietzsche.
    Pretty much al the Romantics, except Wordsworth.
    Bram Stoker. (His antivampire propaganda came during his abstinence years.) Jimi Hendrix.
    “And vampires don’t live forever,” Peter continues, “but if they stick to a strict blood diet and keep out of daylight, they can last a very long time. Vampires over two hundred years old have been known. And some of the strictest ones fake their deaths at a young age, like Byron did on the battlefield in Greece, pretending he had a fever. Then after that they assume a different identity every decade or so.”
    “Byron?” Rowan can’t help but be consoled by this piece of information.
    His father nods, claps a supportive hand on his son’s knee. “He’s stil alive, last I heard. I saw him back in the nineteen eighties. DJing alongside Thomas de Quincey at some party at their cave in Ibiza. Don Juan and DJ Opium they cal ed themselves. God knows if they’re stil at it.”
    Rowan looks at his father and realizes he is more animated than usual. “But it’s not right. We’re freaks.”
    “You’re an intel igent, thoughtful, gifted young man. You are not a freak. You are someone who has overcome a great deal without knowing it. See, the thing is, Rowan, blood is a craving. The feeling it gives is very addictive. It takes over. It makes you very strong, gives you an incredible feeling of power, makes you believe you can do or create anything.”
    Rowan sees his father seem momentarily lost, hypnotized by some memory. “Dad,” he asks nervously, “have you ever kil ed anybody?”
    Peter is clearly troubled by the question. “I tried not to. I tried to stick to blood we could get hold of some other way. Like at the hospital. See, the police never official y acknowledged our existence, but they had special units. Probably stil do, I don’t know. We knew a lot of people who just disappeared. Kil ed. So we tried to be careful. But human blood is best fresh, and sometimes the cravings were so strong, and the feelings it gave us . . . the ‘energy,’ as they say . . .” He looks at Rowan, his eyes offering the rest of the confession. “It’s no way to be,” he says, a quiet sadness infecting his voice. “Your mum was right. Is right. It’s better the way we are now. Even if it means we die younger than we would, even if we have to feel pretty crap most of the time. It’s better to be good. Now listen, wait here til I get you something.”
    Peter disappears out of the room, returning a moment later holding an old paperback with an austere gray cover. He hands it to Rowan, who looks at the title: The Abstainer’s Handbook .
    “What’s this?”
    “It helps. It was written by an anonymous group of abstainers back in the eighties. Read it. Al the answers are in here.”
    Rowan flicks through the yel owing, dog-eared pages. Real words on real paper, making everything seem more true. He reads a couple of sentences.
    “We have to learn that the things we desire are very often the things which could lead to our own self-destruction. We have to learn to give up on our dreams in order to preserve our reality.”
    This has been hidden in the house al these years. Alongside what else?
    Peter sighs. “See, we’re abstainers. We don’t kil or convert anybody anymore. To the outside world, we’re just average human beings.”
    Convert? It made it sound like a religion. Something you were talked into and talked out of.

    Rowan suddenly has one more thing he wants to know. “So were you converted into a vampire?”
    He is disappointed to see his dad shake his head. “No, I’ve always been like this. The Radleys have been like this for generations. For centuries. Radley is a vampire name. It means ‘red meadow’ or something like that. And