After several lengthy appeals, Arnie won his lawsuit and got a settlement, evening hours, and an interview with Barbara Walters. The international vampire community was incensed and formally voted to have Arnie staked to an anthill at dawn. But after the media firestorm (and the “I told you so” storm from Internet conspiracy nuts), most vampires realized they should have come out a century ago. If nothing else, maybe we all could have avoided the Goth movement.

A select contingent of ancient vampires from across the globe officially notified the United Nations of their presence on Earth and asked the world’s governments to recognize them. They also asked for special leniency in certain medical, legal, and tax issues that were sure to come up. Vampires tend to throw away receipts.

The first year or so was chaos. Mobs, pitchforks, the whole deal. The federal government issued mandatory after-dark curfews. Wal-Mart started selling “Vampire Home Defense Kits,” including holy water, crosses, stakes, mallets, and a book of quick blessings to bar vampires from your door. The fact that these kits were generally useless didn’t bother me nearly as much as the idea of holy water being sold at Wal-Mart.

Humans didn’t seem to understand that they’d lived around vampires all of their lives and never realized it, that they had never been attacked before the Coming Out, never been threatened. And vampires posed even less of a threat now that they had better access to legally marketed blood. Vampires would never get their teenage daughters pregnant or tie up the McDonald’s drive-through. Hell, vampires were less of a threat than Bud McElray.

Nevertheless, vampire safe houses were torched in major cities all over the world. The same international contingent of vampires, who called themselves the World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead, appealed to the governments for help. Vampires were given certain global rights in terms of self-defense against angry mobs, but no real progress was made in laws prosecuting said angry mobs.

In exchange for vampire public assistance programs, the U.S. federal government demanded a certain amount of information. According to the 2000 national census, there are 1.3 million vampires residing in the United States. Of course, less than half of the vampires in the United States trusted the federal government enough to participate in the census. In fact, the results showed that two percent of census takers mysteriously disappeared in the course of their duties.

The census also showed that 63 percent of American vampires live in groups of threes and fours. This is called “nesting,” which vampire behaviorists attribute to their need to bond with other creatures who share their unique needs and abilities. I believe that even after death, we want someone to assure us that our butts don’t look big before we leave the house. Single vampires tend to live alone in historic family homes…with a lot of cats.

Very few surveyed vampires were willing to disclose where they get their blood. And those who did disclose their food sources gave vague answers such as “Willing private donors.” That was less of an issue after companies flooded the market with processed artificial blood, which can also be purchased at Wal-Mart. Synthetic blood was originally designed to counteract dwindling American Red Cross donations and support military surgical units, but vampires found they could live a violence-free unlife on the stuff. This, combined with vampire blood banks offering thirty dollars a pint for real human blood, was more than enough to promote those first semifriendly human-vampire interactions.

An unexpected side effect of the Great Coming Out was the emergence of all-night industries to cater to the needs of “undead Americans.” Electronics stores, delivery services, specialty dentists’ offices, window-tinting shops, and, yes, tax firms. There was a new skilled, taxable labor force available to work at night. And there were new companies and products, such as SPF 500 sun block and blood banks that actually allowed withdrawals. The economic development was incredible. The recession the government had told us for years that we haven’t been having? Gone. With the realization that the undead population generated more above-the-table disposable income, vampires were grudgingly accepted into the living world.

It took me a while to learn the rules. OK, it took the librarian in me weeks of careful, obsessive research to learn the rules. There was a label maker involved. I’d rather not go into it. Here’s what I learned: Forget what you’ve heard from the vamp PR firms. Vampires are not suffering from a skin condition that makes them anemic, sensitive to sunlight, and slow to age. Vampires are magical beings, creatures of the night, children of darkness. But don’t call them that to their faces—it really pisses them off.

The undead are highly sensitive to heat and daylight. Some older vamps can venture out in the day under controlled circumstances with no problem. But since their somewhat unstable molecular structure makes them pretty flammable, you get newbies who spend too much time outdoors and end up as little charcoal briquettes. Every vamp has a different level of reaction. I would find out later that I blister and smell like burnt popcorn, which I hate. That smell never comes out of your clothes.

A vamp’s sensitivity to religious symbols is directly related to his or her religious participation and ethnic background B.D. (before death). Vampire legends and lore predate Christianity by thousands of years. Some vampires wouldn’t react if you shoved a rosary down their pants, though I wouldn’t recommend testing the theory. For others, every mention of Jesus is like being punched in the forehead. The cross reminds them of what they once were, how far they’ve fallen away from God’s favor, the fact that they will never die. I don’t know how I will react yet, so I tend to stay away from churches.

As far as I know, vampires still have souls. They have the same capacity for good and evil that humans do. The problem is that the worst can emerge when a person is no longer answering to the “no stealing, no hitting, no bloodletting” constraints of human society. The bottom line is: if you were a jerk in your original life, you’re probably going to be a bigger undead jerk. If you were a decent person, say a juvenile-services librarian with a secret collection of unicorn figurines, you’re probably going to be a kinder, gentler vampire. There are rare exceptions when a repressed person gets turned and goes buck wild and evil. Generally, they calm down after two hundred or so years. Or they’re beheaded by angry townsfolk.

Also, for some reason, vampires tend to wear a lot of leather. Animal-rights issues aside, I don’t think that’s an indicator of evil. When vampires are turned, they buy leather pants. It’s kind of like when human men get divorced, they get a sad apartment and a boat. It’s a rite of passage.

The undead are, generally, more attractive after being turned. Even vampires who weren’t conventionally attractive in life have a certain sensual sparkle. As long as they keep up with basic hygiene, they will stay that way. In order to hunt and feed, they have to be able to attract prey, yes? Chameleons blend in with their surroundings. Anglerfish have those weird dangly-bait things hanging off their faces. Vampires have bright eyes, glistening white teeth, unnaturally smooth skin, and a certain animal magnetism. If they aren’t pretty, they starve. It’s sort of like life in Los Angeles.

As for the other legends: Vamps do not turn into swirls of fog or bats. They can see themselves in mirrors but not in water, for some reason. They haven’t slept in coffins regularly for almost a hundred years now. Leaving knots untied and scattering seeds to distract them will only work on vampires with OCD. Garlic can’t really hurt them, but they tend to stay away from it because, hello, supersensitive noses. Plus, it acts as a coagulant, making drinking from someone who’s just had Italian food like swallowing chewy Jell-O.

Like most aspects of vampirism, their highly developed sense of smell is both a blessing and a curse. Think about your physiological responses to anger, fear, or even arousal: sweaty palms, increased body temperature, release of certain pheromones. Well, vamps can smell all of that. So, if you’re a jumpy slayer wannabe with plans to stake your first bloodsucker, they can peg you at about fifty paces. The drawback is that layer upon layer of emotions and people can be overwhelming and, if dealing with stinky fear-based feelings, pretty unpleasant.

Vampires are allergic to silver. Touching it feels like a combination of burning, itching, and being forced to lick dry ice. If you want to repel attacking vampires, just tell them you’ve had recent dental work.

They are not invulnerable. A stake through the heart, decapitation, and setting them on fire will kill them, but that would kill most anybody.

You don’t become a vampire just by being bitten. Otherwise, the world would be overrun with bloodsuckers. To make a child, a vampire will feed on a victim until he or she reaches the point of death. This is quite an effort, considering that vampires don’t usually drink much more than a pint at a time. The vampire must be careful, as drinking too much can leave the initiate unconscious and unable to drink the blood that will change him or her. I know, it sounds gross. But when faced with death by sudden gunshot wound, it’s a tempting offer. The process takes a lot out of the vampire sire and is said to be the closest the undead can come to childbirth. It’s why a vampire will only turn a handful of “children” in his or her lifetime.

After taking the sire’s blood, the new vampire dies. The heart stops beating, the body shuts down. For three days, he or she is actually dead. In some very unpleasant cases, newbies have been embalmed and buried by mistake. I once asked an older vampire what happens to the embalmed vamps, but he just glowered at me and muttered some undead curse word.

So, in a way, it’s a good thing that no one found my body. Right?

After my death, I woke up in a stranger’s bedroom.

There were soft, deep blues in the carpet over the polished pine floors, in the thick drapes drawn across the windows. The room was gently lit by an old river-stone fireplace, strange in August. Wood carvings, brass knickknacks, polished bits of glass—little touches that spoke of years of travel—were scattered around the room with a careless sort of charm.

Despite the sluggish pace my brain was keeping, this was alarming. I probably should have mentioned that at this point, I had not had sex in about three years. That’s right, a twenty-seven-year-old almost-virgin librarian.

Take time to absorb the cliché.

It’s not that I didn’t have opportunities for sex. I had plenty of offers from bad dates, anonymous callers with breathing problems, various construction workers. But beyond a rather regrettable “let’s just get it over with” encounter with fellow virgin and close friend Dave Chandler my sophomore year of college and an even more regrettable “my first time was awful, maybe it would be better with someone with more experience” experiment with a teaching assistant my senior year, my sexual repertoire was somewhat limited.

My problem with sex was, along with most of my problems, rooted in my brain. My head was always speeding ahead of my libido. I could never relax enough to let nature take its course. And there was just plain bad sex. My partner mistaking me yelling when I caught my hair on his watchband for cries of passion. Having to go to the emergency room for a broken nose when Justin Tyler head-butted me. The guy who got a mid-thrust leg cramp and whined to the point that I walked out of his apartment half-dressed.

I always hoped for this spark of chemistry and compatibility, a flash of clarity to let me know that this was the guy, this was the time, so I should let go and enjoy myself. But it rarely came. And by no small coincidence, neither did I.

Between these extremely unsatisfying experiences and my apparent inability to develop that “spark” with any man on the planet, I just decided sex wasn’t worth the effort. If I wanted to spend an evening half-dressed, humiliated, and unfulfilled, I’d try amateur night down at the Booby Hatch. So I channeled my energy into my work at the library and obsessively collecting obscure BBC movies on DVD. The Woman in White with Justine Waddell is a life-changer.