"Night's Edge"

Liz Kerin is an author, playwright, screenwriter, and graduate of the Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She is also the author of The Phantom Forest (2019). She lives in Southern California.

Kerin applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Night's Edge, and reported the following:

From page 69:

She laughs and downs the rest of the blood. I sit up straight and clear my throat, fighting the thrash of my anxious heart. But before I can begin my impeccably rehearsed monologue, she goes to the sink to rinse her glass. She’s not waiting for me to eat. She’s got somewhere to be.

“Are you uh . . . heading to the restaurant?”

This is not how my speech is supposed to start.

“Yeah, gonna meet Luke early so we can finalize the menu.” It’s not that I don’t believe her. I know she and Luke have been working on the menu all week. And yet...

“Mom, we need to talk about the Facebook group,” I blurt. Another deviation from the speech. I’d had such a perfectly smooth ascent planned. I was supposed to speak in a slow, calming voice and maybe even reach for her hand.

“Um ... okay?” She stops in the hallway. I try to read her expression in the dim light. Does she know what I’m getting at? Is she going to play clueless? For how long?

“Sorry, just ... let me start over.” I wish she would come closer. The distance feels wrong. But I keep talking. “I-I love you and our life together is ...” Shit. What am I saying. “We’ve worked really hard to . . . I don’t want anything to come between us.”

There. Okay. Now what?

“You should go to bed. Sandy was right, you seem like you’re getting sick—”

“Mom, we need to talk about—”

“The Facebook group, right? Mia, you’re not making any—”

“I saw those DMs. About Devon.”

Finally, she moves toward me. I slide my hands into the sleeves of my sweatshirt, like I wish I could hide inside of it.

“I-I don’t usually check your messages but you know I look at the page sometimes when I need information about something and I just happened to—”

“Mia, this has nothing to do with you.” She lowers her voice: the calm before a storm.

I search her face for that flicker of aggression, a sign I should put up my shield. But she’s not here for a fight. Not yet, anyway.

Wow, I didn’t realize how potent this page was going to be! There’s a whole universe of drama on the head of this pin. Mia’s mom, Izzy, is a “Sara,” which means she has a vampiric disease called Saratov’s Syndrome that forces her to consume fresh human blood each night. Her daughter, Mia, has been looking after her and providing her with blood since she was ten years old. Now, after thirteen years of relative stability (albeit the deeply codependent kind), her mom’s been acting super shady. She’s lying constantly, missing work. . . and Mia’s just figured out what’s going on by reading her DMs. Izzy has reconnected with Devon, her ex-boyfriend, who infected her with this vampiric disease thirteen years ago. She promised Mia this terrible, violent man was out of their lives forever and would never hurt them again. But now he’s back, and Izzy doesn’t know how to say no to him. It’s a huge turning point in the story, and I can’t believe page 69 reveals so much rich information about these characters and what’s about to happen.

There’s also a nod to the Sara Facebook Group on this page, where Mia and her mom have been getting information about how to handle this disease since 2010. Throughout the Night’s Edge duology (yes, there are two books!), Saras rely heavily on social media to navigate a world that’s not built for them. So this is a great snippet for that reason, too. Definitely representative of the book (both books!) overall.

Visit Liz Kerin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue