One of My Patients is a Vampire

A woman acquitted of murder but condemned to myth lures a disillusioned psychiatrist into a gothic mystery.

Dr. Ian Greyson does not condone violence. He does not condone biting directly into a KitKat bar. And he certainly does not condone calling one of his patients a vampire.

And yet in chocolate-town Hershey, Pennsylvania, that is exactly what happens. Ian absorbs misery for a living. He treats denture-throwing widows and calico cat smugglers at his strip-mall therapy practice, spending most of his days wondering which supernatural deity he betrayed enough to end up here.

But one day, in the Walmart beside his office, a child wielding a lollipop tells him one of his patients is a vampire. It’s absurd—a joke, a byproduct of a child’s overactive imagination—until a body turns up at his door drained of blood.

And his newest patient is Hershey’s favorite suspect. Years after a jury acquitted Alexandra Abrams of heinous crimes, public imagination has made her a monster again. Her eerie, ethereal presence does little to help.

Ian is seduced by her ability to soothe the ache he has mistaken for a personality. But he quit forensic psychiatry because he was too attracted to the dangerous. Is he defending a wrongfully accused monster, or simply obsessed with one?

And if not her, which one of his patients is a vampire?