Chapters 1 Summary

Claire Danvers, a bright, 16-year-old college student with aspirations to go to MIT or Caltech, is sent by her parents to spend her freshman year at Texas Prairie University in the small college town of Morganville, just an hour from her home. Her parents want her to study nearby before venturing out into the wider world. Morganville, however, is a town ruled by vampires, who live and work there alongside the human population. Although on the surface Morganville looks and seems like any other small college town, its infrastructure and amenities are unique: a blood bank to which all humans are required to donate so the vampire population can be sustained, for example; also, portals allowing vampires and their friends to move instantaneously between houses without having to go outdoors.

The novel opens with Claire getting settled in her new lodgings, which she...