Vamps by Nancy A. Collins

Lilith Todd is the darling of her family, one of the vampires born into vampirehood, who still can stand the sunlight and have reflections. But this lasts only until they are 24 or 25, where they lose their reflections permanently and marry to increase their families connections. Her family is one of the thirteen clans of Old Blood Vampires, each ruling one portion of the world, and she attends the elite Bathory academy with other children of the Old Bloods.

Through a willingness to break the rules and drink the blood of strangers, thus breaking the rules, at a vampire-owned club called the Belfry, Lilith is banned from the club for three days. The next night, she and her friends meet to go "slumming", or to stalk drug dealers and drink the blood of drug-addicted humans. But something goes wrong, and there is another vampire girl there, a New Blood named Cally Monture who is there to roll the Drug Dealers for their money so that her mother can pay the rent. But when many of the Drug Dealers turn out to be Vampire Hunters known as Van Helsings, both sets of vampires have to fight if they want to live... a circumstance in which Cally's powers over the weather stand in good stead.

But the fight leads to the death of Tanith Graves, Lilith's best friend, and Cally inadvertantly saves the life of one of the Van Helsings, Peter, without knowing who he is. Peter is discovered too soon to try and destroy Cally, and feels a bit of a debt to her because she saved his life. So when his father tells him that Cally's grandmother was a white witch and that Cally could choose not to be a vampire, Peter determines to try and save her from the Vampire life. But his father and the rest of his family will not help him, for they consider her lost after leading the life of a Vampire.

Cally returns home, and is told by her mother that her father, whom she has never met, was impressed with her recent grades from Varney Academy, and he has decided to send her to the exclusive Bathory Academy, a stronghold of the Old Bloods, where her recent nemesis, Lilith Todd, also goes to school.

Cally reluctantly agrees to go, knowing she will be snubbed by all the Old Bloods who attend the school. And she is snubbed and cut dead by Lilith and her friends, but Cally finds her own friends by sticking up for herself against Lilith's abuse, and several of the teachers support her as well. But when Jules De Laval, Lilith's fiancee, starts paying Cally the attention the insecure Lilith feels should be better spent with her, it's war! But when Lilith bites Cally, she discovers a horrible secret that could just bring her entire world as Daddy's Little Girl crashing down around her. Can she survive the shock... and her own insecurity?

I liked this series, which has definite ties to the real world. Lilith seems to inhabit the world of the very rich upper-crust, where the rich, the famous and the rich and famous hobnob and act like best friends until the knives come out and the backstabbing starts. She's not a particularly likeable person, for all the attempts to humanize her by giving her the weakness of insecurity. She's shallow and arrogant, assured of her high place from the status and wealth of her vampire family. She treats the people around her cruelly and yet whines and cries at the prospect of her father taking away her credit cards.

Cally is a bit better as a character, but she has her own problems. Coming from a family chronically short of money (which isn't a problem for her unseen father), she steals from drug dealers and questionable types to support her mother, who has no self-control when it comes to money. Her mother seems to do nothing but sit around and watch her flat-screen television all day and occasionally try to mother her daughter. Cally deliberately cultivates a more "street" than expensive bitch image, but she does try to fit into her new school and treats the girls there better than Lilith does.

It was interesting to watch Cally clash with Lilith and get praise from her teachers, and finally make some friends of her own among the Old Bloods and Half Breeds of the school. There will be a sequel out soon, and I have my suspicions about where some of the storyline may be heading. It will be very interesting to find out if my suspicions are confirmed.