Showers, Flowers, and Fangs

by Aidan Wayne

  “That is gross, and you knowing that is gross,” Darren told her solemnly.

  “I’m just saying. He doesn’t sound like a very good vampire.”

  Darren felt the urge to defend Vlad’s honor on his vampiric behalf. “Well, he’s new at it, that’s all,” he said, remembering not to give too much away. That was Vlad’s business. “He’s still learning about that stuff. Maybe when I convince him to hang out with all of us, you could give him some pointers.”

  “Could she?” Trisha asked.

  Bethany shook her head. “Probably not. I can usually smell periods because they’re obvious, and the smell is being excreted—”

  “Way to make it sound even more gross, Beth.”

  “—but I can’t smell blood inside a body,” Bethany continued, ignoring Darren. “My nose isn’t built for that.”

  “I’m pretty sure vampires don’t just smell blood,” Trisha said thoughtfully. “I mean, they do, but I think they also… sense it? Somehow?” She shrugged. “He’d know more than I do.”

  He really wouldn’t, Darren thought with an inward sigh. “Oh well,” he said. “Worth a shot.”

  “So how come he never leaves his house?” Trisha asked, kicking out her legs.

  “I really couldn’t tell you,” Darren said after a minute. Which was true, he couldn’t; it wasn’t his business to tell. “He’s pretty shy, and he’s self-conscious about his English for some reason. Which is the stupidest thing because it’s great.”

  “Darren, you never answered my question,” Bethany said suddenly.

  “Which question?”

  “What he looks like. What does he look like? No one has seen him.”

  “Uh….” Darren waved his hands around. “It’s really obvious he and Tabby are related? They’ve got the same green eyes. His skin’s a little darker than hers? He’s got black hair? I don’t know what you want from me.”

  Bethany sighed like Darren was a completely hopeless case. “You’re awful at this,” she said.

  “I freely admit that,” Darren told her, thinking harder about it. “Vlad’s a couple inches shorter than me, but he’s definitely more built. Just not as much as Marco.” Marco was Trisha’s latest boyfriend. “How’s that going, by the way?”

  Trisha beamed. “Really great! We’re going out tonight, actually. His band, Sticks and Stones, just got a nice write-up in the paper, so I thought we should celebrate.”

  “You’ve talked about his band before,” Bethany said. “Didn’t you date someone else in it?”

  “Ashlynn,” Trisha said. “One of the twins. She’s keyboard. That’s how I met Marco in the first place, remember?”

  “No,” said Darren. “I’d need a way bigger brain to keep track of all your dating stories. Also maybe a day planner and charts and colored string. Ashlynn doesn’t mind you’re dating Marco now?”

  “Oh no, we’re friends!” Which, big surprise. Trish was probably the only person ever who could date so many people and yet never have a messy breakup. “I set her up with Lilly, from our magichem class. They’ve been dating for, like, two months now. How have you not noticed this?”

  “And you’re, like, sure you’re not actually a cupid?” Darren asked. “Because I’m just saying. It would explain so much.”

  “Shut up, you.”

  “Are they any good?” Bethany asked.

  “I just said that they’ve been dating for two months. That’s practically engaged in high school time.”

  “Not them, Marco’s band,” Bethany said. “Student council’s been wanting to have some live music for an end of the year send-off. So? And answer in unbiased not-a-girlfriend words please.”

  Trisha made a show of thinking about it. “I mean, I think they’re pretty good. Even if I was dating Ashlynn at the time, I wouldn’t have hung around long enough after we broke up to really get to know Marco if I didn’t like their music. They’re a rock group. Sometimes they do folk stuff too—that’s the twins’ influence, I think. For two wood nymphs and a golem, they mesh really well.”

  “Do they have any songs recorded? If you send me a couple, I could pass it along to the student council, see if they’re interested.”

  “Oh, that’d be great!” Trisha pulled out her phone and started tapping. “Give me a minute and I’ll do it now.”

  “And after she does, can we please go over my math?” Darren begged.

  Bethany made a show of scoffing, but she patted the spot next to her on the bed. “Just take it out and come here.” Darren immediately scrambled for his math work and hopped up next to her, holding it out for her to take. “Honestly. How did you end up so bad at numbers? Both your parents are accountants.”

  “I’m a wonder of the world,” Darren said. “And not about to ask my parents for help because it is still tax season. Tax season, Beth.”

  Trisha looked up from her phone to pat Darren on the knee. “We know,” she said sympathetically. “Filing for extensions.”

  “And deductions,” Darren moaned. “Mom’s got one client who wants to deduct two thousand dollars’ worth of dental work under work expenses since he’s trying to become a model.”

  “You did problem three wrong,” Bethany said, whapping Darren on the shoulder with the notebook. “Pay attention while I explain it to you.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Darren said, sitting at attention.

  VLAD WAS sitting out on the porch when Darren, carrying a backpack full of snacks, walked up on Sunday afternoon. He actually smiled when he caught sight of Darren.

  That was pretty cool, seeing indications Vlad was learning to socialize again and be a proper person with feelings and stuff.

  “Hey, you ready to head out?”

  Vlad nodded and smoothly got to his feet, slinging a small bag over one shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  Darren filled the short walk to the woods by pointing out who lived in various houses: the Meyers, a nymph family, Mrs. Peterson, a veterinarian who wasn’t powered but was such a wiz with animals she might as well have been, and so on. When he ran out of houses, he finished off with chatter about yesterday. “—and Trisha’s pretty sure you’re going to be a town heartthrob when you finally come out of hiding, so get ready for that.”

  Vlad looked alarmed. “I have no interest in being a heartthrob!”

  Darren patted Vlad sympathetically on the shoulder. “Tough luck. She’s not usually wrong about that sort of stuff.” Inwardly he was pretty pleased. They had passed a few people on the way, but no one looked at them with anything more than passing curiosity, and Vlad had barely flinched. He had, however, looked at Darren expectantly and asked who they all were, which was great. That Vlad was getting more interested in his new home.

  Still, Darren could tell that Vlad was relieved when they reached their clearing and sat down within the mushroom ring.

  “So I’ve been doing all the talking so far,” Darren said, setting his backpack on the ground and making himself comfortable against a tree. “How’re you? What’d you do yesterday?”

  “I am fine,” Vlad said. “Happy to be outside again. I mostly did schoolwork yesterday. I don’t want to fall behind, so I’m taking a lot of online studies. And I helped Tabitha with some housework.”

  Darren wrinkled his nose. “Homework and chores. Sounds exciting.”

  “It isn’t bad,” Vlad said with a shrug. “I am glad to be helping Tabitha around the house. Earn my keep a little. And the schoolwork is familiar at least.”

  “What year are you in, anyway?”

  “I was supposed to be in my last year of secondary school,” Vlad said. “I should have been getting ready for university entrance exams. But I… I was turned right at the start of classes, and then I came here….” He sighed. “I’m still studying, but your school system is very different. There have been talks about me taking the twelfth year at your school, to get some hands-on experience.”

  “Hey, that’d be cool,” Darren said. “And senior year is a lot of self-study, so y
ou wouldn’t be too out of your element. I could show you around the school and stuff. I’m going to be a junior, but since there are so many different species there’s a lot of mixing.” He leveled an appraising look at Vlad and then nodded decisively. “Trisha’s right, though. People would flip over you. How old are you, again?”

  “It can’t be again if I did not say it,” Vlad muttered, and then louder, “I’ll be seventeen in August.”

  “That’s not so far away! Just a few months. And I was right. We’re the same age, almost. Five months. I’m a January baby.”

  “You were born in the winter?” Vlad asked, sounding surprised.

  “You sound like that’s weird. Why’s that weird?”

  “Nothing, it’s just”—Vlad gestured at Darren—“you seem more… springtime?”

  Darren threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, don’t even. Count back nine months from January. That’s how springtime I am. Almost every fae I know has a winter birthday. And now I’m changing the subject, because seriously, ew.”

  “Sorry,” Vlad apologized, looking embarrassed. He broke eye contact with Darren to rummage around in the bag he’d brought, pulling out a bottle of water and a thermos.

  “Good idea,” Darren said, reaching for his own bag. “What’d you bring for lunch?”

  Vlad gave Darren a flat look. “What do you think?”

  “Oh yeah. Right. Sorry. But why the thermos?”

  Vlad made a face. “Cold blood congeals, Darren.”

  “I… did not even think of that.”

  “Clearly.”

  “Is blood the only thing you can eat now?” Darren asked as he pulled out his own sandwich. “’Cause that sounds… kind of boring. Food-wise. Although hey, you had that raw meat before, didn’t you?”

  Vlad took a pull from his water bottle before answering. “Blood is the best thing, but it’s not the only thing. And different kinds of blood taste different, and certain flavorings can also be added to blood, for variety. Spices, sweeteners, things like that. But I can eat most meats. Some dairy products. Raw is… better.” He picked up his thermos, glanced at Darren, and then opened it to sip at the contents. “I’m carnivorous now, basically. With blood as my main food group.”

  “Does it get boring? I mean, do you miss other food? And uh, feel free not to answer me if I cross any lines,” Darren added. It was probably about time he said that. “I know I’ve been kinda super nosy.”

  “It’s fine. Even though I can’t eat the food I used to enjoy, I also don’t want to. They aren’t appetizing anymore. It tastes wrong.” He sounded a little wistful. “I learned you could prepare certain recipes with blood to make them edible, but I did not learn how, only that it was possible.”

  “Hey, maybe when you get a vampire tutor to show you the ropes, you can ask! If there’s a way to like, eat your favorite food again somehow, you should absolutely go for it.”

  Vlad suddenly wouldn’t look up, face blanking. Right, bringing up other vampires was a bad move, oops. Even though he was crazy curious to ask what? What’s wrong with other vampires? Darren scrambled to change the subject to something lighter. “Hey, so, back to you being the town heartthrob—”

  “Absolutely not,” Vlad interrupted, scowling.

  Darren grinned. Perfect. “You sure? I mean, like I said before, Trisha’s a witch in training, and everyone at school is pretty sure her specialty is gonna be love. She’s almost never wrong about stuff like that.”

  “Specialty?”

  “Ha!” Darren said. “Finally, something I know and you don’t.” He grinned again, to show he was teasing, and explained, “Witches gotta have a specialty in something—a thing they concentrate their magic and workings on. There’s too much out there in the world for them to learn everything, you know? It’s just like with any other job. You can’t be, like, a doctor for everything. You gotta pick one thing to focus on and get good at. I mean, you’re going to have basic skills, yeah, but you don’t go to a foot doctor for heart surgery.”

  “I see,” Vlad said. “I did not know that. What is Tabitha’s specialty?” he asked, voice small. Like he expected Darren to make fun of the fact that he’d been living with her for two months and didn’t know.

  Darren was not about to be that kind of jerk. He could be a jerk on accident, sure, but he didn’t make it a habit to do it on purpose. “Tabitha’s specialty is repair work,” he said. “Fixing stuff, healing stuff, other… stuff. You should ask her about it sometime. It’s super interesting, and she’d do a way better job explaining it than I would. Obviously.”

  Vlad nodded. “I will have to do that.” He shifted on the moss, getting more comfortable. “So you feel Trisha’s specialty is love? Like… love potions?”

  “Something like that,” Darren said. “Not love potions because they’re kind of gross, but real stuff. Matchmaking or something. Or not even just love, but people work. She’s just super good with people. I think you’d really like her. Everyone really likes Trish.”

  “All right.”

  “You just wait till you meet her,” Darren said, waving a hand. “You’ll see what I mean. Anyway, magic, like, crazy runs in her family. In ninth grade we had to do this family tree project, and Trisha’s dad is the seventh son of a seventh son, and her mom is the middle of thirteen. She was basically destined to have magic. She also has horror stories of family reunions that last for, like, a week just so everyone can get introduced to everyone else.”

  “That sounds awful,” Vlad said, like he couldn’t help himself.

  Darren laughed. “I know, right? She says that’s why she’s an only child. Her parents wanted one kid. Singular.”

  “I cannot imagine why.”

  “Anyway,” Darren said, “she and I have a couple of classes together, since, as a witch, she’s got a nature affinity. It’s different obviously, since she makes potions and brews stuff up and follows recipes and I just—” He wiggled his fingers. “—but there’s a lot of overlap with the basics you have to know.”

  “And your school covers everything you need it to?” Vlad was back to sounding wistful again.

  Darren shook his head. “Most of us kids do outside practice with our families and stuff too. Especially people like me, who are rarer. There aren’t a lot of classes that can cover hands-on fae stuff. But it’s good for the human stuff I need to learn, and the basics for supernatural stuff. I mean, it’s a pretty big school. Almost every kid is either supernatural or has it in their family somehow, even if they themselves are completely human. Full-blooded isn’t uncommon, but a lot of us are halves, or quarters, or one-sixteenths of something. So obviously we can only learn, like, basic stuff, but it’s all a decent background I guess. Junior and senior year are mostly guided self-study, like I said. For the supernatural stuff, anyway. We still have to learn the regular stuff like math and lit too. Prepare us for the working world of tomorrow and all that.”

  “Oh.” Vlad considered this. “So what other types of people are at your school? Are there more fae?”

  Darren shook his head. “Fae-human pairs are actually kind of rare? Since they don’t really leave their circle that much. I mean, it happens, obviously, hello, but there’s no one else around here who’s like me. We’ve got a lot of other nature-affinity people in town, though. That’s why my parents ended up moving here. I don’t know if you noticed the fact that we’re never, like, more than ten minutes away from woods or a forest or something?”

  Vlad raised an eyebrow.

  “Right, right, you’re only just leaving the house. Anyway, take my word for it. It’s because of the nature thing. A lot of kids at school are nymphs, since they’re the ones who tend to interact with humans a whole lot.”

  “Nymphs are different from fae?”

  “Yeah,” Darren said, pulling out a juice box and fiddling with the straw. “Some of the streams cross, so I’ve had a lot of classes with them, but my powers don’t work the same way. For instance, nymphs can’t glamour. They s
hapeshift. And I do not do that. So, you know. It’s all a learning process.”

  “I wish I could go to your school now,” Vlad said, poking at the ground with the toe of his shoe. “I’d like to learn more.”

  “What classes do you think you could take?” Darren asked. “I mean, that’s stupid, sorry. You don’t know what’s offered. I meant more like… we’ve never had a vampire, I don’t think. I don’t know what supernatural classes you’d take. Maybe werewolf stuff? I know you don’t think it’s the same thing, but you’ve got enhanced senses so there might be some overlap? What else can you do?”

  “I don’t know, remember?” Vlad tipped the thermos back, finishing what was in it, and then set it down on the moss. “I have very little idea of what I’m capable of, or what powers I do or do not have.”

  “You haven’t experimented even a little bit on your own?” Vlad shook his head. “Why not?”

  “I don’t like being a vampire,” Vlad ground out.

  Darren sighed. “Okay,” he said, leaning forward. “And I see where you’re coming from. I do. I get it. I get not… being happy with the cards you’ve been dealt, okay? But that’s not going to actually change anything, Vlad. You’re still gonna be you, fangs and all. Learning about yourself is the best thing you can do. It’s how you take what you’ve got and make an identity out of it.” Darren circled a finger in the moss, a trail of clover popping up with the movement. “It’s not always ideal, I’ll give you that, but it beats being miserable and afraid all the freaking time.”

  Vlad opened his mouth and closed it again, eyes narrowing in consideration. When he did finally speak, it was to say, “I know. I mean, I understand. That I haven’t been handling things well. But I am trying now. I wouldn’t be out here with you, otherwise.”

  “Which is great!” Darren said immediately, going for as encouraging as possible. “That’s great. I’m glad you’re at least comfortable enough to try.”

  Vlad just looked at him, expression unreadable, before nodding. “Yes, well. You aren’t bad company.”