Vampire Innocent (Book 9): An Introduction To Paranormal Diplomacy

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “Mew,” says Klepto in a bizarre, unnatural voice. Like someone plugged a kitten into a guitar amp with maximum distortion.

  Okay, whatever. Yeah, pretty sure the answer to ‘will the universe leave me alone’ is a giant no. Probably a double middle finger right in my face.

  Whatever. I turn back to the computer and stare at my half-started essay.

  Regarding the destruction of Ruben, the elders didn’t care as much as I thought they would. He’d been an outsider new to the area. Worse, he made a habit of killing while he fed, which tended to attract hunters. Odds are high he would’ve been destroyed or run out of town before long anyway. Even Paolo had little to say about Damarco finishing Ruben off—at least, after he tried to blame me for the destruction of a vampire. I found a backbone then and explained he’d nearly killed Ashley and I had been in the process of trying to destroy Ruben when Damarco interrupted us.

  Oh, yeah… apparently, Ashley is now ‘legally’ considered my thrall.

  I kinda had to claim her to justify attempting to destroy Ruben. Vampires don’t have mortal friends. They have pets, employees, or helpers. No, I haven’t told Ashley yet. And no, I am not planning to literally make her into my thrall. For one thing, she’s my best friend and I can’t do anything to her resulting in any of her free will being removed. Second, keeping a thrall—at least a supernatural one—requires a vampire loan them some power. Whatever power is loaned, the vampire loses until the thrall is destroyed. I don’t have much to begin with. The look Paolo gave me made it clear he knew Ashley’s ‘thralldom’ existed only on paper. Ask me if I care. The only real effect it has is me not being able to officially claim any other thralls until or unless Ashley is killed. Even the sticklers don’t really care if I empower her or not. Sure, they think I’m a fool for not doing it, since it makes her ‘useless and short lived.’ But joke’s on them. She’s not my thrall to do anything for me. It’s only ‘paperwork’ to keep other vampires off her.

  Unfortunately, it leaves Michelle vulnerable, but if I don’t talk about her, maybe they won’t notice she exists. And it’s really crappy of me to think, but Ashley’s been my friend since preschool, basically another sister. Enough guilt. I didn’t sit there contemplating which of my friends I love more, it all happened in a spur of the moment ‘agree to this on the spot in two seconds or bad shit happens’ kind of way.

  Point being, this girl walked away from a potential category five hurricane of poop without a scratch. Sure, most of vampire society in the area now thinks of me as a harmless kid, and probably will for a loooong time, but—thbtbtbt! I don’t care. Years from now after my parents are gone, my sibs are elderly, my friends dead, and it’s only me left… then I might care what other vampires think of me.

  My immediate plans include finishing this chaos essay, spending a quality hour with a peaches & cream bath bomb, and enjoying the time I’ve got left to be with family and friends. Yanno, maybe chaos really is a lie. Any number of things could have contributed to Dalton being in the woods the night Scott stabbed me. Things he thought or did a hundred years ago might have made the difference in his being there. Sierra—well, both my sisters—are terrified of school shooters. What if the Universe turned me into a vampire to protect them? Though, honestly, it would’ve been far simpler to cause the crazy guy to have a heart attack than set in motion a chain of events a million steps long.

  And only a little arrogant on my part to think the Universe arranged all this stuff starting thousands of years ago to protect my sister.

  Hmm. Maybe there isn’t a grand architect. Stuff might simply happen… because.

  Like kittens transubstantiating into an energy form capable of flight.

  I look back at Klepto. She’s ‘swimming’ around near my ceiling like a serious clipping error from a video game. Great, Sophia got her cat from Bethesda. What’s next, a horse standing on the wall? Shouldn’t even joke about horses. If Sophia got one, she’d squee with delight so loud, every window in Cottage Lake would shatter.

  “Having fun?” I ask.

  “Mew.”

  She doesn’t appear distressed, so… I mean, what exactly counts as abnormal for a kitten who can teleport and appears capable of understanding human speech? Figuring out the answer would probably hurt less than this darn philosophy essay. Hmm. Couple weeks ago, I said something in class about things happening simply because. People have been trying to find a reason for the way stuff goes down since we started walking on two legs. Okay, maybe not quite so far back. Asking ‘the big question’ probably started around the time of cave paintings.

  A butterfly farting in Istanbul doesn’t make a little kid in San Francisco drop his ice cream on a hot sidewalk—and I proceed to waste ten minutes trying to figure out if butterflies can fart. Right, Sarah. Focus.

  Why does stuff happen? Because it does. Chaos is real.

  Maybe a grand architect does exist and he or she is a random sort of being like Salvador Dali on a major acid trip. Oh, there we go. I’ll argue chaos simultaneously exists and doesn’t. We’re following the chaotic plan of an architect who designed everything to be random.

  Who cares if it’s right or not? This is philosophy class. I’m not searching for the right answer.

  I’m searching for the write answer.

  Meaning, whatever eats up 2,500 words and sounds more coherent than Randy Wilson trying to recite Hamlet’s soliloquy at our high school graduation party after too many beers. No, not the official party. The one at Tiffany’s place later the same night where I ended up in a clothes hamper. Imagine if glowing-Klepto swam through the room there. Wow. Follows-Rules Girl—that’s me—didn’t touch any of the ‘fun’ stuff, but a handful of kids hit acid. More than a handful smoked weed. Some did both. The kitten would’ve been a legend.

  Or turned the party into an utter madhouse.

  I get two pages into the essay before another sort of existential crisis invades my head.

  No, not moping about the future. More about wasting the present. The pile of textbooks beside my computer screen mocks me for my undeath. What sort of vampire in their right mind goes to freakin’ college? I smirk at myself. The kind of vampire who lives in her parents’ basement, that’s who.

  Is it really worth the time? Yeah, having to attend classes shaves a couple hours off each weekday potentially spent with my siblings or parents. Before my death, I didn’t go out of my way to hang out with them. In fact, I kinda tried to avoid them. Like, really. What seventeen-year-old wants to hang out with three little kids when they have friends their own age? I wasn’t mean to them, just… didn’t pay attention. Death put family in hyperfocus.

  Really, they have friends and lives, too. Even Sam, the youngest, is nine now. They don’t need or want to cling to me constantly—Sophia notwithstanding. No reason to feel guilty about two hours a night. Grr. I’m using my sibs as scapegoats to deflect my attention away from questioning my major: computer programming. I thought, hey, what’s a job a person can do from home—read: vampire lair—and wouldn’t be a problem? My father’s a programmer. He works from home. Sounded like a perfect fit.

  Only, I’m not the nerd Sophia is. She’s good at math, loves schoolwork, and wants to become a professional make-up artist for like film studios. Maybe she’ll change her mind as she grows up and become a scientist, doctor, or veterinarian. Sierra wants to make video games as a career but she’s not exactly on the same plateau of nerdvana as Soph. Sierra’s not dumb, not by a long shot. She could get straight A’s and take advanced classes if she wanted to, but she’s lazy and would rather sit around playing video games all the time than worry about schoolwork.

  I’m kinda halfway between nerd and lazy. I don’t love programming the way Sierra would if she could get past her laziness. Granted, I don’t hate it either. It’s kinda like the cheeseburger at my old school cafeteria. A comfortable choice without risk but not particularly exciting. My mind wanders. For the unlife of me, I can’t figure out what my major would�
��ve been if I’d not been killed and turned into a vampire. Whether or not homesickness made me wimp out and come home from USC after one semester, I’d still have needed to pick a major at some point.

  I’m more than a little jealous of Ashley and Michelle. Both of them knew for most of senior year where they wanted to go in life. Michelle’s got her target set on law school after she finishes up a criminal justice degree. She wants to be a prosecutor someday, maybe DA, so she can clean the system up from the inside. Ashley’s aiming for veterinarian. Oh, the injured dog we transported, Hershey? Yeah, he’s doing great.

  My problem at the moment is feeling guilty for draining my parents’ money on college when it won’t do me any good. Am I, as a vampire, really going to make a career out of programming? It would be one thing if I adored doing it and wanted to learn for the fun of it… but, meh. As for what I’d major in without undeath, no freakin’ idea. I’d probably have finished with some generic arts degree if nothing leapt out at me as a good idea. About the only thing for sure is I wouldn’t have majored in anthropology or English. Why get a degree if I’d end up waiting tables anyway?

  Ugh. Dad’s joke makes me feel even worse.

  I don’t want to become a lawyer like my mother. At least, I was exceedingly conflict-averse before death. It would’ve went way beyond my ability to cope having to stand up in front of people and argue a case. For heck’s sake, it took me months—and a lot of encouragement from my friends—to dump Scott. I’d been afraid of that conversation for weeks, and not at all because I expected him to do anything as volatile as stab me.

  Now? Yeah, I’ve ripped people apart with my bare hands. Pretty sure I could rip them apart verbally if I had to. Going lawyer like Mom isn’t a bad idea except for the small problem of my having a severe sun allergy. No job as ‘outsidey’ as an attorney is a good fit for me. Judges really hate it when counsel doesn’t show up on time. No way could I possibly be in court at 8:00 a.m., ever. No matter how gloomy the day.

  Hmm, maybe I could study cinematography or journalism and work as a movie reviewer? Sit in my basement all day watching movies and writing about them? Totally my speed. Or do copywriting. Maybe having an English degree won’t be as useless as my father thinks. Especially since I could mind-control my way into whatever job I wanted.

  Of course, if I can’t deal with a 2,500 word essay on chaos, how the heck am I going to write movie reviews—or anything—as a job? For a vampire, any official job is going to be more like a hobby. I’m not going to need a career. It’ll be something I do for fun and a little extra cash. Kind of like how my Aunt Jody does tarot readings and such for clients.

  Right. Back to work.

  Apparently, thinking of changing majors away from programming makes me happy. So much so, I breeze through the rest of my partially coherent musing on chaos. Wonder if anyone else in my class is going to answer an A or B question with ‘both.’ Here I am feeling clever, and in all probability, Professor Heath has seen this exact argument a thousand times before. Then again, he has been teaching for a long time.

  I’m halfway done re-reading it when a ping comes from the computer. Neither Ashley nor Michelle usually send me Facebook messages, so it’s probably someone from our old high school who just got the memo about me ‘not really being killed.’ Probably a good idea for me to keep up the story about my life being normal, so I click over to the web browser… and see two new friend requests from Cody and Ben Peters.

  Wow… after the craziness we experienced at the Lewis & Clark Caverns, I figured the brothers wanted to forget any of it happened. Cody has… hopefully had more than a little crush on me. Hopefully, finding out I’m really eighteen—not to mention a vampire—helped him get past it.

  Ehh, why not?

  I accept the friend requests and within five seconds, a group chat pops open. ‘Hey, long time, what’s up?’ turns into a fairly routine catch-up session. They don’t need to know about any of the oddities going on here or in my vampiric life, so they get a ‘not much, just dealing with college’ type version of my life since the summer.

  Ben: ‹Hey, we think there’s a v in the area.›

  Cody: ‹Yeah, Mom’s getting major bad vibes from this house two blocks away. No one seems to be there during the day, but lights are on at night.›

  I laugh, despite them being unable to hear me. ‹Chill out. It’s just the Klopeks.›

  Ben: ‹Is that bad?›

  Cody: ‹LOL! Sounds like a weird monster.›

  Two important pieces of information hit me. One: these two are younger than me, fourteen and fifteen. Two: they don’t have a father obsessed with Eighties movies. Good chance they missed my joke.

  ‹Guess you guys never saw The Burbs?›

  Ben: ‹Huh?›

  ‹Old movie. Weird neighbors. Umm, even if it is what you think it might be, you guys should keep your distance and not get involved. Stay safe. You’re not old enough to mess with this stuff for real. And most of them don’t kill, remember?›

  Cody: ‹Yeah, I know. But it’s super eerie. If stuff goes FUBAR, can you help?›

  Klepto continues flying in circles around my ceiling like a tiny Goodyear Blimp. She’s still glowing bright blue, her entire body made of energy. Oh, wow. I hope she’s not destabilizing and about to melt back into a pile of mushroom dust. Sophia would be devastated.

  Not wanting to tell the boys things are already FUBAR, I end up sending: ‹Yeah, sure. Be careful. Hey, need to check on something here real quick. BRB.›

  Both of them reply with ‘K.’

  “Something wrong?” I ask, staring up at the kitten.

  “Mew,” says Klepto, then glides like a ghost up through the ceiling.

  My room looks weird without the blue light, back to an almost black-and-white world of drab half colors. Maybe I should turn on a light? Ugh, guess I’d gotten used to it. Equal parts worried and curious, I head upstairs. It’s past the Littles’ bedtime, but not by a ton. They can usually get away with staying up too late as long as they’re quiet. Mom goes to bed early most nights and Dad will only investigate potential breaches of bedtime if he notices a light on or hears noise.

  I head upstairs, quiet as a ninja without consciously trying to be due to the combination of bare feet, carpeting, and superhuman vampire reflexes. The only way I could possibly be any quieter is flying. But, I’m not trying to ambush any prey, merely not wake sleeping Littles.

  Scintillating blue light shines out from under Sophia’s bedroom door, flashing and pulsing like she’s invited a bunch of mimes over to have a rave. Considering the amount of light Klepto threw off, it’s not proof my sister is awake, but I’m still worried enough to check in on her.

  The sight waiting for me when I open the door is enough to derp-slap me right across the face.

  Sophia, in her nightgown, floats cross-legged a few inches off the floor above a ‘circle of power’ made by her crayons and markers laid end to end on the carpet. She’s got four extra—ghostly—arms, all six of her hands holding various small objects like feathers, bowls, a candle (not lit), and either dice or tiny bones. She legit looks like Shiva or something.

  Klepto’s hovering in front of her, staring. The kitten’s eyes have become as big as hen’s eggs, white, and filled with spirals. Pretty sure my sister’s eyes are glowing, but it’s hard to tell. The kitten’s too bright.

  I’m not sure who’s trying to mesmerize who.

  This is like an episode of Looney Tunes written by HP Lovecraft. Wait, no. There aren’t any tentacles and no one’s gone insane—yet. Let’s go with Looney Tunes written by Poe.

  “Uhh, Soph?” I whisper. “Everything okay?”

  “Yep,” she says, normal as anything.

  “You’re floating and you have six arms.”

  She grins. “I don’t. It’s just a helping hand spell. The arms are illusions. I’ve been practicing making illusions with the book Mr. Anderson let me borrow.”

  “Why is your kitten glowing?”
Right, I’ll take ‘questions no one has ever asked before’ for $400.

  “Umm. Not sure exactly.” Sophia sets down the feather and bowl. The other four arms each place their respective objects on the rug around her, then fade away. “She started glowing when I tried to figure out the spell to make light, then started flying around when I did the levitation spell. I think it’s normal.”

  “Mew.”

  “It’s past your bedtime, kiddo. If Mom or Dad catch you doing sorcery at this hour, you’re gonna get grounded.” ‘Things no one ever expected to say’ for $600.

  “Yeah, I know. I’m already shutting down the spell.” She brings her hands together in front of herself and closes her eyes.

  “Trying to make teachers forget about homework again?”

  “No. Trying to ward the school. So, like, if anyone evil tries to find it, they’ll get lost.”

  Speechless. I have no idea who—if anyone—to become furious with over my little siblings being traumatized at possible violence at their school. With a sigh, I hang my head. Yeah, there definitely are more difficult questions than trying to figure out if chaos is real.

  “Don’t cry,” whispers Sophia. “I think it worked.”

  “Good.” I exhale my anxiety, anger, and grief out my nose.

  Klepto dims back to a normal, fuzzy grey kitten with bright teal eyes… and drops to the rug on her paws. “Mew.”

  “Any idea why she glowed?”

  Sophia shakes her head, making her long blonde hair wave back and forth. “Not exactly. This book doesn’t have anything in it about familiars. I’ll ask next time we visit the mystics.”

  “Okay. I hope your kitten isn’t the harbinger of the end times.”

  Klepto sits back on her haunches, head cocked, giving me this ‘that’s right. I could end the world if I wanted to’ look.

  “Hah. No.” Sophia scoops the kitten up and hugs her. “Gotta go to the bathroom. I swear I’ll go to sleep right after.”

  “Okay.”

  She walks out into the hall carrying the kitten.