Grr. I spend the bulk of the dance class period watching the girls go through their routines while grumbling in my head about the pressure put on us—girls that is—by society to be thin, pretty, and perfect. At least the instructors and other kids here are awesome. Megan is a big girl, little bit chubby even. Other than the unavoidable situation where Sophia was physically unable to hold the girl up over her head—physics doesn’t care about feelings—no one here pays any attention to Megan’s size.
Well, this one stuck up girl named Lindsey did, but I sorted her out.
Speaking of sorting out… I decide to give society a middle finger and completely ignore ethics. When the class ends, I wander into the group of kids, ostensibly heading toward my sister, but veer into Veronica’s path. As soon as she makes eye contact with me—an involuntary reaction to nearly colliding—I dive into her head.
A simple compulsion to be satisfied with her body as it is should be enough.
Her distorted opinion of herself as being fat—absolutely untrue—already resulted in her having a mild eating disorder. No doubt it would’ve worsened as she hit her teen years. Hopefully, this mental zap is enough of a Band-Aid to get her through it. Hmm. Just in case, I add another compulsion to remove her inhibition about talking to her mother. If she starts feeling insecure about her body again, she’s going to confide in her mother about it.
There. Fingers crossed.
“Sorry…” I step around her, trying to make our almost-collision look like a navigation error on my part, and collect Sophia.
Veronica stands in place, gazing into the fifth dimension.
Sophia’s eyes ask me what the deal is with her, but I don’t say anything until we’re outside in the privacy of my car.
“Nothing’s wrong with you or your outfit. Veronica was jealous.”
“What?” Sophia blinks. “Jealous of me? Are you kidding? She’s so pretty. Like a model.”
“You are, too.”
“Am not. I’m a stick figure. Models have more shape than a drinking straw.” She laughs. “I should be jealous of her, but I’m not.”
I grin. “Pretty sure she’ll be okay now.”
“Cool. What did you do?”
My explanation turns into a brief conversation on body image. Sophia’s been teased occasionally for being ‘too thin,’ but doesn’t let it bother her. My timid little sister admits to having gotten into some arguments at school recently when the popular girls decided to pick on Megan for being thick. Soph’s turning into quite the ‘mouse who roared.’ Heh. Guess we both are.
Time to surrender my ‘Miss Non-confrontational’ crown.
It’s amazing what being immortal does for confidence.
I scrambled to get Sophia back and forth to dance class and put some food on the table for the Littles before I had to rush out the door for school. Wednesday is comp sci and calculus, so one of my early nights. First class is at 6:00 p.m.
Cheating happened in two ways: I ordered pizza for dinner, leaving Ashley to manage distribution to the kids when it arrived… and I did the bikini-in-the-rain flying thing to make it to school. Being drenched is irritating, but the ability to fly to class in like eight minutes versus a thirty-five-minute drive is totally worth it.
Still, I had to dry off and change in the parking garage so I ended up being a few minutes late. Professor Garcia didn’t seem to mind too much. Then again, college isn’t like high school. No one’s going to get in trouble for skipping class, merely waste money and fail.
So, anyway, back to the curveball.
Aurélie called me at 9:45 p.m., a few minutes after I left calculus, to inform me I needed to attend an event tonight. Ugh. Vampires and their soirees. Two things I can’t say no to are another season of Firefly and anything Aurélie asks me to do. Alas, I think even vampiric mind-control isn’t powerful enough to make the first one happen. I’d have to attack network executives, and mind-control only works on creatures with brains.
Okay, no big deal. The soiree isn’t starting until midnight, well after the Littles are in bed.
I fly home, not bothering to change out of my bathing suit since I’m going back out soon. A long T-shirt over it is good enough for the hour or so I plan to be in the house. Few things in life are as unpleasant as putting a cold, still-wet bathing suit back on. Much better to stay wearing it. Yeah, it’s still raining hard. According to the weather app on my phone, it’s not going to stop until like two in the morning.
Except for Blix playing video games with my brother in his room, the house is shockingly mundane tonight. Sophia’s reading on her Kindle and Sierra’s doing her usual Vulcan mind meld to the PlayStation in the living room. Only the existence of an imp in the house gives away my family is no longer normal.
I’m in the middle of explaining to Ashley—who is curled up on the couch reading something for school—about my need to go to a vampire thing tonight when Sam comes running downstairs in a panic.
“Sare!” He zooms up to me, bouncing on his toes, eyes wide in near panic. “I’m outta food for Edgar and Allen.”
“Huh?” I blink at him.
“My frogs.”
“I know. I processed what you said. The ‘huh’ was reflexive.” I rake a hand up through my hair. “It’s almost ten at night. There isn’t anywhere we can get dried crickets at this hour. Can they wait for tomorrow?”
He bounces harder. “Not really. They’re starving.”
I’m sure he means ‘starving’ in the way a kid who hasn’t eaten anything since lunch time is starving ten minutes before dinner time. Not literally starving. Still, he’s really upset so maybe the poor guys will be hurt if they don’t eat. Ugh. What do I know about frog care?
“Umm. I understand, but the stores are closed. Are you asking me to break into a pet store and steal bugs?”
Sam stops fidgeting. “Oh. Good idea.” He runs back upstairs. “Soph, I need your cat!”
I face-palm. “Did I just initiate the commission of a crime?”
Ashley cracks up. “Felonious cricket acquisition by means of a kitten with a loose relationship with physical space?”
“Something like that.” Nothing to do but laugh. “Can you imagine the police report? Teleporting kitten steals $2.00 worth of freeze-dried bugs.”
She giggle-snorts.
It occurs to me Sierra’s playing a fantasy type game instead of Call of Duty. Either Ashley spoke to her about screaming curses at the screen, or Sierra wanted a change of pace. I still don’t understand how she can play the same game so damn much and not get sick of it. One good thing about this one at least. When she’s doing a single-player game, she stays much calmer. She only gets screaming-pissed at other human players. She’s more Zen than me there. Sierra understands the computer is only doing what it’s been programmed to do when it ‘cheats.’ Unlike an AI, other human players take satisfaction when they kill her character. Their mockery is what sets her off, not the character blowing up.
Anyway…
I make the bedtime rounds, taking care to ensure Sophia and Sam appreciate using Klepto to acquire needed items should be reserved for emergencies where everything is closed and a frog will die or get sick if we don’t act right away. I don’t see either of them resorting to thievery as a matter of routine, but still, I feel the need to play mom even if I am a co-conspirator and have no plans to tell Mom about this.
Considering Klepto’s thievery came in way handy for dealing with the vampire hunter problem I had a few months ago, it would be completely hypocritical of me to complain too much about the Littles asking the kitten to help them out when needed. I don’t want them thinking it’s okay to send her out to fetch a new video game or whatever on a whim. It doesn’t escape me I’ve been using paranormal means to take what I need from random people (blood) against their will for months, but basic survival is different. Okay, maybe tweaking people’s heads to improve their lives or ‘helping’ Hunter’s mother get a better job isn’t exactly ethical.
> Whatever. My life is morally complicated.
It’s not wrong of me to demand my siblings at least turn eighteen before they take advantage of people via paranormal means. The Kitten of Acquisition is a valuable friend and she shouldn’t be used willy-nilly.
Once the frog food crisis and bedtime are dealt with, I resume filling Ashley in on the need for me to attend a social meeting with Aurélie. Ash gets a little weird whenever I mention her, no doubt thinking back fondly on the memory of the best time she’s ever had—or will likely ever have—in a bedroom. Ack. I can’t even maintain eye contact. It’s as cringey as thinking about close family getting intimate with someone.
“All right,” says Ashley. “Have fun. Hey, is it okay if my mom joins us for dinner tomorrow? She’s kinda lonely in the house all by herself.”
“Of course. You know you didn’t really even have to ask.”
“Cool.”
I wave and head to the kitchen, draping my long T-shirt over the back of a chair before stepping outside into the downpour. No point bringing any clothes beside the swimsuit. Aurélie always insists on me getting dressed up in one of her super elaborate gowns to the point I even wear period-accurate underwear. Considering how hard it’s raining tonight, I’d be less wet if I swam to Seattle.
Sigh. Might as well get the ice bath over with. It’s only freezing for a minute or two.
Luckily, the building Aurélie lives in has a parking garage, as does the hotel the local vampires use for these meetings. As far as I’ve been able to tell so far, they don’t follow any set schedule. Three months has been the longest gap between them, two weeks the shortest. Guess it depends on factors outside my visibility.
Again, don’t really care.
I’m happy to go with Aurélie when she asks me to, but at least for the time being, I wouldn’t complain about skipping these parties. Maybe when the Littles are all grown up and fully established out on their own and our parents are gone, I’ll want to more fully immerse myself in the vampire world. Sitting alone at home will drive me nuts. However, for now, I deal with the ‘underworld’ so to speak only when necessary.
As expected, I end up wearing a puffy peach-colored gown with all the underpinnings. I’m halfway between a Victorian courtier and one of those paper dolls some old people put in the middle of their table during fancy dinners. Pretty sure Aurélie’s wardrobe room could fully supply a theater company performing any play set in the 1700s… at least the women’s clothing.
We take her limo to the hotel, arriving at the soiree a few minutes past midnight. ‘Fashionably late,’ as she says. It’s embarrassing to feel like the kid hanging on Aurélie’s sleeve or being the demure little woman not making eye contact with anyone… but I’ll deal with it instead of setting off an argument.
Some of the elders really don’t like my decision to try living in two worlds at once. Without Aurélie’s protection, it’s almost guaranteed I would’ve been forced to abandon my family or watch them be killed to keep secrets. At least, it’s the impression I get from Stefano Bianchi and Paolo Cabrini, the two elders who have the biggest problem with me. Her protection isn’t completely foolproof, either. A big enough screw up on my part could force her to leave me to suffer the consequences of my dumbassery.
A ‘big enough’ screw up would involve me exposing the existence of vampires—which I’m trying hard not to do—or attempting to destroy other vampires, deliberately mess with their affairs, and so on. Obviously, humanity—to some extent—is aware of the truth, or the PIBs (persons in black) wouldn’t exist. They came calling the day I returned home from the morgue to inform me they knew what I was and they’d be keeping an eye on me.
So the CIA (guessing) is aware of vampires. No surprise there, really. Dick Clark and Keanu kinda gave us away. Heh, just kidding. No idea if either of them are vampires… but you gotta admit they’re kinda ageless. Makes me go ‘hmm’ at those photos from the 1800s where someone looks exactly like a modern celebrity. Used to think it coincidence. Now, I’m not so sure.
But yeah, I don’t mind being Aurélie’s companion for the night. Our relationship is so strange it doesn’t really fit into a neat category. I’m somewhere between her proxy daughter, apprentice, cousin, some poor girl she took under her wing, and whatever they called those girls from lower-class backgrounds who essentially got hired to be companions or friends to wealthy women. One minute we have a highly ‘sensei-student’ sort of relationship, another moment it’s as though we’re at the same level—just friends hanging out. Sometimes, she even throws off vibes like she loves me in a familial way. There’s zero romantic spark between us, despite what some of the vampires around here whisper.
No one looking at her would guess her true age. She looks about eighteen or nineteen, a delicate French waif or a porcelain doll brought to life. Her skin is inhumanly white, like literal chalk, as is her hair. I think in her era, women of a certain social class actually wore white face paint, so undeath merely saves her the trouble of bothering with outdated cosmetics. Seriously though, as innocent as she appears on the outside, she’s quite far in the other direction, and I don’t mean evil. She is ‘adventurous’ as they say.
I suppose most people would consider a woman who could casually lop a guy’s head off evil, but really, the dude was trying to kill me.
So, yeah. To any outside observer, we look like a pair of young women close in age. She got turned at twenty-two and appears somewhat younger. Only, being an Old Guard, her vampiric nature isn’t what shaved a few years off her face—genetics for her, unlike me. The supernatural change made her alluring rather than cute/harmless. Vampires generally develop something of a specialty power when they become old enough. Hers is charm. At her age, she needs to actively concentrate on not enchanting an entire room by merely existing. Fortunately, her abilities tend not to work passively on vampires unless they’re significantly younger than her.
As always, the vampire event is taking place in one of the large convention type rooms. Most of the left wall—compared to the door we enter from—is a spread of tables bearing snacks for the snacks. I still have no idea where the normal people come from who mill around waiting to be bitten. They’re all out of their heads on mind-control fumes. It’s doubtful any of them will remember being here. For all I know, they’re hotel guests borrowed from their rooms upstairs. Nice, convenient, and self-contained. No need to transport what are essentially kidnapping victims around outside.
Still haven’t decided how much it bothers me, or why it bothers me when ambush-feeding out ‘in the wild’ doesn’t. How is it any different? Well, I’m not sucking two hours out of people’s lives by forcing them to stand around like a zombie during a social meeting of higher-order predators. Then again, if they are sourcing these people from the hotel, they’d otherwise be sleeping.
Whatever. I’ll cling to a tiny island of moral high ground by not availing myself of their blood.
We make the rounds, me mostly staying quiet while she talks to everyone. The usual cattiness comes from Vanessa Prentice, a Fury with some envy issues regarding beauty. Aurélie is quite proud of her looks, but she’s so damn pretty, she knows she doesn’t have to call attention to it. It appears outwardly as humility, but it’s actually the opposite. And no, I’m not judging. A world-champion athlete has every right to be proud of their accomplishments. One might say it’s a bad comparison since athletes work for years to get where they are while looks are a roll of the dice. In Aurélie’s case, however, looks are the product of effort. Supernatural perhaps, but still effort.
Jennifer Ruiz, a ‘California blonde’ Sybarite, has nothing to be jealous of, but still gets a little weird around us. In her case, it’s not so much envy of Aurélie but disappointment at no longer being the prettiest woman in the room.
Again, don’t care. I stay out of it.
I do pick up a few snippets of conversation among the Old Guard about my recent trip to London, specifically about me meeting Peter Corley. Appa
rently, no vampire from the Pacific Northwest has officially made contact in any sort of diplomatic sense with the London vampires before. Questions have arisen regarding what, if any, political ramifications may come from me being there. Of course, Wolent already got the entire story from me within days of my return to the US. Nothing political happened. But among vampires, things are never taken at face value. Especially in my case. Because I’m so new at this, some might think I missed a subtle undertone of displeasure or failed to do something properly to prevent an international incident of the undead kind.
Considering no wars have started, it’s most likely safe to assume we’re all good, but ‘safe to assume’ isn’t a hundred percent certainty. Great. I get to spend the rest of the night on edge, waiting for the hammer to drop. If the inner circle is still whispering about me being in London three months later, something’s up.
Remember the curveball thing? Yeah. Here it comes.
When we reach the group containing Arthur Wolent, he breaks off his conversation with the woman next to him and smiles at me. “Ahh, Sarah.”
Eep. Okay, this is beyond weird. For one thing, he reacted to us right away. Usually, he does the Mafia don thing where he doesn’t act at all like he’s noticed anyone’s standing there waiting for his attention until he’s ready to give them attention. Secondly, he acknowledged me before Aurélie. There isn’t any social rule—as far as I know—requiring him to address other vampires in age order. He’s not technically any sort of legitimate ‘ruler’ of the Seattle vampire community, even if everyone more or less regards him as such.
We’re basically like a tenant’s organization and he volunteered to be the leader.
Good thing, though. Much better him than Stefano or Paolo. Honestly, the majority of the vamps around here think those two guys are a bit too old school. They’d probably try to make it illegal to sleep outside of coffins. Really, though. No one does that. It’s as douchey as going to a concert wearing the T-shirt of the band you’re going to see.
Vampire Innocent (Book 10): A Vampire’s Guide To Adulting Page 13