“You should avoid Florida,” says Wednesday. “It’s crazy.”
Jermaine refills his glass from a large wine bottle, then holds the bottle toward me in an offering manner. Sure, why not? I nod. He smiles, takes a clean glass from a cabinet under the table between our chairs, and pours me a drink.
I go to sip the blood but stop short at a whiff of alcohol. Darn. Forgot. I smelled it on the way in. “This isn’t pure blood.”
“Course not, dear.” Jermaine smiles. “Why be boring?”
Whatever. One drink won’t hurt me. I sip. The blood hits my tongue like atomic cherry. Can’t tell the type of alcohol other than it being strong enough to taste like I’m swallowing flames. Whiskey, vodka, or something along those lines. Maybe even moonshine. Eek. Not sure whether to sip it gradually to minimize discomfort or get it over with. Tiny sips are more polite. I’m still here as a representative, after all. Not the time to go all Sarah of the North, Barbarian Queen, and chug ale. Besides, this stuff is so damn strong if I slug it down in one gulp, I will cough, gag, and look like an idiot.
“What’s up with Florida?” I ask after the flames in my throat die down.
Wednesday makes a ‘you have no idea’ face and waves dismissively at me. “Sweetie, as if the sun, heat, and bugs weren’t bad enough, picture Florida Man with vampire powers.”
Dusty flares his eyebrows. “Yeah. Gets powerful weird down there.”
I cringe. Facebook’s had some bizarre ‘Florida Man’ news stories… like some dude getting himself killed while trying to have sex with an alligator. Don’t even want to imagine the vampire equivalent. “Wow. Okay, yeah…” Eight sips into this spiked blood is starting to give me a little buzz. Better stop at one glass.
“How’s it up in Seattle?” asks Shaw. “You got any crazy ones up there?”
“Nothing even close to ‘Florida Man’ type stuff, but I do kinda keep to myself.”
“Probably why the old man sent ya down here.” Shaw winks. “Whenever he or Upton get some new blood, they send ’em over to say hi.”
Wednesday approaches us, holding her empty cup out to Jermaine for a refill. “I think they’re collecting followers and having a friendly competition to see who can get the bigger team.”
“Great, I’m a Pokémon.” I chuckle.
The others look at me as if I’d started singing in some foreign language. Guess they’re too old to get the reference.
“I’m a new pet critter he wants to show off.” Heh. Here’s hoping Wolent and Upton don’t make their minions fight random duels.
Wednesday tilts her head. “I don’t think they’re ‘collecting’ us, but who really knows how the really old ones think?”
“Yeah, seriously.”
Jermaine leans closer, studying me like I’m a bug under a magnifying glass. “Damn, girl. You’re an enigma.”
“Umm, okay?”
He smiles. “Never saw anyone put so much effort into their face while pullin’ a total ‘screw it’ on the wardrobe.”
“I’m not wearing makeup.”
Jermaine lets out a sassy sort of sigh. “I mean your face, not your cosmetics. Honey, you be tryin’ way hard to look like you’re still alive. Not knockin’ it, just find it odd for you to be so concerned about appearances and ignorin’ the most important part—the wardrobe.”
“Oh. Can’t help it. My body does it on its own.”
Sigh.
A conversation about being an Innocent—I avoid mentioning my sunlight tolerance—plus finishing my spiked blood eats far more time than expected. At least these three don’t pity me for being a weak strain. Wednesday embraces her paleness due to—or perhaps in spite of—her name. For all I know, it’s a ‘character’ name she adopted after turning into a Goth queen post-Transference. My guess about Dusty proved reasonably accurate. The guy used to be a film actor in the later Fifties. No one famous, mostly played random henchmen or ranch hands who ended up on screen for a few minutes before taking a bullet. Shaw doesn’t share much of his background other than to say he became a vampire in the early Eighties. He and Dad would probably get along. Both of them are frozen in the same era.
Finally, they realize time’s short. I hadn’t really expected to be able to fly home tonight, but it’s still mildly annoying to have lost hours here. Oh well, not really a big deal. Being friendly to the locals is the nice thing to do and it’s not as if the sibs would be awake now anyway.
After our little party breaks up, I make my way outside via the back door at the end of the VIP hallway. Conveniently, the Delirium night club doesn’t have any lights on behind the building. Almost like they do it on purpose for us to have a secluded place. Works for me. I leap into the air and fly around in an expanding circle, searching for a good place to weather the morning.
Tonight, I’m the 800-pound gorilla in the fourth-grade joke.
Where does a vampire sleep?
Wherever she wants to.
18
Speaking of Crazy
Shelter takes the form of an abandoned house a mile or so away from downtown.
Maybe abandoned isn’t exactly the right word. Vacant works better, since it’s not in bad shape and a ‘for sale’ sign stands in the front yard. Place has a weird energy inside. Can’t tell if it’s haunted or the odd feeling is coming from my unease at legit breaking into a place. Yeah, Follows Rules Girl engaged in a little casual B&E.
I rationalize it away as not a big deal due to it being a matter of survival. Not as if I’m kicking in the door to steal someone’s crap, trash the place, or even go exploring for stupid teenage curiosity. My ass needed something between it and the California sun. The house doesn’t have a basement, so I squeezed into the closet containing the hot water heater. Only spot free from windows.
It bothers me to be away from home on Sunday while my parents are out of the country. I don’t like sitting in a little closet over a thousand miles away from the Littles when Mom and Dad aren’t there for them. Ashley’s doing a great job helping me, but she’s still Ashley. There’s a reason I couldn’t tell if she mentally turned six when Sophia’s magic went wonky. The differences in her personality aren’t terribly manifest. About the biggest change in her is no longer believing Santa is real. Otherwise, she’s still pretty much a kid at heart—which is good. Ashley is sweet, innocent, kind, loving, and puts herself wholly into everything she does.
But I’m not a hundred percent confident she’ll hold it together in a serious crisis.
Then again, she did attack the wannabe vampire hunter the one time. Maybe I underestimate her. Sometimes the cute ones are the deadliest. Also, Blix and some large dog-like creature are at the house. No idea if the mysterious canine is friendly or merely present, though.
Argh! I wanna go home.
Totally don’t mean it the way it sounds. I’m not homesick. I’m worried about my siblings.
I call Ashley since it’s the only thing I can do from a hot water closet.
We talk for over an hour. Once the initial ‘is everyone still alive’ stuff is out of the way, it feels like we’re fifteen again and stuck at home after it’s too late to go outside, killing the last hour before bedtime by talking about random nonsense. She teases me by saying the Tahoe should be back to normal before I get home and won’t admit if she’s kidding or something happened.
My assumption is she’s kidding. Anything serious, she wouldn’t avoid telling me.
I can’t quite get out from under the feeling ‘something weird’ is imminently about to happen. Hopefully, it’s only my guilty conscience needling me for going off on a vampire errand while my siblings needed me. Maybe they don’t need me quite as much as I want to believe. It’s not as if they’re five and six years old, though Sophia might still be afraid of the closet monster. Sam actually has a closet monster.
“Ash, do you think I should’ve waited for the ’rents to come back?”
“Before going to Cali?”
“No, before dying my hair
blonde.”
She squeals. “You did not!”
“No, dork. I didn’t. Of course I mean running the message to Cali.”
“Uhh, maybe. I guess something was important for you to do it.”
I twirl my hair around my finger repetitively. “Worried using family as an excuse to delay doing something for them would give the idiots ammo to use against us. I can just hear Stefano whining to Wolent about how I’ll always put my family ahead of vampire matters and demanding I make them forget me—or someone kills them.”
“Well… you will put them ahead of everything. And you should,” says Ashley.
“I know. But waving it in their faces right now isn’t smart. Besides, what he asked me to do is fairly trivial and it’s not like the Littles are four-year-olds. Plus, I have you to save my ass. Better to hold off on getting into an argument with elder vampires for when it’s important. Gotta protect you guys. Don’t want the buttheads having any reason to get more upset at my family.”
“Guess it makes sense then. Like I said, all quiet here. Sam’s friends are here. Up in his room. The girls went to Nicole’s house.”
“Okay. Sounds good. I’ll be home in a couple hours. As soon as the sun lets me out.”
“Cool. Any idea what time?”
“Probably not going to get there until at least ten, unfortunately. Unless I buy an actual ticket… which I might do just to hurry it up.”
She laughs. “Let me know what happens, okay?”
“Definitely.”
I can’t even sit still for ten full minutes after we’re off the phone before worry gets me again. How long it will take before my expectations of supernatural badness affecting my family lessens? We’re way overdue. Then again, mystics magi-kidnapped Sophia across the ocean, then other mystics kidnapped her, then freakin’ brownies nabbed her. Such craziness ought to satisfy the Universe’s need for weird for a few more months.
At least a couple weeks.
Right?
Hmm. Don’t wanna sit here. I crack the closet door open to test sun levels in the house. It’s pretty damn bright as none of the windows have curtains. Almost too painful for me to leave the space beside the water heater. But, if my ability to resist—somewhat—sunlight is technically a vampiric power, it stands to reason I can develop it and get better at doing it. Innocents can’t be as rare as we seem to be. I’m guessing the apparent scarcity is a combination of vampire society not thinking us significant enough to study/document much, plus a little embarrassment. Some vampires might not want to admit being Innocents the same way people in the 1800s attempted to conceal being left-handed.
You know, since using the ‘wrong’ primary hand meant Satan owned you or some nonsense.
I clench my jaw and extend my hand into the sun until it smokes, then recoil, watch it heal, and repeat the process a few times. Damn this is painful. California sun is not messing around. This shit hurts. The only way I’m leaving this closet at the moment is an epic Hollywood style running-on-fire charge because I need to save one of my siblings from being hit by a car… or grab the last skinny mocha before the Starbucks ran out of sugar-free chocolate syrup. I might end up a smoldering ruin of bones and leathery flesh, but… the coffee… my precious.
Yeah, no. Developing my sunlight tolerance is not happening in five minutes. If it’s even a possibility at all, I’m looking at decades. Furies don’t wake up from the Transference strong enough to throw vending machines right away.
Right. Stuck in jail for now. Grr.
I pull the closet door shut, rest my chin on my knees, and make faces at the wall while rubbing my poor, tender hand.
Maybe an hour later, it’s gotten far enough into the afternoon where I’m able to leave the windowless space.
Outside still isn’t happening without spontaneous Sarah combustion, but my cage got bigger. This house has no electricity. Can’t charge my phone. No TV. Gah. Mega bored. I spend another forty minutes or so wandering empty rooms playing chicken with patches of sunlight. As long as I don’t stand in them, I’m not in too much pain. So weird playing ‘the floor is lava’ for real.
The eerie feeling is gone from the house, or maybe my senses are so damn dulled by the daylight I wouldn’t notice a box truck running over an army of mimes twenty feet away from me. Would a mime getting hit by a car scream for real or just make faces?
Hour drags into hour. So bored.
I’m half tempted to clean the place purely for something to do, but the cabinets are all empty. No cleaning supplies. Yes, I checked. Every cabinet. Crawled into them too like a six-year-old. This place has a lazy Susan inside the corner cabinet in the kitchen. Am I pathetic for thinking it’s a cool use of otherwise inaccessible space?
No, I’m bored.
Lazy Susans are not mic-drop cool unless you’re elderly or pathologically into home design. It’s a sickness.
Bored.
I kill an hour ‘painting’ a flock of doves on the wall in what I think is the dining room by making handprints in the dust. It’s tempting to take a shower despite the lack of hot water, but… the water doesn’t work either. Must’ve been shut off. Speaking of… what evil genius found a way to charge people money for water? The Earth is covered in it. How can water be monetized? I bet the same bastards are working hard to monetize air if they can. Some places make it illegal to collect rain water. Probably so the bastards can charge people for water. They don’t want anyone off the grid.
Bleh.
No, I’m not a conspiracy wonk. I’m bored.
Argh.
I bang my head into the wall, adding to the dove artwork—not hard enough to damage anything. If I didn’t want to go home so bad, the time wouldn’t be so maddening. Screw it.
At 5:19 p.m., I walk out the front door—and burst into flames.
I peer down at myself, on fire. “Well, that didn’t work.”
Ouch.
The flames go out as soon as I jump inside and slam the door.
Okay, I didn’t exactly pull a Sarah Connor clinging to the fence during a nuclear blast, only a few flickering candle flames. Still. Owwie. No one likes to be on actual fire. It sucks. I do a stupid little dance routine starting off by swatting the smoking patches of my clothes and ending by giving double middle fingers to California and the sun. Nothing against the state or its people, just its geographical location and relationship with the firey ball of ‘screw you.’
I count the rooms again.
Except the attic. It’s the house of nope. Too hot. And it’s got one of those little pull down folding ladder things. Never liked those. I’m afraid of the one in our house, too. Sane people don’t go to attics. Attics are where the ghosts and scary stuff live. House builders know this. It’s why they put in those idiotic deathtrap contraption ladder things as a warning to keep people out.
No, I’m not having a mental breakdown.
Bored.
Phone’s at twenty-two percent charge. Screw it. Don’t have too much longer to wait. Oh, craprabbits. Daylight-Mess-With-Sarah’s-Life-Time kicked in overnight. Sunset isn’t until 6:53 p.m. Best case scenario, it takes me a few minutes to fly to the airport, there’s a plane leaving for SeaTac between 7:15 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., and I’m home around eleven. Littles will be asleep. I could also fly on my own straight home, in which case I’ll get there closer to four in the morning. Littles still asleep. Going commercial gives me more time to deal with house stuff or throw at the homework I need to complete for Monday’s classes.
Okay. Commercial it is. Maybe I can speed things along.
Could take an Uber to the airport before sunset so I’m there on time to catch the earliest possible flight based on when my powers come online. It’s probably not worth it though. Won’t exactly take me forever to fly from here to the airport after dark.
Bored. So bored I make ‘dust angels’ on the floor.
The worst way to make time pass is to want it to pass.
I know the layout of this house as well as
anyone who lived here for ten years—except the attic. Could be a pile of money on the floor and I still wouldn’t go up there. A magical portal to teleport me home is about the only thing capable of tempting me to scale the rickety folding ladder, and I’d still have to make it past the evil ghosts.
Figured I passed the point of desperation when I got annoyed at not being able to clean a stranger’s house. Cleaning isn’t fun, but it’s something to do. I make more dust angels on the floor. Good thing Ashley isn’t here or the dares would’ve gotten out of hand. There would’ve been bare boob prints on the walls. Some realtor is going to be highly confused when they show this place. Yeah, crap. I better do something about fingerprints. One downside to being an Innocent, I might still leave them. Most vampires don’t since their bodies no longer produce skin oil.
One might ask how mine does, considering I’m as dead as any other vampire.
I can fly. Explain that with science. Who cares about minor bodily functions?
“It’s magic!” I yell, doing an impression of Eddie Izzard.
Pacing.
Grumbling.
Ugh.
Finally! The sun weakens enough for me to go outside.
Can’t fly yet, still too daylight-y, but screw it. I’m walking to the airport. I have an iPhone and a navigation app and I’m not afraid to use them. Don’t care if the distance covered on foot is minuscule compared to flying, it’s something to do other than rattle around an empty house. At least I busied myself wiping down fingerprints for a while.
As soon as I go online—like twenty minutes after leaving the house—it’s tempting to hurl myself right into the air. But… pedestrians and traffic exist. Worse, they exist in places where they can see me. To avoid a ‘girl flies into the air’ video appearing on YouTube, I duck into an alley behind a convenience store for some cover.
Vampire Innocent (Book 10): A Vampire’s Guide To Adulting Page 20