Vampires Drink Tomato Juice

by K. M. Shea

  Vampires Drink Tomato Juice

  The Magical Beings’ Rehabilitation Center: Book 1

  K. M. Shea

  VAMPIRES DRINK TOMATO JUICE

  Copyright © 2017 by K. M. Shea

  Cover design by Myrrhlynn

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any number whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historic events is entirely coincidental.

  www.kmshea.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. My Life Explodes

  2. The Truth about Vampires (and Werewolves!)

  3. The Shy Unicorn

  4. The Perverted Pooka

  5. Walking a Werewolf

  6. The Formation of the Cyclops Union

  7. I Negotiate with the Magically Inclined

  8. My Memories to Be Modified

  9. Never Remember Who?

  10. A Pervert Becomes My Hero

  11. I Tutor the Morning Light

  12. My Class Size Increases

  13. De-fleaing a Werewolf

  14. Aysel, the Moon Flood

  15. I Stupidly Volunteer

  16. The Truth about Brett Patterson

  17. Fairies in the Field Museum

  18. In Which I am kidnapped

  19. The Goblin Mob

  20. My Rescuers

  21. The End?

  Afterword

  Other books by K. M. Shea

  About the Author

  1

  My Life Explodes

  I have to break it to you: humans aren’t the only beings on the planet. I know, I know; I sound like some kind of UFO freak or Sci Fi nerd, but you’re thinking about the wrong thing. Try picturing something more…magical—like a character you would find in a Disney movie or in one of those paranormal books.

  Yeah, that’s right. Magical beings live among us.

  This is your fault, Dave. I wouldn’t sound like a lunatic if I hadn’t met you, you disappointing vampire.

  I’m not a psycho. I used to be normal. I hung out with my best friend, Fran. I went to school, but my afternoons were free!

  And then I met Dave.

  Now, instead of watching my favorite shows or hanging out with my friends, I rush to Chicago to put flea collars on werewolves. I tutor elves, shove tomato juice down the throats of vampires, argue with a stubborn Pooka, do paperwork for cyclops, and more.

  Did I mention that THIS IS YOUR FAULT, DAVE?

  Welcome to the MBRC, the Magical Beings’ Rehabilitation Center.

  My name is Morgan L. Fae. (Yeah, it’s close to the legendary Morgan le Fay. Even at my birth, the universe was already playing cosmic jokes on me.)

  I’m from a relatively normal family, and I was your typical teenage girl—until I hit age 16 and my Spanish teacher left the week after homecoming on maternity leave.

  That was how I met Dave, the stupid and chubby vampire.

  “Class, this is Mr. Smith,” Vice Principal Russ announced as I flipped through my Spanish workbook. “He will be your substitute teacher until Mrs. Allen returns from her maternity leave.”

  I looked up from my homework, wondering what kind of person would be standing in for my strict Spanish teacher.

  Mr. Smith was short and had a shock of red hair that drew attention to his pasty, pale skin. He looked like he was in his 40s. His hairline was creeping towards the back of his head, and his beer belly drooped over his pants.

  He was an average guy as far as substitute teachers go.

  “Sí!” Mr. Smith beamed. “Gracias, Señor Russ! I am very excited to be here in first-year Spanish!”

  “Second-year Spanish,” Mr. Russ said.

  “Exactly! Second-year Spanish!”

  “I expect you all to be on your best behavior. That means you, Mr. Wilkins,” Mr. Russ said, eyeing a junior on the other side of the room.

  The junior protested that he was always good, and Mr. Russ left with a disbelieving snort.

  “Right…Hóla?” Mr. Smith said, tipping his head. “We should start with a vocabulary review of the chapter.”

  The class stared at him before Toni and Dani, two girls from the school’s popular clique, blew him off and started swapping homecoming pictures. Scott, the Mr. Wilkins Mr. Russ had warned, threw jelly beans at a poor girl named Stephanie. Meanwhile, Mr. Smith tried to bumble through the lesson.

  “Okay class, so el menu is the menu and…el…el cocinero is the cook. What is la mesa?”

  One girl, Rosaline, the best Spanish student in our class, raised her hand with an air of superiority. “The table,” she said.

  “Right you are, mortal,” Mr. Smith said, paging through the book.

  Those of us who were listening swapped shrugs. We had been taught by weirder people before.

  “Who can tell me what la m-mesera means?” our temporary teacher asked, ignored by half of the class.

  I’m not sure who was more relieved, us or him, when the bell rang. My classmates scrambled to gather their books and hurried off to their new destinations. I was one of the last to leave, finding it difficult to shove my Spanish book in my bag. Fran, my best friend since elementary school, is the secretary for the sophomore student council. She uses my backpack as a billboard or storage unit for whatever event the student council has scheduled next. This time it was leftover homecoming parade flyers.

  As I turned to go, I noticed Mr. Smith hefting a bottle of tomato juice onto his desk. He stared at it, his face scrunching up with dislike, uncapped it, and drank a mouthful.

  “Blech,” he said as I left the room.

  He was undeniably odd.

  Any thought of Mr. Smith’s weirdness disappeared the next day. “Class, I would like to introduce you to a new student, Frey Christenson,” Mr. Smith beamed.

  The class stared.

  Frey Christenson was a tall, lean guy with a track star’s build. His skin was pale, not the paper shade of the sub’s skin, but more like the white-blue shades of snow. His hair was silver. It was a nearly colorless shade of blonde that can only be achieved with the help of dye, but it glinted in the school’s fluorescent light.

  “Hey,” Frey smiled, dazzling us with his vibrant, forest-green eyes.

  “Please take a seat, Frey. Th-Gracias,” Mr. Smith said, waving the teenager away.

  Frey walked across the room with ease, totally aware of all the female eyeballs glued to him, and chose a spot on my side of the room. He sat near the front of the classroom, spaced between two of my friends—Samantha and Emily. It looked like I would be getting the scoop about Frey at lunch.

  Toni and Dani frowned. No doubt they wanted the new kid to sit near them (there was an empty seat behind Toni because the duo had chased away a geeky guy named Rob the first week of class) and felt slighted that he chose to be closer to the front of the room.

  I winced sympathetically. Frey had just committed social suicide. But he was so gorgeous, he might, eventually, be forgiven.

  “Okay, time to learn more Spanish tenses. But first, let’s review the months!” Mr. Smith said.

  Throughout the lesson, Mr. Smith occasionally glanced at Frey, as though he were searching for some kind of approval. The new boy stared at him, his long body neatly folded in his desk. I didn’t think about it—not because I’m not observant or something. I just had more important things to attend to. Like Brent Patterson—the guy I’ve had a crush on since sixth grade. He was in my American Government cl
ass later that day.

  Class progressed, Mr. Smith sweated, and the lunch bell rang. I gathered up my things and left with my classmates. I stopped at my locker to stow my stuff so I wouldn’t have to lug it with me to lunch.

  “Hey, Morgan. Did you ask your sub about taking down the homecoming flyers and putting up the penny drive posters?” Fran asked, nearly tackling me into my locker.

  “I knew I forgot something. There was this new kid who is absolutely gorgeous! But never mind, I’ll tell you at lunch if Samantha and Emily don’t. Save me a spot at the table,” I said, turning back in the direction of my classroom, some of Fran’s flyers in my hands.

  “Where are you going?” Fran shouted.

  “To ask Mr. Smith,” I said, hurrying up the hallways. By the time I reached the Spanish classrooms again, the bell rang, announcing the next class period had started. Thankfully, I knew Mr. Smith had lunch break now, so I wouldn’t be interrupting him.

  “Hey, Mr. Smith, I have a question,” I called as I opened the door before freezing like a frightened deer.

  “You have to drink it, Dave,” Frey, the hot new student, snarled, practically force-feeding the Spanish sub a bottle of tomato juice.

  “No, no, no! I’m sick of it! I can’t stand it. You try sipping that stuff for a decade. I want blood! The real stuff,” Mr. Smith complained, fighting his student. He managed to push the teenager away from him.

  Then he hissed at Frey.

  No joke.

  He literally bared his teeth at him—his canines were a little over-pronounced—and hissed. Like a cat.

  “I’m here as your handler to make your rehabilitation easier, Dave,” Frey said, not at all fazed by the hiss. “You will listen to me. Don’t make me get stern, Dave.”

  “Werewolves suck,” Mr. Smith, AKA Dave, announced.

  “I warned you, Dave,” Frey said, crouching down.

  I’m still not exactly sure what happened next. One moment, Frey stood in the classroom, and I blinked. When I opened my eyes, there was a white, arctic wolf snapping at Mr. Smith with some serious teeth.

  “Holy crap!” I said, staring wide-eyed at the pair.

  Mr. Smith and the white wolf swung around and stared at me. It was then that my brain concluded that Frey was, in fact, a werewolf. And Mr. Smith? A vampire.

  All I can say is that the Twilight books lied.

  2

  The Truth about Vampires (and Werewolves!)

  I stared at my teacher and the new student, who was still a dog. They stared back. I backed out of the room, closing the door in front of me. I studied the door for a second before shuffling away, Fran’s flyers still clutched in my hands.

  Within seconds Mr. Smith, the vampire, and the new kid descended on me.

  “Hey, hey, hey! Where are you going?” Frey the werewolf asked, once again in a human body.

  “To get my head checked,” I said, wandering in the general direction of the nurse’s office.

  I’m not stupid. Harry Potter, Twilight…I know those books aren’t real. They’re fiction, okay? Fiction. Make believe. I might like reading them, but the idea of actually sharing the world with vampires and werewolves did not give me a warm, tingly feeling.

  Not to mention that if there WERE such a thing as vampires, they would not be overweight, middle-aged men whose hair seemed to be eating itself.

  Therefore, there was only one option: there was something severely wrong with me. Maybe I would have to see a specialist.

  “If she tells anyone what she saw...” Frey the werewolf growled.

  “Yeah, yeah,” the vampire said before grabbing me by the elbow. “Why don’t you come back to the Spanish room with us and sit down miss…um…”

  “She’s your student, and you don’t even know her name?” Frey appropriately howled.

  “Well, sooorry! It’s my second day,” Mr. Smith whined.

  “Two days in, and you’ve blown your cover. That has to be a record.”

  “It’s Morgan, Mr. Smith. My name is Morgan.”

  “Right, Miss Morgan, come along. And I insist you call me Dave,” Dave the chubby vampire said, turning me around and guiding me back to the Spanish room with a helping hand on my elbow.

  As he and Frey escorted me into the Spanish room, a part of me reasoned that if they really were a vampire and werewolf, I (most likely their food of choice) should not walk into a room with them, alone. I mercilessly shut that part of me up and reminded myself that vampires and werewolves were fictitious creatures the entertainment industry was cashing in on.

  “Miss Morgan, about what you saw,” Dave nervously laughed.

  “Forget it. She saw the whole thing,” Frey shrugged, dropping his slender track star body into Dave’s chair. “I’ll take her to the MBRC to get her memory wiped.”

  “What?” I asked.

  Dave frowned. “Is that really necessary? Maybe they can hypnotize her.”

  Frey shook his head, ruffling his silver hair. “The best hypnotizer we have is a siren who just left to help rehabilitate a flock of phoenixes two days ago. Plus, hypnotizing doesn’t have the same memory-free guarantee, and it might not stick. She’ll have to be wiped.”

  “But that always makes mortals loony. They’re never the same after,” Dave argued.

  “Um, I am personally in favor of hypnotizing,” I said

  “See!” Dave triumphantly folded his arms.

  “As far as we’re concerned, you don’t get a choice,” Frey said to me before turning to Dave. “I’ll take her to the MBRC right now. Cover for me while I’m gone?”

  “How?” Dave asked.

  “You’re a teacher. Say I had to be sent home or something. Just. Don’t. Screw. Up. While. I’m. Gone,” Frey said, emphasizing his speech by poking Dave the vampire in the chest with every word. “Okay, let’s go,” Frey said, grabbing me by the arm before sweeping me out of the room.

  Before I knew it, we were blowing out of the front doors of the school, heading for the train station several blocks down.

  “Um, we need to sign out in order to leave school grounds during lunch hours,” I said.

  “Ahhh, Morgan. So human. So tiny. I have bigger worries than getting approved permission to leave,” Frey sighed, still yanking me along with his iron grip.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, playing with the idea of making a break for it. I still had Fran’s flyers. Maybe I could throw them at him? If I was lucky, I would give him a paper cut on his pretty face.

  “To the MBRC: the Magical Beings’ Rehabilitation Center,” Frey replied.

  “What?”

  “Try not to think too hard about it. You won’t remember any of this in an hour,” Frey said.

  Within minutes, Frey forcibly escorted me up to the train platform, kindly purchased round-way tickets for both of us, and held me rooted to his side as we waited for the train to Chicago to arrive. (He made me throw out Fran’s flyers while we were there.)

  Oakdale, the suburban city where I live, is just a fifteen-minute express train ride away from Chicago.

  As I stood on the platform, the easily excitable part of me—which I was beginning to suspect was the idealistic, childish, romantic part of me—wondered if we were going to walk through a pillar like Harry Potter, or if we were waiting for a train to go flying past us like in the Chronicles of Narnia.

  It was neither.

  The train to Chicago came; Frey pulled me onto it, and we settled down in a seat, Frey sandwiching me against the window.

  The conductor came around to punch our tickets. It was an older gentleman with hair as silvery as Frey’s. He eyed Frey and me beneath bushy eyebrows. “Shouldn’t you kids be in school?” he suggested.

  Frey looked bored and tossed his arm across my shoulders. “We’re doing just that. We’re college students, sir. Man, do I really look that young, Morgan? We get asked that question practically every other day,” Frey said, his voice hitching like a whining dog.

  The conductor shook his
head and moved on. I doubt he believed us. I wouldn’t believe us. Ignoring the fact that we looked too young for college, we weren’t carrying backpacks or books.

  “Sorry about this,” Frey apologized, removing his arm the second the conductor entered the next car. “Thank you for cooperating. I was surprised you didn’t scream when you saw us fighting.”

  “Why would I scream? There’s no such thing as vampires or werewolves,” I firmly said.

  Frey snorted. “So you’re one of those.”

  “What?”

  “One of the deniers. There are two types of people in this world, Morgan. The deniers and the screamers. Well, three types if you count the fainters, but I lob that bunch in with the screamers.”

  “Huh?”

  “When people see something otherworldly like Dave or me, they will either deny its existence even though the proof is smacking them in the face, or they will scream and/or faint.”

  “I see.”

  “Yeah.”

  We were silent the rest of the train ride. We piled out of the car with all of the other passengers at Chicago’s Union Station. Frey led me through the station, navigating our way past other trains. I followed him until we reached a set of stairs that would lead up to the surface of the station. I automatically tried to go up, but Frey continued on our path.

  We separated for a second before Frey’s grip on my arm snapped us back together like a bungee cord.

  “Aren’t we going up?” I asked.

  “Nope. This way,” Frey said, tipping his head.

  I followed him past several food vendors and information desks, heading for a darkened wall I had never really noticed.