by Morgana Best
Lucas nodded. “You could well be right. Anyway, sorry to intrude, ladies.” With that, he nodded and let himself out.
I turned to my aunts who at once let out a collective sigh of relief. “What was that about?” I asked them.
“That’s a conversation for another time,” Aunt Agnes said. “Meanwhile, it’s best if you never mention anything we say to you about his wine to Mr O’Callaghan.”
“Whyever not?”
No one answered, so I said, “Let me guess. That’s a conversation for another time, right? Anyway, I haven’t told you what just happened to me.”
All sets of knitting needles stopped.
“I was walking along the beach, when I saw Marius Jones off in the scrub, acting suspiciously.”
“Acting suspiciously, how?” Aunt Agnes asked me.
“He might have been burying something, but I can’t be sure,” I said, “and then he saw me. I think he threatened me.”
“You think he threatened you?” Agnes said, parroting me once more.
“Not with his words as such, but certainly his manner,” I said. “I thought he had a shovel, but I was too far away. He didn’t seem happy when he realised I had seen him. Now, what’s all this secrecy about the wine from Ambrosia Winery?”
“It’s Witches’ Brew,” Aunt Agnes said, and the other two aunts nodded furiously.
“Lucas O’Callaghan’s uncle Henry was a witch?”
Agnes shrugged. “Yes, and um…” She hesitated for a moment, and then said, “He made the Witches’ Brew. The beauty of it is that ordinary, non-witch people can drink it, but when witches do, it enhances our powers.”
I sat down on the nearest chair and clutched my head. “This is all too much.”
“You’ve seen that Yowie Shifter, right?” Aunt Dorothy reminded me.
“Yes,” I said slowly.
“Your mind should now be more open to the paranormal,” Aunt Agnes said with a hint of censure in her voice.
I sighed. “It is, but there’s a limit.”
“Never mind, Valkyrie, I’ve made you your favourite lunch,” Aunt Agnes said. “Macaroni cheese.”
I thanked her politely. I detested macaroni cheese. Years earlier, when visiting with my parents, the aunts had served us macaroni cheese. I had said it was nice, simply to be polite, and ever since then, Aunt Agnes had it in her head that it was my favourite food and served it up to me at every opportunity.
I warily eyed the huge plate of macaroni cheese that Aunt Agnes deposited in front of me. “And have some wine with that,” she said, fetching the crystal goblet seemingly out of thin air, and filling it.
“The Witches’ Brew,” I said.
“Yes, but you don’t want to call it that in front of other people.”
I nodded. I realized I had already said too much in front of Lucas O’Callaghan.
The aunts only picked at their food, and I noticed they were all looking at me. By the time I had finished my meal, I not only felt somewhat sick to my stomach, but I also felt somewhat apprehensive.
“Now Valkyrie, I have something to tell you.”
My stomach clenched, and I instinctively took a large gulp of the Witches’ Brew.
“What is it this time?” I said. “There are fairies at the bottom of the garden?”
“Would you be surprised if there were?” Aunt Maude said.
I gasped, but Aunt Agnes waved her hand at Maude. “Not as far as we know, but nothing would surprise me, Valkyrie. Now, we’ve been discussing how to break this to you gently, and you seeing the Yowie Shifter was a good start.”
I took another gulp of wine. “You’re saying that the Yowie Shifter was just a start?” I was incredulous.
All the aunts nodded solemnly. “Now, this might upset you a little, Valkyrie.”
“Will it be more upsetting than finding out that Shifters are real?” I asked her.
The aunts exchanged glances. “Quite possibly,” Agnes said, while Aunt Dorothy nodded frantically.
“Please just spit it out and get it over with then,” I said. The apprehension was gnawing away at the pit of my stomach, a stomach already filled with rich macaroni cheese.
“We are vampires.”
The wine had been halfway to my mouth, but when she said that, I set my goblet down hard on the table. “Please tell me this is a joke,” I said weakly.
“No, all three of us are vampires,” Agnes said.
I clutched my throat. “You drink blood?”
The three of them looked horrified. “Oh goodness me, no! That’s so last century, dear,” Aunt Agnes said.
Aunt Dorothy shook her head. “Hollywood has a lot to answer for.”
Aunt Maude agreed. “Drinking blood is so 1695.”
“You don’t kill people?” I asked hopefully.
Agnes gasped. “Of course not, dear.”
“But what do you do for, you know, blood? Do you drink pigs’ blood?”
“Why would we murder an innocent pig?” Aunt Agnes appeared to be shocked. “We’re animal lovers. How could you say such a thing, Valkyrie?”
“Well, she obviously doesn’t know anything about vampires, Agnes,” Aunt Maude said harshly. “You had better explain it all to her.”
Agnes snorted rudely. “How do I know what to explain? I don’t know what she knows and what she doesn’t know.”
Aunt Dorothy piped up. “Obviously she knows nothing at all, zero, zilch, nil, nought, nothing.”
“We’re just like anyone else really,” Aunt Agnes said, her eyes darting wildly from side to side. She wrung her hands. “We need a lot of iron, and that probably gave rise to the old myth of vampires drinking blood. Of course, for all we know they did drink blood, back in the day. Modern vampires need to take iron supplements, specifically, ferritin supplements. Just as vegans need to take Vitamin B12 daily, vampires need iron and certain other vitamins and minerals daily. That’s about it.”
“You forgot the bit about living for a long time,” Aunt Maude prompted.
“How long?” It was too much of a shock to take in. The room receded slightly and I slurped some more wine. That seemed to steady me, but I set down my goblet and gripped the edges of my chair.
“Quite a long, long time,” Aunt Agnes said in a nonchalant tone.
“Are you immortal?” I asked her. The room was now spinning.
“Of course not, dear.” Agnes twisted her knitting needles nervously.
“Well, that’s a relief,” I said, looking at my aunts with new eyes.
“We would probably die if a bus ran over us,” she pointed out.
“Or if we fell off a cliff,” Maude said.
“Or if someone ran us through with a pitchfork,” Dorothy added. “We might possibly die then. So you see, dear, we’re not immortal.”
I rubbed my temples and then looked up to see my aunts looking worriedly at each other.
“So how old are you exactly?” I asked them. “Hundreds of years old?”
“A lady never tells her age,” Aunt Agnes said primly.
My curiosity overcame my fear, but it was all so surreal. “A little hint? Are you over one hundred years old? How old were you when you were turned?”
“Turned?” Aunt Dorothy said in confusion. “What’s that?”
“You know, how you became vampires. Didn’t someone bite your neck and you turned into a vampire?”
A look of disgust swamped Aunt Agnes’s face. “There are so many horrible stories out there about vampires. It’s not very nice. No, we were born this way. If you promise not to scream or faint, we’ll show you our true form.”
I gasped. Would they look like savage beasts? Before I could ask them not to show me their true form, the air around them shimmered.
There in front of me, were three strikingly beautiful women, all youthful, I guessed somewhere in their thirties. As I continued to stare, the air shimmered and once more they turned back into elderly ladies.
“We deliberately hide our true fo
rm, using this magical glamour,” Aunt Agnes explained.
“Why, why?” I stammered.
Dorothy frowned at me. “So men won’t hit on us, of course. Isn’t that obvious?”
I had no reply.
“Yes, we can make ourselves look any age we like,” Aunt Agnes said as if she were explaining something logical like photosynthesis or the law of relativity. “Most people tend to overlook and underestimate elderly ladies. They don’t think we have minds of our own, and they tend to condescend to us. It’s safer to be in this form.”
“Tell her about the Witches’ Brew,” Maude said.
Aunt Agnes’s eyes lit up. “Oh yes, the Witches’ Brew. That is truly how we refer to it, but it’s actually an elixir for vampires. Henry Ichor was a vampire and he produced this wine. He exported it to vampires worldwide. I’ll explain it all more fully, when you’re over this shock, Valkyrie, but Henry was both a witch and a vampire, both hereditary traits. For centuries, his bloodline has had the ability to produce the Witches’ Brew. It’s an innate ability, one his wine scientist relative had, too. The trouble is, there’s no formula for Witches’ Brew, so you can see it’s quite a serious matter that both Henry and Talos Sparks are dead. Not all vampire-witches can make Witches’ Brew, only those with the ability inherent in their bloodline. Only a vampire-witch, someone with the genes of both, can produce Witches’ Brew, which refers more to the producer than the drinker.”
The other two aunts nodded.
“So it’s not for witches?” I asked. I wanted to ask more, but it was too much for me to handle.
“No, it’s for vampires. I just explained that,” Aunt Agnes said. “You’re taking this quite well, Valkyrie.”
“I’m really not,” I said. “I think I’m going into shock.”
“She’s gone white,” Dorothy said. “I hope she doesn’t faint again. Agnes, you’d better not tell her that other thing yet.”
Both Agnes and Maude rounded on her and shushed her, but it was too late.
I took another gulp of wine, dismayed to see the goblet was now empty, and asked, “What other thing?”
All the aunts looked concerned. I wondered what the other thing could possibly be. And that was when I began to put two and two together. The Witches’ Brew was for vampires. They had been keen to have me drink plenty of the Witches’ Brew. Vampires were born, not turned—it was genetic. I was their niece, perhaps their great-great-great-great-great grand niece, but the important thing was that I was their blood relative.
That was the last thing I remembered.
I came to on the floor, all three aunts bending over me, patting my hands.
Aunt Agnes tried to pour some wine into my mouth, but it went down the wrong way and I choked. I coughed and propped myself up on one elbow. I opened one eye. “I’m a vampire, aren’t I?”
Chapter 19
I opened the other eye and tried to remember where I was. Oh yes, I was on the kitchen floor at Mugwort Manor, and my vampire aunts were bending over me. If I hadn’t been lying down, no doubt I would have fainted again.
“Is Lucas a vampire, too?” I asked them.
“I don’t think so, dear,” Aunt Agnes said, brushing the remainder of the macaroni cheese off my clothes. I must have pulled the plate on top of me when I fainted.
“How do you know he isn’t a Shifter, then?” I didn’t resist when the aunts helped me back onto my chair. Aunt Dorothy poured me a glass of wine, and I took a large mouthful. “Are you sure this is low in alcohol?”
“One question at a time, Valkyrie,” Aunt Agnes said sternly but not unkindly. “We don’t know if Lucas O’Callaghan is a vampire, but we know for certain that he is not a Shifter. And the reason for that is that his uncle Henry was a vampire, and no vampire would have a Shifter as a relative.”
“Why?” I was curious, in spite of myself.
“I can give you a long summary of the history later,” Agnes said, “but suffice to say, vampires and Shifters have always been at each other’s throats.”
“Is that a pun?” I asked her. “Because if it is, I don’t find it funny. I hope you understand that I’ve had a terrible shock, in fact, a few days of terrible shocks. So are you saying that you don’t know if Lucas is a vampire, but he can’t be a werewolf or any sort of Shifter, because his uncle was a vampire?”
All the aunts nodded happily. “She understands,” Dorothy said triumphantly.
“No, I really don’t,” I said. I was on the verge of tears. In fact, I wanted to burst into deep sobs, and I was only barely managing to hold it together. “If I am a vampire because you’re all vampires, then why isn’t Lucas a vampire if his uncle was a vampire?”
“It’s just like anything else that is passed down in families,” Agnes said long-sufferingly, “quite like red hair, for example. It’s just a question of genetics. Two parents with blue eyes will always produce a child with blue eyes, but two parents with brown eyes could also produce a child with blue eyes. Genetics!”
“Could I please have some Advil?”
The packet of Advil appeared in front of me as if by magic, along with a glass of water. “How did you move so fast?” I asked Aunt Dorothy.
“It’s just an ability that I developed around a hundred years or so ago,” she said calmly. “Now take two and soon you’ll be feeling a lot better.”
“I doubt it,” I muttered darkly. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. Having vampire parents doesn’t necessarily make the child a vampire?”
Aunt Agnes sighed. “Yes, having two vampire parents will make a child a vampire, but if a child has one vampire parent and one non-vampire parent, then the child has a fifty percent chance of being either. Didn’t you do biology at school?”
“Yes, but it was all about pea plants and nothing about vampires,” I said icily. “So you don’t know if Lucas’s parents were both vampires, is that right?”
“Quite so,” Aunt Agnes said, “but both your parents were vampires.”
I put my head in my hands and rubbed my temples, staring hard at the yellowed lace doily under my plate, and tried to process the fact that both my parents were vampires. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Aunt Agnes took a while to respond. “No dear, I’m sorry to say that we don’t know what happened to your parents, if that’s what you’re thinking. But I can tell you that they were both vampires, and that’s how we know that you’re a vampire. And yes, as I mentioned just then, there has long been hatred between vampires and Shifters. It goes back a very long way. Don’t try to understand now, but just remember that a Shifter is never your friend.”
I thought that a rather strange piece of advice, but I filed it away for future reference. “So what happens now?”
“You eat your dessert, and then we’ll keep up our work making this Yowie Shifter tell us who his accomplice is,” Aunt Agnes said, as if she were talking about something as mundane as the weather forecast. “Simple, really.”
Dorothy deposited a large bowl of chocolate ice cream in front of me. I thanked her and ate a spoonful before speaking. “I suspect Marius. He has a terrible temper, and I’m sure he made me a veiled threat.”
Agnes nodded. “It could well be.”
“Should we search his cottage?” I asked them. “I assume you have a master key?”
They all nodded. “But that won’t be any help at all,” Aunt Maude said. “Shifters wouldn’t be careless enough to have evidence lying around about their homes.”
I looked at the floor. Some macaroni cheese was still lying on it. “I’d better clean that up,” I said.
Aunt Agnes stood up. “Nonsense. You go and lie on the couch and watch TV. We’ll clean it up.”
“I want to help,” I protested weakly, but they wouldn’t listen to me.
Soon I was lying on the big comfortable couch in the living room, watching TV, and clutching the remote. This wasn’t how I imagined my life would play out. Suddenly I thought of fangs. Fangs! Why hadn’
t the aunts mentioned fangs? And I had been to many dentists, so why hadn’t any of them said there was something strange about my teeth? I didn’t have the energy to get up and ask them, so I just lay there and flipped through the channels, trying to find something to watch.
The black cat appeared from nowhere and jumped up next to me on the couch. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think there’s an episode of Gilmore Girls on right now,” I said in apology. The cat looked at me. “It’s a toss up between Antiques Roadshow and Love It or List It Vancouver.” The cat jumped off the couch and sat in front of the TV. She purred loudly and flicked her tail when I flicked the channel to Love It or List It Vancouver.
I lay back on the couch and tried to process the information. I had so many questions, apart from the fangs. And why had my parents tried to keep me away from my aunts? Was there something, even now, that my aunts weren’t telling me?
And was I in danger from the other murderer, the accomplice of the creature locked in a magical cage in the room upstairs? Once again, I could feel hysteria bubbling away within me, and I fought against it. This was crazy, but at the same time, I knew it was real. I thought I needed to see a therapist, only I would be locked up in double quick time. I wondered if there was a therapist for vampires. I’d have to ask my aunts about that.
All three aunts came into the room just when the Vancouver house owners were about to announce whether they would love it or list it. “We’re going for our afternoon walk, now, Valkyrie,” Aunt Agnes said. “We haven’t been on our walk for a few days, and we have to keep healthy.”
“Before you go, I have a question about fangs.”
“Oh yes, fangs,” Aunt Agnes said in a matter of fact manner. “That’s not a very nice term, is it? They’re just like wisdom teeth.” She turned to leave.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What do you mean that they’re like wisdom teeth?”
“They’re not really like wisdom teeth,” Aunt Maude said. “Some people never get their wisdom teeth, but vampires always get their fangs.”
“Quite right,” Agnes said. “You’re probably too young to get your fangs yet, but don’t be alarmed when you do. It doesn’t hurt.”