‘The Order dictate sports events?’
‘They’re not just in place for the killing and maiming of humans,’ Emerson said. ‘They protect the general secret. It would be pretty obvious that there was something up if vampires started competing against humans on national television.’
‘I dunno, you and Grayson manage pretty well on the field now.’ They were great, literal gods on the field, but no one was seriously questioning whether they were human or not.
‘Too risky, and unfair to humans. Plus, high school level is completely different to national or international sports. The media coverage alone would be a nightmare considering half the work the Order have to go into to cover the long-life of vamps.’
I realised that for the first time I’d gotten a straightforward answer for if the “Order” that hired Cassidy Grimm and existed in my dreams were the same one that continued to run today, that Ali worked for. It was also a piece of information that Emerson had given me freely, without me having to pull any teeth (metaphorically).
I wasn’t sure how I felt about Ali working for an organisation that spanned back into the 1600s and were the reason the Mors Exercitus has been created in the first place, and had allowed Cassidy’s experiments to go as far as they did. I mentally shook my head. Only the latter had proof. The first bit was just part of my active imagination.
I looked around the room for something to distract me. My eyes landed on a guitar that was propped up between the wall and the drawers Emerson was leaning up against. I got up from the bed, noticing how Emerson’s eyes tracked me, and reached past him to the guitar.
‘Oh. That,’ he said.
It was a nice guitar. Black acoustic Fender, mahogany, twenty frets. My fingers strummed the strings. Well-tuned.
‘I’m trying to learn for the musical. I know it’s Scaramouche who actually plays the guitar for the solo and Galileo is shite, but…’ Emerson messed up his hair. ‘I never learnt so I thought it could be something I tried.’
I took the guitar over to the bed, sitting down and holding it across my body. Automatically, as though it hadn’t been years since I played, I began to strum. The first song I ever learnt to play was Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple and eventually, I’d learnt to jazz it up a little, covering it finger style with my old acoustic.
After the first couple of chords, muscle memory kicked in and I played through the song, with my eyes closed. I was transported back into Christian’s bedroom, the smell of mildew in the air, Christian’s legs against my back as I sat on the floor, him on the bed. When the song ended, and I opened my eyes, I half expected Christian’s blue eyes to be looking back at me, not Emerson’s.
‘One of my foster dads was a music teacher,’ I explained, handing him back the guitar. He, along with two of my other foster siblings, had been the ones to die in the car accident back when I was eight. ‘And I had plenty of musical acquaintances over my lifetime.’
Christian had saved up a month’s wage for my birthday to get me a guitar. My throat closed up at the memory of what became of it. The snapped fretboard. The sound it had made as it smashed into the wall. Christian’s scream of anger. My tears.
‘Acquaintances, not friends?’
‘I don’t do friends,’ I told Emerson.
Emerson gave me a puzzled look. Right. Yeah. I’d not exactly stuck to my “loner” profile since he’d met me. Even if he had used to call me anti-social.
I was saved from having to get into it as the front door opened and the sound of Grayson’s voice echoed through the apartment.
‘Grayson’s here?’ I asked.
My body stiffened. Whilst I’d been comfortable in this state of dress with Emerson, I didn’t feel as relaxed knowing Grayson was on the other side of the wall. I felt vulnerable. I clenched my fists, the bite of my rings reminding me I wasn’t completely powerless.
Emerson, sensing my unease, threw a hoodie at me. ‘Yeah, we live together.’
‘You do?’
‘And Charlotte,’ he added.
I pulled the hoodie over my head, trying not to let my jealousy show. He lived with Charlotte? The vamp I’d had to watch screw every night for the past week?
‘Perfect,’ I said, sarcastically.
‘I did invite you to hang out with us all. I thought you were just taking me up on my offer,’ Emerson said, nonchalantly.
‘Sure, you did.’
‘Why do you say that like I tricked you?’
‘Because you totally did! You conned me to get me-’
‘You said you were curious about where I lived. I showed you where I lived. You didn’t ask if I had roommates.’
He had me there. Prick.
‘Shall we come back later when she’s in a better mood?’ Grayson called from the other room.
‘She doesn’t really have a better mood,’ Emerson answered back.
‘Prick,’ I said, aloud that time.
‘Is it really necessary to antagonise the mortal?’ the melodic voice of Charlotte asked.
I’d only heard her speak in my dreams. It was unnerving to note how similar her voice was to what I’d imagined. She didn’t have an American accent, not like she and Emerson had when I slept. Instead, it was a mix of European inflections. There was a definite French element to it.
‘I brought pizza like you asked,’ Grayson said. He said it like he was pointing out to Charlotte that he was trying to be nice to me.
We were all still speaking without actually seeing each other. Emerson and I were in his bedroom, Grayson and Charlotte somewhere in the kitchen.
With the prospect of food, I decided I might as well get the official meeting over and done with. I was already going to have to hang out with Charlotte to be her and Emerson’s emotional fluffer.
‘You got him to order me pizza?’ I asked as I reluctantly got up from the silk sheets.
‘We didn’t stop off for a burger like usual,’ Emerson shrugged. ‘And I’m not inept on knowing how to take care of a mortal.’
‘I’m not a dog,’ I said. I felt a weird sense of déjà vu.
‘Woof,’ Emerson said, before he sped past me using his preternatural ability.
I made sure the hoodie was covering as much of me as possible before I walked back down the hallway towards the kitchen.
Grayson had hopped up onto the kitchen side, his legs swinging and hitting the cupboards beneath. He was still in his football kit, minus the helmet and looked like he was about to start practice, not that he’d been suffering in the rain for hours. He was wetter than Emerson and I had been but didn’t seem uncomfortable in the slightest.
The pizza box had been thrown on the table and Charlotte was sat at the chair furthest from it. She was dry, and in her usual outfit of a tight fitted sweater, skinny jeans and Ugg boots. Her pixie-like hair was perfectly straight.
Emerson opened the box and slid it towards me, aware that I was standing in the doorway, lurking.
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, grabbing a slice and shoving it in my face before I was going to be forced to speak to them.
‘See, she has manners,’ Emerson said, like he was presenting his friends with a trained animal.
I flipped him a middle finger with the hand that wasn’t holding the pizza. Grayson laughed. Charlotte’s face didn’t change.
I sat down in front of the box. Charlotte itched her chair further away from me even though she was at the opposite end of the table. Grayson looked to Emerson who slid into the seat next to me. I ate another two slices of pizza in silence. They all watched me. Before going for the fourth I sighed.
‘This is weird as hell. You guys get that, don’t you?’
‘What?’ Grayson asked.
‘You’re all just staring at me. Whilst I eat. It’s weird.’
‘We don’t eat. What would you have us do?’ Charlotte asked.
I had to think that she couldn’t seriously act like this when she was around her cheer friends. Surely the vamp-glamour didn’t do that muc
h of the work. But she was dissociated from that part of herself; this was the most natural her there was.
‘Talk. Occupy yourselves. Explain why I’m here,’ I said the last part to Emerson.
‘You wanted to know where I lived,’ Emerson repeated.
‘You wanted me to meet with Grayson and Charlotte when we were alone, away from high school. This was a rouse to get me to do that.’
‘She’s got you there, mate.’
‘We talked about trying to figure out what you are yesterday,’ Emerson reminded me. ‘This is… that.’
‘A Scooby Doo meeting of: what the hell is Liv?’ I snorted. I grabbed another slice and started to eat.
Charlotte seemed to take that as me accepting this for what Emerson wanted it to be. She launched into questioning me, leaning on her elbows over the table, looking me dead in the eye. I didn’t enjoy the direct, prolonged eye contact she was giving me. It was creepy.
‘How did you know Emerson was a vampire when you first saw him?’ Charlotte didn’t let me answer. Even if I wasn’t chewing, I think she would have continued. Instead she continued to ask a few more questions, like she was attempting to guess what I was going to say. ‘Can you see our true form? Are you immune?’
If she was like the Charlotte of my dreams, she would have had the ability to see the past from another person’s eyes and would already know the answer.
Right, well I guess we were doing this. Apparently, no time like the present.
‘No. I can’t see you through the glamour,’ I said after I choked on the last bit of pizza that had lodged itself in my throat.
I’d seen the vampires who had killed my parents in their true form. For whatever reason, the vampires, when they had killed my parents, hadn’t hidden their true form. I assumed glamour was something a vampire had control over, and in that moment, they’d wanted to strike fear in my heart and see what I was truly up against. It had worked. I’d literally pissed myself.
‘But she can see our glamour,’ Emerson said. He put his foot up on the corner of my chair. It looked like a relaxed position, but I almost thought that the mood was… territorial? Especially when Charlotte lost the intensity of her eye contact.
I took another pizza slice before another question came. I put away food like nobody’s business. It came from the years of living in foster homes where if you didn’t eat fast, you didn’t eat because some other kid grabbed it. As my body was always healing from something or other, I was always hungry trying to recover.
‘That’s how I knew he was a vampire. I sensed it,’ I said.
No mortal was that godlike in real life. For a human to get as attractive as the Sons, they had to be in front of a camera, with the right lighting and photoshop to edit out all the creases, crinkles and blimps that made them real. But like the “weird energy” Grayson always said I had, there was just something more about vampires that couldn’t be explained by words.
‘Have you gotten any further in figuring out how she might be able to do things like that?’ Emerson asked Grayson.
‘You’ve already asked me that,’ Grayson said.
He turned up his nose at the pizza box. It was pretty much devoid of all food now. But apparently the greasy stains were still unappealing.
Emerson gave him a pointed look then nodded at me.
‘Oh, you want me to explain it to her.’
Emerson looked like he wanted to facepalm.
Grayson jumped down from the counter and started pacing. Emerson put his arm around my chair to steady himself, like the sharp movement had shocked him and he’d almost fallen from his chair. He kept himself braced as Grayson paced.
‘I tried to figure out if there were any humans who had energy like yours when I caught you trying to deck Emerson that first time we met,’ Grayson explained. ‘But there’s nothing in our official records that state that’s possible.’
‘Unofficially?’ I asked, noting how he’d put emphasise on that word.
‘The closest that there was to humans exhibiting any lamia energy was after the Second World War when a scientist experimented on lamia and tried to transfer their powers over to humans.’
‘Lamia experiments?’
Sounded like Cassidy Grimm to me. Even if the only files I’d read of hers was experimentation on lamia, I could imagine that her work could be applied to transfer the vampiric findings to see if “magic” could be contracted like a virus, too.
‘Grayson works with the Order,’ Emerson said. ‘He has access to historical documentation that would otherwise be hidden from most people in the Blood World.’
‘Emerson,’ Charlotte hissed.
‘She knows about us because she has mortal friends on the Order,’ Emerson said, defending himself. ‘It’s not like I’m sharing classified information with her.’
‘What would happen if a mortal like me did get their hands on classified information?’ I asked, keeping my tone purposefully light. I wiped my greasy fingers on the closed cardboard box since the only other available thing would be Emerson’s borrowed clothes.
‘Depends on what information and what they did with it. Removing humans is the Order’s last resort. People who have a history with lamia, and can’t be persuaded otherwise, tend to be let in on the Blood World and controlled through observation. If they ever show red signs, they get… brought in and re-educated.’
‘As in brainwashed?’
‘That’s a way to put it,’ Grayson said.
There were probably human ways you could condition a mortal mind, but I had a feeling that lamia knew a better and more successful way.
‘So, me knowing about these experiments wouldn’t put me up for some re-education?’ I asked, my hands clenched tight.
‘No,’ Emerson said. ‘And if you were, I would prove to the Order that re-educating you would be against their Code considering how well you have kept our secret despite your clear detest for us all.’
‘Well… I don’t detest you now,’ I said.
Emerson smiled.
Grayson disappeared for several seconds before appearing in front of us again. He had in his hand a laptop. He put it on the table, logged in, and inputted a few passwords. He turned the screen around to face me and Emerson.
It was some old casefiles in PDF form that looked like the ones I’d stolen from Emerson. Most of these files were handwritten, rather than typed. I skim-read a few of the paragraphs. The scientist was attempting to give humans the longevity and preternatural abilities of vampires without the side-effects of needing to feed on human blood.
I noticed that he referred to his “predecessor” a lot throughout the experiments. It became clear that he had been a lab hand throughout Cassidy’s experiments and had managed to escape the trail and sentencing. He’d continued his work after fleeing to South America and had been caught by the Order a decade later. A whole decade.
‘How did you guys not get him when you caught Cassidy?’ I asked.
Still not looking up from the computer, I used the mousepad to scroll through the experiments to anything that might mention unusual human energy, plus odd moments of preternatural abilities, like I’d been experiencing.
‘How do you know about Cassidy Grimm?’ Grayson asked.
I pointed, without looking, at Emerson.
‘Emerson,’ Charlotte hissed again. I was starting to think that she was one of those drawstring dolls and only had a few catchphrases she could say.
‘I didn’t- I didn’t do anything. I didn’t tell her-’
‘I got the files from your laptop,’ I admitted.
As I wasn’t going to get “re-educated” for reading them, and Grayson had simply handed over his laptop for me to peruse, it didn’t seem like so much of a bad thing to admit now.
‘I thought I told you to keep those files safe,’ Grayson said, his tone low and serious. It was the first time he sounded anything other than an eighteen-year-old kid.
‘My computer has five layers of encryption
to protect anyone getting into it,’ Emerson said. ‘It shouldn’t matter what I keep on there because even if it was stolen it shouldn’t be able to be read.’
‘Your girl’s a criminal,’ Charlotte said, narrowing her eyes at me.
‘She doesn’t really look like a criminal,’ Grayson said.
‘Do you want me to put on a moustache and start twirling it?’
Grayson’s smile turned playful, like he was considering it, all concerns about a breach of Order security forgotten. His dissociation was a lot stronger than I was used to experiencing – but I had to remember that Emerson didn’t dissociate when he was around me.
‘So…’ I said, trying to get back on track to their influx of questioning and attempts to figure out what I was. ‘These humans that were experimented on is the closest you’ve come to an answer as to why I’m exhibiting… lamia-like energy?’
Grayson nodded; his large shoulders encased in the football pads moving slightly. ‘If you were a descendent from one of those humans that could explain it. Some residual powers left over from messed-up biology,’ Grayson said. ‘Did any of your family ever come from South America or spend long periods over there?’
‘I don’t know.’ I certainly knew I didn’t have the colouring for it besides my dark hair. I was ad pale as moonlight and never tanned. ‘My dad came from a long line of veterans. You could probably have access to see their government records. I don’t really know anything about my mom’s side of the family, only that my grandma worked at the White House at some point.’
That official-voice came back as Grayson asked me, ‘would you let us look into your family history – to find out whether you were connected to any of Grimm’s protégé’s experiments?’
‘You’ve not already?’ I asked, surprised.
‘He wouldn’t let us,’ Charlotte said, staring at Emerson. ‘We’re not even allowed to talk to you without his permission. Grayson only broke the rules when Emerson was decidedly exasperated with you for breaking into his car.’
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