by Kallie Khan
Tobie barked a laugh. “Oh, you’re invested, huh?”
“Who wouldn’t be? Baby sis is finally going on a date, and with someone distinctly not sanctioned by mother dearest.”
Tobie rolled her eyes, but the thought of her mother discovering that she was going on a date with a mundane young man frightened her. She shoved the fear away.
“I like that you’re living a little. And the more I think about it, I like that it’s totally weird he’s introducing you to his folks immediately. Like that!” She snapped her fingers.
She shrugged. “It sounds like he just wants some buffer between him and his dad.”
“Maybe. But a sweet, attractive, nerdy-as-they-come buffer.”
She threw a pillow at Mystia.
Then her phone rang. She glanced down at it on the coffee table. It was a number she didn’t recognize. “Hello?”
A man replied. “Hiya, Tobie. It’s me.”
“Who’s me?” She pointed at her phone and exchanged a deeply confused look with Mystia.
The man laughed again. “Ouch. I guess you didn’t put me in your phone. It’s Alistair.”
“Oh! Alistair! Right. I’m so sorry.”
Mystia made a huge show of clapping her hands over her mouth and then bouncing around excitedly on the couch cushion while emitting restrained squeaking noises.
Tobie pressed a finger to her lips and shook her head frantically, trying not to laugh.
“Well I’m glad you picked up. I have kind of a huge favor to ask of you...and I wanted to see if you were free this weekend.”
“Favor? Oh yeah? Free for what?”
Mystia squealed and Tobie backhanded her in the shoulder with a surprisingly loud SMACK.
“Hey!” Mystia shouted.
“Shut up!” Tobie hissed back, clapping her hand over the receiver and trying (and failing miserably) to wipe the grin off her face.
“Uh, is now a good time?”
“Yes! Yes,” she insisted over Mystia’s giggles. “I’m just—that’s just the TV. Mystia likes it loud.”
Mystia cackled.
Tobie shot her a look and stood up, striding quickly away from her.
“No, no, no! Come back, come back, come back!” Mystia whispered. “I’ll be good!”
She rolled her eyes and wandered back to the couch, but put her hand on the high back and didn’t sit.
She knew Mystia was not actually all that invested in her interactions with Alistair, but rather thought it was hilarious that they hadn’t hated each other and that he was actually, beyond all their (admittedly cynical) expectations, reaching out to her.
“—So I thought maybe you’d like to go, and it would really help me out a ton,” Alistair was saying. “What do you think?”
“Sorry, what was that?”
“The Better Bites Vampire Society.” He chuckled. “I feel like maybe you weren’t listening…”
“TV,” she said promptly. “Sorry, tell me again.”
“They have a really swanky gala. My parents go every year, but this is the first year they couldn’t make and want me to go instead. It’ll probably be dull, but they told me I had to go and I had to take a date. ‘A proper date, Alistair!’” he said, putting on a high, sign-song voice, ostensibly quoting his mother. “If you hate the idea, though—”
“I never said I hated the idea.” Except she definitely hated the idea.
“Will you go, then?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“Because it sounds horrible.”
He laughed and then he groaned. “But you’re the only person I can stand.”
“We met like twenty hours ago and my parents were there and it was awkward. How am I the only person you can stand out of all the people you’ve met in your life?”
“Because of all the intelligent young witches my parents would be happy to see accompany me, you’re the only one I like. If I took one of my mundane women-friends, oof. They’d have a thousand fits.”
She snorted. “What kind of people are your parents introducing you to?”
“Probably the same kind your parents are introducing you to.”
He had a point there.
“I think I’m being used.” She raised a significant eyebrow at Mystia.
“Gah, that wasn’t what I meant. I just—you’d just—I’d really like it if it were you I danced with. You know, instead of someone like Twila Blightsmith.”
“Dancing?!”
“We don’t have to dance!” he said quickly. “Not at all. We can just sit there and look mutually snooty and make fun of all the weird vampiric traditions under our breath.”
“Is your other option actually Twila Blightsmith?”
Twila Blightsmith and her brother Edwin were truly insufferable. Edwin spit when he spoke, which actually would’ve made Tobie feel sorry for him, except for the fact that he seemed to think he was infinitely better than her. Twila didn’t spit, but she had the expression of someone who was perpetually assailed by fart fumes, and had once told Tobie it was “cute that Tobie was so simple-minded.”
Mystia had casually manhandled Tobie around the middle so she was unable to throttle Twila in a polite company.
“Twila is, quite literally, my only other option at this juncture.”
She groaned. If he hadn’t been so tolerable the other day, it would be easy to say no.
Mystia watched, hands curled over the back of the couch, eyes peering up at her as though she were hiding behind the wide upholstered back.
She gave Mystia a resolute look and pursed her lips. Then she closed her eyes and sighed.
“Okay.”
“What?”
“Okay,” she repeated. “I’ll help you out. But you owe me. Big time.”
“You are a pillar of hope and benevolence, Tobie Moon.”
“Big. Time.”
“I am forever in your debt, Tobie Moon. You have a deal.”
The Better Bites Vampire Society Gala was held at a hotel a few towns away. The (human and non-vampire preternatural) menu was largely vegan, with a few vegetarian options, which Tobie thought was deeply weird.
Alistair leaned over gesture at the dish listings. “The Better Bites community is very green,” he said. “Vampires can’t be exactly vegan, but they like their donors to be, since veganism reduces environmental waste and their carbon footprint.”
“Ah, their guest speaker makes a lot more sense to me now.”
The speaker, a beautiful dark-skinned woman of about forty, with curly hair frosted an ombre blonde, was listed in the program as “Dr. Peggy Nwankwo, M.D.,” who was described in curling subheading font as a “Vegan Activist, Paranormal Outreach Ambassador, and Chairwoman of the Vampiric Action Committee for Sustainable Donors.”
“Peggy’s great,” he said. “I work with her sometimes at the hospital. They’re aren’t a lot of preternaturals in the medical field, so we try to network where we can. I’ll introduce you.”
Before she knew what was happening, he’d whisked her out of her chair and onto the floor. The room was full of preternaturals—witches, warlocks, weres and shifters, vampires. They all inclined their heads as she and Alistair passed.
“I feel like a pumpkin,” she muttered.
He stifled a laugh. “How in the world do you feel like a pumpkin?” He turned to look at her. “You look lovely.”
She’d worn her green dress, the one with a gently corseted waist and lacy chiffon panels that twirled around her ankles and matched the green streak in her hair. Mystia had picked it out for her.
Mystia had also definitely done her makeup, because she was next to clueless about makeup. (Tobie’s idea of makeup was a touch of mascara and lipgloss, which Mystia said made her look like a sweet, provincial fifteen-year-old who’d never seen “real people,” as Mystia put it, and even that fumbling effort only happened on the rarest of occasions.)
“There’s Peggy,” he said, waving at the vampire from acro
ss the room.
Peggy waved back and swept toward them. “Dr. Bloodsong, what an excellent surprise. Your parents couldn’t make it, I understand. And who is this charming young thing?” She had a lovely British accent, and smiled down at Tobie, her incisors rather sharper than a normal person’s, even though they were retracted at the moment.
“Peggy, I’d like you to meet Tobie Moon of the Moon and Takahama Clans.”
“Takahama, you say? From Bourton-on-the-Water?”
Tobie blinked for a moment in surprise. “Yeah, that’s where my mom was raised. You know it?”
“I think I knew your grandfather. Ginjiro?”
“Wow, I do think you knew him!”
She smiled graciously, fangs glinting in the light of the chandeliers. “I’m afraid I’m not as familiar with the Moons, but the Takahamas are well respected in my circles, among many others. It’s a great pleasure to make your acquaintance. Let me give you my card.”
She handed Tobie what appeared at first glance to be a normal business card, but the ink shifted and reformed from Dr. Peggy Nwankwo, M.D. to read Everlasting enlightenment is just a bite away.
Tobie looked back up at her and smiled uncertainly. “Th-thank you,” she stammered.
“Give me a shout-out if you think you’d like to explore a more eco-friendly and sustainable preternatural world. We could always use talented witches. Well, if you’ll excuse me—it was so good to see you, Alistair. And very nice to meet you, Tobie.”
“You too, Peggy,” she said weakly, as Peggy practically floated away. She looked up at Alistair with a baffled expression.
He rolled his eyes. “I wish Peggy wouldn’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Try to recruit people at things like this. I know it’s part of her job, and witches in particular yield powerful vampires when turned, but it’s just...it’s obnoxious sometimes, especially when you aren’t used to these vampire networking things. I hope she didn’t offend you.”
Tobie looked back down at the card, watching the ink cycle smoothly through Peggy’s name and tagline and email address. “Oh, no, I’m not offended.”
“They actually consider it a big honor. You have to submit a ton of paperwork. They check references and everything. They recruit many more hopefuls than they actually approve.”
“Wow.” Her experience with vampiric society was limited; her mother found vampires to be “insufferable exhibitionists” (at which point Tobie’s father would remind her calmly that Isidora’s own experience with vampires was limited to her half-sister Prunella, who’d been an insufferable exhibitionist long before immortality had ever been bestowed upon her).
Her father’s own sister, Tobie’s Aunt Janice, who’d been turned a few years before Tobie’s birth, was nothing of the sort.
In fact, Aunt Janice was a rock for Tobie in her younger years. She studied space anomalies and taught astrophysics (always with a thick layer of SunAway slathered over her skin and copious amounts of UV-resistant clothing), and in her spare time held little soirees, which consisted of a bunch of vampires in jeans and Star Wars t-shirts sitting around a table with a few discreet bottles of high-quality donated blood, playing Dungeons and Dragons or Magic: The Gathering into the evening.
They were also some of the most genuinely nice people she’d ever met.
Nothing like these glossy, bright immortals, with their fangs sliding out ever so slightly when they smiled in her direction.
“You’re twitchy,” said Alistair, giving her a half-grin. “Do you feel like dinner all of a sudden? Because I confess, sometimes I feel like that too.”
She snickered. “A little. But no, I was thinking I need to give my Aunt Janice a call.”
“Is she vegan?”
“She’s a vampire.”
“Oh! Right.”
“I just haven’t talked to her in a long time, is all. I miss her a ton.”
“Does she text? Send her a quick text.”
She stared at him. “Like, now?”
“Yeah, now!” he said, laughing. “No time like the present. That was my new year’s resolution, as a matter of fact—to actually reach out to people when I think, ‘Oh man, I should really reach out to so-and-so.’ So I’ve had the tendency to encourage others to do the same this year.” He grinned and held out his hands in an appealing gesture. “Sorry if I seemed too insistent. It’s just helped me reconnect with so many people, I think it’s great.”
“You know what? You’re right,” she said, and reached into her clutch to pull out her phone. She sent a quick text to Aunt Janice:
Hi Auntie! Just wanted to let you know I miss you. D&D soon?
She looked up and nodded at him. “That felt pretty good.”
His face broke into a huge, relieved smile. “It’s nice, isn’t it? I feel like we get so used to the grind of our daily lives that we forget to make time for things and people we like. For example, I’m glad I invited you this evening, because I like you.”
She made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. “Please. You’d just exhausted all your resources.”
“Twila isn’t a resource. She’s a nightmare.”
She laughed. “Maybe I should text Twila too, now that I think of it…”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. We don’t want to rekindle all our old connections, do we?” he said, voice and expression exaggeratedly kowtowing as he held out his hands.
She grinned back at him. “I suppose not. I do resent you appealing to my deep-rooted desire to be liked, though.”
“I think we all have that desire. But you don’t strike me as the type who lets it hold any sway over her.”
“True. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still effective. I’m feeling all special and flattered,” she said wryly.
He settled back into his aristocratic half-smile. “Good.”
“I mean, I know it’s all for show—”
He laughed, loudly enough for a few of the vampires and their donor companions to glance their way. “You’re the worst, Tobie Moon.”
“That’s more like it.”
“I’m going to make you dance with me. Just for that.”
“Hey, now—” she said, raising her hands and backing away.
“Too late, kid.”
He took her hand and spun her onto the dance floor.
She clutched at him in abject fear. “Why are you doing this?” she hissed, voice quavery.
“You’re a pretty girl in a pretty dress, and I’d like to be able to tell my parents I danced with that pretty girl in that pretty dress.”
He twirled her gently around.
“So this is all about you?” she grumbled.
“Maybe a little.” He lead her in a wide and gentle arc, smiling down at her.
Suddenly she was aware of how close their bodies were. He was warm, his muscles taut underneath his crushed velvet coat. He smelled like fresh lemon and lavender, and the faint spice of magic.
Her heart beat faster.
“It’s not so bad, is it?” he said into her ear.
“I’ll kill you,” she replied, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was too preoccupied with the way his hand had slipped down to the small of her back, and the way he pressed his palm against her ever so subtly as he guided their slow progress across the floor.
He chuckled. “I bet I’ll rue the day, huh?”
“Something like that,” she muttered.
They danced for another several minutes, and Tobie, despite her natural predisposition to abhor the entire spectacle, found she rather enjoyed the slow spin of the dance.
Afterwards, she was dizzy—with the sweet, clean smell of him, the warmth his arms had left around her, and the swaying motion of their bodies through the room.
A man with long golden hair and hazel eyes flagged them down with an elegant wave. “My dearest apologies for interrupting,” he began, and Tobie realized he was (a) a vampire and (b) definitely blood-drunk by the way he leered forward
at them, “but you, madam, smell like all the wild, wonderful, sensual florals of life.” He inhaled deeply, eyes closed.
“A-a-a-nd, that’s enough,” muttered Alistair, and lead her away.
“Francisco!” a woman shouted behind them. “What did I say about drinking too early in the evening?”
Tobie laughed into the back of her wrist as the woman continued to berate him, her voice eventually lost in the low rumble of collective conversations.
“That was something,” she said.
“It’s always something at these events.”
“I recall you saying it would be dull,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “But then again, I suppose it would get dull if I had drunk vampires chatting me up every day.”
“Are you sure? Francisco was a pretty good-looking guy.”
She giggled. “He’s probably too old for me.”
“Fair point,” he said, grinning back. “I hope I’m not too old for you.”
Her giggle hiccuped conspicuously for a moment. She cleared her throat and eyed him with her head tilted in what probably looked coquettish but was entirely defensive, so her hair could fall slightly over her face and hide the prickle of color sliding up her cheeks. “You’re twenty-nine?”
He made a sharp hissing noise and looked at her apologetically, shaking his head. “A month away from thirty.”
She made a big show of wincing. “Oh my. Utterly ancient. In fact, I think I have to go home now,” she said, jerking her thumb in the opposite direction and making a show of pushing away (albeit reluctantly) from the light pressure of his hand still resting on her back.
He gave a wounded sort of laugh at the way she hurried away from him, gesturing at the sudden wide space between them. “Way to let a guy down gently, Tobie Moon.”
She rolled her eyes. “Give me a break.”
Then there was dinner (tabbouleh with couscous, which Tobie found delectable) and Peggy’s speech about the modern vampire’s ethical responsibilities to the world as its immortal caretakers (which Tobie found equal parts uplifting, weirdly vampire-aggrandizing, and deeply macabre), and the gala was over.
“I must say, I had a fantastically not-horrible time with you, Tobie,” he said on the way to her car. “You’re a breath of fresh air between the likes of Twila and her ilk.”