Stuck in a car with a vampire, I didn’t know, who obviously hated me. This was going to be one hell of a weekend already.
We drove on for some time into the city in silence.
“Do you mind if I turn on the radio?” I asked.
He shrugged and made a turn. We both rocked gently as the car rounded the roundabout.
“Do what you want. You’re going to annoy me no matter what.”
“You know, you’re rude,” I said.
“What would you like me to say?” he said. “Sorry? I’m not. I don’t like you. You don’t make sense to me. You yourself must know how weird you and Eddie’s situation is. For a vampire like Eddie to love a woman like you. I just don’t get it. He hasn’t even given you the embrace…”
“I thought we were all in agreement that that was a bad idea,” I said. “He’s terrified of my birthmark. I thought you all had a conversation about that. I mean, didn’t we all discuss that the first night we met?”
“Oh, that thing. The Moon Kiss. It’s just a myth passed down from generation to generation. I’m a bit younger than the others on the council, except for Eddie—I grew up in the rational age, so I don’t have a lot of superstition towards the Old Ways like the others do. I mean, they discovered electricity and penicillin in my lifetime. Hard to be superstitious when science seems like magic.”
It was frustrating and infuriating—yet I understood where he was coming from. And somehow, this pissed me off even more with him. I had never thought my birthmark was special. Eddie, however, thought it meant something, and therefore refused to bite me. I was thankful for this on the one hand—I’d witnessed the terrible effects being Turned could have on a person if done wrong—and truth be told, I was thankful to avoid the whole drama. I didn’t imagine my coffee addiction could continue unabated if I was suddenly undead.
But for a man to sit here and tell me he doesn’t see what my boyfriend sees in me…
“Have you ever gotten laid?” I asked.
He turned and looked at me.
“Frequently. Well. A few times, sure.”
And then turned back to the road.
Oh, boy, I thought. This is going to be a fun night.
We pulled up to Tremblay Manor a few minutes later, at full dark. The moon overhead was bright and orange, luminescent, bulging bizarrely in the night sky. Windowpanes on the Manor ahead glinted in its rays.
“Worm Moon,” Victor said, voice monotone. “Great timing for this sort of thing.”
“I thought you weren’t superstitious,” I said.
“I’m not. I’m a scientist. I’ve studied the arcane arts for a number of centuries. Over time I have established accurate celestial calculations and determined through long-term data that planetary movement has a correlative effect with paranormal occurrence. I don’t think the diagnostic tools are there to measure the underlying question of why. But I have determined which moon phases are baneful or beneficial for certain workings. With enough time and planning, you can measure anything from a long enough scale.”
“Were you always this inhuman?”
He turned to me in the darkness of the car. His eyes gleamed blood red.
“Not always,” he said. “Over time. I found bits and pieces of the old me carved away. That’s how it goes, you know. Aging when you’re undead. Time passes, and the old you drifts away, like your memories.”
I felt a shudder work its way from my tailbone to my brain.
* * *
“Ah, and you must be Miss Stacey Adams,” the Curator said to me. He beamed a genuine smile on his cracked face and hobbled around towards us, hands spread wide after he got out of his vehicle. He looked elfin and shadowy in the shadows cast from the shrubbery behind us. He was mostly bald, his head pear-shaped, with tufts of white near his ears that went down into a leonine beard that dangled to his chest. I knew he wasn’t the oldest one here, but I still couldn’t help but think of him as elderly.
“Stacey. Yup. That’s me.”
“And your friend here?”
“Victor. Victor Alsace,” he said, extending his hand.
“Very excellent to meet the two of you. So let me just check your reservation. Just to make sure I have the information on all this correct. The two of you are requesting unlimited, building-wide access to Tremblay Manor for the weekend?”
