“Hey.” A raspy voice slurs through my phone speaker and my stomach lurches to somewhere near my feet. “Feel so shit. Tea’s not working. How did your mum make hers? Need it. Was so good. Sorry. Shouldn’t ask, should I? That was rude. Never mind. I’ll figure something—” The ramble drops off with a loud clatter. I think he dropped his phone. I wait for him to continue, but there’s only a long silence and then some groaning and muffled sounds before the voice message cuts off.
I know exactly what tea he’s talking about. It was my mum's ‘secret recipe’ that never failed to make me and the rest of the clan's kids feel better whenever any of us were feeling shitty. She refused to tell anybody her secret, but I figured it out when I was twelve and she confirmed my suspicions.
With his tea obsession, Willan definitely already has most of the stuff I’ll need to make it, but I’ll need to make a quick trip to the twenty-four seven supermarket to get what I need. I’m out the door before I can think twice.
The supermarket didn’t have what I need, but I know who will. Annoyed at having wasted my time, and still running on my anxiety about how bad Willan sounded in that voicemail, it doesn’t click to me until Kroy shuffles down the stairs, grumbling loudly about not having the time or patience for intruders, that I realise it’s 2 a.m. and I’ve woken him up.
“Somebody better be dying.” He grumbles, stumbling into the kitchen at the back of the shop where I’m ransacking his cupboards.
“They may be.” I answer, pulling a packet of crackers off the shelf. They are slightly too high and my hands are shaking so bad and I send a bunch of stuff tumbling. “Ah, shit. Sorry!”
“Gods’ tits, Nikolo. Calm down. What’s wrong?” Kroy rushes to help me pick everything up in a flurry of nightgowns. I stand back because I’m more harm than good. This quick detour is taking too long and I can feel myself panicking.
“Willan’s sick. A charm broke at the shop and now he’s all infected with whatever was inside. He left me a voice message, and he sounds awful and he asked for my mum’s tea and I went to the shops but they didn’t have any of the right chocolate milk powder and I know you do so I came here, but I can’t find it and I’m sorry I woke you up.”
Kroy stops dusting up the scattered cracker crumbs to look at me, his nose scrunched up as he tries to figure out what I’ve just spewed at him. I open my mouth to try to explain it some more, but he holds up his hand.
“Nope. I don’t think talking is gonna clear this up. You go sit down, and more importantly,calm downand I’ll get you a blood and your choco powder.”
“I don’t need a blood.” I pout but sit down in one of the chairs at the small dinette set in the kitchen.
“Yes. You do.” A strong hand grips my shoulder and a blood lands in front of me. Now that it’s in front of me, I’m suddenly starving and I drain half the bottle in one go. “Now, tell me what’s happened. Willan broke what kinda charm?”
“A decayance charm.”
Kroy cringes, even though he tries to hide it. He takes a second to fill the kettle and turn it on before he turns to look at me, eyeballing my bottle in a not-so-subtle hint to drink up.
Obeying will only make him hurry up, so I quickly uncap the bottle and chug down as much as I can. But with my anxiety to hurry this the fuck up, it’s hard to swallow it down.
Kroy watches close, humming with approval when I hold the brown glass up to the light to show it’s gone.
“You two still hanging out regular-like then? You seem like you’re getting close.” He folds his arms over his big chest, leaning against the counter with his ankles crossed like we have all the time in the fucking world, only raising an eyebrow at the disgruntle frown I give his relaxed stance.
“Yeah.” I try to keep the impatience out of my voice. “Yeah, we are. It’s been good. Really good.” The word isn’t anywhere enough to encompass how I actually feel, but I don’t have the right word for it.
Kroy returns to the table with a cup of something warm for himself and a cardboard box of choco milk powder. It’s the cheapest, nastiest chocolate milk powder on the market, but for those of us that grew up on it, it’s the best there is.
Settling into his seat, Kroy looks me over, wide awake now and apparently ready to chat.
“So you two are together now or what?”
All the blood I just drank diverts from my digestive tract to my cheeks. “We’re notnottogether.”
“Right.” Kroy raises his eyebrow and leans back, the chair creaking under him. My leg bounces impatiently under the table, ready to leap up the moment I can. “And what about your clan? You were pretty upset with just one of them on your turf. What happens when being ‘friends’ with Willan invites the rest of ‘em to your doorstep?”
Kroy stirs his cup with a spoon and raises it to his lips, blowing on it gently before taking a sip, waiting for me to reply. It takes me a minute because not only does my first reactionshock me, when I take a beat to think about it, my second one does, too.
“I… I don’t think I’ll mind. Sure, there’s some fear there,obviously, or I wouldn’t have reacted like I did last time. But that was like inoculation. I had a little taste and it wasn’t terrible.” Kroy snorts and I pull a face, waving off his immaturity.
“And,” I carry on pointedly, “I learnt that I don’thaveto resort to shitty old habits and behaviour when things go tits up. It kinda sucked worse than the thing I was running from if I’m honest.”
Kroy looks satisfied with my answer. “But you twoaren’ttogether?”
I shrug. “We’ve talked about it a little? But there’s more than just the clan stuff. He’s a mage. I’m a vampire. It’s not exactly like things can be long term between us.”
“These things can be overcome, you know.”
I do know.Turning.
