As if scorn for the verisimilitude of an old TV show was what mattered, instead of anything more sane. And of course, now she had to go with him on this absurd media-based scale of how fucked things were. “So what is it like?Underworld?Chilling Adventures of Sabrina? That movie where all the vampires eat everybody and then they turn into vampires and eat the people they just ate?”
“You meanDaybreakers.”
“Don’t tell me what I mean. Just tell me how frightened I should be.”
“Well, I mean, not constant vampiric cycle of cannibalism frightened.”
Thank fuck, her brain said. About thirty seconds before she realized that he’d kind of hedged there. He’d left things open to other levels of being frightened. And the way he was trying not to meet her eyes confirmed her suspicions.
“But I’m guessing notThe Addams Family–level of relieved, either.”
“Probably not, no. I mean some of them are pretty scary,” he said. And then he saw what was undoubtedly her face falling three feet, and rushed on. “But honestly? Their scariness is really nothing you should worry about. I mean, vampires in particular don’t really interact with humans at all the way they usually do in movies and shows. They just… go about their own business.”
“Yeah, but their business is occasionally drinking blood.”
“True, but any blood will do. And it does, as far as I know.”
“As far as I know doesn’t fill me with confidence, Seth.”
He raised a curious eyebrow. “Then what would fill you with confidence?”
“Well, for starters, you could warn me about where their nearest castle is.”
“They don’t live in castles,” he said, and honestly she had no idea why that was the thing that stopped her dead. But it did. In fact for a whole thirty seconds she stared at him, waiting for him to say “Psych.” To tell her all about their fancy halls and floofy blouses and goblets full of probably murdered people.
But all she got was him looking at her, with the same level of matter-of-factness that he’d had in his words. Like this was just obvious, and how didn’t she know. Even though she could never have known. Not only were vampires apparently not real, they weren’t even massive-ridiculous-castle dwellers.
And that was just insult added to injury.
“Oh my god. You take that back,” she finally said, more fiercely than she intended.
But even the fierceness didn’t make him bend reality back to what it was supposed to be.
“I can’t, it’s the truth. There are no castles at all. Or even fancy houses. In fact, I know of one of them who lives in an apartment with two other dudes. And the apartment is pretty crappy. Two of them share one bedroom—and not in the cool way, either. In the sad way that makes me want to ask them how come they’ve been alive for hundreds of years but don’t have so much as a bean between them.” He sighed and shook his head. Then seemed to consider something, before adding, “Though to be fair, I’m not sure I really need to ask them that. It’s pretty obvious, when one of them thinks televisions have tiny people living inside them.”
And what could she say to that? Except what was now dawning on her.
“So basically you’re telling me thatWhat We Do in the Shadowsis somehow the closest,” she said, and to her astonishment and horror, he just shrugged. Heshrugged. He even did it with his face—lips pressed inward, chin out.
“I want to say no, but honestly after I devoured the movie and the TV show, and maybe wept because I felt so seen for the first time in over a decade, I spent an entire afternoon frantically googling everybody involved to see if I could unearth any signs of their obvious supernatural secret.”
He wept, she thought. And felt yetanotherlittle pang for him.
Truly it was becoming an epidemic inside her.
“And did you find anything?” she asked.
“Well, no. Though that doesn’t mean anything.”
“It must. I mean there would be signs. There have to be signs.”
“You know there aren’t. In fact, you and me used to talk all the time about how disappointing it was that there wasn’t so much as a hint of any of this being real,” he said. Then looked away, eyes suddenly hazy.
And she knew he was doing what she had been trying not to since he’d turned up on her doorstep. He was thinking about their shared past. About the way they used to whisper together, while tangled in the nest of old clothes and discarded bubblegum wrappers and popcorn crumbs that was her closet. Sometimes sticky with summerheat, more often freezing from the frost that crept in underneath her rickety bedroom windows.
It’s so unfair that nothing is fantastical, she remembered saying to him.
And him saying something similar to her, when they’d found that hollowed-out tree in the woods. The one that they’d been sure held something creepy inside, but turned out to contain nothing but bugs and mulch and bits of bark. Still cool for a hideout, but not quite what they had hoped. Not enough to stop him turning to her, in that faded, forever dusty darkness, to tell her:I was thinking this would be our door to somewhere other than this, but instead it’s just rot and ruin.
