“Show me this person you’ve drained.”
“I don’t want to hear anything about her appearance,” I cautioned him. Heaven was soft and curvy—not like all the shapewear influencers who were usually turned.
Be it further understood that all mortals who receive the Dark Gift should be beautiful in person so that the insult to God might be greater when the trick is done.Obviously, this is rule #2 of the Laws of the Vampires as revealed to Armand by Santino inThe Vampire Lestat.I’m convinced Anne Rice had an insider at Parliament.
Suffice it to say, I think the rule is a load of crap.
“I would never,” Vlad said somberly. He looked deeply into the camera, his gaze landing on me. “And you know I’ve never ascribed to the rule about only turning so-called beautiful people. Pretty is as pretty does.”
“So why haven’t you changed it?”
Vlad’s expression sagged in exasperation. “Tiffenie,” he grumbled, “how many times must we have this conversation? The Vampire Code has existed for thousands of years. We were both ‘born’ into a system that is bigger than us.”
“But you’re a prince,” I protested. “You must be able to do something.”
“Prince isn’t king, and I’m only prince of one coven. All the covens have to convene to change the rules. It’s a whole thing.”
Whatever. I glared at the screen. Heaven couldn’t wait for us to retrace the well-worn paths of my disappointment and his professed ineffectuality. “I need to turn her now. What do I do?”
“It’s simple. You feed her some of your blood, bury her, and waittwenty-four hours.”
“That’s it? Are you sure? There’s not some special step, chant, or ‘fold in the cheese’ direction?”
“Fold in the cheese?”
Of course he hadn’t watchedSchitt’s Creek.
“Just remember, once you turn her, you can never go back. You must teach her the ways. Of all vampires, you know how difficult it is to go it alone.”
He saidthe waysas if I knew them, as if I wasn’t a feral vampire who’d raised herself. It probably would’ve been easier if I hadn’t broken up with Vlad after he turned me, but I couldn’t stay, not after Alba. It’s not like he’d killed her, but I couldn’t live in a coven with the vampires who had, even if they were holed up in a castle. So here I was, several centuries into making it up as I went along. A coven of one.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m thriving,” I said.
“You live in an apartment the size of a shoebox.”
“Hey, renting is a great option in this market,” I said, glancing around the small apartment with its too-big window. My eyes landed on the haphazardly stacked boxes of things I ordered at midnight and never bothered to unpack, then the piles of unfolded laundry.
Vlad’s warning settled in the pit of my stomach. If I turned Heaven, I would have to be there for her always and forever. When you don’t have a support system, you never quite learn how to take care of yourself. Vlad knew this, which is why he made every effort to keep in touch, even as I tried to keep him at arm’s length.
And what did I even know about my neighbor? She used to have a girlfriend, she loved knickknacks, and she had a decently popular TikTok where she told people how to live their lives. Could I really form a lifetime bond with this woman based on those few things, especially if that lifetime lasted forever?
If only I could rewind the clock eight hours and not fall asleep with her neck in my mouth. Why had I been so stressed out about my job anda surprise inheritance? This was so much worse.
“Very well. You know how to reach me.”
I ended the call and took a deep breath like I needed the air to breathe. Old habits die hard. With Heaven’s head in my lap, I ran my fingers along the curve of her neck.
It might be nice having a friend. We could go shopping together, get our nails done, have movie nights. I could teach her everything I knew about how to get by as a vampire in a world made for humans.
But first, I had to make things right.
I bit into my wrist, feeling nothing at the rending of my own flesh. I tilted Heaven’s head back and let my blood drip into her mouth. As it pooled in the back of her throat, I massaged it down her gullet.
“I’m so sorry.” I was saving her life, but I’d been the one to almost take it away. Heaven might not appreciate this “gift” when she woke up.
Vlad said to bury her, but in LA almost everything is concrete. There was a strip of grass between the apartment building and the road, but it wasn’t wide enough for a person, and the neighbors might have something to say about me burying a body on a public roadway. Not to mention digging a giant hole all night isn’t as easy as they make it look on TV.
Vlad didn’t say she had to be buried in dirt, though, just buried. I untucked the slipcover from the couch cushions and covered Heaven with it as if it was a burial shroud. It was a discount, one-size-fits-most slipcover in paisley, an ancient Persian pattern that the 1960s thinks it invented. And, I remembered, I still had that second one unopened. I quickly located it, pulled it out of its plastic wrapping, and double-wrapped her.
