Page 72 of You’re So Vein

“My parents had found some obscure texts that led them to their theory – if they turned Isabelle while the child was still inside her, the child would no longer be Dhampir. But they were wrong. They wouldn’t let me into the birthing room, but I heard the screams. All three of them were screaming, and then came over an eerie quiet, broken only by a child’s plaintive cries.”

Komal’s hands cover her mouth, her eyes wide as she takes in the story. I keep going. Now that I’ve started, the words pour out of me like a tap that’s turned all the way on. I unleash the secret I’ve carried for ten years.

“I didn’t know what to do. I was so frightened. I broke down the door and found Isabelle and my parents dead, their bodies torn to pieces, and a baby wailing in a puddle of blood, its face screwed up with pain and two of the tiniest baby fangs poking from its warm mouth. In that moment, I knew two things – I would love Isabelle’s child as my own, and if the Dusk Court authorities found her, they would kill her.”

“No,” Komal whispers.

“So I took the bodies to the beautiful palace garden, and I buried them under the night-flowering beds that my mother loved so much. I cleaned the room so no one would know what happened there. I packed all the little baby clothes that Isabelle had lovingly made, and I fed the child full of blood until she fell fast asleep, and snuck out of court. Better for us to disappear than for anyone to know what transpired that night.

“I found my way to Argleton. I’d heard rumours of a reclusive vampire who lived in a castle in the hills, a fierce warlord who wished to live in solitude. I knew that if I stayed low profile and made no trouble, I could hide under his shadow. No other vampires would risk threatening the warlord’s lands, which meant that if he didn’t see me as a threat, the child and I effectively had his protection. So I built this cottage, and I watched Hannah grow up.”

“How old is she now?” Komal asks.

“She turned ten the night you saw us outside Nevermore Bookshop. Dhampir age as humans do. When she was a baby, I used to carry her everywhere with me, but now that she’s older and there are more vampires in Argleton, I can’t risk bringing her into the village unless I’m certain I can control everything. That night I took too great a risk. If there’s an accident, like you cutting yourself on that shrubbery tonight, Hannah won’t be able to control her hunger. I might be able to convince a human that she’s sick or playing a game, but any vampire will immediately understand what she is and report us to the Conclave.”

“What would happen if the Conclave found out?” Komal asks.

“Immediate execution, for both of us.” I swallow. “If we’re lucky.”

Komal shakes her head. “And you think I’m unhinged.”

“Hannah is nothing like the stories of Dhampir from our legends. She’s sweet and kind. I’ve made something of a study of her.” I nod to a shelf of leatherbound journals behind Komal’s head – all the observations I’ve made as Hannah has grown, alongside the notes on Dhampir mythology from our ancient texts I’ve been able to get my hands on. I miss the library at court. “She struggles to control herself around the smell of blood, as you now understand, but all children are, at best, a little feral. There may be ways to control her hunger, but we wouldn’t know because no research has been done, since her kind are killed at birth.”

“If the legends are wrong, then what’s true?” Komal asks.

“She can go out in the sun, although her eyes are extremely sensitive to the light. She needs to wear dark sunglasses. She has some small amount of superior strength and stamina. She ages as a human does. She doesn’t seem to have inherited any Dusk Court magic from her father, whoever he is. I can’t send her to school because I can’t be awake during the day to monitor her. Most importantly, she is a kind, imaginative child who deserves so much more than this closeted life.”

I turn away because the fear and the rage rise inside me, and Komal doesn’t deserve to receive that hatred. My ire is reserved for the people who force Hannah to live like this.

“Tell me about her.” Komal’s voice is the softest I’ve ever heard it.

“If you wish to know more, you can read my observations on Dhampir behaviour—”

“No, tell me about Hannah. Tell me about your beautiful daughter.”

Her voice cracks. I don’t understand why, but I sense that she needs this even more than I do.

“Hannah was such a good baby. She rarely fussed or got sick. She adapted to my schedule, so she’s mostly nocturnal. She reads voraciously. I think she’s read nearly every book in the Argleton library. She can’t leave the house without me, but we watch a lot of telly, and I’ll play any game she asks of me. She loves anything that sparkles, which is why she always chooses my accessories.” I touch the face of my watch. Beneath my wrist, the vines twist, desperate to escape.

“She sounds wonderful.”

“She is! She gets these obsessions. For years, she loved labyrinths and mazes.” I nod towards the window, where the fairy lights of the labyrinth are visible through the glass. It always made me wonder if Hannah remembers something of Dusk Court, if she soaked up something of its magic through the womb. “We made the labyrinth together as a winter project two years ago. We had to forage all the materials from the forest, as the hardware store is not open during the night.”

“My nephew Kiaan had a fascination with the circus.” Komal’s smile wounds me as she basks in the memory. “My papa built him a circus tent in the backyard. For a year, every family dinner involved sitting out in that freezing tent for hours while the kids put on these adorably unhinged circus performances. Now, thankfully, he’s into Roblox, which is equally as unhinged but decidedly less cold.”

I smile to think of her and her big, loud family crammed into a circus tent in their garden. It makes my heart lift, but it’s tinged with sadness. Hannah would love to be invited to an Ahuja family dinner.

As would I.

I study Komal’s eyes and see a sadness that drives the breath from my lungs. She barely knows Hannah, and already she cares this deeply, but it is not all for Hannah, I think. Some of that sadness is for herself.

I wish to destroy whatever makes her sad, but even as a monster of the darkness, I’m as powerless as ever in the face of the world’s wrongs.

Instead, words spill out of me. I didn’t realise how I’ve longed to have someone to confide in, someone who understands how special Hannah is. “Recently, she’s developed this obsession with shopping. She loves the idea of being a shopkeeper.”

Komal’s eyes darken. “Is this the real reason why you ordered the shops to open in the evenings? So that Hannah could visit?”

“The stormwater system is in desperate need of repairs, and it’s been sorely tested with all this rain we’ve been having. But yes. Her birthday was coming up. I thought that maybe I could bring her to the village one evening, and she could talk to some real shopkeepers. But of course, with the village filled with vampires, it was a foolish idea. I shouldn’t have told her in the first place – when I said it was too risky and she couldn’t come into the bookshop, we had an awful row.” I wrap a bandage around Komal’s arm, gently, careful not to touch her bitten skin. “It was selfish of me. I wasn’t thinking about the livelihoods of my constituents. It’s only that Hannah has so few pleasures in life. I wanted to give her this one gift.”