Page 50 of Only Fangs

The ancestral home of the Hele’s is the subject of a hundred spooky stories used to scare human kids. We all grew up with them, even if my family stopped telling them once we discovered Matt was vampire.

“Isn’t there another way?” I ask her.

“I don’t think so. We already tried the human business loan angle.”

“What if I…” I trail off. I don’t actually have any other ideas. I pick up the coffee and take a few gulps, hoping the caffeine will fire up the old synapses. I don’t want to take Andrei Hele’s money, or the money of his cronies. But this isn’t my company, I’m just a lowly coder. “If you think this is the best thing for Only Fangs, then I’ll support it,” I say eventually.

“It isn’t that I think it’s the best thing.” She measures the words as she says them. “But I don’t think there’s another way. And as soon as we can do this on our own, we repay the loan and that’s it.”

“OK. Well, in that case I guess we need to get to work. How do we pitch to this committee?”

“Ummm…”

“You don’t actually know how this all works, do you?”

Ari shakes her head.

“We should ring Clara and find out.”

It turns out that there is a really rather formal process to vampire investors. Well, they do tend to like all the pomp and ceremony. I guess after a century or two you need to make everything into an event just to keep the boredom of your own existence at bay.

First off is a pitch meeting with Andrei himself. Clara describes it as a “friendly chat”, but I don’t feel that’s in his repertoire. Anyway, if that goes well and he likes the business idea, then there’s a big investor weekend at Hele House. Apparently this is an opportunity to meet the other vampires with deep pockets and sell the idea to them – literally a ten minute slot to present to the room and answer a barrage of questions. Everything then culminates in a big gala dinner. It all sounds hideous. Oh, and the vampire committee calls itself the “High Council”, just to make it even worse.

“Luckily I won’t need to be part of it,” I tell Ari, trying to keep the glee out of my tone. She will have to do the hobnobbing on her own.

“What do you mean?” She narrows her eyes.

“I’m human.”

“I can’t do this on my own.”

“I’m human,” I repeat. This time a little more forcefully.

“But…”

“I’m human. He hates humans.”

“He doesn’t hate humans. He just thinks…” she trails off. She doesn’t need to clarify his views on my species.

Ari cocks her head to one side and scrutinises me carefully.

“What?” My hand goes to my face instinctively. Do I have something on my cheek?

“You could be a vampire, you know.” A small smile creeps across her features.

“Absolutely not.”

“It could work.”

“It could not.”

“You know he’ll just assume,” she says and the smile widens.

“You don’t think Andrei Hele will realise I’m human the second he sets eyes on me?”

“Why would he. The app is called Only Fangs. We’re going to the vampire High Council. You’ve grown up with a vampire so you know how to act. And we’ll just say you’ve been living somewhere super remote.”

“You’re not actually being serious…” But I can tell from the look in eye that yes, she’s being deadly serious.