Page 5
“My culture?” Okay, I’m leaning back toward psychotic break. Being snacked on by vampires is not a culture. The vampires themselves, sure, but…
I can’t believe I’m thinking about this so hard.
“Yes, your culture. I don’t think you understand what I’m telling you, Adz. The Barales are a gold-star feeder family. We’re the elite. Vampires compete for us, bid for us to choose them. We have a history of reliability, discretion, and consistency. There’s a reason vampires prefer to select their feeders from registered bloodlines over random humans, and we are the cream of the registered bloodlines.”
“And arrogant about it,” I mutter, squinting at her. She’s really serious about this. “Registered bloodlines?”
She nods. “Anyone with blood can be a feeder, but registered feeders are screened for disease, psychological suitability, and other things that could potentially cause problems for a vampire—massive debt, highly religious family, history of violence… that kind of thing. The Association of Registered Feeders is basically an agency to match feeders with vampires, and they love legacy feeders. They also act as a union of sorts for us, to ensure that our vampires aren’t reneging on employment conditions.”
A union for people who let vampires drink their blood. Sure, why not? I skip over that to my next question.
“Doesn’t it creep you out to let your boss chew on your neck? Like… what happened to workplace boundaries?”
The superior look she gives me makes me want to brace myself for whatever’s coming next. “It doesn’t have to be the neck. Usually it’s the wrist—both vampires and feeders prefer that, because it’s less… intimate.” There’s a whole lot of weight on that word, and I screw up my face.
“Ew, Cat, are you fucking your boss?”
She raises a brow. “Like you can talk. Didn’t you lose a job for doing that? In a walk-in fridge?”
Heh. It was totally worth it, too. “Yeah, but I was risking minimum wage and the common cold, not…” I wave my hand around to encompass the pool house, her earrings, and everything else we’ve talked about tonight.
“Relax. We’re not fucking. Being in a long-term feeding agreement leads to closeness sometimes. Nisha and I are friends, sort of, and we’re comfortable with each other.”
That’s some fucked-up bullshit, but I’m not going to waste time arguing about it when I’m not even completely convinced that vampires are real. Maybe Nisha just has a fetish for gnawing on her employees, and Cat’s making up weird stories to convince herself it’s a good idea.
On the other hand, for a quarter of a million dollars a year, would that be such a bad thing? I’ve done stranger things in nightclub toilets with people I just met. Why not let an employer pretend they’re sucking my blood?
“Tell me how it works,” I demand. “We go to this registration place and sign me up, and then a vampire, what, picks my name off a list?”
“It won’t be that way for you.” She shakes her head. “I told you, one of Nisha’s friends needs a feeder. We need to get you registered for your own benefit, but I think we should talk to Nisha in the morning, and I bet she’ll set up a meeting with Tristan. It’s better if we register you with a job offer waiting—the Association loves when that happens.”
“I’ll bet. But let’s say this Tristan guy isn’t interested. We go to the Association, and then…?”
Sighing as though I’m being stubborn instead of just wanting all the (maybe made-up) facts, she says, “New humans, ones who aren’t legacies, fill out an application form and go through an extensive interview process with both humans and vampires, then background checks and psychological evaluations. It usually takes a few months, minimum, before they’re either registered or turned away and memory wiped.”
“Memory wiped!” She didn’t mention that earlier.
“Of course. We can’t have people who might harbor a grudge knowing that vampires exist, Adam. What if they decide they want revenge? They could expose us.”
Sure, how dumb of me for not considering the angry people who wanted to be snacks. It would be terrible if they were walking around the city planning to tell the world that vampires exist—as if anyone would believe them.
“Okay, so rejected candidates get memory wiped and accepted ones get registered.” I’m still thinking about the psych evaluation part of the process. Are these people looking specifically for candidates who are susceptible to their scam?
But that doesn’t make sense—if the candidate didn’t already believe in vampires, they wouldn’t take the psych test to begin with, which would render the psych test a moot point in the case of a scam.
“That process applies to non-legacies,” Cat reminds me. “It’ll be different for you, even if Tristan’s not interested. Which he will be.” She smiles… proudly? This is getting weird.
Weirder.
“Different how?”
“They’ll welcome you with open arms, for starters. No interviews needed. The background check won’t be as detailed—just a confirmation that you’re not in massive debt that you can be blackmailed over. Stuff like that. A basic psych evaluation instead of an intensive one with a psychologist. A blood test to confirm that you’re healthy, instead of a full genetic breakdown. You should be registered within, like, two days max. Less if they’re not busy.”
“Because the family’s been doing this for a long time.” I always wondered why my parents cut us off from family, but now I can’t really blame them.
“Yeah. It’ll be even better for you, because both your parents are from generational feeder families.”
Ex-fucking-scuse me?
