by Chism, Holly
And then I typed a response.
So. Yeah. I do try to stay unobtrusive. I try to have facial recognition software unable to recognize me online. I haven’t changed, other than getting paler, and at some point, somebody’s going to notice that.
A mark appeared almost instantly, letting me know that my response was being read. Then the blinking ellipsis let me know he was responding.
Unless you’re routinely working with living humans, I don’t see how that would be a consideration.
I rolled my eyes. Skimmed over my profile, and noted that, yes, it did list my profession, and linked to my webpage I’d purchased and ran to do investments through and keep track of client accounts. Without keeping too close of an eye on where the money invested was coming from.
Before you messaged me this evening, I had never met another like me, except for the one that raped and murdered me. So yeah, I do “routinely work with living humans.” I invest their money to make more, and they pay me to do it. I wasn’t sure that other vampires even existed, and I have no idea how to contact them. Or even why I should.
I opened another tab in my browser and opened my email. There weren’t any new ones from clients, but there were a few offering me subscriptions to new publications that looked like they’d be handy for work research. I opened a third tab and Amazon, looking for the magazines named, and compared subscription prices…and went with Amazon over the publisher. I make money; I’m not made of it.
The messenger program dinged to let me know there was a new message. I sighed, flipped back over and checked.
There are no questions you’d like to have answered, then? Nothing you’d like to know? Nothing we can help you with to keep you from hurting yourself?
I sighed. And thought about it, pouring a cup of coffee and leaning back in my office chair, putting my feet up on the burlap-covered bean-bag type ottoman I kept under my desk, cradling the coffee against my breastbone.
Of course there’d been things I wanted to know. Twenty years ago, there had been. I’d learned a lot the hard way, ironically enough by hurting myself. Would knowing what to do or not to do beforehand have made it less painful? Sure. But.
Would I have ended up as capable of taking care of myself with little help as I ended up?
Or worse, would I have ended up missing out on meeting my best friend? Would I have been in place to prevent Andi from being raped three months ago?
Likely not.
I took a sip of the scalding hot coffee, savoring the bittersweet bite, and set the cup on my desk before I pulled the computer’s keyboard into my lap to reply.
I’d have liked to know a lot. Twenty years ago. Before I’d hurt myself as many times as I had. Now? I’m pretty self-sufficient, and I tend to not hurt myself anymore. Yeah, I’d like more information—who wouldn’t?—but I’m okay.
There was a long moment after the mark let me know he’d got my reply. I went to my work page and logged in, starting to make a few transactions that had been agreed upon by a half dozen of my clients by email the day before. I’d gotten through quite a bit of it before the private messages dinged again.
I sighed, clicking on the tab for the social media page I was using. Just as it dinged again. I scrolled up to the previous message.
I suppose I can understand your reticence. However, I can offer you membership into our online groups and servers. I can approve your membership as soon as you click on the link and enter the information requested. All you need do is give the program your details, and I’ll send you some useful code. It’s a command line that connects you to the servers and programs and sites we use.
That said, I do need your help. I need your permission to enter your territory.
There was a link in the newest message.
I picked up my coffee cup and sipped. Thought for a few moments, then shrugged.
I’ll think about it. As soon as you tell me exactly why you want to come here. What do you want from me, in particular?
I went back to the last message he’d sent me, to the link.
I clicked on it.
There was a registration on the page, requiring my name, email, date of birth, date of death, and location of death. I entered the asked for information with a little hesitation, and then hit enter. I got a message screen thanking me for entering the information, and that there would be a response sent to me within 72 hours.
I shook my head, logged out of the social media page, and went back to my usual pages of reports for my job.
It was comforting.
The ping of an incoming email shook me out of my money haze about four hours later. I shook myself a bit, then looked at the bottom line of the night’s work. Including the sale of some of the gold coins I was parting out in dribs and drabs through the black market. I’d promised pictures of the basement (that Andi took), and how the coins were found, as well as the booze the coins were found with. We were also getting queries about the booze: was it still sealed, was it professionally bottled, or obvious bootleg, etc. Surprisingly, we were getting some real offers for some of the booze.
Perhaps not so surprisingly, the photographic provenance was driving up the prices I was getting.
Anyway, the bottom line for the night made me smile. I transferred more money into the house improvement accounts, and stretched, preparing to take a break.
I poured another cup of coffee and opened my email. There was a contact from the website I’d put my information on earlier.
I blinked. It wasn’t seventy-two hours later.
I went ahead and opened the email. There was a generic welcome letter, and a bit of code to add to any website to unlock extra content. And a link to click on.
I frowned, sipping my coffee, then wrote down the bit of code, logged out, and restarted everything in safe mode. I went to one of my business networking sites and entered the code.
Holy. Mother. Of. God.
The page exploded with contact requests, from lawyers, accountants, medical personnel, and all sorts of others.
All were like me: night shift personnel.
There were even construction companies, some of which were based out of Kansas City, only two hours or so away.
I looked at the clusters, chewing on my bottom lip, and realized that the cities and places I’d instinctively avoided in my westward flight were places already saturated with others like me.
Okay, then.
I picked one of the medical professionals on the page, and sent a link request.
Maybe I could finally get some real answers to questions I’d had for the past twenty years, and hadn’t been able to answer on my own or find answers to.
Like: why did I never pee, in spite of all the liquids I drank?
Not Your Fun Kind of Puzzle
I woke with a massive print-out on my chest. The same one I’d fallen asleep reading. The one I’d spent the last of the early morning hours compiling from the different websites. Including the vampire part of Wikipedia. Which, given how limited access to that was, had to be more credible than the regular part of it, even if it was also open source.
There were laws. There were laws that vampires had to follow, partially to prevent exposure, partially to not step on each other’s toes. They were mentioned in passing, but not laid out explicitly in what I’d read so far.
There was a culture, and a history—much of which was only available in hard copy, inside enclaves in cities. The same ones I’d avoided by instinct. I shouldn’t have, since I could have gotten help from one of them. However, when I was newly-turned twenty years ago, I’d been running scared.
Thankfully, I’d already been following most of what I could suss out as the laws out of instinct. The rest were common sense things I’d done as…y’know…common sense. Things like “try not to kill your meals. Snack on a few instead of draining one.”
One of the big ones seemed to be “Don’t turn another vampire without their consent. And definitely don’t leave them on their own onc
e they’ve been turned.” I wasn’t sure on that one, yet, though. But if it was the case, that was just one more thing that ass-face had going against him.
I yawned, set my stack of papers on my nightstand (something I wasn’t used to, any more than I was used to the gorgeous sleigh bed with the reading light mounted on the wall above it), and rolled out of bed, padding to my bathroom to take a shower. I stopped short as I made it into the bathroom, and stared at the tub. “Fuck it,” I muttered. “I’m taking a bath.”
I pinned my hair—still clean after the late shower after having gone and fed—up on the back of my head and ran a tub full of steamy warm water. I’d have to get some powdered milk, I decided. I’d always hated bubble baths, but I used to love milk baths. I enjoyed soaking, and the way it warmed me all the way down to my bones, for a little longer than I should have, before I got out, dried, and dressed for work. In insulated leggings under my work pants, and a slick, insulated long-sleeved nylon/spandex blend shirt under my sweater to preserve the heat I’d soaked into myself.
I headed upstairs, after that, to start my night.
And, like was becoming a trend, Andi wandered out of the kitchen as I came up. But tonight, she had a mug of warmed up blood in her hands that she handed to me as she came in reach. “Hi, sleep well?”
I stared at her for a moment, the corner of my mouth twitching as I tried (and failed) to resist the obvious joke. I sipped the warm, rich blood, and had a flash of the person donating it (male, healthy, and hopeful that it would help someone else sometime in the future), and decided I had to make the joke. Had. To. “Like the dead, girlfriend. Like. The. Dead.”
She groaned, following me into the office where I booted up my computer, and set up the coffeemaker one-handed (I wasn’t willing to set my warm blood down to cool) to start a pot. “That was awful.”
“You walked into it,” I protested.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t expecting you to actually say it!” I eyed her for a moment. I was out of practice in discerning whether someone was really annoyed, or amused and annoyed that they were amused.
It was going to take more time before I could tell, I decided. It might be the lack of practice, or it could be that I was still getting to know my best friend.
“I got more money put into the account,” I said, changing the subject. “Did you go out eyeballing the things you needed for the guest room or your office?”
“I did some,” she agreed. “But I didn’t get anything other than the cork boards today, and I got magnetic dry erase boards and little magnets that look like a cross between chess pawns and push pins.”
I blinked slowly. “Will that work?” I asked. “I mean, for everything you need?”
“They’re powerful little magnets,” she said, “but I’m not sure if they’ll work for the string web I was planning. I think they will, though. Maybe. But that’s why I got the cork boards, anyway.”
“Maybe use sticky-tac for string webs on the dry erase?” I suggested. “If you need more room than just the cork boards.”
“Not a bad idea,” she agreed.
“I got some offers on the booze hidden in the basement,” I said, gesturing at the monitor. And the dollar amount some collectors were offering.
“Holy fuck, where’s the decimal?” she yelped. I tapped my finger on it. There were a lot of zeroes before it. “Please tell me we’re gonna.”
“We’re absolutely gonna,” I agreed. “I’m not bypassing that kind of cash.”
“Hey, speaking of cash, wanna go with me to go spend some?” she asked. “I know you said the kitchen was my judgement, but I thought you might like to come with on countertops and stuff.”
“I want Corian,” I said. “I don’t care what color, and I don’t cook, but it’s supposed to be maintenance free, and stand up under hot pans being set from the stove to directly on it,” I explained. “I know I won’t be using it, but you will. Eventually.”
She chewed on her bottom lip, eyes distant, nodding slowly. “I think that would be wonderful,” she said decisively. “Especially if you’re still gonna teach me how to cook with a stove instead of a microwave. What kind of cookware do I need?”
“We’ll hit Walmart after we go to Home Depot, and get what you need to get started,” I promised.
“Cool,” she said, smiling. “I’d like that.”
I shrugged. “Let me get a couple things done real quick, and I’ll be ready to go.”
*
The countertops we picked were a black and white marbled gray granite look. It wasn’t scheduled yet—we gave out Andi’s cell phone as well as the house phone. It took us maybe half an hour? Something like that.
Then we hit Walmart. Andi kept oohing over some of the name brand stuff—the cookware fancier than she’d need for a good while, yet, and would moan about ruining, if she did. I kept her to good, solid generic store-brand pots and pans, and a couple of skillets, both non-stick and cast iron (though, the cast iron was brand name—that was all they had).
I directed her to the grocery side, and helped her pick up ingredients for a recipe I mostly remembered (tasty, and made a week’s worth of single-serve leftovers to take for lunch), then we headed up front to pay for the stuff we’d gotten. And I realized that I’d forgotten to get tin foil. It was, however, on the way—we just had to detour down an aisle instead of passing it.
“What do we need foil for?” Andi asked, giggling. She’d been in good spirits all evening. “Newspapers work a lot better in making hats than tinfoil.”
I rolled my eyes, smiling. “Silly goose. It’s for a couple of recipes I’m gonna teach you. Saves on cleanup.” I grabbed a box of the off brand, and tossed it in the cart.
And I shuddered. A solid, long, skin-creeping, bone-rattling, whole body thing. Something was going on. My gut was telling me things had changed, and not for the better, in the past minute. I looked around, then hurried Andi out toward the self-check lanes. “What’s wrong?” she whispered as she saw my hands shaking.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back, looking around.
And then, my eyes landed on a man sitting on the bench in the front, just inside the door. He wore dirty jeans, and a tee shirt that had seen better days. No coat. Dirty blond hair, average features. He looked…familiar, but not in such a way that I could place him.
He also sat very still. Didn’t breathe. People bustled past him without noticing him as he watched them pass.
“I think there’s another vampire over in the entry way,” I said quietly.
Andi glanced over. “Where?”
“On the bench. The one just inside the entry way.”
“There’s nobody on the bench,” she said, her voice matter of fact.
She had looked right at the bench. She should have seen him…but if I was like him, and he wasn’t breathing, nobody would. I shuddered again. Glanced at him, then away. “Trust me. He’s there. We’re going out the other door.” I looked back over, just in time to see him reach up with the arm farther from us and push his stringy, dirty hair out of his face.
There was a puckered scar on his arm. It looked like somebody had bitten a chunk out of it. In fact, somebody had bitten a chunk out of it. And then swallowed the chunk. I should know. I swallowed hard as her eyes skimmed over him again.
“Okay, then. Why are we doing this again?” she asked, her eyes blank. “There’s no one there.”
I took a long breath. I didn’t have time to argue. “Because we came in the other door, and leaving that way means we’re closer to the car, and it’s damn cold outside,” I said. Matter-of-fact, just like her. Thankfully, it was enough, because she nodded.
I’d show her how a vampire could vanish from normal sight after we got back home.
Because right now, the only thing I wanted was to get the hell away from my murderer.
I had no idea why he was at Walmart, no idea why he was sitting so close to the doors’ cold breath, no idea what gods or demons I’d offended badly enoug
h to have my murderer that close to me, but there we were: with my murderer sitting less than fifty feet from me, at Walmart, with his hair blown back into his face every time the door opened.
I got Andi maneuvered out the door, got things loaded into the trunk and back seat of my car, and got her to climb into the passenger seat. I climbed into the driver’s seat, and started the car, thanking everything holy that the car was still warm enough to not complain about starting right up. I wasn’t sure if it was the battery or something else, but some evenings when it was way below zero, it didn’t like starting. Earlier, when we’d left, it had taken four tries to start it. Sometimes, it took more, but there was still enough heat left in the engine core that there wasn’t any complaint.
We pulled out of Walmart’s parking lot, and I went still, realizing why he was sitting where he was: he was people watching. Hunting. I took a deep breath, preparing to explain to Andi what she’d missed.
Andi startled. “Meg? What the fuck?” she yelped, her hand going to her chest to cover her pounding heart.
“Huh?” My train of thought was utterly derailed.
“You weren’t there.” Her voice was shrill. Distressed. “You weren’t there, the car was going on it’s own, and I wasn’t scared, then suddenly you were right there, driving. What the actual fuck?”
“Oh. That.” I took another breath, reminding myself consciously to actually breathe. “If I’m not breathing, not passing, you don’t see me,” I said. “And you don’t register anything to do with me as something to worry about, I guess,” I continued, letting my own uncertainty color my tone. “I think. I don’t know. I seriously don’t know much about what I’m doing. All I know is that I don’t have to breathe, unless I need to talk, and if I’m not breathing, nobody notices me.”
“So, when you said there was a vampire on the bench at Walmart,” she said, her voice trailing off.
