Bite Somebody

by Sara Dobie Bauer

  “Come here.” She beckoned Celia forward. She kept her dark eyes focused on the blond guy, whose light eyes looked hazy, tired. “You’ve never glamoured someone, right?”

  “No,” Celia said.

  “It’s super easy.” She took a deep breath. “Just make eye contact and think, ‘Relax.’ Then, say what you want your victim to feel. For instance, Paul is crazy about me and likes when I drink his blood.”

  Celia took steps back. “You…what?”

  “Come here,” Imogene insisted. She shifted her eyes long enough to stare Celia down, and even Celia felt almost glamoured. She now understood why Imogene wore sunglasses all the time; she was a glamour tsunami. She continued, “I’ll just take a nibble so you see what it looks like and what to do. Got it?”

  “Uh…”

  Imogene didn’t give Celia a chance to leave. She just dipped down and bit into blond guy’s neck. He didn’t even jump. He just laid there and let her take what she wanted, and it wasn’t just a nibble. By the time Imogene was finished, Celia could have walked home and back.

  Finally, she sat up and wiped her mouth. She sighed. “Now I’m really fucking high.” She laughed. “Okay, here’s the important part,” Imogene slurred. She took a razor blade from her back pocket, which made Celia think her mentor was going to murder someone. She reached out her hand to stop Imogene, and Imogene glanced up. Her lips were tinted red from blood, and her fangs were still out. She looked scary as shit, honestly, which made Celia fall over. She landed on her ass, which made Imogene laugh some more. “It’s just me. God, Merk. Come here and watch. Stop being a spaz.”

  “What are you going to do, Imogene?”

  “Watch.”

  Celia crawled over and watched. There were two bloody spots on the blond guy’s neck. With a flip of her wrist, Imogene connected them like dots with her razor blade. Instead of bite marks, it looked like he just had a cut. Then, in front of his face, she snapped her fingers.

  “Whoa,” he said, coming to. “What happened?”

  Imogene patted at his neck with the bed sheets. “Dude, you cut yourself on a beer bottle. Again.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Shit, I hate when I do that.” He sat up slowly. “At least it doesn’t hurt.”

  Imogene rolled off him. “Better get back downstairs. Get a napkin or something, huh?”

  “Yeah.” He looked Imogene from toes to tits. “God, you’re hot.”

  She blew him a kiss as he left the room.

  “You’ve fed on him before,” Celia said.

  Imogene lay back on her folded arms. “I thought I told you he’s one of my favorites.”

  Celia stood. “And then he just forgets.”

  “That’s the point of glamouring. You should try it sometime.” She put her glasses back on and sat up. “It’s fun.”

  “Wait, I need to…” Celia took hold of Imogene’s upper arm. “I had performance anxiety.”

  “Heh?”

  “I had this guy on the beach, and we were kissing, and I was even near his neck, but my fangs wouldn’t come out.”

  Imogene pursed her lips in a duck mouth. “I don’t think they make vampire Viagra, dude.” She turned to leave the room.

  “But, Imogene…”

  “Try again,” she said. “It’s a party, duh.”

  Celia just wanted to go home.

  Chapter Seven

  Celia knew she needed to see Dr. Savage; instead, she avoided her therapist. She avoided Ian, too, which was really hard since he was her neighbor. If anyone knocked on her door, she wouldn’t answer, and she went Mission: Impossible-style to get to her bike for work.

  She got to Happy Gas safely. As usual, her boss, Omar, was just leaving, but had enough time to tell Celia how she looked nice in her orange Happy Gas apron she’d taken to wearing when she rode her bike. Then, Omar left to do whatever huge bald men do on Tuesday nights on Admiral Key.

  Ralph was closing up shop, but he took the time to give her a look of disdain. “Don’t you own any other pants?”

  Celia ignored him. She waited for him to leave so she could read more of Twilight. The book was taking her forever to finish, because she wasn’t learning anything. There were no vampire-affirming life lessons, but anything to avoid Ralph.

  The empty bell on the front door clonk-clonked, and Celia almost dropped her stupid book when she looked up to see Ian standing there in one of his nice, tight t-shirts and army green shorts. His hair was windblown, and under the ugly fluorescent lights, he looked really tan. She’d missed his smell. At her apartment, she kept candles lit to make it look like a true vampire lair. In reality, though, she was just trying to cover up the way Ian’s scent crept through her kitchen wall.

  “Hey, I tried to catch you before you left, but I must have missed you.” He glanced outside. “I biked here.”

  “Oh, hi, Ian.” She hugged the book to her chest.

  Suddenly, Ralph got animated. He slammed the register drawer shut and started stuttering and grabbing his forehead. Celia thought he might be having a seizure, but then he said, “You’re Ian Hasselback.”

  “Yeah. Hey, man.” Ian reached across the counter and shook Ralph’s hand.

  “I have worshipped you since I was a fetus.”

  Ian laughed. “Thank you.”

  “Celia!” Ralph grabbed her upper arm, and it kind of hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew Ian Hasselback?”

  “I didn’t know his last name.”

  She was immediately ignored.

  “Bro, I’m Ralph. The time you rode that gnarly cruncher in Biarritz, that was bitchin.’ Do you still hold the record for that?”

  “I think so.” Ian nodded, even though Celia understood nothing that was being said.

  Ralph stood on the tips of his toes like he might take off like the Challenger and explode. “Do you have the…Can I see the…You know, Banzai Pipeline?”

  “Sure.” Ian smiled, and Ralph rounded the counter. He looked down at Ian’s calf, and so did Celia—the one with the bite mark the size of a human head.

  “Whoa, bro, that is vicious.” Ralph’s voice broke. “How big was that Great White anyway?”

  “I don’t really remember,” Ian said. “I just remember punching him in the face.”

  Ralph let out a loud sigh of air. “Wicked. Is it true you haven’t been in the water since?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But, man, you’re Ian Hasselback. You’re the best!”

  Ian looked sheepish. “Thanks, Ralph. So you surf?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not that good. Not like you.”

  Celia had never heard Ralph say anything humble. It made it hard for her to swallow, especially considering she had about a million questions to ask Ian. For starters, what the hell were they talking about?

  “Can we hang out some time? Just talk surfing?” Ralph’s brown eyes were wild and bright.

  Ian smiled politely. “Sure.”

  “Holy shit, I can’t wait to tell everyone I know.” He pushed the receipt machine button next to the register and tore off some paper. “You live on Admiral Key now?”

  “Yeah, just moved here.”

  Celia watched Ralph write down his phone number. He had the handwriting of a five-year-old. “And you’re friends with Celia?” Ralph snickered.

  “Hey, man, Celia’s cool.” Ian’s blue eyes watched her watching him.

  “Oh. Okay.” Ralph handed the paper to Ian. “Call me anytime, but I gotta go. Some of my buddies got some dank weed down on Ship’s Bell. You wanna come?”

  “Maybe next time.” Ian nodded.

  “Yeah, totally.” Celia had never seen Ralph smile so hard. As he pushed the door open to the outside world, he shouted, “Ian Hasselback, yes!”

  Ian turned to Celia, his smile wrinkles in full bloom.

  “What just happened?” she asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “Ralph doesn’t know about anything, but he just geeked out over another man. Who are you?”
r />   “Ian. We’ve met.”

  Celia hid her vampire book behind the counter.

  “I used to surf,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “I was really good at it.”

  “But you don’t even go near the ocean,” Celia said.

  He leaned back on his heels and looked away from her. “Three years ago, I was surfing off the coast of Oahu, and a Great White tried to take me out.” He winced. “I almost lost my leg.”

  The feeling came over Celia sort of like a shark attack. One second she was fine, talking to Ian. Next thing she knew, she couldn’t breathe. She felt like someone had tied a rubber band around her esophagus.

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” she wheezed. She had the fleeting thought: Apparently, Ian smells good to animals, too.

  “Celia.” Ian circled the counter and put his hands on her shoulders.

  It wasn’t enough. She shoved her face against his chest and latched onto his back. Next thing she knew, she was choking on sobs. She wondered what the hell was wrong with her.

  Ian seemed to understand, because he rubbed her back and whispered, “I’m okay.”

  Then she recognized what was happening. She was freaking out at the thought of Ian being dead—freaking out over the thought of some sea monster taking a bite out of his leg and leaving him, bleeding, to fight for his life.

  She felt his mouth right by her ear. “I’m okay, Celia.”

  She didn’t feel embarrassed, her nose crushed against his breastbone. She should have been embarrassed, having a meltdown about the near-death experience of a guy she barely knew. But Ian had a way of making her feel not embarrassed about anything. Even The Mermaid Incident didn’t bother her anymore.

  Ian didn’t stop holding her until she stopped crying. She didn’t even know vampires could cry. She kind of wished they couldn’t.

  The next time Celia visited Dr. Savage, there was a man there—a human man. The doctor and the human stood in the little lobby outside her office together, where she played quiet sitar music on the stereo and burned incense to help relax clients.

  The human was attractive in that soap opera star kind of way—spikey but stylish blond hair, big brown eyes, and carefully planned five o’clock shadow. He had a cute butt, which Celia only noticed because Dr. Savage had her hands on it.

  “Celia!” Dr. Savage looked up, surprised. “You’re early.”

  “I can go.” Celia gestured to the door.

  “No, it’s all right.” She smiled. Her business suit was green that night, with a slight sheen like lizard skin. She had on her red-bottomed Louboutin heels, which made her a couple inches taller than the traditionally pretty human with his hands on her hips.

  “See you in the morning?” he whispered.

  “Mm-hmm.” She kissed him once, quickly, but Celia noticed, as he walked away, Dr. Savage looked like she wanted to eat him.

  He sort of smiled at Celia as he left.

  “Come into my office, Celia.” She gestured toward the open door, and Celia could already hear the fountain inside. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No.” She shuffled past her therapist and sat on her favorite farting couch. “Who was that?”

  Dr. Savage picked up her leather bound pad of paper and sat cross-legged in her swivel chair. “We’re not here to talk about me.”

  “Are you dating a human?”

  She put on turtle shell glasses. “Yes.”

  “And it’s working out?”

  “Dean and I have been together for a year.”

  “And he knows…” She flashed her top teeth at the good doc—no fangs. Celia still couldn’t get ‘em to boing unless Ian was around.

  “Of course.”

  “He’s okay with it?”

  Dr. Savage smiled, tight-lipped. “Do you have on a new perfume?”

  “No.” Celia was embarrassed to tell her she’d been wearing the same shirt for the past two days. After hugging Ian at Happy Gas, Celia had been pleasantly surprised to realize his scent had stuck to her clothes. She refused to wash her shirt and was still debating whether she would ever wash it again.

  Dr. Savage sniffed the way Imogene sometimes did—which made Celia nervous. Then, she stated the obvious: “Is that Ian?”

  Celia cleared her throat and tugged at her shirt.

  “Well.” Dr. Savage chuckled. “No wonder you’ve got a crush on him. You’ve been close to him lately?”

  “Yeah,” Celia said. “A little.”

  “By the smell of you, very close.”

  “I had a meltdown on him.”

  Celia thought Dr. Savage was trying to wrinkle her brow, but her wrinkle-free skin wouldn’t let her. “A meltdown, Celia?”

  She shook her head. “That’s not why I’m here. I need to talk to you about something in particular. I have a problem.”

  Dr. Savage shifted gracefully in her seat, but she still leaned forward, Celia assumed in an effort to catch shadows of Ian’s scent in the air. “Okay. We’re here to solve problems.”

  “Right. Okay. It’s about my fangs. They don’t work right.”

  “Could you elaborate?”

  “Yes.” Celia picked at her fingernails. “Imogene says I either have premature ejaculation or limp dick.”

  “Um.” Dr. Savage pursed her lips together. “I don’t think I understand.”

  Celia got up and walked to the window of the office that overlooked St. Arthur’s Circle where all the posh clothing stores stayed open late for drunken tourists with too much money.

  “The other night, I went to this party with Imogene, and…but that’s not really the problem.” She shook her head. “I can’t control my fangs when Ian’s around. They just…” She gestured to her mouth. “Boing.”

  “Boing?”

  “That’s the sound I pretend my fangs make,” she said. “So when he’s around, sometimes, they just pop out, and I have no control over them, and it’s embarrassing. The other night, Imogene thought I could go to this party and practice.” Celia paced. “Boinging them out and then pulling them back in. But they wouldn’t boing. I had performance anxiety. Have you ever heard of that?”

  “Celia, why don’t you sit down?”

  She sat down and folded her hands in her lap.

  “This is an easy thing to fix,” Dr. Savage said. “Just takes some practice.”

  Celia barked out a petulant sigh.

  “It’s obvious why your fangs come out when you’re with Ian. You’re attracted to Ian. As you know, our fangs distend when we are sexually excited or hungry. You’ve done well controlling your hunger, but you’ve never met anyone like Ian since your turn. You need to learn to control yourself. It takes practice.”

  “But why won’t they come out when I want them to?”

  “Nerves.” Dr. Savage nodded. “We’re going to work on some exercises, but then we really need to talk about Danny.”

  “Why?” Celia howled.

  “Because I feel that most of your repression and anxiety stem from your experience with him.”

  Celia crossed her arms, reverting to her five-year-old self. “I don’t want to talk about Danny anymore.”

  “That’s the problem. You need to work through your feelings about what happened.”

  “There aren’t any feelings,” Celia said. “He just left me.”

  “He rejected you, Celia, which is why you’re afraid that all other men will do the same. Even Ian. That’s why you fear your fangs. You fear judgment, rejection. Your fear manifests itself in your fangs misbehaving.”

  “Look.” She poked out her bottom lip. “I promise we’ll talk about Danny next time if you just help me with this fang thing. Can’t we just do that tonight?”

  Dr. Savage leaned back in her chair and looked at Celia over the top of her glasses, probing.

  When Celia got home later, all was quiet at the Sleeping Gull Apartments. It was 3 a.m., so when she walked into her kitchen for a snack, she heard Ian snoring through the thin wall. The s
ound was way more soothing than Dr. Savage’s fountain and stupid sitar music. Celia took a couple sips of A-positive and headed to the bathroom.

  Contrary to popular lore, vampires did have reflections. They showed up on cameras and video. It was a good thing, too. Celia couldn’t imagine going through a whole day with a booger on her face and not knowing it.

  It was time to practice. The exercises she and Dr. Savage had put together were simple. She had to think of two different dudes. One dude: Ian. The other dude: Ralph. She couldn’t use Danny, because Dr. Savage said they still weren’t sure how Celia felt about Danny. The exercise needed to be clean-cut, obvious—a guy she liked and a guy who annoyed the shit out of her.

  What she was supposed to do was, first, think about Ian—not just his name or his face but all of him: his crinkly blue eyes, the freckle on his neck, and the length of his toes. She avoided the shark bite scar because she was still pretty freaked about that whole thing. So back to Ian and his good stuff: his curly hair, the way he sounded when he laughed, the way he smelled.

  That did it. Boing! The fangs were out. Celia admired them in the mirror. She had to admit, they were pretty freaking cool.

  The second part of her exercise was to think about Ralph. Ralph with his stupid gelled hair with highlighted tips and his stupid hemp necklaces—the way he said, “Ceeeelia,” like he had a speech impediment. Ralph: stupid, annoying Ralph.

  Holy shit, her fangs went back in. She leaned forward and pulled at her upper lip. Nothing. Nada. Gone.

  Celia called Imogene immediately, and she said, “Go bite Ian,” the mere suggestion of which made Celia’s teeth go boing without her consent. Apparently, more practice was necessary.

  Chapter Eight

  Celia was working on her fang trick—and getting pretty good at it—when someone knocked on her front door: Ian, obviously, based on the woodsy BO scent wafting around her living room. She looked at herself in the mirror. Still awkward with a round face and too-big nose?

  Check.

  She opened the door to a sweaty Ian wearing one of his spandex biker outfits. He held a helmet in his hand, and he was still out of breath. “Do you work tonight?”