by Molly Harper
My eyebrows rose. Was Ben friends with Naked Jason? Somehow that made Ben slightly more interesting.
“How are you enjoying your semester so far, Ben?” I asked.
“Eh, it’s my senior year, I’m just trying to coast on electives while I search for a good job,” he said, shrugging with the disdainful boredom so common to his generation. He apparently noticed the flicker of annoyance cross my face and straightened his shoulders, formalizing his tone to add, “Jamie said this is your very first experience with modern education. How are you enjoying it?”
“Classes are . . . not what I remember them to be,” I said, thinking of long-ago childhood mornings spent in a freezing-cold schoolroom, memorizing religious texts that would be considered advanced secondary material by today’s standards.
“Have you chosen a major?” Ben asked.
I frowned at him, and Jamie winced. Ever since the Council had sentenced me to an undergraduate program, I’d struggled with choosing a degree. I didn’t know what I wanted to study. Frankly, if the vaunted scholars who ran this campus allowed us to count life experience, I could have walked out of this place with a doctorate in about a week.
Science had never appealed to me. I didn’t want to major in something as mundane as accounting, though I’d always excelled at bookkeeping. Well, I excelled at keeping my considerable finances organized, regardless of inappropriate expense reports. Art? Sure, I was a decent draftswoman and knew enough about the history to put my human professors to shame—which I had done on multiple occasions since the semester started, because it amused me. But I would never be able to get a job with a fine arts degree, according to the rants I’d read on the Internet, unless it was in “digital media.” But thanks to my lifetime savings, I didn’t really need a job. For right now, I was undeclared, and that was a bit of an embarrassment.
Even Jamie had a major, and he was only nineteen years old. He was already a hit in the sports medicine department and was on track to serve as an assistant trainer for the baseball team in the spring (for the night games). This was the life he should have started just a few years ago, except he’d be eating solid foods and able to go out during the day without self-immolating. Maybe my punishment for contributing to his losing that life was my own difficulty in settling into similar contentment.
It was embarrassing at my age to be so directionless. I was lost. And I had never been lost. I supposed the problem was that while he was choosing what he wanted to be when he grew up, I’d already lived several lifetimes. I’d learned so much already that it was difficult to find a new subject that interested me. And Jamie was so young. He’d seen so little of the world. No matter what Jane said, I didn’t want to keep him from it. Quite the opposite—I just wanted to be there with him when he saw it.
“Uh, Ophelia’s undeclared for right now,” Jamie said, squeezing me against his side.
“Well, you’ll figure it out,” Ben assured me. “Gigi had been in college for a couple of semesters before she figured out she had a talent for coding. And look at how she’s doing now.”
“And how is . . . Gigi?” I asked, trying to keep the growl from my voice.
The sparkly smile disappeared from his button face. “Oh, uh, we haven’t really talked much since this summer. We broke up, you know, and she’s been real busy adjusting to being a vampire. I mean, we parted as friends and all, but you know how it is when you say you’re going to stay friends. You never really do.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. No paramour I’d parted with had ever asked to remain friends. Mostly, they begged to remain attached to all of their limbs. But, given her tendency to enthrall every man she came into contact with, it didn’t surprise me that Gigi had left Ben a morose shell of the man-puppy he used to be.
“Ben was seeing some girl he met interning at Microsoft,” Jamie added, in his helpful tone. “But she dropped him like a silver cross when she moved back to her campus in Ohio. She saw an old boyfriend, and they got back together. She says it’s like they’d never split up.”
Ben said drily, “Thanks for bringing that up, buddy. And with so many details, too. It’s not embarrassing at all.”
Jamie grinned. It was at times like this that I had to remind myself that the awkwardness stemming from Jamie’s obtuse nature was genuine. Inconvenient and sometimes hilarious but genuine.
I would have to think of some more appropriate woman to distract Ben. It would keep Jamie from being his undead wingman, and it would irritate Gigi when she saw her ex wandering around campus with attractive arm candy. Sure, Gigi had moved on with one of my more reliable operatives, Nikolai Dragomirov, but that didn’t mean she would enjoy seeing her ex canoodling with a beautiful vampire.
I added connect Ben with a trustworthy vampiress to my ever-evolving mental to-do list. Also, copy Jamie’s schedule from his iPhone to mine so I could try to find more time with him.
But for right now, I had body wash to avenge.
“Well, it was lovely to see you again, Ben. Please don’t be such a stranger.” I paused and gave Jamie a quick kiss. “Enjoy your workout. I’m going to go have a conversation with my roommate.”
“Be nice,” Jamie told me.
“I will be the very picture of civility,” I promised. “All smiles and sweetness.”
“That does not make me feel better. I’ve seen what you’re capable of with a smile on your face,” Jamie noted, while Ben blanched.
I widened my eyes to cartoon-kitten proportions. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Jamie kissed me, though his expression remained skeptical as he led Ben away. As they disappeared from sight, the smile melted from my lips, and I whirled toward my door. I squared my shoulders and threw the door open. Brianna was lounging on her bed, dark hair fanning around her as she bobbed her head to whatever emo rock music she was blasting through her headphones.
I’d abandoned my love of Hello Kitty to maintain a calm, restful space on my side of the room—pale blues, neatly arranged desk, pictures of Georgie and Jamie in elegant silver-toned frames. I knew I would need Spartan simplicity to keep my focus on not going on a bloody rampage. But my attempts at serenity were nothing in the face of Brianna’s creeping chaos.
In addition to the piles of unwashed laundry and empty blood bottles, Brianna’s side of the room was plastered with posters of poseur vamp bands and prints featuring Elizabeth Bathory. When I found the low-rent vampire who had turned my roommate, I would remove his spleen with a melon baller.
Brianna stirred, lazily rolling toward me with an intentionally indolent frown. She had received the same marks of transformation as all vampires: sparkling white fangs; pale, pearlescent, and perfect skin; and glossy hair, which she still insisted on dying an unnatural shade of black. Her eyes, a deep china-doll blue, were ringed with waxy streaks of kohl that she painstakingly applied each evening. Telling her that the goth phase had officially become passé the moment it showed up on South Park had done nothing to deter her nonironic use of corsets and ankh jewelry. Georgie refused to Skype with me when Brianna was in the room, because she couldn’t see her without bursting into peals of laughter. And according to the new principles of coexistence that Jane was instilling in her, laughing in someone’s face was rude.
Melon-balling someone’s spleen was also rude, I was sure, but at the moment, I didn’t care.
“Brianna,” I growled.
Nothing.
“Brianna!” I barked louder. She glanced up at me and rolled her eyes so hard I was surprised her blue mascara didn’t smudge her forehead.
“I’ve asked you, over and over, to call me Galadriel,” she drawled, in a bored tone too exaggerated to be genuine ennui. I slammed the door behind me, making her sit up slowly, prey assessing the danger of the predator she hadn’t noticed slipping up on her. I pulled my lips back, revealing fully extended, razor-sharp fangs. In my r
aised hand, I held my empty body-wash bottle.
Brianna’s face went an even pastier shade of oatmeal, and she scrambled to her knees on the bed. “Ophelia, look, it’s not a big deal. I ran out of soap, and I didn’t think you would mind—”
“No, no,” I said, dropping my shower supplies onto my bed. “There will be no excuses this time, Brianna.”
She relaxed slightly, and I grinned nastily before I added, “Only begging and extensive bleeding.”
2
* * *
* * *
Vampires—even the most mature and ancient of vampires—should be prepared for some emotional turmoil. You’re surrounded by young humans experiencing adult life for the first time, steeped in drama, romance, and terror. Don’t be surprised if you suddenly find yourself crying into your phone over the boy who won’t return your texts.
—Big Vamp on Campus: Strategies to Successfully Integrate the Undead into Postsecondary Education
If there was any room I hated more than the communal bathroom, it was my resident director’s office.
It was just my luck that the human administrator selected to serve as resident director of the New Dawn building had also been assigned to run the vampire orientation class. All incoming vampire students were required to enroll in VMP 101, Intro to Undead Education, a twice-weekly class in which we were advised on issues like redeeming our meal plans at campus blood banks, using the library’s complicated reference system, and not eating our classmates. The class was supposed to help us get assimilated into an educational culture that was being retrofitted to our needs. Mostly, we sat around while Tina Messinger, one of the first humans to graduate with an advanced degree in Undead Studies from UC Berkeley, pontificated about us to us.
Tina saw herself as a sort of therapist/spirit guide/guidance counselor, but she spent far too much time explaining how well qualified she was to understand our undead point of view. I didn’t think it would be helpful to point out that if she were truly well qualified, she would know how annoying we found it to have our point of view humansplained to us.
Following the first wave of vampires coming out of the closet, it had been rather amusing to watch the various levels of academics nearly swoon when they realized how many of their colleagues were undead passing as human. Honestly, why did they think so many of them had requested to teach evening classes?
And now I was expected to sit through an orientation for undergraduate vampires. I didn’t even have the pleasure of Jamie’s company, as he’d already taken a version of the course at the community college where he’d taken his first classes. Other than glomming on to his circle of friends, he was relatively unfazed by our arrival on campus anyway. His unflappable nature was part of what I loved about him. I was bothered by everything. I overthought. I overreacted. But Jamie just rolled with things. It would be wrong to think him simple, but he cut to the heart of matters in a way that I struggled with.
Tina was not impressed that in the course of “explaining my distress” to Brianna over my lost body wash, I’d broken her bed, a desk, and Brianna’s collarbone. Brianna had gotten a few shots in but only after our floor’s vampire RA, a former bodybuilder who wrestled professionally in the 1970s under the name “the Iron Bear,” kicked down our locked door and pulled me off her. The Iron Bear, also known as Sidney Applebaum, didn’t appreciate Brianna’s unsportsmanlike behavior and allowed me two retaliatory punches in return. And since he didn’t specify “no broken bones,” Brianna was now nursing three splintered ribs and a punctured lung. They would heal, but her every movement would be agony for the next couple of hours.
Sidney was now standing between our chairs and the door to Tina’s office as we sat in front of her desk and received the full range of her thoroughly disappointed facial expressions.
I’d put on some clothes, because apparently, my having beaten Brianna’s pretentious ass while I was half-naked was off-putting for some people. I did the “walk of shame” to Tina’s office in one of the jeans-and-tank-top ensembles that were now my coed uniform. While they were adorable, Jamie said my elaborate costumes made me stand out among my classmates as a “weirdo.” Also, my ass happened to look spectacular in skinny jeans.
I crossed my arms over my chest and focused on the strange collection of intentionally vampire-centric tchotchkes decorating Tina’s office. Lots of casually draped scarves, exotic pillows, and fanged figurines were supposed to suggest world travel but mostly screamed, “I went to a well-stocked flea market.”
Tina sat in her desk chair, fingers steepled in front of her barely lined face. She might have been a handsome woman, had she taken the time to tame her wild, frizzy brown hair and found a pair of glasses that properly framed her expressive brown eyes. Even in our comparative human years, this woman was barely old enough to be my mother, and yet she was lecturing me as if she was about to take away our TV and dessert privileges.
“Galadriel, can you understand why Ophelia might feel upset and intruded upon when you use her toiletries without asking?”
I tried to restrain my eye roll as Tina used Brianna’s assumed name. I really did. But I failed.
“I didn’t even use that much of her stupid body wash.” Brianna huffed, blowing her dyed-black hair out of her slowly fading black eye.
I hissed, baring my still-elongated fangs at her. Brianna flinched back in the cheaply constructed chair, and I grinned, even as Sidney laid a firm hand on my shoulder.
“I shouldn’t have used it,” Brianna grumbled.
“And you’ll replace it,” Tina prompted.
“And I’ll replace it,” Brianna added, without any enthusiasm.
I gave her a simpering smile. “Wonderful. I’ll give you the address of my personal parfumeur. I would start saving your laundry quarters now.”
Even as Brianna turned a sickly shade of oatmeal, Tina turned her doe eyes on me. “And Ophelia, do you see how Galadriel might feel unsafe, living with someone who would break her ribs over bath products? Without apologizing?”
“It’s not like it won’t heal immediately,” I retorted.
Tina frowned at me.
I sighed. “I’m sorry that your stealing from me made me so angry that I broke your collarbone.”
“You broke her collarbone, too?” Tina exclaimed.
“I’m sorry I broke your collarbone and your ribs,” I amended.
Sidney snorted at my insincerity but covered his laugh with a cough.
Tina’s frown deepened. “Well, that was a special sort of nonapology.”
I smiled sweetly, sure that the end of this painful interview was coming soon.
“Galadriel, you can go back to your room now. Expect an invoice for your half of the broken bed and the desk.”
“But I didn’t!”
The whine from Brianna’s lips was only half-formed when Tina shot her a sharp look. “Sidney says you participated in the fight. Even after he separated you two and he was restraining Ophelia, you were swinging at her. If you want a lesser consequence, learn some self-control.”
Brianna rolled her eyes and huffed out the door. Sidney nodded to Tina and walked out after my roommate.
“Ophelia, of all the students I work with, you have given me the most trouble. And you’ve only been here a few weeks.”
“It’s so nice to be noticed.”
“Look, I know you’re used to running things the way you see fit. I know you’re used to getting your way, by nature of manipulating the people around you.”
“I also abused my power. It was one of my favorite parts of the job,” I admitted.
“But I also know you’re on pretty thin ice with the Council, and you don’t want to do anything to show them that you’re not taking your rehabilitation seriously.”
“What’s my sentence?” I asked.
Tina’s smile was practically crocodilian, a cold,
sharp expression that didn’t correspond with the touchy-feely, ultrasensitive hugger I’d met at orientation. “You know, of course, that Undead American Awareness Week is coming up. The administration has asked the residents of New Dawn, the acknowledged campus home of vampire students, to host a party. Just a pleasant little mixer for the human and undead students to find common ground and build meaningful relationships. I think you and Brianna should arrange it—the food, the blood, the decorations, the music, everything. You’ll have use of the main lounge on the second sublevel. It is my hope that this combined effort will teach the two of you to get along well enough not to want to murder each other on sight.”
“Is this like those ‘buddy cop’ movies that were so popular in the nineteen seventies? Pairing up the young obnoxious rookie with the seasoned veteran, forcing them to appreciate their differences and, in the end, develop a rewarding, productive partnership?”
Tina pursed her lips. “No, it’s based on my having no interest in planning the party myself.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. Was Tina trying to out-delegate me? I’d been a vampire bureaucrat for more than three hundred years. No one out-delegated me.
But damned if I didn’t have to respect that just a little bit.
“Need I remind you that I’m required to submit a monthly report regarding your activities to Ms. Jameson-Nightengale? And that your behavior on campus could result in more serious consequences than what we here at university housing can enforce?”
Well, now she’d threatened me. I had to respect her.
I’d scored my second strike with the Council. They’d tolerated my turning my younger sister into a forever-child vampire because I was willing to serve the fledgling group and they enjoyed my audacity. They were considerably less amused by my paperwork antics, because unnecessarily spending money galled vampires to the core. In a private conversation, it had been made clear by Jane and her superiors that I would be dealt with “permanently” if I made one more mistake. If Tina reported that I was a chronic, unrepentant problem, Brianna could use all of my stuff. Because I would be a little pile of dust.
