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It was almost summer, two weeks til the first day of May, and the inhabitants of 666 Hawthorne Street were preparing.
"We are very excited to be hosting the milkmaids," Nadja said. "Look! We have all set up for them." There were butter churns around the front room, and a dirndl was optimistically draped over the piano. Nadja patted the handle on one of the churns, and pushed it in, and out, delighted. "See? It works!"
"I do love a good milkmaid," Laszlo said. "One time - ho, ho - I was out walking in a field in the Ardennes, and the milk is very good there, you know, nice and thick and creamy - and there was this girl really whaling on the butter churn, you know, really going to town, and I just couldn't help myself." The camera operator reacted. "Oh, I didn't kill her, no, it turned out she was a succubus. Took years off my life. Age three hundred and twenty to three hundred forty-five, just gone, and now I have this black spot that appears behind my left eye on Tuesday the 13th when it's raining. Worth it, though. Those curds! Anyway. What was I saying?"
Nandor cleared his throat. "We are trying to make the place nice for our guests," he explained. "Yes! We are hosting some overseas students, for 'cultural exchange of ideas and people'. Gizmo found it on the internet. It's going to be delicious," he said enthusiastically.
"There were a few issues with the accents at the call center, but the students they're sending sound nice," Guillermo said. "I think it's going to be a really fun week."
He smiled a conspiratorial smile, and smoothed out a sign on the wall above them:
WELCOME, DAIRY GIRLS!
Mid-April in Staten Island was still cold, and rain threatened. Erin looked up at the house doubtfully, down at the scrunched-up paper in her hand, and back up at the sloping roof, the blackened stained glass, the crumbling eaves. "Are you sure this is the place?" she said.
"The cab driver said it was just down this way," Clare said cautiously.
"Although we've been walking for twenty minutes since then," James said, "and he did just push us out of the car in this direction and then take off."
"Sure it's the place," Michelle said, plucking the map out of Erin's hand and looking at it. "666 Hawthorne Street. Well that's grim as fuck." She walked up the steps, raised her hand into a fist and banged the wooden door as hard as she could. "OI! Anybody home! We're the exchange…. students," she said, as the door swung backwards, opened by a short, smiling man with curly black hair and round glasses.
"Hello," the man said warmly and cordially.
"Oh no," Michelle said with open dismay. "I'm sorry girls, but we are looking at a four out of ten situation at best. I'm just the messenger. Hi," she said, smiling too widely. "Do you have, like a jacked older brother or something?"
"Welcome!" the man said. "Come on in, we are delighted to have you. Welcome, welcome, welcome." He nodded at each of them in turn.
"…Hot cousin?" Michelle said, but she and the rest followed him through to the front room.
"What's with the sign?" James said. Then he caught sight of the residents and shrieked.
"Oh my god," Clare said, half fearful, half reverent. "They're goths."
"Oh, no, no, don't worry," said one of the men. He was a little too tall and a little too close, but gave off strong confused puppy energy, so wasn't really threatening. "We got rid of the Goths a whole millenia ago, it was like a whole thing. Hello! I am Nandor, these are my friends Laszlo and Nadja, and the person who opened the door for you is Gizmo."
"Guillermo," the dark-haired man murmured, but his heart wasn't in it.
"I absolutely love your look," Erin said to Nadja, who patted her skirts and looked pleased. "I've always wanted to be a goth. I feel there's a real darkness in my soul, you know? A deep internal well of night, that can only be expressed through the external trappings of, you know," Erin gestured, then tried again. "Yeah?"
"I know just what you mean," Nadja said. "Do you want to come sit next to me and we can braid each other's hair and chat about your life and human feelings or whatever?"
"Yes," Erin said.
"Would any of you care for a drink!" Laszlo exclaimed in a booming English voice. "Some kind of beer perhaps? Or," he leered, "milk?"
"I could do a tequila," Michelle said.
"Tea for me, thanks," Orla said. "Just sugar, no milk."
"Ah," Laszlo said, disappointed. "Well, the butter churns are here if you get in the mood. Gizmo? Tequila?"
Guillermo returned after twenty minutes, covered in dust streaks, with a tray of shot glasses and a bottle with a scorpion at the bottom.
"None for me, thanks," James said. "You don't always know what's going into them, you know? And if the detoxification hasn't been totally effective, it can actually kill you." He shuddered. "No thanks!"
"Oh, cool!" A bald man in a cardigan and khaki trousers had slipped in to sit on the sofa next to James. Or had he always been there? "Nice to meet you, I'm Colin Robinson. When did you first find out you were an energy vampire?"
"What?" James said.
Michelle, ignoring them, took a shot. "You can really taste the scorpion," she said.
"Hi - guys," Clare said. "This is really nice craic and all, but what's the plan with the cultural exchange? I thought there was, like, a sort of programme? With, you know, metrics for success and cross-cultural discussion, and suchlike? …Rankings?" she said hopefully.
"Oh yeah! We brought gifts," James said. He took out a box from his bag, and opened it.
Colin Robison hissed and recoiled. "Dark Madonna mother of our false lord!" Laszlo exclaimed. Nadja simply screamed.
"What?" James said. "What did I do?"
"Put it away!" Nandor said. He blinked, repeatedly, and started to paw at his own face. In one moment all the residents of the house fled into the next room. All except Guillermo, who stood holding the tequila tray and looking incredibly guilty.
"Ohhhhhh," Orla said. "Right girls, we've got to get out of here. We've got vampires."
"The fuck?" Michelle said.
"Don't be insensitive," Erin said, patting her hair where Nadja had been plaiting it.
"No, no, no," Guillermo said, unconvincingly. "No, that's not - no. ...No."
"Yeah, it's full on vampires," Orla said. "You've got all the signs. Are you a familiar? Yeah, I thought so aye. My nan lived with a vampire and his familiar after the war for a few years. Lovely lad, she said, but it was a right pain trying to mend all the blackout curtains."
"I've never seen a vampire before!" Clare said, with the same blend of excitement and apprehension that had greeted the prospect of goths.
"No kidding," Michelle said, "back home there's crosses fecking everywhere. Turn around, there's a cross. Curl your hair, there's a cross. Dog pisses, there's a cross. It's out of control."
James stared sadly at the box of gifts he had brought with him: the tea towels, the cathedral prints, the badges from Our Lady Immaculate College. "It is a lot of crucifixes," he admitted.
Guillermo sighed. "Can I call you guys a cab?"
"We'll walk, thanks," Erin said with a self-righteous air.
"It's thirty-two blocks," James said.
"I think a cab is the least you can do," Erin sniffed.
"And we're taking the tequila," Michelle said, hoisting the bottle as they sailed out the door.
"Let me get this straight," Laszlo said at the house meeting that night, his temples resting on his fingers. "Not only did we not have any dinner, not only did we have to flee the room in our own house, not only did you permit them to depart having deduced our vampiric status. But you are giving me to understand - they weren't even milkmaids?"
"Laszlo, darling," Nadja purred. "We still have the dirndl."