Chapter Text
Despite Sean’s warning that they were running late, the group was actually several minutes early for the class. So much so that the documentary crew capitalized upon the opportunity to film a quick talking head or two.
Nandor’s interview took place outside Kiln’ Thyme. The shot was framed well; above his left shoulder, through the storefront window and parted blue curtains, was the unfocused tableau of a pottery studio and Jordan, who scurried around while they finished setting up for the class.
Hunched, Nandor leaned in to confide in the camera. “I am going to tell you a secret that nobody knows, not even Nadja and Laszlo. I am related to someone famous!”
“Define ‘famous.’”
The shot widened, revealing Laszlo. He leaned on the building’s brick façade beyond the window and gesticulated his point, open flask in hand. “On a scale of, I dunno, Colin Robinson to our beloved Queen of England, what kind are we talking?”
Nandor stood tall and imperious, and his uncombed hair fanned out under a gentle breeze. “My mother’s mother was… Sahar.”
Laszlo’s eyes flicked to the offscreen crew, then back to Nandor. “I don’t know who the fuck that is,” he announced with a shrug.
“And you call yourself a patron of the arts. How embarrassing for you.”
Unfazed by Nandor’s patronizing tone, Laszlo tipped back the flask and motioned for him to continue.
“My grandmother, Sahar, was a master artisan. Her pottery was exquisitely crafted and glazed and highly sought-after. Everybody who was anybody has one of her plates or cups.” Nandor swayed in his spot, eyes flashing with pride. “I still have the vase she made to celebrate my first-ever accession day. It depicts the glorious battlefield of my first conquest as Supreme Viceroy of Al Qolnidar. It is my most prized possession and the only thing that remains of my mother’s family.”
“Do you have anything special from your family that you’d be willing to share with us? Like a gift, a family heirloom, etc.?”
~♪~
Laszlo was interviewed after Nandor - directly after, considering his location and stance hadn’t changed one bit.
“My father was not a sentimental fellow, so no, I do not have any ‘familial heirlooms,’ as it were. Unless you count the Cravensworth estate in London, but truth be told, I couldn’t care less about that shithole. I always meant to sell the place, but I’d have to return to England to do so.”
His sigh was deep, full of regret. “I should have burned it to the ground when I had the chance.”
~♪~
“Oh, yes! When I was a young girl, my mother gave me the most beautiful gift, a handmade dolly passed down from mother to daughter for generations.” Nadja sighed at the memory, wistful, with just a hint of melodrama.
“Nostalgia has muddled your mind, μουνί μου.” Dolly rolled her eyes. “Helen was an ancient, fraying dolly made by Mama’s γιαγιά, with one eye and no hands, and her dress was donkey-shit brown.”
“Yes, she was quite ugly and not much fun to play with,” ceded Nadja, “But I’m more talking about the gold coins sewn in the hem of her dress. I still have the doll in a box somewhere, but Mama made me swear that I would only use the coins if it was a matter of life or death.”
“Moot point for both versions of us.”
“It’s just too bad. It would be nice to have a little money, especially now.”
~♪~
“Well, to have a family heirloom, one would need to have a family of origin. But, as far as I can tell, I was never really born. I just- I don’t know - I popped into being fully formed, I guess? Or! Maybe it’s like that movie, Jerome Bixby’s final masterpiece, Man F-’”
“-excuse me, I need you to clarify something real quick,” interrupted Hazel from offscreen. “We’ve heard you talk about your parents before. Who were they to you if not your family of origin?”
Colin Robinson frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
~♪~
“No, everything my family had burned in the fire.” The Guide’s wide, round eyes were lit with smug satisfaction. “Trust me, I made sure of it.”
Historically, when things went very, very wrong in his life, the odds were split on whether Guillermo would have a mental breakdown and start crying, or have a different kind of mental breakdown and laugh it off like it was nothing. Either way the coin landed, a mental breakdown was guaranteed.
Guillermo was laughing right now, technically, but it sounded strained and humorless, and he felt the prickle of tears welling up.
Maybe the coin landed on its edge?
“Um… Guillermo? Are you ok over there?” A sliver of fangs were visible through Derek’s grimace.
Guillermo caught his tears with the cuff of his Versace button-up. “Oh, I’m peachy keen, Derek. Just super healthy and alive and human over here.”
They sat in heavy silence while Guillermo attempted to pull himself together. Disquieted, Derek grabbed his cell and aimlessly scrolled through Reddit. Guillermo stared at the drained McDonald’s cup - partly in disbelief and partly to avoid the intense gaze of the camera crew in the far corner of the basement. He didn’t mind the humans typically, but they had even less tact than Derek at times.
Eventually, Derek locked his screen with a click and gently placed it on the table. “So... what now? There’s no clause for this.”
The blood loss saved Derek from physical retaliation at this absurd, tonally ignorant comment because Guillermo was too light-headed to stand, let alone find a rosary or holy water in his slayer stash he smuggled into the apartment without Derek’s knowledge.
“Fucking hell, Derek - stop talking about the goddamn contract, ok? It’s not like we could have prepared for the impossible.”
And it was impossible, wasn’t it? Vampire blood was poisonous. It only took a teaspoon to kill a human, and Guillermo just drank twenty ounces and felt fine. He must have misunderstood everything he read about vampire blood and turning methods in London. That was the only logical conclusion; Occam"s razor, and everything. Right?
Desperate, he began to unravel the ace bandage on his arm. “Ok, let’s just do this the old-fashioned way. I’ll hit you with a rosary to the face if you can’t disengage from my arm.”
Face drawn tight, Derek slowly shook his head. “Look - I know you really want to be a vampire, but you could die if we try again tonight. Like, permadeath die.” He nervously fiddled with his phone on the table, spinning it around and around on its Black Panther popsocket. “Let’s postpone a few days-”
“-estoy perdiendo la maldita cabeza, ¡santa mierda!” Guillermo moaned and lay halfway on the table, his turned head cradled by crossed arms.
“Dude - I’m sorry, but your blood needs to replenish before we can try again.” Derek pocketed his phone as he stood to retrieve his coat. “Actually, just stay here for a moment, ok? I might be able to work this out.”
The door latched behind him before Guillermo could process what the hell he meant. Whatever. He probably stepped outside to furiously google information on vampiric turning methods, or perhaps he just wanted to give Guillermo some privacy.
“Guillermo?”
As if privacy existed when you’re the subject of a documentary.
“Fuck off, AJ.”
~♪~
“Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” Derek announced several minutes later when he burst through the door, startling Guillermo back upright in his chair. “I wouldn’t really call it bad news, though, more like mildly uncomfortable news at best.”
The subtle undercurrent of panic in his voice immediately concerned Guillermo. “What were you doing?”
“I just stepped outside to make a call, which leads me to my good news - I just talked to an expert in vampiric lore who knows what we did wrong!"
“Wait, how? What did we do wrong?” Derek may be chronically lonely, but his supernatural network was bafflingly extensive. First a werewolf notary, and now a vampire scholar? “How do you even know an expert in vampiric lore, anyway?”
Derek barreled ahead, ignoring Guillermo’s questions entirely. “The other news is that, well, I kinda-maybe-sorta-definitely broke the contract. Specifically, Article 2, Subsection 4.3.”
“Which one is-?”
“-It’s the non-disclosure clause.”
“What the fuck- Derek, you absolute shithead, what did you do?”
Derek hid behind cupped hands as if that were sufficient protection against a slayer wronged. “I thought I could ask without mentioning you at all, but- I dunno, I must’ve slipped or something because she tricked me into inviting her over. She’ll be here any moment”
“You invited her?!” Guillermo stumbled to his feet. He was wobbly from the blood loss and adrenaline, but he had to get the fuck out of there; he could not deal with this right now, but his legs gave out, and he crumpled down to the folding chair just in time to see dark smoke pour in through the cracks in the doorframe.
The Guide materialized from the cloud with a wicked, shit-eating grin. “Hey there sexy, long time no see!”
“How do I feel about being back?” The harsh fluorescents in Colin Robinson’s basement bedroom nostalgically flickered and buzzed while he considered the question.
“It’s odd. On the one hand, I’ve been out of the game for what, thirteen, fourteen months now? But I don’t feel like I"m missing time. To me, my hundredth birthday was a couple days ago. On the other hand, a lot seems to have happened in the interim. Things feel fairly turbulent. The delicate balance of power in the household is in flux, and I’m McLoving it.”
He chuckled, tickled by his own humor.
“Anyway, besides the all-you-can-eat buffet of emotions available twenty-four/seven, I’m finding there’s ample opportunity to climb the ranks of the household pecking order. Maybe even claim the title of ‘head chicken’ myself.”
“How has that been going for you?”
“Well, truthfully, it’s not been going all that well,” he admitted, scratching at the dry skin by his nostrils. “Don’t get me wrong - I’ve already asserted dominance over Laszlo and Nandor, and Guillermo surrendered by moving out, but Nadja… Nadja is a formidable opponent and turning out to be a real pebble in my shoe.”
~♪~
Nadja scowled at the camera as she wound her way through the basement corridors. “Colin Robinson grew up a few days ago, and it looks like he grew too big for his boots. What gives him the right to make all the decisions in this house? Excuse me, but that’s my job.”
“Our job,” Dolly chimed in from her perch on Nadja’s shoulder.
“Eh, different sames,” she dismissed. “Anyway, the overgrown baby pulled me aside and had a hissy fit about the whole ‘using hypnosis on the contractors’ thing. He droned on and on about the ethics of hypnotism and how vampire/human relations are tenuous enough as it is, blah blah blah, that I genuinely feared for my life.”
The haunted doll shuddered. “That man is a fucking psychopath, and not in a fun, chill way like us.”
“Ok, I’ll have to double-check to make sure, but I think this is the right room.”
The auxiliary basement storage room held a veritable mountain of precariously stacked boxes. As Nadja walked down the line, tapping and tugging to determine their importance in stack"s structural integrity, Dolly deftly scaled the pile and began nestling in. “You vampires are all messier than magpies. How the bloody hell can you live like this?”
“Χέσε μας,” Nadja hissed defensively. “Come back to lecture me on mess once you’ve been around as long as I have. Shit really starts to pile up after a couple centuries.”
She managed to identify and dislodge a rare non-load-bearing box from the stack while talking, but no sooner had it been freed than she felt a wave of goosebumps prickling across her arms, and it slipped out of her grasp with a worrisome crunch as she twirled around to find Colin Robinson skulking by the doorway.
“Howdy Hos, what’s crack-a-lacking? Tastes like the beginnings of self-loathing in here, yummy!” Colin Robinson punctuated the greeting by licking his lips. Not for the first time, Nadja wished she could murder him without upsetting Laszlo. Sometimes marriage felt like nothing but compromise.
“Colin Robinson, please, I will wither into a disgusting, ugly raisin if you drain me again.”
He lifted his hands in surrender. “No drainage here, just picking up what’s already in the air. I could smell it from my room and came to see what the dealio was.”
She knelt to open the dropped box. “The dealio,” she spat, “is that you’re forcing me to deal with the contractors in a way that’s ‘humane,’ and ‘ethical,’ and that’s just not how I like to do business! You’ve left me with no choice but to sell some shit and use that money to bribe the humans so they will bend to my will.”
“Oh yeah, sounds super ethical,” he nodded. “What kind of junk are you selling?”
“Nandor’s wedding presents- Eugh, but look at this! You made me shatter the crystal chalices from Catherine the Conniving. They would have paid for the new marble flooring in mine and Laszlo’s crypt!” Nadja plucked two broken pieces from the box and slotted them together, as if they could be fixed through physical contact alone.
Colin Robinson was genuinely surprised; his eyes had widened in shock, then narrowed as he scrutinized the documentary crew. “Nandor’s… wedding presents?”
She dropped the shards back into the box and rose to her feet, glaring all the while. “You know, this new obsession you have with right and wrong is a motherfucking pain in the arse.”
“And not the fun kind,” Dolly added from her eyrie by the ceiling.
“We had a custom in Antipaxos: if someone owned a boat but never sailed it, anyone who needed a boat but didn’t have one had the right to claim it for themselves. Nandor threw these boxes in here weeks ago and hasn’t touched them since. It is well within my rights to sell it all and keep the money.” Nadja turned to the camera and beamed, fangs on full display. “Eminent domain, bay-bee!”
“Cool, cool, that’s very authoritarian of you.”
“Thank you,” she replied with absolute sincerity.
“You’re welcome,” he returned with absolute indifference. “So, what’s the next step, eBay? Or, are you following in the footsteps of the city’s most enterprising hustlers and setting up a table by Central Park?”
“What is eBay; is that some sort of marketplace?” Nadja asked, undoubtedly stalling for time because she hadn’t thought that far.
“More or less. It’s an online auction house where humans go to sell all sorts of weird shit. I’ve been an active user since they launched in ninety-five.” Colin Robinson turned to brag at the camera, eyes lit with mirth. “You know, just the other day, I sold a bunch of those Lego sets that were just laying around the house. I made sure to take a brick or two from each box before resealing and selling them as new to unsuspecting collectors. Time-delayed feedings are such a treat.”
While he blabbered on about Lego nerds and whatnot, Nadja"s demeanor pulled a rapid 180 from idle frustration to keen ambition. “Colin Robinson, are you telling me that it"s possible to pull scams on this internet website?”
“Absolutely. People can just go on the internet and tell lies. They do it all the time. It’s a beautiful place.”
Nadja clutched her hands together and grinned with wicked intent. “Fuck Nandor’s shit. I just had the most brilliant business idea.”
The lone employee at Kiln’ Thyme flipped the sign on the door from ‘We’re Open - Please Come In!’ to ‘We’re Closed - Please Come Back Tomorrow.’ They noticed the watchful camera to their left and shrugged somewhat helplessly.
“The storefront isn’t scheduled to close for another hour, but I’m the only one here tonight, and pottery is a pretty hands-on class to teach.” Their eyes blinked away for just a moment, then peered at someone behind the camera. “I don’t know if that qualifies as a pun, but I’m going to pretend it does and that it was intentional.”
~♪~
The documentary snagged a quick ‘can you tell us a little about yourself?’ before they could herd the waiting students into the studio space in the back.
“ My name is Jordan Revivo, my pronouns are they/them, and I’m the assistant manager at Kiln’ Thyme. I’ve worked here for about four years- not all as assistant manager, though. That’s a recent promotion. It’s only been a month, I think? Luanne wanted to cut back on her hours when the grandbaby was born, and she knows I’m always down for more hours. It"s still just part-time hours, but I’m getting by.”
~♪~
The studio’s drywall and concrete flooring were splattered with multi-colored mediums, and the space was barely large enough for the necessary equipment - seven pottery wheels in two rows of three, with the seventh at the head for the instructor.
When the group settled at their stations - Charmaine and Sean opposite himself and Laszlo - Nandor finally noticed the two strangers in attendance as well. One of the women had dozens of intricately braided locs that fell well past her shoulders, and the other had a veritable garden of botanical tattoos that snaked down to her hands. They were married, judging by their identical gold bands and unreasonably mushy, doe-eyed public affection for each other.
It was one of life’s cosmically cruel ironies that Nandor found himself surrounded by wives.
Nandor itched to get his hands on the clay, but first, he had to suffer through several agonizing minutes of generally useless shit that he had no intention of paying attention to, such as:
Introductions ( ‘Hi, I’m Alexis, and this is my wife, Kim. Aww, I can’t believe I get to call you that now!’ );
Workshop Details ( ‘The first half of the class will focus on the wheel. You may continue to use it for the second half, or you can glaze a pre-fired bowl instead.’ );
And:
Safety Instructions ( ‘You should remove any rings from your hand, secure loose articles of clothing, and tie your hair back so that nothing can get snagged up in the wheel. And no drinking, please.’ ).
He never should have trusted Derek, should he? Instead of soaring through the air with vampiric power, Guillermo was too light-headed to escape a confrontation with the second-to-last vampire he wanted to see. The Guide wasn’t number one on his list, but still. His fingers itched with an instinctive desire to grab the nearest crucifix and exorcize her from the apartment.
“Fuck, no. You have ten seconds to leave, or I swear, I will stake you.” Guillermo knew he couldn’t look all too intimidating with a bandaged arm and tears in his eyes, but he had no patience for her specific brand of bullshit.
The Guide fanned her hands in a calm the fuck down sort of motion, though she seemed more amused by his posturing than anything. “Alright, hot shot, settle down. There’s no need for such blatant hostility. Can you scale back to a more passive type of aggression? Just for today? Believe it or not, kiddo, I’m here to help.”
“Fine, let’s just get this over with,” Guillermo sighed, then relaxed marginally in his chair. The Guide glided across the sparse basement to sit at the table with him, and Derek hovered nearby, nervously gnawing his nails as he watched the consequences of his stupid, stupid actions unfold in front of him.
Although The Guide had wasted no time booking it to the apartment to further ruin Guillermo’s life, she seemed somewhat hesitant to begin the conversation she started. Her lips were pursed and eyes downcast, and, if he was being honest, her whole vibe unsettled Guillermo, who was very much not used to seeing vampires think before speaking.
“First of all, I just want you to know that just because you ran away from home to ask a criminal if he could turn you into a vampire-”
“-excuse me, I was exonerated!-”
“-just because you asked an ‘exonerated criminal-’” (her eyebrows arched in place of air quotes) “-to turn you into a vampire does not mean that I came here just for the tea. Yes, it’s scalding hot, and I’m a world-class nosey bitch, but I’m not going to spill it to anyone. Trust me, I am great at keeping secrets. Your brain would explode if you knew even a fraction of the shit that I know.”
There was a ninety-nine percent chance Nadja would know by the end of the day, but there was nothing he could do about that now. “Thank you,” he lied.
“You’re welcome. Now - when Derek here gave me a ring and asked hypothetical questions regarding an unusual issue he encountered while trying to turn a friend of his, I knew it had to be you. And, let me tell you, I was shocked. Appalled, even! I mean, it is simply preposterous how you chose to waste your time while in London.”
Guillermo’s indignant retort died on his lips, and his mouth hung loose as he tried to process this twist in the conversation. “The fuck does this have to do with London?”
The Guide’s face crinkled with exasperation. “Fuck me running, I’m getting there, don’t you have any appreciation at all for the art of the dramatic reveal?” Clearing her throat, she clasped her hands firmly and continued her exposition; she was uncharacteristically sober, shrill voice swapped for one simply sharp.
“The Worldwide Supreme Vampiric Council library in London holds one of the finest collections of supernatural literature worldwide. You would know the answer to your question if you read anything about your great-great-great-great-grandpappy Van Helsing.”
“Van Helsing- like the slayer?” gasped Derek.
Guillermo leaned in, eyes locked on The Guide’s. “What would I know?” he asked, voice cracking under the stress.
“As a direct descendent of Abraham Van Helsing, you have the Van Helsing familial magic coursing through your veins, making it just so, so stupid easy for you to kill vampires.”
What the fuck. It would be nice if The Guide could go one full sentence without saying something that changed the conversational roadmap entirely. Jesus. He had never seriously considered why his ancestry made him an extraordinarily dangerous slayer, despite, you know, everything, but still… Magic?? That was hard to believe.
After the Théâtre, his (ex-)roommates would tease him from time to time about his ‘magical DNA,’ but they were prone to dramatic hyperbole, to say the least. All vampires were. Plus, The Guide literally just told him she was doing a ‘dramatic reveal,’ so maybe he was just overthinking this. It’s been a stressful day. No need to jump to conclusions.
“However! Your kick-ass slayer abilities are but one ingredient in your whole magical enchilada. For example - Van Helsings are naturally resistant to vampiric magic, and that resistance grows an eensy bit stronger every time a vampire uses their unholy powers on you.”
That… tracked, actually. Hypnosis hadn’t worked on him in years. The same went for glamor, now that he thought about it… igniting flames of terror in his mortal heart… all vampiric powers, really.
All vampiric powers.
Oh.
Oh, no no nonononoNONON-
“Given just how long you’ve lived with vampires, it’s not unreasonable to assume that, over time, your resistance developed into an unqualified immunity.”
Fuck me running.
Nandor used his white cravat to pull back his hair and felt foolish for how tricky and difficult the task turned out to be. Sure, he could blame his fumbling fingers on the blood liquor, but Nandor hadn’t done this in a while. He always had a- a someone else, someone who would take care of those trivial yet necessary aspects of grooming for him.
Eventually, after several intense moments of focused determination peppered in between agonizing stretches of slipped knots and a stinging scalp, the war was won; his hair was tied securely behind him.
They began with the basics of wheel throwing, and Nandor was pleased with how much he had retained from his childhood days spent in Sahar’s studio. He knew how to secure the clay on the wheel’s center. How to cone the clay up and down, guiding and shaping it. How to build the walls up and up with hands at once delicate and firm, and how all it really came down to was technique over brute force.
However - it wasn’t long before Nandor realized the evening was likely cursed. Jordan was a competent teacher, but Nandor knew how to do this. Hell - he made his first cup long before learning his first weapon. So, what other explanation was there for how shitty his pot looked, all lumpy and off-center, than a good old-fashioned curse?
Well, to be fair, it had been centuries since Nandor had last sat at a pottery wheel - before he was a vampire, before he was Supreme Viceroy of Al Qolnidar, or a warrior, even. He wasn’t sure when, exactly, but it must have been before he left for training camp as a young boy, just a few days shy of fourteen. Enlisting had always been Nandor’s goal. True, it was kind of a given as the eldest son of a highly respected general in the army, but as long as he could remember, battles and pillaging and conquests all had his heart.
At last, the pot’s misshapen walls collapsed under his ham-fisted grasp, and Nandor was relieved by the loss. Better to lose honorably than suffer the shame of surrender. Ready for a fresh start, he cleaned the wheel, grabbed a new lump of clay, and got to work.
[ 8:09 pm ]
While Jordan was distracted helping Nandor ( ‘Just relax, ok? You don’t need to use that much force,’ ), Sean subtly slipped the flask of human alcohol to Charmaine. She was plagued with a cough after taking a swig but had enough sense to stash it in her bra before Jordan saw her drinking.
They weren’t entirely unobservant, though. “Please don’t drink during the class. We can’t afford the inevitable injury lawsuit.”
Charmaine erupted into a fit of giggles.
~♪~
[ 8:18 pm ]
Nandor watched the walls of his pot rise higher and higher as the wheel spun around and around in a familiar, comfortable rhythm.
The pot still looked kinda shitty, and the bottom was far too thick, but he was bound and determined to see this one through.
~♪~
[ 8:27 pm ]
“It’s a lot harder to reenact that scene from Ghost than we thought.”
Sean took this observation personally. “Hey! You try leaning in like that with a hereditary degenerative disc disease like I do!”
~♪~
[ 8:38 pm ]
Braid-Wife and Tattoo-Wife gushed about their recent wedding with Jordan, causing Nandor to lean towards Laszlo. “You gotta help me out here.”
Laszlo nodded in understanding and wiped his hands on his apron before passing the flask to Nandor, who took it with clay-covered fingers and drained it down to the last drop.
~♪~
[ 8:44 pm ]
Everyone posed with their pots of various shapes and structural integrity before Jordan whisked them away to dry in some secondary location and set up the paints for the second half of the workshop.
Nadja half-sat on the half-table in the mansion’s entryway with folded arms and eyes lit with determination. Behind her, Colin Robinson was bundling himself up with an overabundance of layers.
“I read an article in the newspaper the other day about these little animal dollies filled with beans. Apparently, humans are mad about them and will pay thousands and thousands of dollars for all sorts of bear-shaped Bean Children.”
“Beanie Babies,” Colin Robinson corrected while winding himself up in an extra-long scarf.
Nadja gave no indication that she heard him.
“So, my brilliant idea is to make counterfeit Bean Children and sell them on the internet. I am an excellent businesswoman, obviously,” she grinned with unearned confidence - as if she didn’t have to shutter the nightclub a few days ago. “But, there’s more to being a successful girlboss than having an innate lust for power and an irresistibly charming personality. You need someone to boss around. That’s the ‘boss’ in ‘girlboss.’”
Colin Robinson raised a mittened hand. “That’s where I- wait, hold up.” He removed the mitten, revealing a second layer consisting of neon-green gloves. “Sorry, you couldn’t really see me pointing at myself. That’s where I-” he pointed at himself, “-come in.”
~♪~
“Nadja asked for my assistance since she - like the other nightwalkers - regards me as some kind of tech genius simply because I know how to navigate The World Wide Web. I’m happy to help, and I even have four or five semi-legitimate eBay accounts I’m willing to sacrifice for this capitalistic venture.”
Behind his many scarves, Colin Robinson smiled like the cat that ate the canary.
“Besides, it’s always nice to have a political rival in your debt.”
~♪~
As they approached the corporate architecture of The Temple of Blood-Devourers, a voice half-muffled by wind asked if they could talk about what they were doing, please.
The vampires began simultaneously (“We’re going to-” / “We’re here at-”) , but Nadja won out at the end, partly because Colin Robinson knew the producer would inevitably ask for a redo due to overlapping dialogue and partly because of the way that Nadja’s fingers flexed menacingly and loosely curled by her sides.
“We’re here at headquarters to talk to the staff. The wraiths are going to make the Bean Children, and I need to tell The Guide that, so that she can tell the wraiths. That way, there will be no pushback. I swear, those hellions would do anything for her.”
The path split a few feet from the front of the building. Colin Robinson continued straight ahead towards the glass double doors, but Nadja turned right to walk along the side of the building.
“Oi - dipshit,” she called over her shoulder, “where are you going? The side entrance is much more direct.”
He had to speed-walk/speed-stumble over the mulched landscaping to catch up with Nadja and the camera crew. “The side entrance? I don’t think I knew there was a door over here.”
Nadja opened the bespoke side door and led him down a similarly unfamiliar stairwell. “I don’t think you’ve ever used it. Laszlo always brought you through the club’s secret talent entrance in the back.”
“I, uh… wow.” The stairway curved, and they passed the unlit neon sign for Nadja’s. “I have, just, a whole buttload of questions.”
“Well, plug it up, Colin. I don’t have time for your nonsense.”
He winked at the camera. “Consider my butt plugged.”
“Eugh.”
“So, Nandor, how"s married life treating ya?”
Nandor’s fingers twitched, and his brush streaked through the flower he had started, marring it with a thick line of green.
“Married?” Charmaine gasped at her husband’s question. “How the fuck is this the first I’m hearing of it? Seanie, you’re supposed to tell me everything - that’s the only way I can one-up that bitch Brenda at my ladies’ brunches.”
Sean’s face contorted with befuddlement. “Really? You didn’t know? Man, I coulda sworn I remember talking to you about it.”
“Well, memory isn’t one of your strong points.” She took her brush and cleaned it in a cup, swirling it in the water as she turned her attention to Nandor, who was focused on floral damage control. If he was careful, he could add some swirlies and a leaf or two and pretend the vine was intentional from the start.
Armed with a clean brush, Charmaine loaded the bristles with mustard yellow and gave Nandor a sly smile. “Ok, start from the beginning: When did you get engaged? Who proposed first, you or him? Tell me everything.”
Damn Laszlo for bringing him here tonight. This was everything that he was specifically invited to forget about for the evening, and yet here he was, ambushed by the Rinaldis.
Fucking humans. He was sick of their prying and unfounded misconceptions. Maybe that’s why he was stupid and answered instead of pretending he had gone deaf or fallen asleep, or just Bat!-ing away and hoping Laszlo would hypnotize the group for him.
“I… I proposed to her, Marwa, uh, by telling her that we would be wed by the next full moon.”
“Marwa? I didn’t even know your last relationship ended- who’s Marwa?”
Nandor saw how Miles shifted ever-so-slightly to the left for an unobstructed shot. How everyone stared at him - not just the documentarians and his so-called friends, but Jordan and the Wives, too. Nine discrete pairs of eyes and one camera lens were all on him.
He was sure of it now - the evening was cursed.
Shitfuck.
“Immune. Immune to vampiric magic. I’m immune to vampires.” Guillermo’s voice grew frantic as he kept repeating that word, turning it around, trying to find an unknown, probably non-euclidean angle to view it from where immune didn’t mean immune. “I’m immune to vampires? I can’t be turned because I have what- what is, essentially, a hereditary magical autoimmune disorder?”
“Ehh, not exactly.” The Guide wiggled her hand, palm down, as she contemplated the semantics of the thing. “It’s not a ‘disorder,’ more like a ‘magical mutation inherited from Mr. Van Helsing himself.’”
“How is that any better than what I said?”
Derek’s eyes were wide with awe. “Dude. You’re a real-life mutant. You could literally be in the X-Men.”
Guillermo threaded his fingers through his hair and practiced his breathing exercise in a desperate attempt to ground himself, or, at the very least, breathe through the burning desire he had to cause grievous bodily injury to all vampires in a ten-foot radius. “I don’t want to be in the X-Men. I want to be a vampire.”
“Well, Jubilee-”
“Oh my God!” Guillermo relished the way the vampires flinched when singed by his words. “This has nothing to do with the X-Men! This has to do with me, a real-life human! I’ve worked too fucking hard for too fucking long for it to end like this!”
The metallic chair clattered when he rose to his feet, and he ignored The Guide and Derek’s shared look of apprehension when he walked past them to the coat hooks by the door. “I’ve wasted thirteen, almost fourteen years of my life, and now I’m in the exact same spot I was before. Worse, even - I don’t even have a fucking job.”
He grabbed Derek’s coat, tossed it to the vampire (who caught it with his face), and buttoned his jacket with fingers that trembled. “I’m sorry, Derek, but we have to go to the storage unit. If I have to start over, fine, but I refuse to start over while in debt to Colin Robinson.”
Per the contract, they had stashed the black duffel bag of cash in Derek’s old storage unit to be accessed once the turning was complete. Guillermo wasn’t a vampire, but this was so far beyond the scope of the contract. He wasn’t about to let himself get softlocked by a piece of paper.
“Guillermo-” The Guide called urgently, and for the thousandth fucking time that evening, he knew something was very wrong. He looked at her, and wordlessly, she pointed at Derek.
Guillermo had never seen someone so perfectly encapsulate the phrase ‘like a deer in headlights’ quite like Derek at this very moment. He held the coat in his hands and stood stock-still with eyes that were wide, wide, and every one of his tense muscles were frozen with instinctual terror.
“Um… Derek? Are you ok over there?”
“...”
“Ok, you gotta talk to me, bud. You’re making me nervous.”
Derek’s jaw worked itself open, and he had a couple of false starts before his mouth remembered how to make English happen.
“I… Well, I can tell you the long story after, but- also, please don’t kill me; it’s not like I had many options, and there’s no way I could’ve expected how today shook out, but… I had to move the money. Out of the storage unit. Into someone else’s bank account. It’s gone. It’s all gone.”