Chapter 3

"How's your first week going?" Thea asks me as we step onto a crowded elevator.

Normally, I wouldn't leave at five o'clock sharp, like so many of Kyan's employees tend to do, but I have a meeting tonight and don't want to be late for it.

"Going well so far," I tell Thea with a smile shimmering with gratitude. It's a lie though. I've only had the job for four days, but it's awful, and I fucking hate it. It makes me feel like a twisted Freudian combination of Kyan's mother and his servant, and I'm one swipe of a Tide pen away from quitting. I even made a pro/con list last night to decide if being sent back to Xavier would be better or worse than another day of answering Kyan's phone.

The exercise bummed me out, so I gave up and drank a bag of weed-laced blood, then passed out on my couch while watching Ugly Betty.

"I hope Kyan hasn't been too tough on you," Thea adds, tugging the strap of her purse back onto her shoulder. A second later, it slips back down to her elbow.

It's a distinctly human behavior that vampires lose after being turned––the overall need to fidget and adjust and preen every moment of the day. I'm not sure why that changes, but vampires exist in perfect stillness, whereas humans seem to be on a lifelong quest to figure out what to do with their hands.

I spent weeks practicing this when I was a newborn vamp, and I sometimes have to remind myself to blink, or twirl my hair, or pick at my fingernails to avoid looking as at ease inside my body as all vampires are.

"No, not at all. He was cold at first," I tell her, "but I think I've already melted a few layers of that glacial exterior." It's not as blatant a lie as the first, but I'd put it near the top of the fib category. Kyan has softened a bit since the first day, that's true, but it's clear to me and anyone with eyes that he doesn't want me here.

He gets impatient when I don't give top clients the VIP treatment when they call, not that I was ever given a list, so I'm trying to flag them as VIPs based on Kyan's reactions. And he got really mad when his brother Mylo called to say that Kyan had an overdue book at the library called How to Make Friends When You're Dead Inside: A Survival Guide for the Hopelessly Unpleasant––a joke that I found hilarious. Kyan, on the other hand, did not.

"If you get a call from Mylo, Zev, Axil, or Luka, you tell them I'm in a meeting," Kyan shouted the moment I ended that call. "My brothers are clueless dipshits. Their calls are never important, and their jokes are unoriginal and lazy. Don't let them waste your time or mine. Understand?"

I gritted my teeth through an apology and spent the rest of that day reminiscing about my former life as the one of the top surgeons at Madison Park Hospital, and the respect I commanded in that role. No one ever raised their voice to me. They wouldn't dare. My patients adored me, my colleagues appreciated me, and my hands were never idle. My hands performed hundreds of lifesaving procedures.

Now they copyedit Kyan's emails, carry his lattes from the kitchen to his office, and shred each piece of paper that gets handed to him once I scan it and send him a digital copy.

The elevator dings once we reach the parking garage, and Thea gives my arm a gentle nudge. "He's glad you're here, I promise you that. He might never say the words, but he's needed someone like you for a long time."

The genuine kindness in her words surprises me. I'm not used to receiving compliments anymore. Most of the time, my presence seems like a nuisance to those around me. If only I could be Thea's assistant for however long this ruse is supposed to go on.

We say our goodbyes, and I send a prayer to Lillith that my car will start. It does after a few tries, but instead of listening to the radio on my commute home, I try identifying a clanking sound the car makes whenever I press my foot on the gas.

I maneuver my dying station wagon into the employee parking lot of the Dunkin" Donuts on the edge of Sudbury and park next to Quincy's bright yellow Jeep before going inside through the back entrance.

Brown folding chairs are set up in a circle in the back room, and Quincy is pouring blood into red plastic cups.

"Hey, Quince," I say, hanging my stuff on the coat rack next to the door. "How many are we expecting tonight?"

"Uh, I think it'll be the four of us again," he replies in a proud tone. Our Sipper Support Group started with just the two of us venting about our shitty lives, but over the last month, Quincy has recruited two new members. We have a secret Facebook group with over a thousand, but with the members scattered across the globe, most can't attend the in-person gatherings.

We're lucky to have the meetings here. The only reason we can is because Quincy owns this location and works the graveyard shift seven days a week. He has two human employees that work the day shift, but once the sun goes down, the coffee and donut orders drop dramatically, and Quincy hosts events like this in the backroom to fill up the time.

He doesn't seem to realize it, but Quincy is like a hug in vampire form. The man has a way of bringing people together and making even the loneliest vampire misfits among us feel seen. I'm not sure where I'd be without him.

I found him on Facebook not long after I moved here. When I realized he lived so close by, I begged Elaine to let me meet him. She agreed, but only because she was sick of me tagging along on their hunts and begging Wyatt to fill a cup with their victim's blood just so I didn't have to suck it out of them. I brought down the vibe, so she was eager to get rid of me.

"Can you add three more THC bags to my weekly haul?" I ask him as I grab my cup and take a seat.

He snickers. "Bad day at the new gig?"

"Eh, let's call it a bad decade. The day, the job, the pressure from Elaine…it's just a nonstop loop of despair."

"Damn, maybe it should be your turn to share tonight."

"I went last week. I'm not going to hog the spotlight. Besides, I think it's Frat Boy's turn. He hasn't gone yet."

A few minutes later, Frat Boy shows up, followed by Betsy, our other new member. Betsy is a surly Cuban woman who was turned by her granddaughter last year on her seventy-third birthday, because her granddaughter couldn't bear the thought of losing her. It was a thoughtless and selfish move. When you're turned, you remain eternally frozen in the same physical condition you were in on that day, so Betsy's back is constantly sore, her hands are tight balls of arthritis, and she has a smoker's cough that sounds like a snowblower. The idea of living forever in her current state terrifies her.

"Would you like to share with the group, Cody?" Quincy asks Frat Boy once he and Betsy are seated.

Cody runs a hand through his wavy brown hair and drops his blank stare to the contents of his cup. "Hi, everyone. I'm Cody."

He waits for us to reply, but when we don't, Quincy leans over and says, "It's okay, Cody. You don't have to introduce yourself every meeting since our group is so small."

Cody lets out a nervous chuckle before continuing. "Right. Well, I was turned six years ago, during my junior year at Dartmouth. Beta Theta Pi was having this massive rager, and I was drunk off my ass." His laughter returns, but with the softness of being wrapped in a happy memory. "It was sick. I was dominating the beer pong table. I mean, people were fighting over who got to play with me next. It was unreal." He takes a sip of blood, and his mouth forms a grim line. "For some reason, I went outside. Probably to take a piss. I don't know. But somehow, I ended up in the woods at the end of Fraternity Row, and there was this total smoke show in a tight silver dress leaning against a tree."

"What's a smoke show?" Betsy asks, way louder than necessary in such a small circle.

"Somebody who's extremely attractive," I tell her.

She nods and gestures for Cody to continue.

"So she's standing there in the woods, eye-fucking the hell outta me, her tits practically falling out of her dress. What was I supposed to do? Reject her? This was the hottest chick I had ever laid eyes on." Cody looks at each of us expectantly. I guess he's hoping for some bro-y assurance that following a woman you've never met into the woods is a perfectly rational decision to make. His face falls slightly when the three of us remain silent. "Anyway, we start making out and everything seems cool. Then I woke up in a pile of leaves, my clothes soaked with blood."

"That's horrific, Cody," Quincy says. "I'm sorry that happened to you."

"Wait, so you don't know your maker?" I ask, unable to mask my curiosity. "You never got her name?"

He shakes his head while keeping his eyes on the floor.

When I hear stories about vampires who don't have a connection to the one who turned them, I'm always a little jealous. Waking up as a freshly turned vamp is traumatizing, of course. You don't fully understand what you are, or what, if anything, can kill you, and how to get enough fresh blood down your throat to make the excruciating burning sensation stop. Having your maker there to explain the basics is key to keeping you from losing your mind.

When I woke up to find Xavier, he seemed eager to guide me through that difficult transition, but only after he drained every drop of blood from the young mother and newborn baby he had just killed. I refused to partake and spent the morning silently begging for death.

Cody seems like one of the lucky ones.

"I don't know who I am anymore," he continues, wiping his palms on his threadbare dark-wash jeans. "My future was pretty bright, you know? I thought I'd graduate, get a job on Wall Street, marry a yoga teacher or some shit, have a few kids, and spend the weekends barbecuing with my Delta Chi brothers."

Quincy nods, his hands folded in his lap, looking much more like a therapist than the owner of a Dunkin" Donuts. "I assume you left school after you were turned?"

"Yeah, even without my maker to guide me, I knew I couldn't stay there. I was different in a way that I wouldn't be able to hide, so it just seemed easier to leave." Cody crosses his arms over his chest. "It's not fair, man. I don't even like the taste of blood, to be honest. I only drink it because I have to. But I'm not about to bathe in the spray of a torn artery just to eat my fucking dinner. The whole lifestyle is so messy and gross. I'd give anything to have my old life back, drinking beer every night and going to class hungover the next morning. There, at Dartmouth, I fit in."

"If it makes you feel any better, we don't fit in either," I tell him, surprising myself by offering support. When I first laid eyes on Cody, with his whole date-rape-sponsored-by-Abercrombie vibe, I thought I'd find his trauma a source of entertainment. How much can a guy with that much baked-in privilege actually be suffering? But his life was turned upside down in the matter of a second, just like ours, and there's still a big part of him that wishes he could go back to the way things were. I know that struggle intimately. It would be easier for him to fit in with his new brethren if he drained his victims, and the fact that he hasn't, despite his obvious loneliness, blows my mind.

The reason why he chooses to sip versus drain doesn't matter. We all have different motives for choosing this lifestyle. And it's nobody's business how we consume blood, frankly, but a large percentage of the vampire community sees us as a joke. A weaker generation of immortal beings who won't make it to our hundredth fangiversary unless we grow a pair and start sucking humans dry like our ancestors.

It's such a silly argument, and all it does is put a deeper wedge between a group of people who have to remain so hidden that humans are convinced we don't exist.

Isn't this how we evolve as a species? We question the way things have always been done, we find better ways to do it, and life becomes easier for us as a whole. Future generations of vamps won't have to hide in dark alleys or ransack blood drive vans to avoid starvation if we can find other sources of sustenance.

Quincy is attempting to do just that by developing a type of synthetic blood that takes most of the individual components of human blood, plus freeze-dried plasma, and multiplying them in a cold, sterile environment.

Before becoming Kyan's assistant, I'd spend a couple days a week working with Quincy on the different blood formulations. I remember only bits and pieces from my rotation in hematology in medical school, so when I help Quincy, I mostly record data and clean the beakers. But I am starting to understand how he tracks the samples and how he determines whether it's a success or failure, so it's less intimidating than it was in the beginning.

As the meeting comes to a close, Cody and Betsy pack up their weekly blood orders from Quincy and head out.

"How are the new samples doing?" I ask. "Any progress?"

"Too soon to tell. I think I'll test them next week."

I pause. "Is that safe? I mean, what if it's not viable blood? You can't die on me, Quince. The Sipper community needs your chemist brain to find an alternative."

He shoots me the same lopsided smile that appears whenever I compliment him. "If it isn't viable, it'll be like eating human food, and I'll spend an hour puking my guts out. I suffered a lot worse just to see if I could still ingest chicken nuggets."

My stomach growls, despite the mention of vomit. "I think I miss human food more than I miss my parents. Is that horrible?" I'd swap my left breast for a bowl of my grandmother's mapo tofu, or the Louisiana chicken pasta from The Cheesecake Factory because that shit was gold.

"Nah. We're already damned. We can miss whatever we want."

"For real."

"Any fun plans tonight?" He asks as he hands me my heavy blood-filled cooler.

"I bought some peanuts from the vending machine at work, so while I suck down drug blood and watch Grace and Frankie, hopefully Felix will be beside me getting a year's worth of protein. You?"

"I'm here until six in the morning, but when I get off, I think I'm gonna have the best day's sleep I've ever had. Check it out," he leads me over to the fridge in the break room and shows me a tray of vials filled with blood with a large purple M on each cap. "It's my new melatonin infusion. We'll see how it goes. If you don't hear from me over the weekend, it means I'm still asleep."

"Ooh, put me down for a case if it works."

We bump fists and say our goodbyes as I leave.

When I make it home, I change into my pajamas and settle into the thick cushions of the couch as I turn my little TV on. On the table to my right is my stainless-steel water bottle covered in pink unicorns and filled to the brim with weed blood. To my left is Felix and the circle of peanut crumbs surrounding his feet. I've just wrapped myself up in my oversized Sherpa blanket when I hear a frantic rapping on my door. I know who it is before I even open it.

"Hi, Elaine."

Her posture is rigid, and her expression is impatient as she glares at me. "Intel. Have any yet?"

I chew on the inside of my cheek as I figure out what to say. "Well," I begin, willing the tremble in my voice to vanish, "now that I'm settling into the role, I can foc––"

Before I can finish, Elaine grabs the front of my shirt and yanks me forward, causing me to trip over my feet and land in the dirt just outside my trailer. My knees connect with the frozen ground, sending a sharp pain radiating up my spine. I hear Felix letting out a frightened caw as Elaine digs her long artificial nails into my scalp and pulls me up by my hair. I yelp in anguish as I fight against her grip, but she's so much stronger than I am, so it's no use. She finally lets go and tosses a clump of my hair at me.

I raise my hands in surrender as I take two steps back, tears freezing against my cheeks as they fall. "I promise I'll have something for you by the end of next week," I stammer. "Just a l-little more time…please."

"Do you think I got you this job so you can hang around the water cooler with your coworkers?" she shouts, adjusting the mink stole around her shoulders and smoothing out the skirt of the evergreen velvet dress beneath. It's a look befitting a night on the town in a big city during the Roaring Twenties and doesn't make any sense here, but Elaine doesn't care. She was turned in 1921 and hasn't changed her wardrobe since. "You bring me intel, and I let you keep this shitty roof over your head. That was the deal."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," I reply, my hands still shaking.

She takes a step toward me and raises her arm. Instinctively, I flinch and duck my head, expecting her large pointy rings to leave cuts across my cheek like they did last time she hit me. When the slap doesn't come, I open my eyes to find her fingering her hair, carefully brushing back the few strands that fell out of place while she was tearing my hair out. "You have until the end of day tomorrow to get me some information on this guy. Something I can use. Burton is getting impatient."

That's a tall order, considering I haven't even been there a full week, but if I can learn something about him, something that no one else in the office knows, maybe it'll be enough to get her off my back for a week or two.

"Fine. Tomorrow."

She flashes her fangs at me before turning on her heel and strutting back to the house like a model on a runway.

My hand goes to the bald spot on the back of my head, and I hiss in pain when my finger brushes against the raw, exposed flesh. It'll be healed by morning, but that doesn't make it any less painful right now. Slamming the door shut behind me, I grab an ice pack from the freezer and heave myself onto the couch next to Felix. He hops into my lap and pokes me with his beak until I stroke his head.

Tonight, I ice my scalp and relax with my crow. Tomorrow, I find a skeleton in Kyan's closet.