Chapter Six

New York, June, 2024

Empty. Empty. Empty.

You work at a grocery store, how can you be so bad at shopping for yourself?

Being semi-broke might have something to do with it.

Emily shut the cupboard door and put her head in her hands. She worked five days a week at the big supermarket by the high school. It felt like the school, the big chain grocery store, and the area of town where office buildings mingled with institutions like the hospital and fire department formed the “normal” safety zone. That area was the buffer between her mindset of “must kill monster” duty and “but this is the quietest, most peaceful town I’ve ever been in.” Even there, though, she saw shoppers that made her do a double take. All around her, the human citizens of this small town seemed oblivious to the terrors walking among them. There must be a few thousand people in the town, and she’d seen at least ten monsters over her weeks at the store.

That day, as she’d done her normal job of stocking shelves, she had seen a big, burly Orc with clothes made of leather and fur lumbering through the dairy section, smiling and nodding, stopping to talk to a stooped, elderly man about fishing. As she set up rows of cottage cheese and sour cream, she could hear him talking on his cell phone, telling his wife that he’d just had to stop to pick up milk before coming home.

How can he be harmless, she’d thought to herself, body tensing as he reached past her for two gallons of whole milk?

And yet, what gave her the right to think he wasn’t, except for everything her father and his family had instilled in her?

Emily stood at her door, breathing unevenly, trying to bring her mind back to the present, back to calm, back to the new normal.

She avoided going out at night. She wouldn’t run into Simeon that way, except for his semi-regular visits to her apartment to “check on” her.

But I need food. Veggies and eggs would do it. An omelet is one of the five things I can cook without fail.

The Night Market, a lot filled with all sorts of vendors and their stands and carts, was closer to her criminally cheap one-bedroom apartment on Pinecrest Avenue than the supermarket, which was two miles away on foot.

She was always on foot, since her job barely paid for the apartment and utilities, and she was still dipping into her savings every month. A new car was out of the question right now.

The Night Market had a stall from the local farm, Onyx Farms, and she could probably get eggs, onions, tomatoes, and even a zucchini for the crumpled ten-dollar bill she had in her jeans.

Emily put her hand on the door, but then her lifelong training kicked in, and she turned and went back to her bedroom.

Stake. Holy water. Knife. Cross. Emily patted her chest where the silver chain lay under her shirt. She always wore her cross.

There. Ready to hunt.

But I don’t want...

Her mind shut down the phrase, switching tracks like someone had pulled the pins on a railway line.

Skip a meal. Remember all the times Dad made you skip meals to get used to fighting while you were weakened and woozy?

She swallowed a curse and the anger that flooded with it. If her mom had stayed—or lived—would she have allowed that?

Go, get food. Even if it means going out at night. You can go grab eggs and veggies and be back in ten minutes. You probably won't even see any monsters tonight.

Except it seems that the Night Market was the workplace of several monsters—the gargoyle who had saved her life for one, the minotaur who made weapons for the other, and a banshee who had phenomenal deals on used clothes and bric-a-brac.

If you go to the supermarket, you can use your staff discount.

But you’ll be out at night longer. You’ll be vulnerable longer.

But I might run into fewer “creatures.”

Time vs. location.

Whenever Emily saw a monster, no matter the kind, it triggered a conflicted inner monologue.

You’re a Van Helsing. Kill them all. The only good monster is a dead monster.

How can you say that, when Mr. Minegold has kept you fed, and the police officer in town who took the accident report is a Pooka, and a gargoyle saved your life, and a minotaur gave you a discount on all iron and silver-bladed weapons?

How can you keep thinking Simeon is evil, when he took out humans who kill humans, and you take out vampires who kill humans? Doesn’t that kind of make you on the same team?

Your father would say you’re a turncoat. Betrayer. Failure.

You’ll have the dream again tonight, the one where he chases you with a stake. Or worse, the one where he pins you into a coffin. Maybe he won’t let you out this time.

Remember the time he left you in there for three hours because he wanted you to break out, only he didn’t tell you that?

I thought I was supposed to wait, to show I wasn’t scared.

He was so angry at me for almost dying, suffocating, after he’d spent so many years training me. He’d lectured me about my duty, forcefully reminding me there was no other Van Helsing to carry on the work.

Emily rubbed her shoulders, the phantom grip of her father’s fingers shaking her oxygen-deprived form suddenly as real and painful as it had been when she was thirteen.

Anyone else would have been diagnosed with PTSD. But no therapist on Earth would believe her stories of watching her father battle vampires and gore-covered shifters since she was a toddler. No one would believe that she had done the same thing since her teenage years.

With a neat switch, Emily shut her brain off and opened the door, then carefully locked it behind her. She could either shut the thoughts down or listen to them rage. There was very little middle ground. Probably because she had always lived in extremes of either waiting with nothing to do or a constant loop of kill-or-be-killed adrenaline.

Eat, so you can sleep. Maybe if you’re very tired, you won’t dream tonight.

“Emily! Oh, my goodness! Jesse, Sophie, Jesse Jakob, this is Miss Van Helsing.”

Emily juggled a handful of produce into a brown paper bag, small cloves of garlic and plum tomatoes toppling from her grasp.

Mr. Minegold caught them in his hand and helped scoop them back into her bag before giving her a brief hug. “You are up and walking so well! Not even a limp!”

“Uh. Yeah. Hi!” Emily swallowed the questions burning her throat.

How had he touched garlic? How had he hugged her without getting burned?

Simeon told me the truth. He has his soul.

The pale, beautiful woman holding a toddler by the hand gasped. “Van Helsing? Like... Abraham Van Helsing?”

“Descendent of.” Emily allowed herself to shake hands with the equally pale man next to her.

“This is my son and daughter-in-law, and my darling grandson! J.J. Upsies!” Mr. Minegold scooped up the little boy and kissed his round cheek.

“Your... children?” His children are vampires? The woman has a heartbeat! So does the little boy. What the...

Jesse tapped his teeth. “Adopted, but you could say we’re blood-related.”

The three pale people laughed, and Emily felt like screaming.

I’m in a weird nightmare where the vampires are out hitting the flea markets in a happy little family group, and I’m the monster because I want...

The end of the phrase wouldn’t come.

I want to kill them, that’s what I’m supposed to say.

Her eyes lingered on the little boy in his grandfather’s arms as his mother handed him a morsel of fudge and a piece of popcorn.

Happy family. Look at how his family loves him. Protects him. I bet his “monster” parents would never starve him, or tell him he can’t go to the doctor when he’s hurt, or tell him his only home is his “work.”

I bet he’ll always be loved and safe, with people who would do anything to protect him.

“My dear? Are you unwell?” Mr. Minegold passed J.J. back to his father to take her arm.

I want to be with them. I want a family.

I want to know someone loves me, not someone who just wanted me to carry on a job.

“I didn’t eat today. Forgot. I’m just picking up some stuff to make dinner, and I’ll be fine,” she told a half-truth with a stiff smile.

“Good heavens! Jesse—”

“I’m on it! I’ll go to the Jade Forest now. You like Chinese?” The younger man with his dark curls and intense eyes was already turning, handing J.J. to his wife’s outstretched arms.

“I love Chinese,” Emily managed to say before she choked down a sob.

“Oh, God, sweetie.” Sophie hugged her with one arm while balancing the toddler on the other hip.

“Here, now. Are you worried ‘cause of the Van Helsing thing?” Jesse turned back and smiled at her. His voice dropped. “We’re on the same side.”

“Yes. If evil ones of our kind venture into this town, we dispatch them. You are among friends, my dear.” Mr. Minegold put a guiding hand behind her back. “Come, we will walk you home. Jesse will fetch you something solid.”

“Babe, get her some wonton soup. It’s the perfect comfort food.”

“Wonton soup and some beef and broccoli and scallion pancakes and sesame chicken.” Jesse raced off.

Belatedly, Emily made a squeak of protest. “Oh! No, that’s too much.”

Sophie patted her shoulder and smiled. “Leftovers!”

“Noodles, Mama?” J.J. reached over his mother’s shoulder toward his father.

“I’ll text Daddy and ask him to get you noodles, baby.”

Emily found herself ushered away. This should be her worst nightmare. A gang of vampires invading her home!

She felt safer than she had in years.

And a little, tiny part of her wished Simeon was the one rushing off to get her Chinese.