The mood was pensive, at Josse and Adelphine’s breakfast check-in the following day.
“I guess we shouldn’t have let her stay this long,” said Josse.
“I don’t see why not,” Adelphine replied as she sprinkled flax seed over her muesli.
“Because she was inevitably going to find out,” he replied. “And, more to the point, because we take care of stranded aliens and supernaturals, not troubled teens. We’re useless with them, and we’re wasting time and energy that should be going towards what we’re actually good at.”
A brief silence while they watched a lutin band of marauders snatch food from the plates at the werewolf table. There were plenty of pastries, baguettes and cereal on the sideboard, but where was the fun in mealtimes if you couldn’t enrage a fellow resident?
Behind them, a group of younger vampires were taking turns throwing daggers at the bat friends zipping around the room’s exposed beams. An agility contest as old as collective memory at the warehouse café, interestingly complicated this morning by the ominous plumes of bile-green vapour rising from Chlurp’s basement laboratory. It rarely caused serious injuries, but it did take a toll on the décor.
“I mean, they’re like an alien species. Good intentions are a fabulous thing, but Jade would have been much better off with people who know what they’re doing,” he continued.
“Sure,” Adelphine conceded after a sip of ginger tea. “That said, I didn’t see anyone queueing up to support her. Or anyone other than Mirko whose help she was willing to accept.”
A startled yelp from another corner of the room caught their attention. Minuit appeared to be practising his cat skills again, cosying up to unsuspecting zinneke dogs and taking swipes at them once they’d let their guard down.
“So far as I’m concerned, she’s one of us now,” Adelphine added. “Plus, I need an apprentice.”
“Not this again, Finette, please. Remember what happened last time.”
It had taken them ages and a small fortune to rebuild after the explosions, and the rogue coven founded by the failed contender 170 years ago was still sabotaging them at every opportunity.
“Transmission is a duty.”
“Not if it puts us at risk. Also, does she even have the gift?”
“Who knows, who cares. It’s 1% talent and 99% hard work, and she definitely has the mindset.”
Josse sighed.
“OK, so we let her in. Let’s sit down with her later – you, me, Mirko and Ingrid.”
It had been a foregone conclusion. He didn’t necessarily approve, but at the very least he had wanted it to be a deliberate exception. As opposed to some gradual erosion of the rules that kept them safe.
“Just wait a bit before mentioning the apprentice thing, though. See how things shape up.”
“Fair enough. But not too long. I need help and I want time off. There’s more to life than nursemaiding you lot.”
The thought of Adelphine mollycoddling the residents… A lesser man might have taken the bait, but not Josse. Least said, soonest mended, he thought as he drained the rest of his espresso.
***
Meanwhile, the object of their concern was banging on a bedroom door.
“What?” Mirko grumbled when he finally opened. Dishevelled, bleary-eyed, bare-chested, and those trackie bottoms looked about ready to slide off… Not a look that suits just anyone, but to Jade, it suddenly revealed that her self-appointed guardian was in fact extremely attractive.
Potentially.
To someone twice her age.
Who would probably swoop in to tend the deep scratches on his chest, dabbing the wounds with some unsanitary wet flannel as he watched her adoringly and occasionally winced. Their eyes would meet, and they’d be drawn closer inexorably by some greater force that they’d attempt to withstand, until… et cetera blah blah here we go.
Urgh.
Anyway, never mind that now. She hadn’t seen him since he’d carted the park creep off to – what, vampire prison? She had returned to her room at the tavern and waited for him to turn up for a debrief. Should have known better, she thought when she eventually woke on the duvet eight hours later, still wearing her parka and combat boots.
Come to think of it, she had never been to his room before. She knew where it was, on the floor above hers over the tavern, but it struck her that so far she had never initiated an interaction with him. Every time they had talked, it had been a case of him reaching out to her. Watching over her. Making sure she was all right.
This abrupt realisation nearly took the wind out of her sails, but it wouldn’t do to get distracted. She had a bone to pick, and pick it she would.
Jade pushed past Mirko, swept a change of clothes from a chair in a corner and plonked herself down.
“So. You’re a vampire.”
“Hhhhhm,” came the muffled response as he pulled on a T-shirt. He added a grey hoodie, then rifled through the garments she had dislodged for a pair of socks.
“Well, don’t you think you owe me an explanation?”
“No, I don’t.”
“The cat’s out of the bag anyway.”
“What’s to explain? What do you want to know?”
“What do you mean what do I want to know? I want to know evvv-ry-thing. Mainly, why? I mean, why are you looking out for me rather than doing whatever it is you people do?”
“Less of the ‘you people’, if you don’t mind.”
“OK, OK. You’re not all alike and you don’t all know each other, I get it. Still. Why?”
“I’m a progressive.”
Like that explains anything, Jade thought but didn’t say. Sometimes, silence is more powerful than a follow-on question.
“And you remind me of someone.”
So you keep saying, she mused, resisting the temptation to say it out loud. If she tried to egg him on, he’d probably clam up.
“Fine. Ask away, and maybe I’ll answer. But first, coffee.”
***
Her head was still spinning when she joined Josse, Adelphine, Ingrid and Mirko at a quiet table in the tavern later that day. It would take her a while to process the fact that Mirko was 300 years old and allegedly undead. She had gathered that he wasn’t from Brussels, but what distant land she had imagined didn’t involve vampire clans in mountaintop castles.
She didn’t like the sound of those Cragborn; no wonder he’d legged it. Winged it. Whatever.
It dawned on her that he must be lonely, possibly homesick. Maybe he’d recognised that in her, every bit as much as his sister’s long blond hair, but she couldn’t afford to go mushy at the minute.
“So,” Josse ventured. “I hear the past 24 hours have been eventful.”
“I’ve had worse,” Jade replied, while Ladrache bemoaned doom in the background.
“But yes,” she added after a moment’s reflection. “Actually, WTF is going on here? So far, we have a poltergeist and a couple of vampires. What’s next? A wicked witch and a dozen hairy gnomes? Am I hallucinating, is that it? I’ve never actually met any of you, and this whole thing is me having a fever dream in my tent?”
“I’ll pinch you, if you like,” Adelphine offered.
“It’s all completely real,” said Josse, with Ingrid and Mirko nodding along. “And we figured that at this stage we should probably tell you. If that’s what you want.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Well, you could choose to pretend none of this happened and carry on as before. Or you might decide that our world isn’t for you and head for the hills. And there’s always the possibility that you might elect to make a big thing of all this, go public, expose us. Not that that seems probable or that anyone would believe you.”
Leave? The idea hit her like a punch in the gut; it hadn’t even occurred to her. If anyone had asked her even the day before, she’d have insisted her stay was temporary and that her time at the tavern was simply a reprieve. Now, the mere thought of her days with these folks potentially coming to an end made her blood run cold.
“That said, I don’t think that looking the other way and carrying on as before is really an option,” Josse added. “Some things can’t be unseen. So the question is, are you in or are you out?”
“What would I be signing up for?”
“Nothing untoward. You’d just have to promise to help keep our secret. If you do, it would make sense for you to join our community. That decision does come with a few rules and constraints, but those aren’t a big deal.”
She’d spent weeks interacting with a vampire who’d always been careful to respect her boundaries, and she’d worked several shifts with a poltergeist. Jade figured that if these people were likely to hurt her, they’d have done it by now.
“In case you were wondering,” said Ingrid. “That idiot in the park yesterday isn’t one of us.”
“OK, I’ve had enough of this palaver,” Adelphine cut in. “What it boils down to is, we’re a hidden community of other-beings, and we need to know if we can trust you. What’s it going to be?”
Oh, so this situation was a bit spooky for them too.
“I’m in,” Jade replied. “Whatever this is, I’m ready.”
