Page 31 of Falling for a Villainous Vampire

I can smell toast.

I can totally smell toast.

“Phone, can you look up signs of having a stroke,” I whisper, but she just answers in the same kind of haunted voice I seem to have.

“No, because I can definitely smell it, too,” she tells me. And yes, I want to reply that she doesn’t have a nose, so how would she even know.

Only I can’t.

That scent is filling my head. It’s filling my chest. It’s making me think of the last time I left my bedroom and was greeted by it. When Mom and Pops were still with me, when I was still surrounded by people who cared about me, when I had a family, I think, and of course as soon as I do I feel Pops ruffling my hair. I hear Mom saying, I’m so proud of you, my special girl.

And then even worse: I remember reassuring myself after I sent them away. I told myself it wouldn’t be long until I found new people. Supernatural people, strange buddies, some ragtag crew of weirdos. But then suddenly it’s ten years later, and there’s still no one. I even sent the friends I did find away, too. They’re currently in the South of France, because I said I suspected he was there.

And now I’m here, getting all choked up over an evil vampire most likely setting fire to my kitchen. Found family only happens in your favorite shows, dumbass, my brain jeers, and as if on cue the laugh track to a sitcom that’s all about just that cackles out of the television. I could honestly lob a conjured brick at it, it stings so hard and seems so pointed. In fact, the only reason I don’t is because that’s when the kitchen door opens.

And I need all my magic to kill him:

The demonic vampire who is obviously doing this as some sort of psychological torture.

He enters with a cutting board covered in toast in his hands, then sees me and looks simply delighted. “Oh,” he says, as he sets this cutting board down on the chair he should be sitting on, but clearly wriggled free from. “You have awakened. Good, I have prepared the breaking of your fast. Your … break … fast. Your breakfast. Am I saying that correctly? I feel as if I am not saying that correctly at all.”

What the fuck, I think.

But Phone does not back me up on that in the least.

“It’s usually an eh sound, not an ay sound,” she inexplicably says.

And true, her voice sounds faint and sort of dazed when she does.

But still.

“Phone, why in the fucking fuck are you answering him?”

“I don’t know, I panicked and obeyed my operating parameters.”

“Well, maybe next time your operating parameters could go with pertinent questions first. Like how the fuck he can suddenly speak English if this is all not some kind of terrible ruse.”

I wave both hands in his direction.

And to be fair, she does go to explain herself.

It’s just that he gets there first.

“I learned so we might better communicate,” he says.

As if I’m going to believe that.

“Right. And where did you learn, exactly?”

“Well, I would have thought it would be obvious.”

“It isn’t. So you better start explaining.”

“The magical shield that you have mounted on your wall.”

He points without looking in that direction. Instead, his eyes hold mine, like he somehow thinks that will show me how sincere he is. Or maybe trick me into glancing away, so he can leap on me when I do. It’s the reason I train Phone on him, as I gingerly turn my head.

And find he’s only fucking talking about the television.