Of Turnstikes, Boots, and Williamses

Chapter 1

This is, first and foremost, a love story. I realize there are a lot of things that may distract from that (assorted vampires, a certain Milton Weatherby, mischievous nephews, the mysterious past of Skippy Turnstike, etc.) but at heart it's just a simple love story. And it does have a happy ending. I think, anyway.

It all begins with a ballet dancer from Marseillan in the south of France. She had a little bit of a rough upbringing; her mother died giving birth to her younger brother, who didn't survive long after that, so it was just our ballet dancer, her two sisters, and their father, who did the best he could to help them achieve their dreams. The oldest sister, Christelle, wanted to be a writer, and she did fairly well  after a while, and got her own house that she could pay for entirely herself. Lillie got her ballet training, and Marie, the youngest, didn't really know what she wanted to do with her life until she was about ten, when she decided she wanted to be a doctor. Sadly, when the Marie was fourteen, the girls' father died. Christelle took the youngest in and cared for her and our ballet dancer moved to Paris to make her name and fortune.

She had a little bit of trouble getting started. That is a little bit of an understatement. She had to turn to a less reputable source of dancing for some time in order to feed herself. After a while, though, she struck up a conversation with a nice gentleman who played in the band. Soon enough, they fell in love. He managed to help her get a place in a ballet corps, not a very important place, but a place nonetheless, and she managed to keep it even after she married him. His name was William Williams, and though he found his name a source of endless hilarity, he shortened it to Bill for everyday use.

Bill found laughter in almost everything. He was a great source of jokes, and could cheer almost anyone up at almost any time. It's why Lillie fell in love with him. She had gotten a bit jaded and cynical, and he was (figuratively) a ray of sunshine, bringing light and laughter into his life. He loved her because she was smart as a whiplash and a little rough around the edges but she always found actual genuine joy in his (sometimes admittedly stupid) jokes. Also, she didn't mind his awkward stick of a mustache and he appreciated that.

Eventually, they had a son together, and named him Clarence Eustace, after his father and her little-brother-who-wasn't. She had to abandon her place in the corps, but she didn't mind that in the moment, because it was an acceptable reason to leave, and besides, it would quell the worries about what would happen to the baby if she kept dancing as she was.

And so Clarence grew up with two parents who loved him, and three aunts who adored him as well, though they all lived rather far away: two in the south of France and one in England. That was Bill's sister, and it is she whom this story is really about. Clarence went to school from his parent's house in Paris, and every summer he would visit the aunts: even numbered years he visited Lillie's sisters in Toulouse and Marseillan, and odd numbered years he went to Ada in Manchester.

Ada was a caterer, and one of the best in the city. She lived just two streets away from the local "family" of vampires, and they hired her to provide food whenever they had any sort of ball or party that would have human guests. That was nearly all of them, for the eldest in the family, Tucker, was a notorious romancer who had a different guest nearly every evening and more often than not they were human, because there simply weren't that many vampires in Manchester besides the Turnstike family. Said Turnstikes always made the next oldest, Montague (he disliked it immensely when people shortened his name to Monty, which he thought was jaunty and undignified. This stopped exactly no one, not even Ada after a few weeks of acquaintance, because Montague is a horrible, long name and his parents had no taste.) be the one to drive out to inquire if she was free to cater the nights they had an engagement, for it was exceedingly unlikely that he would ever leave the house if they didn't make him. Besides, even though he hated driving and was awful at it, he liked Ada. She was always kind and friendly, and she didn't talk very much, which was more than could be said about anyone in the Turnstike household, except possibly Wellie, who could talk for hours when he got going, which wasn't very often, but it still counted in Monty's book. And though he hadn't seen much of Clarence, the boy seemed like a good lad.