The Journals of a Vampire Scribe

Chapter 4: Family Secrets

"Wait, what?"

Have you ever been in a situation that truly made you feel special or seen? Where, maybe for the first time, someone who you could only dream of ever noticing you happens to come across you randomly and for once you don't stutter or draw a blank, and everything that comes out of your mouth just clicks like you always knew it would if you could just stop fighting yourself, and that person you're talking to genuinely smiles in subtle astonishment and almost embarrassment of how surprisingly witty and relatable you are? You go on to have this moment, right? Where you're both the only two people in the world and everything seems to fit like a dainty foot in a glass slipper and neither of you can stop smiling, if for no other reason than just because it feels right. And her smile is like the key to unlocking your every inhibition, or his voice is suddenly the safest place on Earth for you to cuddle up and let everything else go, and even the pissy interruption of the lady and her seven squirrely brats behind you pushing rudely past seems like a rain drop rolling off your suddenly plucky duck feathers because nothing else really matters but that feeling. That feeling like, today the True You has finally been allowed to stretch its wings and prepare for flight...

Then his or her significant other strolls up – hands still moist from the sink in the shitter – puts their arm around your Ticket to Forever-Blue Skies and says, "Yo, babe... Who's this loser?"

Yeah... That's pretty much how I feel when realizing that her being here has nothing to with me at all. That she's here because of my latest acquisition and would be somewhere else entirely if I hadn't been the one to acquire it...

"The Shaman blood..." She's still weak, but suddenly I don't feel like coddling her. "...It's why I'm here—"

"Yeah, I got that part." I cut her off sharply and she notices. "But why? Why do you care about an old bottle of blood?"

She doesn't like my change in tone. Neither do I, to be honest. But it's hard when you go from being on top of the world, to the fodder that's kicked off its shoes. Her eyes veer away as if to avoid confronting my moodiness when she says,

"I think it can help me."

"Help you?"

She hesitates. "With...my situation."

OK. So...let's not get overly touchy here. Let's think this out. Rationalize.

I may not be why she's here, but I did just witnessed some unholy, world-changing shit and can still be a part of what comes next.

Can't I?

"So you're here to, what? Confiscate it?"

Her eyes narrow in annoyance. "Is that what just turned you from Happy the Magical Horse to Moody the Bitter...Butthole?" She reclaims her superior "copttitude," swiping at the glass of water I gave her to lift it and engulf a few gulps in irritation.

She's entirely wrong, of course. As broke as I am, I could give two-and-a-half shits about the Shaman's blood... But opening up the wound of "I Thought I Was Special and You Just Shit on My Special-Guy Parade" doesn't seem like it'll help anything. So I roll with her assumption.

"Well...are you gonna compensate me for it?"

She shakes her head dismissively and puts down the near-empty glass. "I'm not going to take your blood, Conrad." —I try to conceal my cringe at the use of my real name as if it's an insult— "What the Hell would I even do with it? I need a vampire to drink the nasty shit and – I don't know – decode the dreams."