‘Amazing people?’
‘Yeah, two different kinds, really. A whole bunch of kids around my age, maybe a few years older, all dressed up, sort of goth, but not really, wearing white paint on their faces and red on their lips. Then there were the others. So beautiful. They wore regular stuff like leather, and didn’t have the white makeup on, but they were totally awesome. They looked a little older, maybe in their 20s or 30s, and they all had gorgeous long hair . . .’ She stared off for a moment, her mouth hanging loosely open, lost in the vision.
‘So they were totally awesome?’
She nodded slowly. ‘Totally.’
‘And then what happened?’
Am I sure I want to know?
‘We were just standing there, scoping out the room, and a hand came through the curtains, opened them, and the hottest guy I’ve ever seen asked if we wanted to come in. Emerald didn’t want to go – she’s afraid of everything – but I really wanted to check out all those people, so I said yes. The gorgeous man reached out, took my hand and actually kissed the back of it and said his name was Devereux. I thought I was going to pass out just from looking at him. There was something about his eyes—’ She paused and glanced over at me, trying to gauge my reaction before she shared any more details.
Man? Wait! Dev is an adult? Not a kid? Holy shit. That changes everything.
The muscles in my neck and back tightened, which happened sometimes when I worked too hard at holding in all the opinions that wanted to tumble out of my mouth. I bit my bottom lip to stifle myself. Often, having to remain silent was the hardest part of my job.
She met a strange man in a bar. A man dressed in leather, who invited her into a private room. What’s wrong with this picture?
‘And then?’
‘Then he sort of led me inside and Emerald followed us. There must have been fifty people in that room, and they were all incredible. Dev walked us over to a table, and he was so polite. He pulled out the chairs for us, like in the old movies, and asked if we wanted something to drink. We both ordered beers – we had to try – but he brought us Cokes, and we just sat there, staring at him. He wasn’t drinking anything, and I asked why not. He said he’d already had his fill for the night, and he just kept smiling and flashing us with those psychedelic eyes. I didn’t know what he meant back then, but I do now.’
Uh-oh.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he drinks blood, you know? That’s what vampires do. So when he said he was full, he meant he’d already “eaten” for the night,’ she explained, her voice light and casual, as if we were talking about the weather.
He drinks blood? Yuck. Did he tell her that or is that fantasy? If he really does, can you say ‘mental illness’?
‘Do you drink blood?’
That, obviously, was a loaded question, because Midnight started scraping her lower lip against her upper teeth. She twisted the fabric of her dress in her hands and stared down into her lap.
‘Midnight? Are you all right?’
‘Yeah.’ She squirmed in the chair. ‘It just feels scary to talk about this.’
‘Do you mean because of what your family would think?’
‘No.’ She hesitated. ‘Because of what Dev would do if he found out.’ Her voice softened. ‘We’re not allowed to drink blood.’
Thank heavens for that.
‘We’ll come back to the blood in a minute. What’s your relationship with Dev?’ I was becoming more and more suspicious of this charismatic-sounding character.
Catching the drift of my concern, Midnight shook her head. ‘He’s just a friend. All the girls are after him, but he said we’re too young and that he’s into older women. We all hit on him, but he never goes out with any of us. He’s in charge – the boss, I guess.’
‘The boss of what?’
‘The vampires. And the apprentices.’
‘The apprentices?’ I had a sudden vision of several vampire wannabes sitting around a conference table in New York with Donald Trump. A vampire Donald Trump. I fought to keep the amusement from creeping onto my face. My sense of humour was such a challenge sometimes.
‘That’s what we call ourselves.’
How much weirder can this get? I need to know about the blood.
‘Let’s go back to the drinking blood part. You seemed to have a strong reaction when I asked you about that. Why?’
She lowered her eyes. ‘Dev lets us hang around with him and the other vampires, but he won’t let anyone take blood from us and he won’t let us drink blood either. He said that only real vampires can use blood the way it’s meant to be used. Since we’re officially still human, we could get diseases that vampires can’t get. He has lots of rules about what we can and can’t do if we want to be with them.’
Okay, so maybe the guy isn’t totally wacked if he keeps them from the drinking blood thing.
‘So what is it you don’t want him to know?’
Long pause.
I waited silently and watched waves of conflicting emotions flow across her face as she decided what, if anything, she was going to tell me.
‘There’s this one guy, Eric, who wants to be a vampire real bad. Dev told him that he isn’t ready, that he needs to go out and learn about life before becoming one of the undead, but Eric doesn’t listen. He sets up these rituals at his apartment, where the apprentices drink each other’s blood. He gave us all these neat little necklaces with tiny knives on them so we can make little cuts in each other’s necks and drink,’ she said, her voice breathy. ‘It would be really bad if Dev found out because he’d be totally angry, and I don’t want to do anything to make Dev mad at me.’
My eyebrows crawled up towards my hairline.
The apprentices drink each other’s blood? Damn!
I hoped she was simply acting out and all this blood-drinking was imaginary. I needed to find a non-threatening way to convince her that the entire vampire idea was a fantasy.
‘Are you afraid of Dev?’
‘No. Not the way you mean.’
‘But despite Dev’s disapproval, you go to the rituals at Eric’s apartment?’
‘Well, yeah.’ She smiled wide. ‘It’s so much fun. I never would have thought that drinking blood could be so sexual – so romantic,’ she gushed.
Blood-drinking as an aphrodisiac?
I tried very hard to keep the neutral expression on my face. ‘Sexual? Romantic? What happens at these rituals?’
AIDS! Not to mention viruses, bacteria, and horrors I can’t even comprehend. What about infections from the cuts? Red alert, Kismet.
‘Well, first we order a pizza or something and drink some wine, maybe get high, just the same as any other night. Then we pick a partner, and after we take turns drinking a little blood – not much, just a couple of teaspoons – we have sex. It’s the most amazing feeling. I let Eric cut my boob last week and suck on it. It was so hot.’
My breath caught. Is this what she thinks intimacy is? Where did these ideas come from?
‘Are you having safe sex?’
‘Don’t worry about that.’ She nodded vigorously. ‘I’ve got a purse full of condoms!’
I tried to visualise a condom big enough to fit over Eric’s entire body. I didn’t want to come off as sermonising or lecturing because she wouldn’t come back, but I had to find a way to communicate to her how dangerous this choice was.
‘Midnight, what about the diseases you can get through blood transmission? What about AIDS? Drinking blood is very dangerous.’
‘Vampires can’t get diseases.’