Chapter 3
Aster hadn’t worked a real, human job in, well… It occurred to her that maybe she had never worked a real human job, at least as long as she’d been a vampire.
But not as fickle as fucking Kubernetes.
Aster inwardly groaned as she tapped fruitlessly at her mouse. She’d been downloading and re-downloading the same program over and over, but it refused to boot up. Boot up. Was that even the right word? She was so in over her head.
Even logging into the laptop to begin with had been a chore—why is the power button a weird circle with a line through it?
Wouldn’t it make more sense if it just said the word power?
—and then there was the whole ordeal with the username (this is something like an alias) and the password (which is like the combination for a safe.)
Sylvia, meanwhile, was having a grand time.
Aster knew this because she could hear her cackle of a laugh carrying three rooms over.
Sylvia’s job mostly consisted of conducting a ritual she referred to as “one on ones.” Aster had asked what this term meant, and Sylvia had summarized it as a time for aggrieved employees to mumble their problems at Sylvia, and for Sylvia to quietly assure them that they were being listened to, only for her to do nothing at all, then repeat the same process the next week.
Apparently, hiring a human resources specialist was just the mortal equivalent of hiring a gaslighting sadist for your workplace, so really, Sylvia was perfect for the job. No pretense required.
Aster was not nearly as lucky.
“Hey–uh, hi there.”
Aster momentarily paused her all-out assault on the computer mouse to drift her head in the direction of a shy little voice.
To her surprise, there was an entire boy sitting next to her in a matching cubicle of his own.
He was thin framed, like an emaciated Victorian boy, and had a mop of thick curly brown hair.
“I’m Wallace.” The boy laughed nervously, sticking his hand out.
Aster stared at the hand, then back up at him.
He quickly retracted it. “Ah—sorry. Not everyone is a handshaker. You’re Aster right?
Today’s your first day?” She squinted, then nodded.
“Oh, awesome. I’m so glad to have you on the team.
I mean, we’ve been totally swamped with this upcoming deadline.
Having some extra muscle to push through is like, a godsend. ”
“Uh huh.”
Aster was already growing disinterested. But this child was apparently her team member, so she had to at least seem polite.
He continued rambling. “You know, maybe you and I could get lunch together today? I could show you around the office? There’s this great view on the top floor. You can see the whole city—”
“Do you know how to download Github?”
He stared at her like she’d just grown horns.
“Sorry.” He frowned. “Github? You don’t know how to download Git?”
Shit. He already looked suspicious. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Aster wracked her brain for everything she knew about computers. Some kind of excuse. Her eyes widened. That’s it.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling tersely. “I’m a Windows girl. I’ve never used a Mac before. They’re like foreign machines to me.”
All confusion immediately melted away.
“Oh, of course. That makes sense,” he said. Aster wasn’t sure that it did. “Well, let me introduce you to the superior operating system.”
***
“Please tell me we can quit soon,” Aster whined.
The tea kettle whistled in the kitchen as Aster rested her head on the couch, her aching eyes closed. The computer screen had seared them like burnt toast.
She could hear Sylvia’s footsteps treading back and forth. Sylvia always paced when she had a problem she couldn’t solve. Usually it was endearing, but Aster hadn’t slept in days because of having to work human hours, and she was starting to slowly lose her mind.
“Not yet,” Sylvia replied. Water sloshed out from the kettle, and the scent of peppermint filled the room.
The vampire’s slippers tracked across the floor to her, and soon enough green eyes were blinking down on Aster.
“I’ve been trying to get a meeting with Tommy all week, but he won’t respond to any of my messages. Some boss.”
Sylvia lifted Aster’s legs and slunk underneath them, placing them back on her lap as she blew on the top of her tea.
Aster made a small noise of protest, but she didn’t really mean it.
They almost always sat like this—some part of them touching.
Vampires were tactile animals; and Sylvia even more so, even if she’d never admit it.
Aster studied Sylvia’s face as she drank. Moonlight splayed across her nose, her jaw; Aster found herself staring at Sylvia’s lips as she lifted the burning liquid to her mouth, then swallowed. Watched as her neck bobbed. Listened as she made that little ah sound, smiling into the vapor.
She looks beautiful.
Aster blinked.
The thought caught her off guard—not because she hadn’t thought it before, she’d thought it plenty of times.
But because she’d never thought it so intensely. With an urge attached to it.
An urge? Aster found herself dumbfounded at her own thoughts. An urge to do what? Aster didn’t know. All she knew was that looking at Sylvia was making her fingers itch. She gripped the side of the couch, trying to knead out the tension she was feeling.
Maybe the terrible quality blood is getting to me as well, she thought as her nails dug into cheap plastic. The nutritional profile of the hemoglobin probably seriously decays after sitting around for a few days. Maybe I can find a way to get some better quality blood for both of us. So we don’t…
Aster’s mind trailed off. Don’t what? What was she afraid of happening, exactly?
Sylvia’s fingers began to trail absently over her calf. Aster felt it like a gun had gone off in the apartment—her chest constricting. God. What is wrong with me?
She didn’t want Sylvia to think anything was wrong.
One, because nothing was, and two, because that never went well.
As much as Sylvia liked to put on a brave face, the vampire had some deadly abandonment issues.
Consequently, their fights over the years went one of two ways—Sylvia was the one to start it, and Aster waited around for her to apologize, or Aster was the one to start it, Sylvia cried like a hurt puppy, and then Aster apologized for the next three weeks, feeling worse than she’d ever felt in her life.
(Then Sylvia would force her to make a blood pact so that she would never bring up Sylvia’s sobbing again. Rinse, repeat.)
But Sylvia didn’t notice. Which Aster was happy about… until Sylvia’s fingers began to knead into Aster’s leg, just around her ankle. Sylvia massaged her muscles absentmindedly as she studied something on her laptop. Probably more reading about Tommy what’s-his-face.
And it wasn’t that this was particularly strange, either. Again—vampires, tactile, et cetera. What was strange was how aware Aster was of it.
How much she didn’t want it to stop.
God, how touch-starved am I?
Aster hadn’t had sex in a hundred years, give or take.
The same could not be said for Sylvia, who went out on the town at least twice a month, hunting down some human to take home for the night.
Aster never had the same needs. Most humans bored her.
She found their limited view on life unattractive.
How they repeated the same cycles over and over again.
None of it inspired much of a sex-drive in her, so she let it fizzle.
But was that really what this was? Her needs rearing back to life, showing their ugly head, projecting onto her friend? It didn’t feel like it. It felt specific. Specific to Sylvia.
And maybe that was all it was. She just enjoyed Sylvia’s touch. So what? That wasn’t new news. She loved Sylvia. She loved being around Sylvia. She had chosen to spend six hundred years with her, and not by herself, alone, for a reason. Why was she so in her goddamn head about this?
Because she was never very good at keeping her mouth shut about anything, Aster decided to summarize all of these ruminations with a barely intelligible mumble of, “That feels nice.”
“Huh?” Sylvia peeled her eyes slowly away from the screen. “What does?”
Sylvia’s hand was still working on Aster’s leg. She didn’t even seem to notice.
“Your fingers.” Aster squinted. That sounded bad. “I mean, your fingers on my leg. You know what, never mind. It’s just nice, that thing you’re doing.”
Sylvia looked down at her hands as if they had been acting of their own accord, her eyebrows raising in surprise. But she didn’t stop, like Aster feared she would, she just looked at Aster with a perplexed expression, and laughed.
“Sore muscles, huh?” She squeezed Aster’s leg harder, with a little bit of that teasing edge that Sylvia always applied to everything. “I didn’t know they were working you so hard in the backend programming department.”
“Oh shut up, human resources.”
“Do you want a massage?”
Another gunshot went off in Aster’s chest. Jesus. She was a vampire—her heart wasn’t supposed to jump that hard. It was barely supposed to beat at all. She commanded her body to chill the fuck out before Sylvia picked up on her heartbeat—
“Wow. Your pulse is going a mile a minute.” Too late. “You okay?”
Sylvia seemed genuinely concerned, her eyebrows furrowed.
“I’m fine.” Lie. “Drank too much coffee today at the office.” Another lie.
“You hate coffee.”
“I know. But I hate Kubernetes more.”
“You still have no idea what that is, do you?”
“Not a single clue. But I found an intern to do my work for me.”
“Oh, naughty. I might have to report you to…” Sylvia grinned. “Oh. Me, I guess.”
Aster rolled her eyes.
“Do you offer massages to all your employees?”
That last one had just jumped out of her. Aster wasn’t mad about it, though, with the way Sylvia’s face lit up in delight. She loved nothing more than the idea of a workplace transgression.