Chapter 4 #2
That entire interaction with the CEO had been so earnestly amusing that Aster completely forgot about this morning’s argument. The pair of them talked like two chirping songbirds on the way home, going back and forth about what they intended to do with the Ashcroft family money.
“I want to buy Starbucks,” was Sylvia’s idea.
“Privatize it, and then make it so the only person who is allowed inside their locations is me.” She snorted.
“Imagine some twenty-something college idiot strolling up to the store only to run into a bouncer.” She dropped her voice, doing another horrendous impersonation of a made-up man.
“No fangs, no thousand-year-old sex appeal, no entrance, kiddo.”
“Sylvia, that’s like the most useless way to spend billions of dollars you could have possibly conceived of.”
“No it’s not.” She scoffed. “You’re so boring. Go ahead, tell me your boring answer.”
Aster took the bait. “I would open a bunch of wildlife rescue centers for endangered animals.” Sylvia rolled her eyes, opening her mouth to interrupt before Aster continued, “And then I’d buy a personal militia and dismantle the US government.
Kill the rest of the billionaires. Redistribute the wealth. Go full Karl Marx on ‘em.”
Sylvia stopped in her tracks, mouth open.
“You’re serious?”
Aster snorted, and took Sylvia’s hand without really thinking, swinging it in between them.
“Maybe. Or maybe I’d just hang out at the zoo everyday and feed the monkeys.”
This warm bubble of hypotheticals carried them to their street and up their creaky elevator, opening onto the 15th floor.
They had about twelve more days in this Airbnb before they’d be forced to leave—but neither of them thought about that now.
No, nothing seemed to burst the happy little cloud until the clock hit midnight, while they were lying on the couch, eating chips, watching reruns of Gilmore Girls.
“The actress who plays Lorelai is a vampire, you know.”
Aster looked at Sylvia in bemusement. “Lauren Graham? Seriously?”
“Mhm.” Sylvia popped a chip in her mouth absentmindedly. Aster could almost taste the salt and vinegar just watching Sylvia eat it—the smell was as powerful as an acid cloud. “She’s a shapeshifter. She’s been in every sitcom under the sun. Full House. Friends. Entourage.”
“Who was she in Friends?”
“Monica and Rachel,” Sylvia said, then snorted. “Kidding. She was just Rachel.”
Aster frowned. “I didn’t know shapeshifting was a power.”
Lorelai and Rory chattered in the background as Sylvia set her chip bag aside.
“Sure is. One of the most powerful vampiric talents there is, actually. And all she uses it for is to be in generational sitcoms. Can you believe that?” Sylvia laughed tersely. “God, I would be way more creative if I had access to that kind of firepower.”
Aster was mesmerized, not for the first time, by that murderous glint in Sylvia’s eyes.
“What would you do with it?” Aster whispered.
She didn’t mean to say it like that—so low, so earnest—but that’s how it came out.
Sylvia smiled like a snake. She clicked off on the remote, and the TV shuttered into darkness. Wordlessly, she turned to Aster, so their thighs were flush on the couch. Sylvia’s hair was down, wild and messy, and she was wearing one of her sleep blouses, a white, unbuttoned top.
“Remember when we enthralled the King of England?”
Sylvia wrapped her hand around Aster’s, pressing her fingers into Aster’s palm. It was something she did sometimes, when she was particularly excited—she used Aster’s hand like a stress ball, kneading out that extra energy.
“Yes,” Aster breathed. “Of course I do.”
“And you remember how he broke out of our spell and burned our houses and stole all the gold from our vaults and unleashed the full power of the English army on us.”
“It rings a bell.”
“Well.” Sylvia clicked her tongue, and closed her eyes, as if she was traveling back in time. “If I could shapeshift, I would have turned into his wife, and kissed you right in front of him.”
Aster didn’t know what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that. Sylvia looked so insanely pleased with herself that Aster couldn’t help but laugh with her full chest.
“You are so—”
“Wise? Genius?” Sylvia interjected, grinning like a little kid. “God, imagine his face. The love of his life making out with the vampire who made him waddle around like a duck for ten years.” Sylvia was laughing uncontrollably now, and it was contagious.
Eventually, Aster got a hold of herself, and shook her head. “You know, you don’t even need shapeshifting to accomplish that. You could have just enthralled her and kissed her yourself.”
Sylvia gasped in offense. “I don’t kiss ladies who don’t want me to kiss them, Aster.”
“Oh yeah? But I want to kiss you, then, in this scenario?”
“Of course you do. You’d love it.”
The way she said it was light, teasing, obviously facetious; their crazed laughter had made them manic, put them in another little bubble where nothing else existed except their minds, their endless imagination. It should have been a throwaway line, a blip in the ocean.
But to Aster it felt like being shocked by an electric fence.
“You think I want to kiss you, Sylvia?”
Sylvia’s grin faltered. Aster had popped their bubble with a pin-needle. She looked at a complete loss, her mouth curling around words that weren’t there.
Eventually, she said, quietly, “I was only joking.”
It was an opportunity to drop it. An olive branch that would let them return to life as it was. But something inside Aster burned.
She didn’t do well with uncertainty, and Sylvia had been bathing her in it.
“But were you?”
Sylvia’s throat bobbed, and her grip on Aster’s hand constricted. Sylvia’s eyes had begun to burn the slightest shade of blood red.
“I need to tell you something.”