Chapter 17
I sit up, my legs twisted in my sheets, and as I pull off my eye mask and take out my earplugs, Oscar’s voice echoes in my head: I’ll see you at nine-thirty sharp.
No, you won’t. Psycho.
I reach for my phone.
No texts. No calls. Just one notification.
VHC: You have two new messages.
I log in and tap through to them. They’re both from Sally. The first reads: What???? Right before Christmas? I’m so sorry, but NEXT! He doesn’t deserve you. Sending love.
The second reads: Just remember, there are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. Always.
It feels like the whole world wants me to just ‘get over’ Jonathan, move on—like it’s easy.
It’s not. And now I feel a little guilty.
Because I’ve seen so many friends go through break-ups over the years, and I’ve always secretly thought that they should just get over it.
That I’d be stronger somehow, that nobody could bring me to my knees after everything I’d gone through.
That I’d be different; I’d do it better.
But now that it’s me . . . now that it’s happening, I realise I was wrong.
It feels like a bomb has gone off in my chest and I find a new piece of shrapnel every time I breathe.
I tap through to the noticeboard and scan down through the most recent articles:
TAXI DRIVER SERIOUSLY INJURED BY STABBING IN STOCKHOLM, JOGGER STABBED WHILE RUNNING IN DULWICH PARK, NEW ORLEANS MAN CLAIMS VAMPIRISM IS REAL.
But as I stare down at them, my insides twist. I can’t believe I ever signed up to this site looking for Oscar.
That I ever hoped he might be good. A shiver moves through me as I think of the way he made me feel—more terrified than I’ve ever been.
And he’s wrong about me, I’m not a problem. A weak link.
Then my gaze catches on a post: IRL MEET-UP LONDON: CHRISTMAS DRINKS.
As I sit in bed, looking at it, I think: Or am I?
Because, I’d never admit this to Oscar, but I have almost messed up terribly before.
There have been times when my hypnotism hasn’t quite worked out, a very bad time on Coventry Street in 1922, a small ‘incident’ while I was working at the Moulin Rouge, there was Freddie and everything I told him, and a few other less than ideal moments too.
But, most recently, there was that IRL meet-up for the Vampire Hunters’ Collective. The one where I met @Riley.
* * *
Riley was a founding member, worked on the VHC doing tech, had a new line of VHC merch coming out (hoodies and socks) and was certain he had found a vampire’s hunting ground.
He wanted to discuss it further in person, and assemble a crew of us to stake the place out.
I was sceptical, but also hopeful. I’d scoured the site and not found any recent credible leads, so maybe this was it. Maybe this would lead me to my maker.
So off I went to a little bar on Carnaby Street.
I was working that night so got there an hour after it had started but spotted Riley immediately.
He was tall, with a weak chin, dark hair and pockmarked cheeks, a little unwashed with a slightly stooped posture—he looked a little like he himself had escaped from the set of The Lost Boys and the irony wasn’t lost on me.
But I went straight up to him to ask him what he knew.
He ushered me to a small table in the corner, and I sat with a white printer label with @Margot written on it stuck to my thin black cardigan, breathing in stale beer as he nursed a Guinness and told me everything.
He’d followed up on a lead from the site that had led him to a pub in Hampstead.
He’d decided to go there every night, just in case.
And just last week, he had finally struck gold.
As he was leaving, he passed an alleyway and witnessed a vamp mid-attack.
The vamp was huge and male, and must have heard Riley approach, because he stopped and turned to look.
As he did, Riley saw his bloodied fangs.
Terrified, Riley pulled back and hid behind a building, frantically pulling a stake from his backpack.
But by the time he stepped back into that alleyway, the vamp was gone.
His female victim was sitting on the pavement, she had no recollection of the attack and—he added this bit in a particularly hushed tone—her wound had healed up.
He suspected the vamp had wiped her memory then healed her with his blood.
Did I want to be a part of the team that staked out the pub while we waited for this ‘shitbag’ to come back?
Until this point in the story, I’d been thinking, That could be my maker.
I was allowing myself to blister with anticipation.
But with the mention of blood potentially healing the victim’s wound, I became dubious.
Riley had clearly been watching too much TV.
Because I’d bled into a human wound before and it had not healed up anything.
It just made it messier. Added to which, would my centuries-old maker, someone powerful enough to turn me into this thing, really be so careless as to get seen? Especially by someone like Riley?
It was as I was weighing all this up, that I realised Riley had clearly got a whiff of my scent.
He was looking at my chest, then my mouth, like he thought it was a date and then he reached for my hand, clasped onto my fingers, and said, ‘Wow, you’re cold for summer . . .’
His eyes met mine. I didn’t like what I saw.
Dark thoughts, flickering. His gaze brushed across my pale skin then moved back to my mouth.
Or, more specifically, my teeth. And hang on, was he just coming onto me or did he .
. . suspect? Was he looking for fangs? His fingers slid up to my wrist . . . was he looking for a pulse?
Just act normal, I told myself. It’s nothing.
But alarm bells shrieked from deep within me. Alarm bells honed over 150 years of hiding.
And so, I left. Quickly. Before things could go very wrong.
I ripped my @Margot label from my cardigan as soon as I stepped out of that bar.
It was only on the Tube ride home that I caught sight of my reflection in the window and saw my yellow Selfridges name badge still pinned to my chest: Aubrey. Panic pulsed through me as I thought of Riley’s eyes on my chest.
And the panic wasn’t just because I didn’t want Riley knowing my real name or where I worked (though that too).
Because you can’t just sign up to the Vampire Hunters’ Collective.
There’s a vetting process you go through to ‘protect the integrity’ of the community.
That process involves answering some key questions: Do you believe in vampires?
Would you die for the cause? And like I said before, it requires an ID.
More specifically, a photograph of you with said ID, proving that you are indeed a real person, a true believer, that you have nothing to hide.
The ID in question needs to include your address.
Thankfully, I had a fake set of IDs—passport, driver’s licence—lying around.
I’d had the presence of mind to have them made when I got my current one done (I have a guy, he lives in Brixton).
So, I had used that. Wise move, until now.
Because the name on my fake ID was Margot.
Like my username. Like the name on my profile. Not Aubrey. Like my nametag.
My mind was a whir of: Riley did tech for the VHC.
What if he clocked my little white lie and it piqued his interest; what if he somehow had access to that picture I’d taken?
The site was supposed to delete those images, after verification, but I read the news, I knew data leaks happened, I knew companies didn’t always delete the things they said they would—and it wasn’t like anyone was governing a vampire hunting website.
I didn’t want him to have a photograph of me.
And I certainly didn’t want him to have my address—even if it was an old address.
Because I’d given my old landlord a forwarding address: a P.O.
Box at London Bridge Post Office. If Riley wanted to find out where I was, there were ways.
I considered deleting my profile, but what would that have achieved, other than making me look even more suspicious?
It wouldn’t stop him if he was planning on coming for me.
I also considered leaving my current life and starting another, but that seemed a bit drastic all because of a nametag, a gut feeling and a wild hypothesis, which was probably just the result of 150 years of hiding, of controlling everything around me to stay safe.
So I did nothing. But a dark cloud of paranoia followed me around for weeks as I watched his posts like a hawk.
Waiting in part for news of the vamp from that bar, and in part for news of myself.
But a few weeks later Riley confirmed that his vamp had not returned to his ‘hunting ground’ and the bar in question was closing.
Honestly, I was sad. It was the closest I’d ever come to potentially finding my sire.
But thankfully, Riley never contacted me on the site.
I realised I had indeed been paranoid. In any case, I learnt my lesson.
No more IRL meet-ups for me. Though, I do wonder now whether it was instances like that, hunters lying in wait for vampires at bars, that landed Oscar in my living room last night.
And it makes me wonder how many other groups there are like that in the world, that I don’t know about.
* * *
I trudge through to the kitchen, tripping over the packet of cigarettes I threw last night.
I drop them into the rubbish—to smoke them would be like admitting that Jonathan and I are over, that I don’t need to give up smoking for him anymore—then glance around the room.
The knitting needle is still where I dropped it while Oscar grabbed my throat.
I calmly put it back with its partner under the coffee table.
I should probably eat something, but I’m not hungry.
And what’s the weird smell? I sniff the air.
It’s like . . . oxidised blood. And it smells sort of familiar.
I get a flash of Oscar dropping my blood bag into the bin, like it was nothing.
It must be the blood that seeped out of the bag before I rescued it.
So I grab two bin liners, double bag the offending rubbish, head outside and drop my rubbish into the pub’s bin—one can never be too safe.
I rush back inside, and as I close the door, I think of Oscar with that credit card last night. As soon as Christmas is over, I’m going to get a locksmith to come and strengthen my security.
My phone beeps and a message flashes up on my phone.
Es: Meet you outside Covent Garden Station? Xxxxx
Ah shit. With all the stress of last night, I forgot to cancel the Christmas lights. I stare down at the five kisses, wondering what sort of excuse I can make.
But I can’t cancel now. Not two hours before we’re meant to meet.
That would be mean. And also, last night showed me that Oscar can’t tell me anything about human-me, so if I don’t get Jonathan back, I’ll never know.
And the Christmas lights seem as good a place as any to take some living-my-best-life-please-call-me-love-you shots for Instagram.
So I type back: See you soon!
But the smell of blood is still so strong, even though I’ve taken out the rubbish, and as I frown and look around the room I’m thinking could one little trickle really—
Then: What’s that?
I see a T-shirt, glaring from the top of the washing hamper, a red smear on it.
I pick it up, peer down at it. There’s a big red mark down the front. And that’s not like me, I’m an exceptionally careful eater. I have to be.
I sniff it and immediately recoil.
That’s it, that’s the smell. But I don’t understand . . . when?
A sense of uneasiness comes over me now, like I know it’s bad but I don’t know why.
Still, a lot has happened in the last twenty-four hours, I’m probably just frazzled. Hypervigilant. So I spray it with stain-remover, scrub it a bit in the sink, then throw it into the washing machine.