Alice
After growing up surrounded by cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, living on my own had been a major adjustment.
My cousins and I were lucky because by the time we’d gained our majority and were eligible for military service, the expectation to join was gone.
Our fathers had given Vampire Command the middle finger before we were born, and within ten years, most Vampires had followed suit.
Within fifteen years, the entire government had been overhauled and reconfigured.
They no longer had to fight when called upon by the humans.
Vampires voted, one and all, to decide if a cause was justified or not.
We’d never really known anything different, but the uncles and our grandfather loved to tell the stories, especially during family month.
The only downside of that is we’d had to find our own paths in life. We had to figure out the things we were good at, the things we liked to do, the wrongs we wanted to right, and how we could do them. I’d found mine behind a keyboard, which made sense considering both my parents had done the same.
“Tell me the truth,” I asked my dad as I walked through the kitchen. “Did you refuse to build us a pool because Granny and Afi wanted to have the only one?”
“We didn’t build a pool because your cousins would be forever at our house, swimming if we did.”
“No fucking way,” I laughed.
“Oh, yeah,” he replied, grinning. “It was a game of chicken that your grandparents willingly lost.”
“I bet Will twenty dollars that Afi wouldn’t let you.”
“What did Will think it was?”
“He thought that Mom was wound too tight.”
“That too,” my dad admitted over his shoulder as he walked away.
Since Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Danny hadn’t built their home on my grandparents’ property, their family stayed in the main house during the summer.
All of us spent our days there, catching up and fucking around, but they were the only ones who were given actual bedrooms. I’d been jealous of that when I was young, but after a stern lecture from my mother, I’d come to realize that we were the lucky ones—those of us who were able to go down and hang with Granny and Afi whenever we wanted.
Even though they lived less than an hour away, Uncle Danny’s boys had to wait for someone to give them a ride when they wanted to see us.
The rest of us had grown up in each other’s pockets, taking lessons with the same tutor, running wild all over the property, creating inside jokes, pulling pranks, and showing up at one another’s front doors at all hours.
Though only my brothers and I had pulled that last one, because my dad thought it was hilarious.
As the oldest, you would think that I’d been the leader of the lost boys, ordering them around and making most of the decisions, but I’d been a sickly child.
According to my parents, I’d been a happy, healthy, thriving baby and toddler, but once I’d finished breastfeeding, that had gradually changed.
Most of my early childhood memories were of me on the couch, watching as my brothers and cousins roughhoused on the floor.
Or me being carried on my dad’s or Afi’s shoulders while the others tramped through the woods ahead of us.
It wasn’t until the summer before I turned seven when, out of nowhere, my dad’s Aunt Helen figured out what was wrong with me.
But by then, the next oldest, Uncle Danny’s son Zeke, had solidified his role as the leader of our ragtag group.
I missed Zeke. He’d been working as an operator for Strike since he was twenty years old, and we were rarely in the same place throughout the year.
“Hey, Doodle! What time is Ira getting in?” my mother called from her bedroom doorway.
“Oh, so I’m my brother’s keeper now?” I asked, flopping onto the couch. I always tried to get home a few days before the others, so I could spend time with my parents and grandparents before their attention was divided between us.
“Just say you don’t know, so we can move on.”
“He caught a ride with Erik,” I told her, lifting my head to look at her. “So did Joey.”
“I hate it when they all fly together.”
“Erik’s a good pilot,” I reminded her.
“Still,” she said, disappearing into her room again.
I gave my mother shit about a lot of things, too many things if you asked my dad, but I never teased her about her fear of flying. She’d earned that fear. I couldn’t imagine losing Afi and Granny. It would fracture our family in a way that couldn’t be mended.
By nine o’clock that night, the entire family had taken over Afi and Granny’s house, and it was so loud you could barely hear yourself think. It sounded like home.
“How’ve you been, kiddo?” my Uncle Charlie asked, slinging his arm around my shoulders. “Staying out of trouble?”
“Never,” I replied, turning into his arms. “What about you?”
“I work and I sleep,” he said with a grin.
His tan told a different story, but I didn’t pry.
Uncle Charlie had lost my Uncle Zeke before I was born and had clawed his way out of the despair that my parents had thought he’d never recover from.
He’d created a support community for others who had lost a mate and had spent the rest of his life nurturing it.
“You’ve got a tan, Charlie,” my dad said as he carried a bottle of wine past us. “Where’ve you been?”
“Hawaii,” Uncle Charlie replied, following my dad.
“Sure, just ditch me,” I whined.
“Your dad’s got the wine, Doodle,” Aunt Lucy said in explanation, grinning at me. “Now come on and tell me what you’ve been up to.”
I followed Aunt Lucy into the living room, telling her about my latest project.
I was currently gathering financing for a number of schools in areas where there weren’t any to speak of.
It had taken me nearly a year to get off the ground, but we finally seemed to be making some progress thanks to my mom’s network of people in the media.
“Yeah, yeah,” my cousin Peter said, putting his foot out to trip me as I walked by. “You’re so altruistic. A regular saint.”
“At least my name isn’t another word for dick,” I shot back, kicking his foot.
“I was named for my grandpa,” he argued, kicking back.
“That wasn’t even his name,” I snapped, swinging at his head.
“Children,” Auntie Reese bellowed. “Could we act our age, please?”
“She started it,” Pete said, blinking innocently up at his mom.
“You’re so full of shit,” I complained, following Aunt Lucy over to the other couch.
“Hey, Ma,” my cousin Will said, looking up at her from his place on the floor.
“Oh, Will! I asked my dad, and he said no one wanted all the kids at their house, so they all refused to put in a pool.”
Will laughed. “That makes sense.”
“That’s not true,” Aunt Lucy said, frowning.
“Yes, it is,” Auntie Reese said as she dropped down next to Will. “We knew that whichever house had the pool would have the kids all fucking summer. No one wanted that.”
“I would’ve loved it,” Aunt Lucy countered.
“We saved you from yourself, Luce.” Aunt Reese patted her on the thigh. “You’re welcome.”
I grinned as I listened to the many conversations overlapping each other.
Uncle Charlie was telling my dad about some place a friend had taken him fishing in Hawaii.
Uncle Danny and Uncle Ambrose were discussing some politician who was running for the state senate.
Uncle Beau was telling my mom that he wasn’t going strawberry picking, and she couldn’t make it a mandatory family outing because she wasn’t in charge, while Peter innocently made comments about how long it had been since he went strawberry picking, and how he’d always had such good memories of doing that with the aunties.
My cousins talked about everything from work to cars to real estate, and everything in between. The only thing off-limits when the parents were around was women—for obvious reasons. None of them had found a mate yet.
My baby brother, Ira, and Uncle Danny and Aunt Rosemary’s youngest, Gary, were arguing about who was the oldest and who was the youngest.
“You’re both wrong,” I called out. “Gods, why does this come up every summer? It’s fucking easy.”
“They do it just to annoy you,” my dad offered.
“Ahem,” I said, getting to my feet. “I am the oldest.” I gave a little curtsy, making Granny chuckle. “Then Aunt Rosemary had Zeke.” I pointed at him and spun, still pointing. “Then Aunt Lucy had Isaac.” I pointed at the next one. And the next. “Then my mom had Joey?—”
“Would you stop calling me Joey?”
“No, I will not. Then Auntie Reese had Dick, I mean Peter.”
That one made my dad laugh.
“Then Aunt Rosemary had Sven, Aunt Lucy had Chip, my mom had Erik, Aunt Rosemary had Viggo—” I paused and gasped dramatically. “Then Aunt Lucy had Will, Aunt Rosemary had Siggy, my mom had Ira, and Aunt Rosemary had Gary.”
I took a bow to the expected applause.
“Yes, but can you list how old each of us is based on when we reached our majority?” my cousin Siggy asked, lying on his back in the middle of the floor.
I gasped again, like I was winding up, then smiled and plopped back onto the couch. “Fuck it. I don’t care.”
He laughed.
“Sigurd,” I said, pointing at him. “I got that coffee you like. Remind me, and I’ll bring it over in the morning.”
“You’re my favorite cousin.”
“I’m everyone’s favorite.” I grinned.
“What did you get me, Doodle?” my brother Erik asked, sitting his bony ass on my lap.
“Get off me.”
“What did you get me? Candy? Cheese?”
“I’m going to get you a swift kick in the nuts if you don’t get off me,” I grunted, shoving at him. He didn’t look huge, but he was heavy as hell. I could already feel my feet going numb. “Why the hell would I bring you cheese?”
“You brought Siggy coffee!”
“I’ve been in South America, you asshole. I swear to Gods, Erik.” I dug my elbow into his back, and he just laughed.
“Erik, get off your sister,” Afi ordered from across the room.
I smiled smugly at my brother as he got up. “Yeah, Erik.”
He flipped me off behind his back as he walked away.
“Afi, Erik flipped me off,” I sang.