CHAPTER 2 #2
Though she knew there were a handful of vampires who volunteered at the center, Zander Hunt was the only one she saw regularly. Dark, wavy hair escaped the hockey cap he always wore, bearing the logo of his favorite team, the Ice Slayers.
“Still convinced they’ll win the Cup this year, I see.”
“Daniela Girard, you wound me.” Zander pressed her case file to his chest.
Thick, dark-rimmed glasses framed hazel eyes that always seemed to absorb every word Dani said as she sat across his desk, often in tears, describing her family’s latest situation.
His mother was chronically ill, too, he’d explained on her first visit to his office, touching the protective mask he had on before passing her a box of tissues.
While he couldn’t make any promises given the lack of resources in the system at the moment, he would do everything within his power to help.
This small thing, knowing they both had desperately sick family members at home that they were caring for, had caused her, against her better judgement, to slowly let her guard down.
Dani knew he’d only been practicing law for a few years.
She guessed that put his age at maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven, though in truth, with vampires it was impossible to say.
There were theories as to whether they would reach lifespans that rivaled the fae, but since no vampire had existed for more than thirty years, changed or born, it was anyone’s guess.
“Did you get a new coat?” He frowned at the old army-green trench she’d traded with Evan, and she wondered if he could smell her sister’s scent on the fabric.
Dani flushed, tucking a strand of blonde hair back behind one ear. “Evan wanted to trade for the day. She has a date later and thought mine looked nicer.”
Zander held her eyes, and she felt her pulse pick up.
She’d always wondered if it was true that vampires could detect tiny changes in pulse rate and body temperature, could sense truth from lie in that way.
Maybe he would assume she’d sold it and was too ashamed to say.
Anything but the truth that she couldn’t risk being scanned by the new cameras that had gone up everywhere around the sector seemingly overnight, technology that could identify her as the aberrant blood everyone was hunting for.
“Come on back,” he said gently.
The office he shared with a dozen other volunteers at the legal aid center was cluttered with boxes of case notes and files, pens and notepads, and a particularly sad looking spider plant. In the corner, sat Henri, Zander’s legal aid, who Dani had never once seen smile.
“Hi, Henri,” she said cheerfully. “I hope the cold weather isn’t bothering you.”
“Oh, but the cold is the best weather for skating,” he murmured, fingers flying over his laptop.
“Before I forget,” she said to Zander, pulling a worn book from her satchel and sliding it across the desk. “This was one of my father’s favorites. He had an entire shelf devoted to books that were once banned, even before the virus struck.”
Though she’d never seen the lower half of his face due to the mask he always wore, the corners of his eyes crinkled in a smile.
“Ray Bradbury. I’ve been wanting to read this one.
” His voice softened. “You’re sure it’s okay if I borrow it for a few weeks?
I promise to take good care of it and get it back to you. ”
“Of course.”
Zander tapped her file on the desk, then opened it.
Dani knew what it contained, the petition asking if she could be declared Ava’s guardian.
There was a slim chance it would be approved, and the meager health coverage the factory provided would probably fight them for every vial of insulin they asked them to pay for. But they needed something.
“We got a response from the courts a few days ago.” She could see the answer in Zander’s pitying expression even before he rubbed his forehead with the edge of one thumb. “I’m sorry, Dani. They denied the request to have you named as Ava’s guardian in place of her mother.”
“Just like that?”
Perhaps it was because with all her extra shifts, she was running on far too little sleep.
Perhaps it was the inescapable truth that with the cameras going up, she and Evan were running out of options in a world where there were few of those to begin with.
Maybe the events of the past few days had just been too much, even for someone who’d been stubbornly holding her family together for four years now.
Whatever the case, before she could stop them, tears smarted at the corners of her eyes. Embarrassed, she swiped them away.
Zander passed her a folded handkerchief.
“Thank you,” she sniffled.
It smelled nice, like peppermint and cinnamon, not at all like she thought vampires should smell, though she supposed they couldn’t all smell like mothballs and blood. The thought immediately made her woozy, and she pressed fingers to her temples.
“Your stepmother hasn’t been declared legally incompetent or dead,” Zander said gently.
“She’s still Ava’s guardian. I couldn’t find any record of cases where a sibling was named guardian where the parent had been missing for less than a year.
Even in that case, the courts like to see a death certificate. ”
Dani chewed her lip, wondering if Evan could get one forged, but quickly decided against it. When Nadine resurfaced, which she inevitably would, the authorities would realize their papers were faked and Evan’s entire underground network could be endangered.
Zander tapped a pen on the desk. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Gosh. It’s been three, nearly four months ago.”
She remembered the exact date. It was two weeks after Ava’s tenth birthday, not that Nadine had known what month it was, much less the date, when she’d staggered up the stairs, pupils still unfocused from whatever she’d taken last.
Ava had burst into tears at the sight of her mother. She never noticed the smell of the cigarettes on her clothes, or the stringiness of her hair. She didn’t question why Nadine always kept her sleeves pulled down so no one could see her wrists.
No, she only remembered the forbidden trips to the downtown shopping center for ice cream, or to the park for sugar-dusted funnel cakes and to the chocolatier’s for fudge and other sweets with money she stole from the hiding places Evan and Dani had it stashed under the floorboards.
Sadly, if there was anything her addict stepmother knew how to do, it was root out things they were trying to hide.
Dani gritted her teeth every time Ava came back from one of her outings with her mother smelling of processed sweets.
It sent her blood sugar levels skyrocketing, but what could she and Evan say?
Nadine was her mother. Whenever they tried to protest, Ava cried, saying they never let her have any fun.
Nadine fed off the drama, stroking her hair and tsk-tsking like they were the ones mistreating her.
Inevitably, Nadine would ask for larger sums of money. Every time she and Evan refused, it led to screaming fights and threats by the landlord to evict them. It was money they couldn’t afford to give her, not when it was needed for rent and Ava’s medicine.
But the only way to get her out of the apartment and restore sanity to their lives was to pay her off.
So they did.
And every time her mother left, Ava became inconsolable for weeks, blaming them.
The sad truth was that Dani didn’t fault Nadine.
Addiction had stolen the stepmother she’d once been close to, changed their relationship irreparably.
Once upon a time, she and her stepmother had been close.
She’d always been kind to Dani and Evan, never treated them with any less care or softness than she did Ava, who was hers by blood.
They’d gotten on well enough until Ava’s illness had struck and the loss of their father had forced her to sell her blood, setting her down a path of addiction, first to vampire venom, then other substances.
Now that she was addicted to street drugs, the vampires would no longer take her blood. She blamed them entirely for taking the stepmother who’d once read to her, combed out her hair and sang her lullabies before bed, destroying their family like they had so many others.
“I’m sorry. I wish there were something more that I could do,” Zander said gently, drawing her back. “You said Nadine has been gone for four months this time?”
“That’s right.”
“How much insulin does Ava have left?”
“Not much. We just got a new vial, so that should last her for a few more weeks, but it’s getting harder and harder to find it.”
Zander frowned at this, typing notes. “You’re still able to find it, though?”
“Yes,” she said carefully, not wanting to admit the methods she and Evan now resorted to.
She had no idea if by working in the legal aid center, that made Zander a mandatory reporter, but she couldn’t risk it.
“Is there any chance production might increase in the new year? I’ve been hearing talk of trade deals on the news. ”
He released what sounded like… a growl of frustration? Henri abruptly stopped typing. When Zander glanced over, his paralegal quickly resumed.
“That’s still up in the air. Cavalieri Pharmaceuticals seems to be making a power play.
I would expect things to get worse before they get better.
They’ll cause artificial shortages, if anything, rather than ramp up production of critical medicines.
Diabetes is a condition that primarily impacts humans so they have little financial motivation to act. ”
“And it turns out that the changes in blood chemistry turn my sister into a particular delicacy to those monsters.”
Dani looked away when her eyes began to smart.