The Human She Hired
1. Ari
Ari
Clara, being something of a celebrity, has managed to snag us a booth at the edge of the dance floor, the perfect place to watch the evening descend into debauchery.
“I love Night of the Shadows!” she shouts in my ear as the DJ cranks up the bass, the beat reverberating through my bones. A handsome young waiter, the high collar of his uniform starched to within an inch of its life, hovers with a tray of crystal glasses overflowing with champagne.
Ivan appraises him like a fox contemplates a juicy rabbit. I can feel the fear roiling off him.
“Ivan!” Clara admonishes him. “Leave the poor boy alone.”
Ivan runs his tongue over his teeth and then breaks into a grin. “I’m just kidding.” He lays a hand on his arm, the lights bouncing off the vermillion lacquer on his stiletto manicure. “Be a darling and get us a round of cocktails. The special ones.”
The waiter nods, then puts the tray of champagne on our table and scurries away.
An hour later and the edges are starting to feel a little fuzzy.
Ivan has started a new round of his favourite game.
“Him.” He points at a guy in the middle of the dance floor, dressed all in black, his leather coat grazing his ankles and sweeping around him like a cloak as he spins. “OG, newbie, cosplayer, tourist?”
There’s no better night of the year to play this game, when every vampire in the country goes out to celebrate our shared ancestry in a frenzy of alcohol and Sanguis.
The three of us are OGs, we’ve been around for well over a hundred years, enough to see an empire rise and fall, and more than enough to become thoroughly disillusioned by the passage of time.
Then there are the newbies, newly minted vampires who still don’t quite get it, who haven’t quite wrapped their heads around this whole immortality thing.
Cosplayers are humans playing pretend. And tourists are just playing with fire, queuing up to get themselves bitten for a story to tell their other human friends.
“Cosplayer.” Clara gives her verdict with practised decisiveness. Clara likes to think she has a highly tuned vamp-dar. Ivan nods in agreement. Both of them are wrong. I went to school with Atticus.
“What about him?” Ivan turns her attention to another guy. He’s tall, with the kind of chiselled jawline Ivan has a particular soft spot for.
Clara narrows her eyes and contemplates for a few moments. “Newbie.”
“Yesss,” Ivan punches the air. “You’d better be right about that, young lady.” He downs his drink, wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, and then stands up on shaky legs like a drunken fawn.
Five minutes later he’s back, eyes as dark as thunder. “He’s a fucking tourist.” He spits the word. “Why is it so hard to meet a nice vampire boy?” he laments, throwing himself back on the sofa in a rather overly dramatic fashion.
“There should be an app,” I reply, my eyes scanning the crowd for a new target for him. “Like a dating app only vampires can use.”
Ivan sits up and stares at me. “That is actually brilliant.” I try not to let it sting that he’s quite so surprised at my genius.
“I’d use it.” Clara takes a sip of her cocktail and gives me a cheeky wink over the salt-encrusted rim.
“You have a fiancée,” Ivan reminds her, his tone deadpan. For all his running around after anything without a pulse, he’s surprisingly prudish about Clara’s dating habit.
“No. I have a betrothed.” She sighs deeply in a way that accentuates just how many times she has had this conversation.
“And my father will grant me another twenty-five years before…” she flicks her wrist as if to dismiss the idea of her impending nuptials to a Transylvanian prince.
To be fair, she’s already on her third stay of execution.
However insistent her rich politician daddy is about the continuation of the perfect pure-blood family line, he’s also entirely twisted around her little finger.
“But—”
“You really think I’m going to just wait for him?” Clara scoffs a little at the thought. “Twenty-five years is a life time.”
“Not for us.”
Clara rolls her eyes and then focusses her attention back on me. “The app idea is actually genius, you know. You should do it.”
If only I had Clara’s faith in myself. I’d only mess it up. Leave yet another broken thing in the trail of destruction behind me.
I’m not looking for a guy. Or a girl. I might hook up with someone occasionally, I’m not dead. Well I kind of am, but you know what I mean. But Night of the Shadows is always an absolute meat market and I just can’t be bothered any more. Not that my friends believe me when I tell them that.
“Not even for him,” Ivan points to a man at the bar.
“Nope,” I reply before I even bother looking properly.
But I can’t help the way my eyes are drawn to him, to the broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist in that utterly delectable way of a professional rugby player.
He’s tall, but not too tall, the perfect match for me even in heels.
Dark auburn hair flops across his forehead in a way that looks styled but something tells me is just how it naturally lies and he gets irritated by the fact it’s always falling into his eyes.
He’s dressed casually, dark jeans hug his peachy arse and a soft grey t-shirt that looks like it’s been washed a million times.
He talks with his hands, gesticulating to his friend, a sliver of toned stomach on show as the t-shirt rides up slightly. For a moment I’m suspended in time, thinking about how it would taste if I ran my tongue across his skin, the feel of his weight pressing me onto the bed, the cool of his touch.
But then I notice it. The white band on his wrist where he normally wears a watch. He has to be human, no vampire would let himself get an actual tan line. He doesn’t act like a tourist though. He looks like he’s just here with his friend, his very obviously vampire friend.
I drag my attention back to Ivan and Clara. I’m not looking for a guy. And I’m certainly not looking for a random human guy, no matter how hot he is.
Another hour and we troop to the bathroom en masse.
Ivan is wearing a corset top which requires one of us to help tighten it every so often to keep its shape.
Clara and I play rock, paper, scissors to decide who has to be the one to do it this time, and deal with the bitching and moaning as the laces are pulled taut.
Clara loses – she always, always does scissors and then acts surprised when I beat her with rock every single time – and the pair disappear into the nearest stall.
They emerge a few minutes later, Ivan pulling at the bottom of the corset so it sits just right.
“That feels better,” he tells me with a grin.
He catches sight of himself in the mirror and blanches at his reflection.
“Jeez. I think I liked it better before they installed the filtered glass and I had no idea how shite I looked.” He runs his hands through his long dark hair in an effort to flatten the wisps.
“Then we could just pretend we were gorgeous.”
A lot of people are super excited that some clever dick just developed a digital mirror with a special filter that means we can finally see our reflections.
Being the finest vampire club in town, this place is the first to install it.
I hate it already. Apparently the guy who invented it has shares in a vampire cosmetics company. Why am I not surprised?
Ivan turns back to the mirror and wipes the smears of mascara from under his eyes.
He pulls a compact of pressed powder from his pocket and applies a new layer to cover up his slightly sweaty complexion.
“Right then. We need to find me a nice vampire boy. I’m so done with all these cosplayers and tourists. Best vamp-dars tuned, ladies!”
“Or Ari could just make that app,” Clara says, pushing her way towards the mirror. “O.M.G. You could call it…” she trails off as she puts her lipstick down and then taps out a drum roll on the vanity unit in front of us. “You ready?” she asks, eyes glinting, a smile licking the corner of her mouth.
I nod and lean a little closer for the big reveal.
She draws her lips back, her cuspids catching the light. “Only Fangs!” she shouts at the top of her voice, then spins round to grab both me and Ivan round the shoulders.
I can’t help but laugh.
But she’s right.
That name is pretty damn good.