5. Ari
Ari
“I cannot believe you’re actually going through with this,” she all but screams in my face, lips drawn back into something she thinks of as a smile.
Other people normally recoil in horror at this particular expression, but when you’ve been friends for well over a hundred years you start to cut each other a bit of slack.
I follow her into the kitchen and grab us a couple of glasses for the wine. OK, it isn’t wine. And the glasses are more what you’d describe at goblets. But that whole gothic, blood drinking aesthetic sounds kind of creepy when you say it out loud.
“Any applicants?” Clara asks, twisting her body so she’s leaning against the breakfast bar, glass poised just in front of her lips.
I grimace. I uploaded the ad for an app developer to Reddit a week ago and I’ve still not had any interest. Well, except for the person who messaged to ask if I was that Ari Haywood in which case they wouldn’t dream of trusting me to pay them, which I thought was a little unfair and so I immediately deleted it without bothering to reply.
“I think the pool of qualified vampires is pretty small,” I tell Clara.
“I mean, I guess it’s not a skillset most of us have mastered. ”
“You’ll have to find a newbie for sure,” she says.
“Actually, I think I might need to take on a normie.”
Clara’s eyes sparkle. “Yes! Do it. Daddy would go insane!”
Clara’s father is one of the wealthiest men in the country and the self-styled keeper of vampiric purity.
Basically, think of Jacob Rees Mogg and make him an actual vampire.
Yep. Poor Clara. But she does take every possible opportunity to upset him.
He’s going to love the idea of the app but he would lose his shit if he knew a normie wrote the code.
Is it fate? Or just pure coincidence as that’s the exact moment my phone pings with a notification. I have a message waiting for me on Reddit. “Oh my god,” I whisper as I read it, scanning forward to see if I’m reading this correctly. “I have an applicant! An actually qualified one.”
“Vamp?”
I roll my eyes at her. “Who else would be on r/VampireLife?”
“Fair.”
“He sounds like he might actually know what he’s talking about.”
“We need to go and meet him.” Clara declares, knocking back the rest of her drink before smearing the back of her hand across her lips, the other hand reaching to pick up her coat from the back of her chair.
“Now?”
“No time like the present.”
“Well, at least let me message him back. Find out if he’s free.”
She rolls her eyes and sits back down. “Get on with it then.”
It only takes him five minutes to reply. “He says he’s out with his flatmate this evening.”
“Perfect. We can join them.” She grins at me.
“That feels kind of…” I trail off, grasping for the right word. Intrusive. Weird. Operating outside the normal boundaries of decorum.
“Oh come on, please.” Clara gives me the look she knows will never fail to get me to give her exactly what she wants. She really is a master at that.
“Fine,” I tell her. “But it’s just a casual ten minute chat to see if he’s a lunatic and then we will leave him and his friend to their evening. OK?”
She nods and then her face breaks into the wicked smile I know means she’s only agreeing with me to placate my concerns. If she gets her way – and we all know she probably will – we’ll end up out all night, rolling home as the sun begins to rise.
Half an hour later, we’re hovering outside The Pig in the Parlour, peering through the windows to see if we can spot a lonely vampire nerd at the bar.
“Promise me you’ll behave?” I ask, putting my little finger out for her to pinky swear.
Clara has a bit of a tendency to act like a complete lunatic and this is meant to be a job interview, of sorts anyway.
“I always behave.” I don’t like the innocence in her tone, like she genuinely believes her conduct to be above reproach. Refusing to learn from your mistakes just means you keep on making them. Enough for the two of us normally.
“He’s cute,” she whispers, pointing through the window to a guy sitting at the bar. “But OMG, look at how young he is.”
He genuinely does look like a baby, like he’s just about to graduate, and that’s being generous.
If I had to age him I’d say he’s about thirty in real years.
Vampires age normally until we’re late teens or early twenties and then the process slows way down.
From then on we age at maybe one year to every fifteen human ones – hence why I’m one hundred and seventy-two but I look like I’m late twenties or early thirties – until we eventually stop aging at all.
Another guy comes to join the baby. He’s older, closer to my age I would expect.
If his friend is cute, this guy is devastating.
Tall and broad shouldered, but with a back that tapers to a narrow waist; he looks like a rugby player, or at least someone who is well acquainted with the gym.
He’s wearing a simple black shirt and blue jeans, but they both fit him like a glove.
His hair looks dark from here, but the light catches some hints of auburn and for a second I’m pulled back to our birthday night out and another handsome stranger propping up a bar.
“Damn,” Clara says under her breath. “He is fine. Where the hell has he been hiding all this time.” She does a little hip wiggle. “Mumma likes.”
I pull a face at her. Sometimes she really does have no filter. “Don’t be gross,” I tell her.
“Kill joy,” she says as she waits for the doorman to invite us in. She pulls me over the threshold and into the dim space beyond.
So, it turns out the hot one is my candidate and the baby-faced guy his wingman, the flat mate he was already out with when he sent me the email.
“I’m Brody,” he says with a smile as I approach him and introduce myself.
It’s all a bit unconventional – I mean, we’re conducting spontaneous interviews in a crowded and seemingly human bar – and I’m starting to think this is all one big mistake, a sign from the universe that this business idea is just a pipe dream and not something I could even fathom making into a reality.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a job interview like this before,” he tells me with a nervous smile.
“How old are you?” I reply with a question, wincing slightly at the oddly accusatory tone in my voice.
“Twenty-nine.” He swallows audibly and looks at me, as if he’s waiting for my reaction.
“Twenty-nine?” I raise an eyebrow. “Yeah, but really?” I mean, come on. I’m “thirty” but we all know it’s a huge lie and I’m really one hundred and seventy-two.
He swallows again and his blue eyes slip to the side. “Yeah, I…” he trails off.
“You’re actually twenty-nine?”
He nods.
“Wow.” For a moment I’m speechless – unusual as that is.
You just don’t meet that many newbies, it isn’t like there are millions of vampires being born every year; the only reason we have enough numbers of form a community is because we literally don’t die.
I lean forward slightly to look more closely at him.
“You don’t look like a newbie.” Most newbies have this slightly weird almost waxy look to them, like their skin is just a little too plump for their features, or like they’ve just had botox.
But Brody has very feint lines around his eyes, like his face wears an almost perpetual smile and it’s already scoring grooves into his features.
“Oh,” he says and his hand creeps to his face under the heat of my stare.
I feel like there’s something more he wants to say. But he stays silent as his eyes move from mine. I follow his gaze to the mirror behind the bar area.
His face is reflected back at me and the shock makes me jump backwards. “Jesus, you’re a normie?”
He nods again, a lock of auburn hair falling forward to curl in front of his eyes. “Yeah…”
“Holy fucking shit.” I thought I’d said the words in my head but the truth is they slipped right out of my lips to plop on the bar in front of us, all ripe and glistening like slugs.
“I can code though. I’m good. And I’m… look, I’ll level with you.
I’ve been working for a normal company, and it was…
awful. All the corporate bullshit and circle jerking and then Danely, fucking Danely.
” He shakes his head, but there’s a hint of humour in his voice, in the pull at the corner of his lip.
“He stole my lunch and vomited knock-off synth all over the conference room.”
I can’t help myself but laugh, almost spraying daiquiri over him in the process. “Like…” I make a motion of a serious projectile.
“Yep,” Brody replies, completely deadpan. “So. I’m young. I’m good. I’m keen and I’m… well I know it isn’t what you’re meant to say. But I’m desperate. For a job,” he adds quickly.
“The app is called Only Fangs,” I tell him, my tone deadpan.
He stares back at me as if to say so what?
I sigh. “Only Fangs is a dating app for vampires.”
“Oh.” His face drops. “I guess the hint is in the name.” But then he smiles softly. “I could still do it.”
“It wouldn’t bother you?”
He shrugs. “Should it?”
“I don’t actually know,” I reply honestly. I was joking earlier when I said to Clara that I might have to employ a normie.
“Look, have a think about it,” he says. “That’s all I’m asking. Just consider my application. I really think I could be an asset to you.”
“Well then.” I take a sip of my drink and then extend my right hand. “I promise to think about it. I’ll be in touch.”
He shakes my hand and his palm is warm in mine.