25. Ari
Ari
Iknew I shouldn’t have gotten all positive and enthusiastic. I knew I should have continued to imagine all the things that could go wrong instead of going out and toasting a win that wasn’t ours to celebrate.
I feel like such a fool.
Brody has gone. I can’t stand to be around all that joie de vivre. He was driving me crazy with all his “it’s only a minor setback” and “there’s still plenty of options” and “it isn’t over until the fat lady sings” bullcrap.
It’s a major setback.
There are no options.
It’s over. The fat lady has completed her song, taken off her makeup and is now enjoying a large glass of merlot.
Hmm a large glass of merlot sounds pretty good right now. I might even forgo the glass and save on washing up.
I wake up to find the light streaming onto my face and I immediately cover my delicate skin with the blanket.
Safely ensconced, I take a tentative sniff of the air. It smells like vanilla. And the blanket is soft against my skin. I’m not at home.
The realisation causes me to jolt upright. Where the hell am I?
But of course I’m at Clara’s. Somewhere I’ve woken up too many times to count. I sink back into the cushions. Everything’s fine. I’m safe.
Except I have no memory of getting here.
Clara screams when she walks into the living room. “Jesus Christ,” she says when she realises it’s me. The arm which was clutched tight across her chest relaxes. “I thought I was having an episode.”
There was a mass hysteria event in the vampire community back towards the end of the nineteenth century when a whole town of vampires suddenly started seeing phantoms in their homes.
People who couldn’t possibly have gotten inside were just sitting in their chairs or pacing up and down their hallways.
No one ever figured out what caused it, but Clara went into total Sherlock Holmes mode, desperate to be the one to solve the riddle.
She’s been obsessed with it ever since, convinced that one day it’ll happen again and she’ll inextricably be right at the heart of it.
“Didn’t you know I was here?” I ask. Although I have a key so technically I can let myself in whenever I want to, I still don’t just sneak in. It would be weird and obtrusive and… well… rude. Besides, why would I come here if I didn’t want to gossip with Clara?
“I was out late,” Clara says quietly. “I didn’t check if you were in here before I went to bed.”
“Makes sense. I must have come in and then realised you were out so I…” I stop talking as I look down and see a bottle of expensive whisky on the floor. I must have helped myself. I grimace slightly.
“Whatever,” she waves her hand as if to say she doesn’t care.
“Where were you anyway?” I ask, desperate to change the topic. She might seem cool about the whisky but I feel guilty and I don’t like it.
“Oh, nowhere,” she says. “Shall I make coffee?”
“Nowhere?” I raise my eyebrows.
“It was nothing. Now, coffee?”
There’s something she’s not telling me. If she’d been on a date she would have told me every gory detail. If she’d been out with Ivan she would have invited me along. Where the hell was she?
But as I make my way towards the kitchen and the smell of brewing beans, I spot the invitation on the side table in the hallway.
A gala evening of Sanguis and excellent company is written in a curling script across the top.
Obviously some kind of fancy vampire event.
The invite is addressed to Clara Hele and Luca Ro?u.
Luca is the Transylvanian prince she’s been betrothed to since she was a kid.
Why is she going to gala evenings with the man she’s desperate not to marry?
I place it on the kitchen table in front of her.
She sighs loudly. “Daddy insisted.” She rolls her eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, hurt that she hasn’t shared this with me.
“Because it was boring and bullshit and I only went to stop Daddy from moaning at me.”
“But you’re still asking for the extension?”
“Of course.” She grips me by the shoulders, her eyes boring into mine. “I’m going to take all the time I can possibly get.”
“Promise?” I’m not ready to lose her yet.
“I promise.” She drops her hands and then sticks out her little finger.
I wrap my own around hers. A pinky promise is legally binding.
“Now,” she says, turning away from me to pour coffee into two enormous mugs.
“Do you want to tell me why you snuck into my house to drink my whisky and pass out on my sofa?” Her words are soft and gentle, without even a hint of accusation that I’m a shitty friend for effectively breaking in and stealing her stuff.
“The bank pulled their offer,” I tell her. “They only lend to humans. It’s a policy.”
“Ah, shit, Ari. I’m sorry.” She sounds genuine and I desperately blink back the tears that are forming.
I don’t want to break down in front of her but I’m not sure if I’m strong enough to hold myself together.
“I thought it might have had something to do with Brody…” she dangles the end of the sentence in the air as if it were a question.
“Nothing happened between us.”
“Well, a little happened.” She grins. Of course I already told her everything over the phone while we were still in Aberystwyth.
“He’s being a sweetheart and gentleman. It doesn’t even feel that awkward anymore.”
“Good.” She peers at my puffy face. “I just needed to be sure you didn’t want me to punch that perfect human face of his.”
I shake my head and try not to burst into tears about the funding issue.
“You could get an investor,” she says quietly.
“I don’t want your money Clara.” I’m adamant.
“Not mine…” she trails off. I borrowed some money back in 1956 and it caused a bit of a rift between us, one we’d moved on from a long time ago, but obviously it still plays on her mind a little. “Daddy’s.”
“No.” I’m adamant. The last thing I want is Clara’s wealthy father to loan me money like I’m eighteen and not one hundred and seventy-two.
“You know this kind of ‘keep it in the family’ shit really gets him off,” she tells me, her tone sardonic and with a single eyebrow raised.
“Gross,” I mutter under my breath.
But Clara does kind of have a point. Her father is a very loud campaigner against mixed relationships and believes vampires should only date other vampires.
“You’re doing that face again,” Clara tells me.
“What face?”
“The one that looks like a bulldog swallowed a bee. The one you always pull whenever there’s any mention of dear old Daddy.”
She’s joking. She hates his politics as much as I do.
But vampire blood is thicker than water and the vein of familial loyalty runs deep in the Hele clan.
Clara walks the fine line between publicly agreeing with him and not pissing him off so much he starts putting his foot down on certain aspects of her life.
Like marrying the Transylvanian prince she’s been betrothed to since she was little.
So far she’s managed to convince him she’s not ready to settle down and so he keeps pushing back the date.
But one day the debt will need to be paid.
There’s no getting out of the contract her father signed for her.
“I don’t think getting into bed with your father is a good idea,” I tell her.
She looks horrified until she realises it’s a figure of speech and I’m not literally getting into her father’s bed.
The mere thought makes me want to vomit in my mouth a bit.
“You know, he invests in loads of random vampire companies. Says he wants to make sure other people have access to the same opportunity he had. Or some other such bullshit soundbite.” She flaps her hand.
“But still…” I make the face again.
“He has a committee. It wouldn’t just be him investing. He’d just be opening the doors, so to speak.”
“Would he want to be involved? In making decisions and stuff?”
“I doubt it. All he’ll care about is if it fits his stupid ideology, and if you’d likely make him some money.”
“It feels…” I trail off as I grope for the right word.
“Genius?” Clara offers.
“I was going to say grubby. Like it’s clearly nepotism.”
Clara rolls her eyes. “Nepotism is a fact of life, sweetie. Come join us. It’s kind of fun.”
“And I don’t think I like trading off the whole pure blood thing.”
“You’re building a dating app for vampires called Only Fangs. That ship has sailed.”
“But…” I can’t articulate myself. I can’t figure out the right words to explain what I’m feeling.
Like I’m selling out. Like I’m going against every inch of my belief system in pursuit of money.
Like I’m a literal capitalist vampire, sucking the rest of the world dry for my own gain.
OK, perhaps that’s a little extreme. A metaphor too far. But you know what I mean.