It took Sammy longer to finish his sandwich than the rest of us, having to withstand a few phone-related interruptions. Two of the calls sounded like the typical sort of crazies, but there was something about the third— something that had drawn his attention. He’d actually set his plate aside to focus on the pad resting on the desk, as he scrawled several lines of notes.
“Sammy and I are heading out for dinner tonight after work. Maybe even a couple of drinks. You should join us.” Indigo rinsed the plate, then popped open my rickety, fifteen year old dishwasher and slotted it into the bottom rack.
“I heard you guys talking about it. Wasn’t sure I was invited.”
“We invite you every damn time, Gus, you just keep on either telling us no or just not showing up.”
“I’m a busy guy.”
“That’s not it.” Her thin eyebrows lifted. I took a moment to look at her as she used the heel of one black boot to slam shut the dishwasher. The light within the office was somewhat dim, the table lamps keeping things softly illuminated, though sun proof shades had been installed in all of the windows. It was far too easy to forget what Indigo was— we’d tried to make everything feel as normal as humanly possible. The truth was, her current status as a half-blood meant that she could withstand at least some measure of sunlight— she generally wore a hat and a scarf around her face with a pair of sunglasses, though the elevated ultraviolet levels made her a bit uncomfortable. The thick window shades had been installed a day after she’d started working here as a measure of protection. It was an initiative suggested by Sammy, which once again shamed me because I hadn’t thought of it myself.
Indigo generally came to work early, before sunrise, letting herself in with a key and starting the day while I was still sleeping. At this time of year, the sun set late enough that she had little interest in working until it went down. She’d wrap herself up in layers of protective fabric and charge out as if she were a desert nomad setting out into a sandstorm. It seemed to be working so far, though I had my doubts about how long.
I’d only known a handful of half-bloods in my time— vampires who were turned by their masters, but never had an opportunity to drink fully from them— and each case was a little bit different. So far, Indigo seemed to be doing okay with her blood hunger, but as she matured, I had no doubt that would get worse and I still didn’t have a good solution for her. The fact that she and Sammy were getting along so well and spending some time after hours having meals and drinks was great for company morale, though I worried about the long term impact. If Indigo ended up losing control— if she gave in entirely to her animalistic instincts, things could get very bad very quick. There’d been no sign of it so far and I was trying to remain confident, but after five centuries of life and direct exposure to the dichotomy between human and vampire— it was difficult to maintain a strong sense of optimism.
There’d been that Romanian family in the 1800s— a normal farming family, by all accounts. Happy and healthy, even with rumors of vampire activity in some of the neighboring wilderness. As an Enforcer for the Caretakers, I’d been sent in to investigate, wanting to be sure to keep the word ‘vampire’ out of human mouths, as much as possible. As it turned out, the vampire activity was mostly due to a woman— the matron of the farming family, a mother to four children, a wife to her doting husband. Granted, she wasn’t a half-blood, though she’d actually been able to cobble together something of a life for herself and her loved ones.
Until she hadn’t.
I’d made a routine visit to their farm one evening, trying to get a sense for how things were going, and I’d noticed the six pigs they’d kept in a pen were all missing. Upon closer examination, I’d crept toward the house, while I listened for signs of activity, trying to stay out of sight. I’d heard it as I approached— a sound I’d likely never forget. The soft, wet slurping, like someone drinking water from a bucket. I’d crept into the farmhouse, only to find the husband cold and bloodless on the kitchen floor. He was lying as still and cool as a stone, every ounce of his life drained from his body.
She’d apparently fed on the pigs first, hoping to quench her blood hunger before it got to be too much for her. But feeding on them had only served to ignite her thirst stronger— to stoke the simmering flame into an almost raging inferno. Three of the four children had already been fed upon before I reached her, and she was working on the fourth until I’d used one of my trusty knives to end her existence.
It was her eldest son I’d saved, though he claimed to wish I hadn’t in the years to come. Like Indigo, he’d become a half-blood, living in some strange world between human and vampire, and I’d taken him under my wing, hoping to help him navigate this new, strange world. It hadn’t worked, and upon a later visit to the farm, I’d found evidence that he’d removed all of his clothes and walked out into a nearby forest clearing just as dawn was breaking. He’d sprawled out on the ground, closed his eyes and waited for the sun’s inevitable arrival. I found what was left of him a few hours later, between the sun’s work and the work of scavengers, there hadn’t been much to recover. I still couldn’t explain why that particular story stood out so dramatically in my mind. I’d served the Caretakers for hundreds of years and had been involved in countless missions against and for the supernatural realm, many of them bleeding together into a huddled mass of images. But that memory, for whatever reason, stood taller and clearer than the rest and every time I looked at Indigo, I saw the face of that young man. His dark eyes revealing little more than a withered soul within.
“So you’re just going to stop talking then.” She crossed her narrow arms over her chest and looked at me, her chin down-turned.
“Sorry. Lost in a memory. What— what was the question?”
“If you’re coming to dinner and drinks tonight. We promise we won’t keep the old man out too late.”
“I— I can’t.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Indigo—”
“Look, I get it— we’re not exactly your crowd. It’s cool. No offense taken—”
“That’s not it.” I wasn’t sure what to say exactly. I’d spent five hundred years on this planet and in that time, I’d been through too many friendships to count— most of them, for whatever reason, with humans. One by one I’d watched them grow old and die, and by the end, invariably, they always looked upon me with a sort of scorn. Looked at me as if it was my fault that I lived such a long life— as if I’d made some sort of deal with the devil for my immortality. For those few who I’d trusted enough to share the truth, they often begged me to cast some spell or work some magic so they could have just a few more years. Those who I didn’t share the truth with— they simply couldn’t comprehend the differences between them and I, and I, for once, remained at a loss for words.
Friendships, in my experience— relationships even more so, brought nothing but eventual misery, and these days I needed less misery in my life, not more. I was fine building bonds with my co-workers or showing some kindness to a young homeless girl who needed a fresh start. But those situations were worlds apart from genuine friendships and I lived in fear that one might eventually transform into the other.
“Then what is it? It’s just dinner and drinks. I’ll get a nice, rare steak, try and keep from biting Sammy’s neck for a little bit longer. Then—” her voice trailed off. A shadow passed over her face, a gradual darkness that I hadn’t remembered seeing before, just a flicker, which she tried to shake away, but not quite quickly enough.
“Then what?”
“Huh?” She snapped out of her momentary fog and looked up at me.
“You were saying something— dinner, drinks, then— then what?”
“Oh. Right.” Air left her flared nostrils and I could tell she was battling with something.
“Talk to me, Indigo. What’s on your mind?”
She ran her tongue over her teeth, then drew her dark fingernails through her short hair, lined with purple tips.
“You probably don’t remember,” she started, and leaned against the kitchen island, her fingers curling into fists, moving in and out with a kind of nervous energy. I would have invited her up to the roof for a cigarette break, except that was no longer a viable option, at least not during daylight hours. “When I was taken in Seattle, when Davit and his goons lured me stupidly into his circle— there was another girl—”
“Miranda.”
Her face brightened somewhat, apparently cheered by the fact that I actually did remember. “Yeah, Miranda. We— we actually knew each other in Seattle, you know, before we both ended up in the back of that asshole’s van. We weren’t best friends or anything, but we hung in the same circles, attended a lot of the same shows. There was this crew— the Wailing Willows, we both roadied for them, right? An all-girls band, which we thought would be awesome, except that a lot of creepy guys attend those shows and there were some sketchy nights. Miranda and I, we always had each other’s backs, all the way until we ended up in the darkness of Davit’s moving van.”
“Sounds like you looked out for each other.”
Indigo nodded, her teeth, just the bluntness of her human teeth, not the sharpened canines that came with transformation, gently pinching her lower lip. “We even helped each other escape— the two of us. Brainstormed the whole thing, made our move and broke our way out of there, just her and me. There were other girls with us, but we started the whole thing.”
“What happened? You get separated?”
Indigo nodded, her eyes lifting toward the ceiling, as if she was trying to put together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle sentence. “Davit’s men were closing on us, you know? We broke apart, ran in opposite directions, told each other we’d meet up somewhere, but none of us knew anything about Boston, we’d spent our entire time here locked up in that abandoned tenement building. We sprinted away and— that was it. That’s all she wrote.”
“How long ago was that?”
“A month maybe, altogether? Could have been longer. Like I said, you live on the streets, your sense of time turns to shit.”
“Do you know if she’s—”
“What? Human? Or a vamp freak like me?”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“But that’s what you meant.”
“Well, not in so many words, but— yeah. I mean— he turned you somewhere along the way, how do we know he didn’t turn her? We figure he only partially turned you so that you could get closer to me, right? Get access to my dad’s blade. But Miranda— maybe he changed her fully. For all we know she could have been one of the Wilds we saw in Fort Warren.”
“Well, that’s a pleasant thought, no wonder nobody ever confides in you.”
“I’m not trying to be an asshole—”
“So it just comes naturally, then.”
My mouth hung open, though, for the life of me, I couldn’t coax any words out.
“Sorry.” She lowered her head and heaved a heavy sigh as Sammy’s voice carried over, another roller coaster of a phone call that had drawn his attention for nearly seven minutes. “Now I guess I’m the asshole.”
“You’re not an asshole, and you’re right, if it’s words of encouragement you’re looking for, or some kind of fluff to make you feel better— I’m not that guy. I’ve lived too long to tell people what they want to hear.”
“I get it.” She turned and looked toward one of the thick, shade covered windows, a sense of longing in her pale face. She’d claimed to have never been a beach bum, though I could sense a profound sadness in her since she’d been forced to be locked away from direct sunlight. I’m not sure I ever fully appreciated the torment a half-blood vampire goes through. Still clinging to that small slice of humanity but knowing that you’re destined for a life of darkness and hunger. It wouldn’t have been easy for anyone, much less a twenty-something young woman who’d had her life in front of her.
“I mean, you’re right,” she continued, “for all I know, Davit did her dirty. Or, she might have run across some meth head and gotten a knife in the gut— I just don’t know, which is kind of the problem, right? I feel like if I at least knew what had happened to her, then I could put it behind me. But I don’t, so I can’t.”
“And you want help? Finding her, I mean?”
“I’m not really an ask for help kind of girl.”
“I might have noticed that from time to time.”
“What can I say— we’re both a little thick-headed and stubborn. Like two peas in a pod, I guess.” Indigo rolled her eyes, then turned her head away so I wouldn’t see the emotion etched upon her face. This issue with Miranda affected her far more than she was willing to let on.
“Tell you what,” I finally said, keeping my voice low. “You and Sammy, go out after work, do your thing. You and I can meet for coffee after, take a few minutes, you tell me what you remember about Miranda and we’ll see what we can do about poking around a bit. If we think it’s worthwhile, we can talk to Sam about it tomorrow, too, see if any of his police contacts can lead anywhere.”
Indigo sniffed, nodding softly, still not looking directly at me. After a moment spent composing herself, she finally drew her moist eyes back my way. “Thanks, Gus. That— that works.”
“Good.”
“I still don’t know why you won’t just hang out with us, though. Snob.” She rolled her eyes, wiped at them and then strode over toward the desk where she could get a better eye on the computer screen and continue her work for the day.