Page 9 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends
ORIENTATION
brENNAN’S PHONE
[Unknown Number]
Ummm wait hold on!
I forgot to ask
Are you going to the meeting?? From the text?
This is Cole btw
Cole
I got ur number from Tony
Brennan
Hey. I think I’m gonna go. I don’t have a lot else to go on right now.
Cole
What if they’re like vampire hunters??
Or they want to experiment on you???
Brennan
I’ll be careful. I have some time to prepare. I need to learn something from them.
Cole
Okay well maybe we should do what mari and I do for tinder dates, we do code words and check-in times and stuff so we don’t get murdered
Brennan
Um. Yeah. That’s a great idea, if you don’t mind.
brENNAN’S JOURNAL
Blood Rationing
16 oz per pint
1 packet per week ??? = ~ 2 oz per day? Or 8 oz twice a week?
Less with more animal blood??
Regular, consistent dose instead of waiting—helps manage sensory overload, distraction by peoples’ pulses. Needs more experimenting.
Maybe I can do 1 oz per day? Worried about running out, stealing more. This isn’t sustainable. Shit .
Four Three pint bags left
The address, it turned out, was for a trendy-looking café in Boston, about an hour on the university shuttle into the city and then twenty minutes on the T away.
It was, if nothing else, comforting that it was public.
He couldn’t be murdered in public, right?
But he was the genius going to meet a group of unknown people who might or might not be watching him, far away from anyone who knew what was going on, so maybe he should be getting a second opinion.
Brennan had had an ongoing mental play-by-play of every terrible outcome that could come about.
Popular ideas were vampire hunters poised with stakes and flaming pitchforks, or comically Dracula-like vampire clans come to kidnap him in their quest to desecrate humanity.
And Sunny, that had to be a code name, right?
A tentative part of him wondered if, just maybe, he might meet a potential ally. A lead. A friend. Because while he was adapting, living off of stolen blood wasn’t sustainable.
This was how his days were going:
Each morning he microwaved a shot glass’s worth of frozen blood and took it like medicine, and so far, it was effective in keeping his thirst in check.
Notably, the buzz of caffeine quieted the thirst, too, so he’d embraced his inner New Englander and started toting around a large iced coffee from Dunkin.
And while he didn’t burn in the sunlight, he squinted in the light like never before and wore sunglasses far more often than he used to.
He went to classes and tried to keep his mind and senses from wandering while he tried to absorb a fraction of the material.
He fended off calls from his mom. She continued to offer her worries and concerns in between rattling on about her own job and life, and she continued to tell him to use the credit card, as if her giving him money now made up for being a broke workaholic throughout his childhood.
She reminded him, as she had all summer, that he could take a semester off “if things got a bit much.”
Well, Mom, he didn’t say, everything has officially gotten a bit much.
He read Twilight.
It was… exactly what he expected. Not great in terms of literary value or cheap thrills, nothing illuminating in terms of vampire research, but informative about the vampire craze he’d missed out on as a kid.
He went to the library, an escape from a constantly garlic-scented apartment.
He went at night, when the quiet let him focus.
He’d ended up deep down a rabbit hole of local secret societies, trying to figure out who might know about him.
Mostly it seemed like conspiracies, but, hey, no stone unturned.
Cole had run into him in the stacks again, and Brennan gave his review of Twilight thus far.
“They don’t talk a lot,” Brennan said, “they just kind of”—he waved a hand in the distance between them—“angst at each other. It’s not really romantic.”
“Right!” Cole said, lighting up. “He’s kind of creepy. Like, first relationships suck but. Talk about ignoring red flags.”
Mostly, though, Brennan waited.
The meeting approached. Saturday, eleven in the morning. It didn’t seem like a good place to launch a vampire-hunting ambush. But still, Brennan needed to be prepared for anything.
brENNAN’S JOURNAL
Weaknesses
Garlic—yes, obviously, established.
Silver—burns like a motherfucker. Also, seems like the only way to break skin.
Side note, I bleed, somehow. It’s gross, black, thick, and oozy and doesn’t look like blood. Vampire blood?? Research later.
Wooden stake—would probably kill anyone? But might be part of making vamps “stay” dead? Not something I’m equipped to experiment with right now.
Fire—Fire hurts. In related news, water is wet.
Holy water—TBD, ordered some on the internet.
Rushing water / rivers—nothing, at least, not the little creek in the woods nearby. Maybe bigger bodies of water are bad?
Maybe I should go to the meeting equipped with a bowl of Tony’s marinara. It would do the job, worst-case scenario.
brENNAN’S PHONE
Cole
You on your way??
Brennan
On the commuter line now. I’ll let you know if I die.
Cole
Not dying is preferred!
Brennan
You can’t always get what you want.
Brennan’s backpack held a jar of marinara sauce, a silver pocketknife, and an oven mitt to wield it.
He fit right in. The magic of Boston being a city of students meant that he was basically invisible, another white guy with a backpack.
The café was unbearably trendy, all exposed brick and string lights and leafy plants on every surface. The menu was written on a chalk board. The little storefront was crowded, the outdoor tables full of students talking or studying, the inside just as bustling behind the big glass windows.
If there was a vampire and/or vampire-hunter ambush planned, this wasn’t a great place for it. It was very public, and very full of girls taking pictures of their food for Instagram. Brennan’s rampant nerves settled down infinitesimally.
His daily dose of blood kept his senses in check, but he felt much duller than when he’d drank a lot.
He’d have to note that one ounce a day wasn’t enough.
Even if lights and sounds weren’t piercing anymore, there was still this dry itch under his skin that served as the constant reminder that something was wrong with him.
He scanned the room for anyone who might stand out while he waited for the host. Everyone looked… normal. A group of girls studying, a couple outside with a dog under the table. No one who screamed “vampire adjacent.” If Brennan blended in, anyone could.
When the host returned, Brennan asked for Sunny.
A part of him hoped she’d have no idea who he was talking about, so he could leave quietly and write the texts off as badly timed spam mail.
But his (dead?) heart skipped in his chest when the host immediately turned to lead him across the restaurant.
He followed her through the café. She beelined through the small main space and went to a door with a sign that said DO NOT ENTER . Brennan braced himself again to be ambushed or murdered, and when she opened the door, she revealed—
A private room. A large circular table with endless plates of food and pastries. It must have been one of everything on the menu: brioche French toast with fresh strawberries, spicy shakshuka with crusty bread, spinach and feta quiche, a pear tart, chocolate mousse cheesecake.
More importantly, two girls, just as college-aged as everyone in the building.
One had pale skin and dark hair, the long limbs of a model.
She wore a crop top and cargo pants straight out of an Instagram ad, and was taking pictures of the food.
She expertly dual-wielded the latest iPhone in one hand and a DSLR camera in the other.
The other girl had brown skin, a pixie cut with coiled curls, and a binder so full of papers it probably equaled her in body mass.
The host quickly went back to her post, leaving Brennan hovering over the table when the girls looked up in perfect unison.
“Oh good, you found us.” The girl with the binder smiled. She set down a chocolate croissant and wiped her hands on a napkin, standing up to offer a handshake.
Brennan blinked, taking in her straight-out-of-the-nineties bomber jacket and earnest smile. Brennan shook her hand. She gave his a firm shake, a bit aggressive, and immediately began an enthusiastic ramble.
“We can never agree on where to do these things, and for the record”—she leaned forward, waggling her eyebrows—“I wanted to do laser tag. But we agreed that was more of a second meeting thing. For now, we figured we’d let Sunny get us brunch with her fancy Instagram superpowers. Sound good?”
Sunny didn’t look up from her camera, the click of the shutter punctuating the moment of silence as Brennan took in the scene.
“Not that I don’t love this energy, or, like, free food, but”—Brennan looked between the two girls—“what the hell is this?”
Sunny took one more picture of the food before peering at Brennan with a thoughtful frown.
“Oh shit,” said Sunny. “He’s the one who didn’t RSVP.” Her nose wrinkled.
“RSVP to what ?”
Binder Girl pouted. “Don’t you use Facebook?”
“I mean, I have Facebook,” Brennan said. “But it’s kind of like a phone book nowadays, I don’t really keep up with it—”
“Wait, I finally figured out Facebook and you’re telling me it’s already uncool with the kids?”
Brennan grabbed his phone and started to pull up the long-abandoned Facebook app with 99+ notifications on it. Clearly, they weren’t going to give him answers, so Facebook it was.
“I told you we should have DM’d him on Insta,” Sunny was telling Binder Girl. “I have a checkmark, he’d listen to me.”