Page 18 of A Bond with the Dark

“Before we were born,” Maggie states.

“What does it mean, do you think?” I say, trying to press them. “Of the sea?”

“A siren, probably,” Hilda admits, though her voice is unreliable.

“A siren?” I repeat. “Like, a mermaid?”

“Well, yes.” Hilda rises and moves over to the coffee pot, getting herself a cup from the cupboard. “Probably not what you imagine a mermaid to look like, though. These are magickal, immortal beings doomed to the sea to lure sailors to their deaths and drink their blood.”

Oh, so grandma was a little coo-coo then?

“She did have a vivid imagination,” Hilda counters, as though my inner thoughts crawled out of my brain and crept into hers.

“Yeah, she did,” Maggie agrees, winking at me with a suspicious grin. “I wonder if this was for a book she was working on.”

“Does it say anything else?” Hilda asks, returning to the table with her coffee. “About that woman she saw?”

“No, the page is torn out where there should be more to the entry,” I reply sadly, touching the frayed edges sticking out from the crevice. “I want to know more.”

“I'll look through the other boxes at home,” Hilda says, opening another book. “Maybe the other page is in there. We have a lot of her old journals.”

“Yeah, that would be great, Hilda, thanks,” I say, returning to the page about mermaids.

After a few slow moments of only the pages turning, making the only sound, I chew on the inside of my cheek hesitantly. “What do you guys know of vampires?” I say timidly.

Maggie looks up from her book, her wild hair backlit by the morning sun steeping in through the window. “They're said to have powers to compel you to do what they want you to without speaking.”

“I've heard that in movies before,” I agree.

“Yes, but it is ancient knowledge, too,” Hilda says. “Everyone knows they are strong and fast; that sunlight, stakes, garlic, and silver kills them.”

“They're also said to have individual powers, too,” says Maggie, the look she gets when she’s about to drop her useless knowledge on us sweeping over her face. “Like their own special power depending on the person who turned them, their blood type, and the time of year they were born into vampirism. Things of that sort.”

I glance at her sideways. “Well, don't you know a lot about vampires.”

“Oh, Maggie was obsessed with them back in the day,” Hilda replies almost condescendingly. “She did papers on them in college.”

Maggie tends to go overboard with things she gets fascinated with. She often bores Hilda to tears when she has random eruptions of her knowledge, wringing eye rolls and harsh sighs from Hilda every time she brings up a topic.

That’s why there’s a teenage-level wall in their bedroom with a collage of the Moodiest Blues band she ‘toured’ with in college, or why she claims she knows Italian and is fascinated by Italy but has never set foot there yet talks like she has.

It’s funny listening to the two of them banter. They still fight like siblings even in their seventies.

I almost spill my dream of the mysterious vampire who has been haunting me, but then I think better of it and shut my mouth.

I’ll keep him as my dirty little secret.

For now.

“Why are you interested in vampires all of a sudden?” Hilda queries, as though she senses my impure thoughts of ungodly creatures.

“Oh, I don't know,” I lie, trying to tighten my voice. “Maybe because of Twilight.”

A chuckle ripples through us before we settle back into our quiet.

Flipping through the pages nonchalantly, I keep looking for more words to tell me anything about vampires.

Why would grandma have a book that mentioned herbs that could kill them if she didn't know more about them?

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